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I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

247 points by ghuntley 4y ago

a-dub 4y ago
i think handshake and gns are pretty cool.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I don't know about Handshake, but GNS isn't block-chain. As far as I understand, it's a distributed hash-table: https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html
  - a-dub 4y ago
    handshake is at handshake.org in my mind they're both decentralized and distributed peer to peer systems which aim to provide global public internet infrastructure (which is what i find to be the interesting part). handshake has a cryptoconomy and gnunet is more a traditional peer to peer network. handshake is probably the cooler of the two, if you ask me.
mistrial9 4y ago
quote -- It should be noted that this (ed. extra dead project death) was in 2020, and it’s still listed when google searching for “blockchain production users” ghosts in the machine
orzig 4y ago
> TL;DR: The top #1 Google result for “blockchain production users” (and related queries) lists 34 individual “real world blockchain” projects. One would expect some actual functioning projects that have an impact on every-day consumers — outside of cryptocurrency & NFTs. Looking into all 34, I found that 13 are already dead (including one that has been killed by the SEC), 6 are only useful within the crypto & NFT ecosystems and not in the “real world” and 14 use Blockchain in a way where removing the blockchain would not impact functionality at all, or make the product better. The remaining project is Chainalysis, which has real-world impact by helping law enforcement de-anonymizing blockchain users. So basically the author found nothing good (and I haven't either, though I commend their depth of investigation). I'd be open of objective approaches any objectors would recommend doing differently to find a top 34
- bo1024 4y ago
  If you want to find interesting blockchain projects (not necessarily impactful, but interesting), I would spend some time clicking around https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/
smsm42 4y ago
I kinda question the scientific methodology of "take the first N Google results". Not only for obvious reasons, but also for the reason that a lot of infrastructural projects that have a lot of real world effects are not routinely discussed in the press (because they are extremely boring to everybody but specialists, also because nobody but the specialists knows they exist, or understands how they work) and thus would not show up at the top results. What would show up is more marketing than technology. And, of course, since we are living through the initial hype cycle, there would be a lot of marketing to sort through. Limiting oneself to look only at the most hyped projects virtually guarantees you never see the deeper infrastructural ones. I am not passing judgement on how good are those or how many of them use blockchains properly - I am just saying the methodology used here is doomed to miss them. It's a good entertaining reading, but it's more gossip column than industry research quality. That said, it is true that companies like Chainalysis (it is in no way alone in this field, of course), which bring visibility, analytics, risk assessment and so on into the blockchain world, have a real world impact. I think the accusation of "censoring transactions" is misplaced - first of all, on a decentralized blockchain you can not really censor a transaction (you can do it if you're a centralized exchange gatekeeping an access route to the chain, but that's a different thing) - but the impact is there and is going to grow nevertheless.
- vkou 4y ago
  The list wasn't taken from the top N google results, the list was hand-curated by a web3-focused publication, and was found by a google search. It would be like a construction-focused publication hand-curating the top N/most important N construction projects in the world, of which N-1 are some mixture of cancelled, fictional, or not actually having anything to do with construction. It would, of course, be utterly farcical - in any space other than web3. But in this space, we smile, nod, close our eyes, and hope that our token/ico/ape.jpg will go to the moon. This isn't actually a good thing.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    builtin.com does not seem to have any specific focus on blockchain - their site says "Built In is the online community for startups and tech companies. Find startup jobs, tech news and events" and their "Our story" page does not seem to mention blockchain or crypto at all, and if anything, is focused on recruiting ("career" is mentioned a lot). I have no idea how they ended up being #1 in google for that specific query, maybe mostly because of randomly matching some search terms, or they have a very good SEO team. The author's credentials are: Sam Daley is a Built In associate product manager who formerly covered AI, blockchain and emerging tech trends for BuiltIn.com. Prior to Built In, Daley worked as a CNN production assistant and development coordinator for Rotary International. Which does not suggest he has any special insight into any blockchain technology or industry beyond being assigned to "write about all that new stuff because you young people understand those". OTOH, his previous title on Linkedin is "SEO Strategist" - which may be the explanation for the #1 result. At least we know he's good at that job, congrats, Sam. His credentials on being the arbiter of blockchain project prominence are still not clear - and I suspect his methodology of compiling the list differs little from the original article's methodology. Maybe I'm wrong but his bio doesn't show any signs of any relation to crypto. Maybe he still has huge knowledge of it, I don't know, there's no way for me to see it at least. So, not a "construction-focused publication" but more like "local newspaper worker who covers any news about manufacturing industry, construction, agriculture, food industry and anything else nobody wants to". So yeah, random list of startups has most of them dead or pivoted in several years. That's how it works with startups.
tmpz22 4y ago
You know how “the brightest minds of our generation spent the last decade on ads”? I’m just glad they clearly stuck with ads and let all these scam projects rot.
- api 4y ago
  We’re out hiring right now and it’s shocking how many people have a career filled totally with dodgy cryptocurrency nonsense. Loads of designers and developers have most of their experience in platforms that seem to have no utility beyond scams, gambling, and MLMs. There certainly is a massive amount of wasted talent here.
  - Fargoan 4y ago
    What do you think is wrong with gambling?
    - simonw 4y ago
      It takes advantage of people who have a common mental disorder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_gambling
      - tresqotheq 4y ago
        So does the ads, google, government machinery etc. They take advantage of people's common "mental disorder" (I say "mental disorder" because it is still a weakness even if it is present in a lot of people, which I take as the assumption made in your comment as well) such as very limted attention span, lack of long term memory and vulnerability to distraction..
        nextaccountic 4y ago
        > So does the ads This is true, but this just means that there's something wrong with both ads and gambling
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
notRobot 4y ago
Extremely relevant simple chart: NIST's answer to "Do you need a blockchain?": https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed
- influxmoment 4y ago
  This is wrong. Blockchains validate data. Their purpose isn't to store it. Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no
  - cowtools 4y ago
    The purpose of bitcoin, for example, is not to store a list of transactions?
    - tux3 4y ago
      Storing the list is the easy part. I have a usb drive that can store the list. You want people to agree on which chain is the main chain, so that you can only add things to the list, and you can't go back or substitute it with another list without breaking proof of work. The purpose of bitcoin is to make people agree that a spent transaction is irrevocably spent.
      - testesttest 4y ago
        Have you tried storing the list lately? I don't think you have a 10TB plus flash drive. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive Crypto is more and more centralised because the hardware to run your own node is now thousands of dollars. That is without even getting into miners...It is kinda failing.
        influxmoment 4y ago
        That's Ethereum. Largely was consider a bad ideas because it's too large to independently validate
glerk 4y ago
> Algorand, Gemini & Circle: Crypto only > Not real-world projects. As discussed in the introduction, I am only discussing projects that have real-world effects outside of cryptocurrency balances. Gemini, Circle as exchanges, and Algorand as a Blockchain implementation, don’t qualify here – they don’t actually add real-world utility other than moving tokens around. Interesting take. These are very different "projects", but I don't see why they don't qualify as "having real-world effects". Gemini and Circle are corporations that provide stablecoins backed by USD reserves (gUSD and USDC). The tokens these companies have created can be moved around on various blockchains without an intermediary and used to pay for goods and services. Algorand is a blockchain protocol that can be used to build decentralized applications (similar to Ethereum). There are many "real-world" projects built on Algorand, for example lofty.ai (tokenized real-estate investing). I don't see how the author defines "real-world utility" and why Algorand, Gemini and Circle wouldn't qualify. It seems like the author is trying to cherry-pick a few failed blockchain projects in an attempt to smear the whole industry.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Would you be so kind as to cherry-pick a few successful "real world" Blockchain projects then?
  - glerk 4y ago
    There are a lot of successful blockchain projects that respond to various use cases. On top of my head: - Uncensorable money: og bitcoin and pretty much everything else - Uncensorable money + privacy: monero, tornado.cash, etc. - Decentralized exchanges/automated market makers: curve.fi, uniswap, etc. - Prediction markets: polymarket etc. EDIT: looks like omen and augur are dead
    - thematrixturtle 4y ago
      Please note the stipulation "real world": everything you just listed involves moving bits about in the crypto world.
hash872 4y ago
I have an extremely low opinion of blockchain/crypto, but in the interest of fairness, I did read an FT piece a few months ago about how banks are apparently actually using the blockchain for currency trading: "HSBC and Wells Fargo are cutting out a key part of the currency market’s infrastructure from some trades after the two banks agreed to settle transactions directly on blockchain technology. From Monday, they will use blockchain technology to reconcile and pay out on deals in dollars, sterling, euro and Canadian dollars between the two banks, using HSBC’s FX Everywhere platform. The agreement means they will bypass CLS, the nearly two-decades-old utility that central banks urge market participants to use to neutralise the risk of certain trade failures" https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f24b3 https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f2... https://archive.ph/qs8Cg https://archive.ph/qs8Cg non-paywalled link
- simonw 4y ago
  That sounds to me like someone used excitement about "blockchain" as an excuse to upgrade a two-decades old system to something a bit more modern. It looks like it's a private blockchain shared between two (at the moment) institutions, which means it's probably being used basically as an append-only log.
  - civilized 4y ago
    Reminds me of the craze for using Hadoop on data that could easily be handled by basic R, Python, or even Excel https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/hadoop_hatred.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/hadoop_hatred.html In hindsight, the Big Data hype wave was really just a good excuse to bring in a wider set of analytics tools than Excel, Access and inflexible, IT-administered databases.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    A blockchain is an append-only log. Upgrading ancient technology is a huge use-case for blockchain tech. The advantage of this platform is that settlement is probably much faster and it will presumably be relatively easy to add more than two parties to the system, without running into gnarly trust issues.
m00dy 4y ago
AMMs work pretty ok on chains. The list is subjective.
- MBCook 4y ago
  What is an AMM?
rvz 4y ago
> Money transfer use-cases would fall directly in the category of “crypto-only”. For as long as Bitcoin has existed, this has been touted as a great use-case — but it never really materialised. So Stellar and MoneyGram are not 'Money Transfer Use Cases'? [0] If not, why did they partner on this in the first place if they didn't think this was a possible or a feasible use case? On NFTs, Blockchain domains like ENS (Ethereum Name Service [1], Handshake [2], etc) are the only valid NFTs that have a use case. Seem to work fine for Namecheap [3], Encirca [4], etc, with millions of these domains registered so far. Once again, 90% of all NFTs, including the JPEG ones will die with the remaining 10% still surviving including blockchain domains. But yes as always, the extreme anti-crypto boosters like ghuntley will do anything to boost the most ridiculous of posts. Including this one. Oh dear. [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-launches-pioneering-global-crypto-to-cash-service-on-the-stellar-network-301565815.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-launches-... [1] https://ens.domains https://ens.domains [2] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org [3] https://www.namecheap.com/domains/handshake-domains/ https://www.namecheap.com/domains/handshake-domains/ [4] https://www.encirca.com/ https://www.encirca.com/
- MBCook 4y ago
  The author appeared to be explicitly looking for non-cryptocurrency related Blockchain used cases.
- krade 4y ago
  did you even read the moneygram PR? "Consumers can now go into a MoneyGram location to either load their digital wallets to access the digital economy, or cash-out their digital currencies to increase the utility of their holdings." So the real world use-case for Moneygram is to exchange cryptocurrency for cash and vice versa. How exactly does this refute his point? And having blockchain domains that can only be accessed using a particular dns, a VPN service, certain browsers or having to install an extension is hilarious. Not to mention ENS is running their "web3" on Cloudflare. The decentralization is truly mind boggling. Oh and loved this part about handshake renewal fees: "Renewal fees and ownership It’s important to understand that when you buy a traditional domain, you are hooked to pay the domains registrar a renewal fee each year. This is a fee to maintain ownership of your domain name. The renewal fees are subject to change and often times driven by ICANN and then the registrars. So with traditional domains, you don’t truly own them – you are simply leasing it" And handshake domains solve this by: "Handshake domain names provide true ownership. Which means there are yearly renewal fees*" Gotcha, makes sense.
Animats 4y ago
Even 3D TV got further. You could actually buy 3D TVs for a while. There were, briefly, a few shows you could actually watch.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  The PS4 supports it, even! I dunno if it just sort of works for everything if you turn it on, or if games have to explicitly support it; my projector has 3d capabilities but I never bothered buying the goggles to see it. Edit: well it used to support it, it seems to be gone from the settings now.
hestefisk 4y ago
I’m surprised there’s no mention of R3/Corda. There’s a lot of good real-world application of blockchain in their portfolio, which us effectively a consortium of banks working together. Documentary trade finance is where blockchain finds decent uses.
- civilized 4y ago
  I tried to Google this and all I was able to learn is it's backed by big banks and it lets you transact without disclosing information to your competitors. Still can't quite understand if there's anything to it beyond hype and FOMO.
  - hestefisk 4y ago
    Good example is Contour (formerly Voltron), a DLT based system for trade finance. https://contour.network/ https://contour.network/
    - civilized 4y ago
      Leaning more towards hype and FOMO after glancing through that.
- HillRat 4y ago
  I generally stayed away from the crypto folks at my old firm, but I did get tangentially involved in one project that remains the only reasonable blockchain use-case I’ve seen — a Corda dapp for untrusting and untrusted financial parties to independently negotiate multilateral financial instruments in a permissioned chain. Looks like the consortium involved is still operating it.
influxmoment 4y ago
Or read the bitcoin white paper, understand the tech and then you'd know these are all scams and move on with your life. Opps I mentioned bitcoin and forgot about "blockchains" immaculate conception
akudha 4y ago
It would be nice to read an article on blockchain projects that are actually used in the real world and have real impact on human life. Assuming such projects exist. By now, most people have a healthy skepticism of blockchain projects. All that said, kudos to the author for spending a good amount of time looking into these projects.
- liveoneggs 4y ago
  my wife's work does mediocre games with "nft gear" that can be re-sold on some kind of marketplace
- danaris 4y ago
  > and have real impact on human life Oh? Like a story about all the various cryptocurrency scams that cost so many people their life savings? Or a story about the massive overuse of energy causing brownouts for unfortunate towns that happen to be too close to a mining datacenter? Or a story about the bright-eyed college graduates sucke(re)d into working for cryptocurrency startups that then either quickly go belly-up or gradually become more and more obviously scams?
  - akudha 4y ago
    lol. I should have said real positive impact. I thought it was implied, though.
rzwitserloot 4y ago
I keep saying this, but: Bitcoin is well over 10 years old by now. In 10 years, the internet was already clearly adding a ton of value all over the place. Bitcoin is not really a 'young technology' anymore, and the only thing it has enabled so far is risky, unregulated investment strategies, and an staggering amount of crime.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  DARPAnet did what in 10 years? Where we are now as still deciding whether the equivalent of TCP/IP will be what to move forward with, and by that metric I am pretty impressed with the progress of the blockchain concept and sentiment coordination.
- Taek 4y ago
  When the Internet was 10 years old the year was 1987.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    But Al Gore didn't even take office until 1992.
    - mulderc 4y ago
      Al Gore was first elected to congress in 1977.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - smsm42 4y ago
      That's why he had time to invent the internet! You can't do that while being busy with congressing and stuff.
  - dfabulich 4y ago
    In 1987, Usenet and email were already pretty great. (And that was all before the web!)
CodeShmode 4y ago
I'm surprised Kleros is missing from this list
jacknews 4y ago
This would have been much more useful if the author had described what each project was intended to do, rather than just dump on it. IMHO the use cases that make some sense for blockchain are identity, ownership certificates and providence, and trustless exchange/settlement between institutions. ie where you want ot be sure you got your money, even if your counterparty goes bust overnight, eg for forex settlement, or anywhere some kind of escrow is currently used.
Keyb0ardWarr10r 4y ago
The primary purpose of blockchains is to prevent a central authority of regulating a currency, anything beyond it is hype. You're discarding the technology as whole without taking into regard its original intent.
- macspoofing 4y ago
  So … the primary use-case of blockchains is to skirt AML regulations?
- MBCook 4y ago
  I disagree. The author said they weren’t looking at cryptocurrency projects because blockchain makes some sense there. That’s what it was created for after all. This article is a refutation to the “blockchain all the things!” hype of the last few years. Very often on HN and other places when problems come up with cryptocurrencies (like another scam implodes) defenders are quick to point out “yes but there are other uses besides cryptocurrency” or that blockchains will revolutionize tons of industries. Logistics is very frequently mentioned. This article shows that no, not a single group seems to have succeeded at needing a blockchain in any non-crypto project. The few that might be running hide the blockchain in a central place behind a gateway making it totally superfluous.
Keyb0ardWarr10r 4y ago
Storj for storage and Zcash/XMR for privacy made valid improvements.
alduin32 4y ago
I'm very skeptical of Bitcoin, but right now it's the only way I can get the medications I need, and I'm very grateful for that.
- ausbah 4y ago
  HRT?
abxytg 4y ago
What is this crap lol. TA on the first 16 Google results for a series of buzzwords. Good luck finding a thing good there for any industry. Someone should parody this with "real world users e commerce"
siliconc0w 4y ago
IMO as an inflation-hedge and as a payments network (once PoS or layer-2 gets going) is going to be the crypto killer-app. Possibly even a reserve currency. It shouldn't be all of your portfolio but I think it's a reasonable hedge given the current direction (or even current state) of most major economies.
actinium226 4y ago
If you search for 'Internet production users', you won't find Google or Amazon or Facebook.
sytelus 4y ago
I used to think that Bitcoin has no assets underneath it like all experts says. However, I have changed my views. There are ultra-libertarian type folks who will rather risk tremendous losses than give in to their principles. These are probably 5-10% of the folks in US. Then there are people hit by a corrupt governments and high inflation (> 20% yoy). These are probably a 5-10% of folks. This IS the “assets” underneath bitcoin. In all, I think the value of Bitcoin eventually stabilize at around 1% of world GDP eventually given these reasons (regardless of it’s actual utility to make transactions). This comes down to about $40k per Bitcoin in 2020 money. It would obviously not wise to not sell if it ever reaches 5X of this or $200k in 2020 money.
miedpo 4y ago
I am not into crypto... it seems a bit too 'gambly' to me... but I'm kinda wondering why they didn't list BAT. Built into a browser (Brave), perhaps not as decentralized as the rest, but I think it seems to be doing what it is supposed to...
bag_boy 4y ago
I think Helium is a pretty well known, real-world blockchain project. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptocurrency-uses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptoc...
- flyt 4y ago
  Excellent decision to cite the company that today was caught lying that Lime and Salesforce were their “real world” customers: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=helium-caught-lying-that-lime-and-salesforce-use-their-network https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=helium-caught-lying-that-li...
  - bag_boy 4y ago
    Wow. I remember reading the Lime line in the The NY Times article. NY Times didn’t check that source. That was audacious of Helium. Thanks for replying.
- jduckles 4y ago
  Oh yeah Helium...that blockchain with a whopping $78k in annual revenue and a $2.1-billion valuation. [1] They're just paying venture money to hotspot owners at this point. There is no functioning business model. [1] - https://twitter.com/liron/status/1551738599254773765 https://twitter.com/liron/status/1551738599254773765
  - bag_boy 4y ago
    Thanks for posting this. I had a totally different opinion after reading the NYT article. 6.5k monthly - I wonder how much longer they have?
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
I work in this industry and have heard of only a few of these projects. The idea that this is a "top" list is ridiculous. This is more a testament to how messed up Google's search results are for niche subjects. Dapper Labs is legit. Steem was a 2017-era source of ridicule within crypto. Gemini is just a conventional crypto exchange (like Coinbase). Algorand has some interesting tech but was a mixed bag from launch. The rest of these projects are totally obscure.
neals 4y ago
Ah yes, a blockchain thread on HN. It doesn't get more black and white than this. As a neutral person, I love these. However, there's so much personal trauma on both sides that I sincerely would like to give all commenter here a hug and tell them it will pass and it will end up OK for everybody. Please don't forget that we're all just people on here and that none of us have all the information and context matters. Let's all respect that some people work on this and try to come up something good for everybody. And also, some people don't or have had bad experiences. Love <3
jll29 4y ago
There's a simple "bs filter": ultimately, a block chain is just a simple data structure. So when I read about hype stories, I mentally replace s/blockchain/linked lists/g; s/artificial intelligence/regression/g; If the story still makes sense, good; most of the time, it turns into a laugh.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
orf 4y ago
The linked dtube post is interesting: https://steemit.com/witness-update/@quochuy/your-previous-d-tube-videos-don-t-play-anymore-how-to-prevent-this-from-happening-again-without-technical-skills https://steemit.com/witness-update/@quochuy/your-previous-d-... > Number of pins: 1286 > Repo size: 52.87 GB > Rate In: 21.38 KB/s > Rate Out: 6.49 KB/s 6kb/s out rate. For 1.2k videos.
ETH_start 4y ago
Relevant comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31805570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31805570
SMVS 4y ago
Google has repeatedly restricted crypto advertising and down ranked legitimate Cerrito enterprises. Building this article using search visibility is going to give you local (US) results, and suppress a lot of the important ones who don't use that phraseology to describe what they do. Americans build your own biases always, then act like they don't exist
drpixie 4y ago
The author's criteria for 'good' projects seem very reasonable. So all you blockchain yeah-sayers, convince me that sensible, useful, REAL applications exist - things that make the author's criteria (no vague "in xxx they use it" statements, please).
seanhunter 4y ago
You have to understand some nuances of the technology to be able to fully appreciate the emptiness of the claim made by BurstIQ to have a “blockchain-enabled big data” system. Based on the tech, this claim just makes no sense, and it doesn’t surprise me that all of their job ads are for normal sql skills. Trying to query a blockchain you are trying to reconstruct the state of an event-sourced system by replaying all the events (ie without using CQRS). It is incredibly painful to answer even basic questions, so anyone with an analytic question to answer ends up building/using an indexer and writing the results to a sql database so they can actually use the data is a flexible way (ie they use CQRS effectively). Source: I recently wrote a blockchain indexer to answer queries because I couldn’t do what I wanted directly by querying the chain even though all the data is there. It walks a chain using RPC queries and writes the results to a postgres database. In and of itself this doesn’t invalidate the potential niche usefulness of a blockchain btw (say you need to share data between parties who don’t trust each other without having a central party because noone would trust that party) but the blockchain doesn’t in any sense enable the “big data”, in actual fact you are managing to achieve data analysis in spite of the blockchain. Also, it’s 2022, can we just let the term “big data” have a decent burial at this point?
upsidesinclude 4y ago
What a waste of time to read. Blogger randomly selects other bloggers garbage article to hand select a comprehensive list of projects no one has ever heard of and rightly bashes them. Of course, ostensibly this is representative of all projects (even those that actually have a following) Beyond a bore. A ledger is the oldest (Sumer) recorded instrument used in organized society. We now have an immutable ledger that requires zero intermediaries. How is it possible for people to fail in understanding that value? Can anyone speak to the timeframe after 99-00 implosion of the internet when people finally stopped claiming it was a sham? I just want to know when to expect this kind of boring shortsightedness to taper off
- cmsj 4y ago
  > We now have an immutable ledger that requires zero intermediaries. > How is it possible for people to fail in understanding that value? Because so far nobody has shown me a way in which an immutable ledger can let me do something desirable that I can't already do, or transform a thing I currently do into a more desirable version of it.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Eh, false. The point is that you cannot do those things without an intermediary. That's it. That's the difference. I'm showing you. Try, really think, to see yourself in another country, one where the currency isn't guaranteed. How about having your home shelled after you have been evacuated? You have a safe deposit box? Not any more, confiscated. There are countries around the world where people lack basic security. They cannot store wealth. It's not just about the first world
    - cmsj 4y ago
      I feel like this is often how these discussions go - crypto maximalists say this is going to change the world and take over all sorts of things, someone suggests that it actually wouldn't make any difference for most things, and they say "aha but people in crappy regimes can use it to hide money". Like, sure, that's a use case, but if that's the best we've gotten so far, I'm fine with continuing to think that this isn't as universally beneficial as the Internet was.
davidguetta 4y ago
Not including thorchain in the list kinda kills the seriousness of the whole list

247 points by ghuntley 4y ago

a-dub 4y ago

i think handshake and gns are pretty cool.

cowtools 4y ago
I don't know about Handshake, but GNS isn't block-chain. As far as I understand, it's a distributed hash-table: https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html
- a-dub 4y ago
  handshake is at handshake.org in my mind they're both decentralized and distributed peer to peer systems which aim to provide global public internet infrastructure (which is what i find to be the interesting part). handshake has a cryptoconomy and gnunet is more a traditional peer to peer network. handshake is probably the cooler of the two, if you ask me.

mistrial9 4y ago

quote -- It should be noted that this (ed. extra dead project death) was in 2020, and it’s still listed when google searching for “blockchain production users” ghosts in the machine

orzig 4y ago

> TL;DR: The top #1 Google result for “blockchain production users” (and related queries) lists 34 individual “real world blockchain” projects. One would expect some actual functioning projects that have an impact on every-day consumers — outside of cryptocurrency & NFTs. Looking into all 34, I found that 13 are already dead (including one that has been killed by the SEC), 6 are only useful within the crypto & NFT ecosystems and not in the “real world” and 14 use Blockchain in a way where removing the blockchain would not impact functionality at all, or make the product better. The remaining project is Chainalysis, which has real-world impact by helping law enforcement de-anonymizing blockchain users. So basically the author found nothing good (and I haven't either, though I commend their depth of investigation). I'd be open of objective approaches any objectors would recommend doing differently to find a top 34

bo1024 4y ago
If you want to find interesting blockchain projects (not necessarily impactful, but interesting), I would spend some time clicking around https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/

smsm42 4y ago

I kinda question the scientific methodology of "take the first N Google results". Not only for obvious reasons, but also for the reason that a lot of infrastructural projects that have a lot of real world effects are not routinely discussed in the press (because they are extremely boring to everybody but specialists, also because nobody but the specialists knows they exist, or understands how they work) and thus would not show up at the top results. What would show up is more marketing than technology. And, of course, since we are living through the initial hype cycle, there would be a lot of marketing to sort through. Limiting oneself to look only at the most hyped projects virtually guarantees you never see the deeper infrastructural ones. I am not passing judgement on how good are those or how many of them use blockchains properly - I am just saying the methodology used here is doomed to miss them. It's a good entertaining reading, but it's more gossip column than industry research quality. That said, it is true that companies like Chainalysis (it is in no way alone in this field, of course), which bring visibility, analytics, risk assessment and so on into the blockchain world, have a real world impact. I think the accusation of "censoring transactions" is misplaced - first of all, on a decentralized blockchain you can not really censor a transaction (you can do it if you're a centralized exchange gatekeeping an access route to the chain, but that's a different thing) - but the impact is there and is going to grow nevertheless.

vkou 4y ago
The list wasn't taken from the top N google results, the list was hand-curated by a web3-focused publication, and was found by a google search. It would be like a construction-focused publication hand-curating the top N/most important N construction projects in the world, of which N-1 are some mixture of cancelled, fictional, or not actually having anything to do with construction. It would, of course, be utterly farcical - in any space other than web3. But in this space, we smile, nod, close our eyes, and hope that our token/ico/ape.jpg will go to the moon. This isn't actually a good thing.
- smsm42 4y ago
  builtin.com does not seem to have any specific focus on blockchain - their site says "Built In is the online community for startups and tech companies. Find startup jobs, tech news and events" and their "Our story" page does not seem to mention blockchain or crypto at all, and if anything, is focused on recruiting ("career" is mentioned a lot). I have no idea how they ended up being #1 in google for that specific query, maybe mostly because of randomly matching some search terms, or they have a very good SEO team. The author's credentials are: Sam Daley is a Built In associate product manager who formerly covered AI, blockchain and emerging tech trends for BuiltIn.com. Prior to Built In, Daley worked as a CNN production assistant and development coordinator for Rotary International. Which does not suggest he has any special insight into any blockchain technology or industry beyond being assigned to "write about all that new stuff because you young people understand those". OTOH, his previous title on Linkedin is "SEO Strategist" - which may be the explanation for the #1 result. At least we know he's good at that job, congrats, Sam. His credentials on being the arbiter of blockchain project prominence are still not clear - and I suspect his methodology of compiling the list differs little from the original article's methodology. Maybe I'm wrong but his bio doesn't show any signs of any relation to crypto. Maybe he still has huge knowledge of it, I don't know, there's no way for me to see it at least. So, not a "construction-focused publication" but more like "local newspaper worker who covers any news about manufacturing industry, construction, agriculture, food industry and anything else nobody wants to". So yeah, random list of startups has most of them dead or pivoted in several years. That's how it works with startups.

tmpz22 4y ago

You know how “the brightest minds of our generation spent the last decade on ads”? I’m just glad they clearly stuck with ads and let all these scam projects rot.

api 4y ago
We’re out hiring right now and it’s shocking how many people have a career filled totally with dodgy cryptocurrency nonsense. Loads of designers and developers have most of their experience in platforms that seem to have no utility beyond scams, gambling, and MLMs. There certainly is a massive amount of wasted talent here.
- Fargoan 4y ago
  What do you think is wrong with gambling?
  - simonw 4y ago
    It takes advantage of people who have a common mental disorder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_gambling
    - tresqotheq 4y ago
      So does the ads, google, government machinery etc. They take advantage of people's common "mental disorder" (I say "mental disorder" because it is still a weakness even if it is present in a lot of people, which I take as the assumption made in your comment as well) such as very limted attention span, lack of long term memory and vulnerability to distraction..
      - nextaccountic 4y ago
        > So does the ads This is true, but this just means that there's something wrong with both ads and gambling
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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notRobot 4y ago

Extremely relevant simple chart: NIST's answer to "Do you need a blockchain?": https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed

influxmoment 4y ago
This is wrong. Blockchains validate data. Their purpose isn't to store it. Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no
- cowtools 4y ago
  The purpose of bitcoin, for example, is not to store a list of transactions?
  - tux3 4y ago
    Storing the list is the easy part. I have a usb drive that can store the list. You want people to agree on which chain is the main chain, so that you can only add things to the list, and you can't go back or substitute it with another list without breaking proof of work. The purpose of bitcoin is to make people agree that a spent transaction is irrevocably spent.
    - testesttest 4y ago
      Have you tried storing the list lately? I don't think you have a 10TB plus flash drive. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive Crypto is more and more centralised because the hardware to run your own node is now thousands of dollars. That is without even getting into miners...It is kinda failing.
      - influxmoment 4y ago
        That's Ethereum. Largely was consider a bad ideas because it's too large to independently validate

glerk 4y ago

> Algorand, Gemini & Circle: Crypto only > Not real-world projects. As discussed in the introduction, I am only discussing projects that have real-world effects outside of cryptocurrency balances. Gemini, Circle as exchanges, and Algorand as a Blockchain implementation, don’t qualify here – they don’t actually add real-world utility other than moving tokens around. Interesting take. These are very different "projects", but I don't see why they don't qualify as "having real-world effects". Gemini and Circle are corporations that provide stablecoins backed by USD reserves (gUSD and USDC). The tokens these companies have created can be moved around on various blockchains without an intermediary and used to pay for goods and services. Algorand is a blockchain protocol that can be used to build decentralized applications (similar to Ethereum). There are many "real-world" projects built on Algorand, for example lofty.ai (tokenized real-estate investing). I don't see how the author defines "real-world utility" and why Algorand, Gemini and Circle wouldn't qualify. It seems like the author is trying to cherry-pick a few failed blockchain projects in an attempt to smear the whole industry.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Would you be so kind as to cherry-pick a few successful "real world" Blockchain projects then?
- glerk 4y ago
  There are a lot of successful blockchain projects that respond to various use cases. On top of my head: - Uncensorable money: og bitcoin and pretty much everything else - Uncensorable money + privacy: monero, tornado.cash, etc. - Decentralized exchanges/automated market makers: curve.fi, uniswap, etc. - Prediction markets: polymarket etc. EDIT: looks like omen and augur are dead
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    Please note the stipulation "real world": everything you just listed involves moving bits about in the crypto world.

hash872 4y ago

I have an extremely low opinion of blockchain/crypto, but in the interest of fairness, I did read an FT piece a few months ago about how banks are apparently actually using the blockchain for currency trading: "HSBC and Wells Fargo are cutting out a key part of the currency market’s infrastructure from some trades after the two banks agreed to settle transactions directly on blockchain technology. From Monday, they will use blockchain technology to reconcile and pay out on deals in dollars, sterling, euro and Canadian dollars between the two banks, using HSBC’s FX Everywhere platform. The agreement means they will bypass CLS, the nearly two-decades-old utility that central banks urge market participants to use to neutralise the risk of certain trade failures" https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f24b3 https://www.ft.com/content/1a4dcaf5-2b4b-4f0b-8c58-a8fa173f2... https://archive.ph/qs8Cg https://archive.ph/qs8Cg non-paywalled link

simonw 4y ago
That sounds to me like someone used excitement about "blockchain" as an excuse to upgrade a two-decades old system to something a bit more modern. It looks like it's a private blockchain shared between two (at the moment) institutions, which means it's probably being used basically as an append-only log.
- civilized 4y ago
  Reminds me of the craze for using Hadoop on data that could easily be handled by basic R, Python, or even Excel https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/hadoop_hatred.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/hadoop_hatred.html In hindsight, the Big Data hype wave was really just a good excuse to bring in a wider set of analytics tools than Excel, Access and inflexible, IT-administered databases.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  A blockchain is an append-only log. Upgrading ancient technology is a huge use-case for blockchain tech. The advantage of this platform is that settlement is probably much faster and it will presumably be relatively easy to add more than two parties to the system, without running into gnarly trust issues.

m00dy 4y ago

AMMs work pretty ok on chains. The list is subjective.

MBCook 4y ago
What is an AMM?

rvz 4y ago

> Money transfer use-cases would fall directly in the category of “crypto-only”. For as long as Bitcoin has existed, this has been touted as a great use-case — but it never really materialised. So Stellar and MoneyGram are not 'Money Transfer Use Cases'? [0] If not, why did they partner on this in the first place if they didn't think this was a possible or a feasible use case? On NFTs, Blockchain domains like ENS (Ethereum Name Service [1], Handshake [2], etc) are the only valid NFTs that have a use case. Seem to work fine for Namecheap [3], Encirca [4], etc, with millions of these domains registered so far. Once again, 90% of all NFTs, including the JPEG ones will die with the remaining 10% still surviving including blockchain domains. But yes as always, the extreme anti-crypto boosters like ghuntley will do anything to boost the most ridiculous of posts. Including this one. Oh dear. [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-launches-pioneering-global-crypto-to-cash-service-on-the-stellar-network-301565815.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-launches-... [1] https://ens.domains https://ens.domains [2] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org [3] https://www.namecheap.com/domains/handshake-domains/ https://www.namecheap.com/domains/handshake-domains/ [4] https://www.encirca.com/ https://www.encirca.com/

MBCook 4y ago
The author appeared to be explicitly looking for non-cryptocurrency related Blockchain used cases.
krade 4y ago
did you even read the moneygram PR? "Consumers can now go into a MoneyGram location to either load their digital wallets to access the digital economy, or cash-out their digital currencies to increase the utility of their holdings." So the real world use-case for Moneygram is to exchange cryptocurrency for cash and vice versa. How exactly does this refute his point? And having blockchain domains that can only be accessed using a particular dns, a VPN service, certain browsers or having to install an extension is hilarious. Not to mention ENS is running their "web3" on Cloudflare. The decentralization is truly mind boggling. Oh and loved this part about handshake renewal fees: "Renewal fees and ownership It’s important to understand that when you buy a traditional domain, you are hooked to pay the domains registrar a renewal fee each year. This is a fee to maintain ownership of your domain name. The renewal fees are subject to change and often times driven by ICANN and then the registrars. So with traditional domains, you don’t truly own them – you are simply leasing it" And handshake domains solve this by: "Handshake domain names provide true ownership. Which means there are yearly renewal fees*" Gotcha, makes sense.

Animats 4y ago

Even 3D TV got further. You could actually buy 3D TVs for a while. There were, briefly, a few shows you could actually watch.

egypturnash 4y ago
The PS4 supports it, even! I dunno if it just sort of works for everything if you turn it on, or if games have to explicitly support it; my projector has 3d capabilities but I never bothered buying the goggles to see it. Edit: well it used to support it, it seems to be gone from the settings now.

hestefisk 4y ago

I’m surprised there’s no mention of R3/Corda. There’s a lot of good real-world application of blockchain in their portfolio, which us effectively a consortium of banks working together. Documentary trade finance is where blockchain finds decent uses.

civilized 4y ago
I tried to Google this and all I was able to learn is it's backed by big banks and it lets you transact without disclosing information to your competitors. Still can't quite understand if there's anything to it beyond hype and FOMO.
- hestefisk 4y ago
  Good example is Contour (formerly Voltron), a DLT based system for trade finance. https://contour.network/ https://contour.network/
  - civilized 4y ago
    Leaning more towards hype and FOMO after glancing through that.
HillRat 4y ago
I generally stayed away from the crypto folks at my old firm, but I did get tangentially involved in one project that remains the only reasonable blockchain use-case I’ve seen — a Corda dapp for untrusting and untrusted financial parties to independently negotiate multilateral financial instruments in a permissioned chain. Looks like the consortium involved is still operating it.

influxmoment 4y ago

Or read the bitcoin white paper, understand the tech and then you'd know these are all scams and move on with your life. Opps I mentioned bitcoin and forgot about "blockchains" immaculate conception

akudha 4y ago

It would be nice to read an article on blockchain projects that are actually used in the real world and have real impact on human life. Assuming such projects exist. By now, most people have a healthy skepticism of blockchain projects. All that said, kudos to the author for spending a good amount of time looking into these projects.

liveoneggs 4y ago
my wife's work does mediocre games with "nft gear" that can be re-sold on some kind of marketplace
danaris 4y ago
> and have real impact on human life Oh? Like a story about all the various cryptocurrency scams that cost so many people their life savings? Or a story about the massive overuse of energy causing brownouts for unfortunate towns that happen to be too close to a mining datacenter? Or a story about the bright-eyed college graduates sucke(re)d into working for cryptocurrency startups that then either quickly go belly-up or gradually become more and more obviously scams?
- akudha 4y ago
  lol. I should have said real positive impact. I thought it was implied, though.

rzwitserloot 4y ago

I keep saying this, but: Bitcoin is well over 10 years old by now. In 10 years, the internet was already clearly adding a ton of value all over the place. Bitcoin is not really a 'young technology' anymore, and the only thing it has enabled so far is risky, unregulated investment strategies, and an staggering amount of crime.

yieldcrv 4y ago
DARPAnet did what in 10 years? Where we are now as still deciding whether the equivalent of TCP/IP will be what to move forward with, and by that metric I am pretty impressed with the progress of the blockchain concept and sentiment coordination.
Taek 4y ago
When the Internet was 10 years old the year was 1987.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  But Al Gore didn't even take office until 1992.
  - mulderc 4y ago
    Al Gore was first elected to congress in 1977.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - smsm42 4y ago
    That's why he had time to invent the internet! You can't do that while being busy with congressing and stuff.
- dfabulich 4y ago
  In 1987, Usenet and email were already pretty great. (And that was all before the web!)

CodeShmode 4y ago

I'm surprised Kleros is missing from this list

jacknews 4y ago

This would have been much more useful if the author had described what each project was intended to do, rather than just dump on it. IMHO the use cases that make some sense for blockchain are identity, ownership certificates and providence, and trustless exchange/settlement between institutions. ie where you want ot be sure you got your money, even if your counterparty goes bust overnight, eg for forex settlement, or anywhere some kind of escrow is currently used.

Keyb0ardWarr10r 4y ago

The primary purpose of blockchains is to prevent a central authority of regulating a currency, anything beyond it is hype. You're discarding the technology as whole without taking into regard its original intent.

macspoofing 4y ago
So … the primary use-case of blockchains is to skirt AML regulations?
MBCook 4y ago
I disagree. The author said they weren’t looking at cryptocurrency projects because blockchain makes some sense there. That’s what it was created for after all. This article is a refutation to the “blockchain all the things!” hype of the last few years. Very often on HN and other places when problems come up with cryptocurrencies (like another scam implodes) defenders are quick to point out “yes but there are other uses besides cryptocurrency” or that blockchains will revolutionize tons of industries. Logistics is very frequently mentioned. This article shows that no, not a single group seems to have succeeded at needing a blockchain in any non-crypto project. The few that might be running hide the blockchain in a central place behind a gateway making it totally superfluous.

Keyb0ardWarr10r 4y ago

Storj for storage and Zcash/XMR for privacy made valid improvements.

alduin32 4y ago

I'm very skeptical of Bitcoin, but right now it's the only way I can get the medications I need, and I'm very grateful for that.

ausbah 4y ago
HRT?

abxytg 4y ago

What is this crap lol. TA on the first 16 Google results for a series of buzzwords. Good luck finding a thing good there for any industry. Someone should parody this with "real world users e commerce"

siliconc0w 4y ago

IMO as an inflation-hedge and as a payments network (once PoS or layer-2 gets going) is going to be the crypto killer-app. Possibly even a reserve currency. It shouldn't be all of your portfolio but I think it's a reasonable hedge given the current direction (or even current state) of most major economies.

actinium226 4y ago

If you search for 'Internet production users', you won't find Google or Amazon or Facebook.

sytelus 4y ago

I used to think that Bitcoin has no assets underneath it like all experts says. However, I have changed my views. There are ultra-libertarian type folks who will rather risk tremendous losses than give in to their principles. These are probably 5-10% of the folks in US. Then there are people hit by a corrupt governments and high inflation (> 20% yoy). These are probably a 5-10% of folks. This IS the “assets” underneath bitcoin. In all, I think the value of Bitcoin eventually stabilize at around 1% of world GDP eventually given these reasons (regardless of it’s actual utility to make transactions). This comes down to about $40k per Bitcoin in 2020 money. It would obviously not wise to not sell if it ever reaches 5X of this or $200k in 2020 money.

miedpo 4y ago

I am not into crypto... it seems a bit too 'gambly' to me... but I'm kinda wondering why they didn't list BAT. Built into a browser (Brave), perhaps not as decentralized as the rest, but I think it seems to be doing what it is supposed to...

bag_boy 4y ago

I think Helium is a pretty well known, real-world blockchain project. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptocurrency-uses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptoc...

flyt 4y ago
Excellent decision to cite the company that today was caught lying that Lime and Salesforce were their “real world” customers: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=helium-caught-lying-that-lime-and-salesforce-use-their-network https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=helium-caught-lying-that-li...
- bag_boy 4y ago
  Wow. I remember reading the Lime line in the The NY Times article. NY Times didn’t check that source. That was audacious of Helium. Thanks for replying.
jduckles 4y ago
Oh yeah Helium...that blockchain with a whopping $78k in annual revenue and a $2.1-billion valuation. [1] They're just paying venture money to hotspot owners at this point. There is no functioning business model. [1] - https://twitter.com/liron/status/1551738599254773765 https://twitter.com/liron/status/1551738599254773765
- bag_boy 4y ago
  Thanks for posting this. I had a totally different opinion after reading the NYT article. 6.5k monthly - I wonder how much longer they have?

lazzlazzlazz 4y ago

I work in this industry and have heard of only a few of these projects. The idea that this is a "top" list is ridiculous. This is more a testament to how messed up Google's search results are for niche subjects. Dapper Labs is legit. Steem was a 2017-era source of ridicule within crypto. Gemini is just a conventional crypto exchange (like Coinbase). Algorand has some interesting tech but was a mixed bag from launch. The rest of these projects are totally obscure.

neals 4y ago

Ah yes, a blockchain thread on HN. It doesn't get more black and white than this. As a neutral person, I love these. However, there's so much personal trauma on both sides that I sincerely would like to give all commenter here a hug and tell them it will pass and it will end up OK for everybody. Please don't forget that we're all just people on here and that none of us have all the information and context matters. Let's all respect that some people work on this and try to come up something good for everybody. And also, some people don't or have had bad experiences. Love <3

jll29 4y ago

There's a simple "bs filter": ultimately, a block chain is just a simple data structure. So when I read about hype stories, I mentally replace s/blockchain/linked lists/g; s/artificial intelligence/regression/g; If the story still makes sense, good; most of the time, it turns into a laugh.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

orf 4y ago

The linked dtube post is interesting: https://steemit.com/witness-update/@quochuy/your-previous-d-tube-videos-don-t-play-anymore-how-to-prevent-this-from-happening-again-without-technical-skills https://steemit.com/witness-update/@quochuy/your-previous-d-... > Number of pins: 1286 > Repo size: 52.87 GB > Rate In: 21.38 KB/s > Rate Out: 6.49 KB/s 6kb/s out rate. For 1.2k videos.

ETH_start 4y ago

Relevant comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31805570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31805570

SMVS 4y ago

Google has repeatedly restricted crypto advertising and down ranked legitimate Cerrito enterprises. Building this article using search visibility is going to give you local (US) results, and suppress a lot of the important ones who don't use that phraseology to describe what they do. Americans build your own biases always, then act like they don't exist

drpixie 4y ago

The author's criteria for 'good' projects seem very reasonable. So all you blockchain yeah-sayers, convince me that sensible, useful, REAL applications exist - things that make the author's criteria (no vague "in xxx they use it" statements, please).

seanhunter 4y ago

You have to understand some nuances of the technology to be able to fully appreciate the emptiness of the claim made by BurstIQ to have a “blockchain-enabled big data” system. Based on the tech, this claim just makes no sense, and it doesn’t surprise me that all of their job ads are for normal sql skills. Trying to query a blockchain you are trying to reconstruct the state of an event-sourced system by replaying all the events (ie without using CQRS). It is incredibly painful to answer even basic questions, so anyone with an analytic question to answer ends up building/using an indexer and writing the results to a sql database so they can actually use the data is a flexible way (ie they use CQRS effectively). Source: I recently wrote a blockchain indexer to answer queries because I couldn’t do what I wanted directly by querying the chain even though all the data is there. It walks a chain using RPC queries and writes the results to a postgres database. In and of itself this doesn’t invalidate the potential niche usefulness of a blockchain btw (say you need to share data between parties who don’t trust each other without having a central party because noone would trust that party) but the blockchain doesn’t in any sense enable the “big data”, in actual fact you are managing to achieve data analysis in spite of the blockchain. Also, it’s 2022, can we just let the term “big data” have a decent burial at this point?

upsidesinclude 4y ago

What a waste of time to read. Blogger randomly selects other bloggers garbage article to hand select a comprehensive list of projects no one has ever heard of and rightly bashes them. Of course, ostensibly this is representative of all projects (even those that actually have a following) Beyond a bore. A ledger is the oldest (Sumer) recorded instrument used in organized society. We now have an immutable ledger that requires zero intermediaries. How is it possible for people to fail in understanding that value? Can anyone speak to the timeframe after 99-00 implosion of the internet when people finally stopped claiming it was a sham? I just want to know when to expect this kind of boring shortsightedness to taper off

cmsj 4y ago
> We now have an immutable ledger that requires zero intermediaries. > How is it possible for people to fail in understanding that value? Because so far nobody has shown me a way in which an immutable ledger can let me do something desirable that I can't already do, or transform a thing I currently do into a more desirable version of it.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Eh, false. The point is that you cannot do those things without an intermediary. That's it. That's the difference. I'm showing you. Try, really think, to see yourself in another country, one where the currency isn't guaranteed. How about having your home shelled after you have been evacuated? You have a safe deposit box? Not any more, confiscated. There are countries around the world where people lack basic security. They cannot store wealth. It's not just about the first world
  - cmsj 4y ago
    I feel like this is often how these discussions go - crypto maximalists say this is going to change the world and take over all sorts of things, someone suggests that it actually wouldn't make any difference for most things, and they say "aha but people in crappy regimes can use it to hide money". Like, sure, that's a use case, but if that's the best we've gotten so far, I'm fine with continuing to think that this isn't as universally beneficial as the Internet was.

davidguetta 4y ago

Not including thorchain in the list kinda kills the seriousness of the whole list