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Will blockchain work for money? No Will blockchain work as a store of value? No Will blockchain work for art? No Will blockchain work for the web? No Web3 i

Will blockchain work for money? No Will blockchain work as a store of value? No Will blockchain work for art? No Will blockchain work for the web? No Web3 is just another problem domain people up the pyramid chain are looking to expand their MLM into. Since blockchain (as with herbal life, etc.) isn't effective at almost anything, this will pass. It's so laughably ineffective that I think we dont even really have to argue much with it. "Blockchain technology" takes the computing power of an apple watch and realises it with a data centre. It's so bad its self-exposing to most non-gullible people. I think we can wait for Web3 to pass, as with NFTs. Next it'll be HousesOntheBlock, MedicalRecordsOnChain, etc. this will all cycle out over the next decade until gov's start to see the massive crypto losses, and as with the opiod pandemic, step in. One would hope most govs would regulate it into oblivion soon. As soon as the pyramid scheme around crypto is broken 99% of its fanatics won't be desperately searching to find a use case. Remember, with crypto, people's lives are actually invested in it. This ain't Rust. It's Rust but each keyword was $50,000 you need.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
You don't think some things will stick? Key revocation certificates come to mind as a good case for a public blockchain. NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly. The whole trustless thing means users can provide compute for each other rather than tolerating an ad-riddled central point of failure. You know, the stuff that doesn't need hype and is just the right engineering call.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Ownership is an interpretation of the blockchain and therefore still requires someone to interpret it. I'm not sure what you're thinking about domain ownership (I'm open if you can explain), but my sense is that contracts of ownership arent suitable for blockchains -- nor indeed, for any presently imaginable computable system. Rights are fundamentally modal, ie., "what ifs". The exercise of a right changes depending on context, and that context includes how a given society inteprets its meaning at any given time. Hence lawyers, judges, etc. Algorithms are fundamentally non-modal constructs, ie., "always if". And whilst "perhaps" (but probably not) reality can be described by an algorithm, it isnt any that is "always if" at the level of social phenomena. Ie., maybe atoms are simply deterministic, but their aggregates (eg., people) are not. And so it is unlikey any finite computable representation of social life will ever, eg., account for "a change of taste in the law". Blockchains are distributed immutable logs which impose massive computation costs on appending to them. They're a niche technology that, does actually, model money. That's about the best use-case as a model for money. But they're terrible at implementing money. Beaten by a simple piece of paper at every turn.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    That's a lot of words to say nothing in particular. Ownership is an interpretation - I agree with that. It may be an interpretation of the blockchain (Namecoin). It may be an interpretation of the land deed (house). It may be an interpretation of records that a registrar stores (DNS) or at RIPE (IP addresses). I don't see any reason blockchain is any different from the others. People either respect the underlying data storage or they don't. Algorithms have nothing to do with it, nor do computational costs. Moving paper isn't cheap either.
    - cguess 4y ago
      Either courts recognize it or not, and no court in the world has recognized any blockchain as a valid proof of contract of anything. Nor should they, laws are never immutable and always up for interpretation, which is why courts exist in the first place.
      - rhn_mk1 4y ago
        I'm not sure about courts, but the government over here will definitely recognize that I owned the coins and that I later stopped owning them - by collecting taxes on the transaction. I have't seen anyone trying to push that on to courts, which indicates that the expectation is that courts have the same idea on coin ownership.
        cguess 4y ago
        I'm talking about the "use blockchain to prove ownership of a domain" or whatever else people are talking about. Money is different as the non-fungible part of money already exists. It's called cash, and even ownership of that is able to be adjudicated. They can sue you for back taxes and you can sue to say you do not own certain taxes.
        rhn_mk1 4y ago
        In this context, maybe a closer analogy would be information "ownership". While in a typical database, you can order the change of an entry by fiat, you can't do that on blockchain without the crypto key. Revealing a secret cannot be forced by the court, be it a password, or a recipe. Best courts can do it "encourage" one party to do it. Even then it might be in vain, if the information was forgotten. Courts do deal with it somehow, more out of necessity than choice. That would be more similar to getting the keys to a domain or any other blockchain asset.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly. How do handle domain squatters and legal disputes? > whole trustless thing means users can provide compute for each other rather than tolerating an ad-riddled central point of failure. What compute? If you exchange money, you explicitly trust that person to provide you with services or goods (and/or explicitly trust the "smart" "contract" running the transaction to be correct which, you know ... [1]) [1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=almost-300000-stolen-from-olympus-dao-later-returned https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=almost-300000-stolen-from-o...
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    1. You don't. But if you choose to use an nft domain it's probably because you think these are lesser evils when compared to broken references when domain ownership lapses or changes hands. 2. I'm talking about providing compute in lieu of money. I want to be able to tell users of a service: you can pay me $5 per month for access via my node, or you can run your own node on that phone you have lying around with a cracked screen, and then you don't need to pay anything.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > You don't. But if you choose to use an nft domain it's probably What if I chose NFT domain to scam people, impersonate someone or squat? > I want to be able to tell users of a service: you can pay me $5 per month for access via my node If you exchange money, you explicitly trust that person to provide you with services or goods (and/or explicitly trust the "smart" "contract" running the transaction to be correct which, you know ... [1]
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        > What if I chose NFT domain to scam people, impersonate someone or squat? Well that's a shitty thing to do, and a limitation of the technology, but it doesn't make all uses of that technology invalid. > If you exchange money... You're missing my point. It's the case where no money changes hands that I'm interested in. If we have technology that can function without custodial trust, then I can pay my subscription fees by helping host the site that I'm subscribing to. I wanna turn everybody's pile of phones with bad batteries or busted screens into a distributed datacenter which we can use as a cheaper alternative to aws & friends provided we're willing to cooperate with each other.
- manigandham 4y ago
  Humans are messy and rely on trust to work together. That's why we have laws and a judicial system that can create, interpret and enforce actual contracts instead of the cold logic of "code". It's also why Web3/crypto is encountering all the problems solved over time by the traditional finance system as it converges on the reality of human nature and how people actually behave. There are use-cases for a completely trustless interactive ledger - however these are so niche as to be irrelevant for the vast majority.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly The cost of the domain is insignificant when compared to the cost of the site itself e.g. development and hosting. You're solving a problem I can't imagine more than a few dozen people deeply care about.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I'm sure there are more than dozens interested in publishing a site without a persistent billing relationship with a cloud provider. If you're hosting on IPFS you just have to make sure that some device somewhere has your content pinned. There's a raspberry pi in my closet... Data is referenced by cryptographic hash so there's no need to authenticate the source. The hardest problem in that space is getting new hashes to your audience when you make updates.
- nradov 4y ago
  Certificate revocation checks already work fine without a blockchain. No one pays monthly for domains; existing registrars let you pay in advance for multiple years and are quite cheap. You should read the NIST blockchain technology overview because you clearly don't understand how to make the right engineering calls. https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- hiq 4y ago
  > Key revocation certificates come to mind as a good case for a public blockchain. It's not. It already exists without a blockchain[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency [0]: since it's a source of confusion, with the definition (and explanation) of what a blockchain is given there: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_good_reaso.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Re: CT, > Logs are operated by many parties, including browser vendors and certificate authorities. Why should we trust browser vendors and certificate authorities? They're high value targets and therefore more likely to be targeted. As for Schneier, he asks: > Would you rather trust a human legal system or the details of some computer code you don’t have the expertise to audit? If I don't have any evidence that the code will fail in the way I'm worried about, but I do have evidence that the legal system frequently fails in the way I'm worried about, then maybe the code. But whatever the case, I definitely prefer a legal system that has to worry about being replaced by code than one whose dominance is assured.
    - hiq 4y ago
      > Why should we trust browser vendors and certificate authorities? They're high value targets and therefore more likely to be targeted. You're mentioning that as if blockchain somehow solved this problem. It doesn't. At best, blockchain moves trust around and you end up with a system that won't resist the test of time and end up converging to what you already have, but worse.
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        If you can generate a valid revocation certificate in the first place, you're already trusted. There's no need for additional trust in this case, just a place to put it that's hard to censor.
hatchnyc 4y ago
Every cool new revolutionary, game changing, disruptive tech I can think of has had some kind of “killer app” that lead the way to widespread pubic awareness. Peer to peer had Napster, AJAX had Google Maps, microservices had services of large scale tech giants, and even blockchain originally had Bitcoin. In each case people were doing some cool new thing and we approached the technology trying to figure out how it was accomplished. I am not aware of a single such example for Web3 nor has anyone I’ve asked been able to name one. The killer Web3 apps are at best hypothetical imaginings of what someone could build with it someday, and even that take is quite generous. It is a technical buzzword in search of funding which is not a proven solution for anything at all.
- roenxi 4y ago
  If I wanted to send you $50 worth of assets, literally right now, what alternatives do we have apart from crypto? Certainly nothing that does such a good job of preserving our relative privacy to each other. I don't want to, but it is still an interesting question. There are capabilities here that have never existed before, it seems likely that something radical will happen in time. There is already a lot of money sloshing around, and it takes a while for innovations to sink in.
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    If you require that level of privacy you are either -Buying drugs or illegal porn -A terrorist -A libertarian that opposes taxation That's not how society works thank god.
    - roenxi 4y ago
      I don't see how I would buy drugs or conduct terrorism on HN. And while avoiding tax on $50 might be a win, it is a boring part of the scenario. I don't want to post PII info publicly from this account. But, in practice (ie, we're long past theory) if I want to accept payment as roenxi I can. And if I use something like Monero, it'll be extremely anonymous. There'll be a use for that sort of tech to someone and for legitimate purposes.
latexr 4y ago
> Web3 is just another problem domain people up the pyramid chain are looking to expand their MLM into. Since blockchain (as with herbal life, etc.) isn't effective at almost anything, this will pass. What do you mean when you say “this will pass”? Herbalife¹ has been in business for over forty years; Amway² for over sixty; Watkins Incorporated³ for over one-hundred and fifty! The MLM business looks alive and well. I wouldn’t be surprised (but haven’t checked) if the widening gap in income inequality resulted in more people falling for scams and get-rich-quick schemes. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkins_Incorporated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkins_Incorporated
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Stupidity and greed never passes. Fortunately in my country people are forced to invest in a pension plan so they can't blow it all on crypto. We don't have 70 year old people flipping hamburgers at McDonald's lol.
  - mcosta 4y ago
    You are a lucky guy. In my country we are forced to pay the pensions of others.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  I meant the web3 phase of it. But as far as crypto, as soon as it starts to even plausibly compete with any aspect of the finical system, it'll be regulated to oblivion -- even if it were a good idea. No government on the planet would tolerate a rival private army, nor likewise a rival private economy. It's tolerated at the moment because crypto is just casino chips, and mostly a "useful honeypot" for exposing its criminal users via pretty transparent public records. However blockchain is also just such bad technology with no competitive use cases -- unlike herbal life products, you can't drink a blockchain ledger. My sense is that the emporer here is so naked, and the product so useless, that each time the fantatics try to undress him, many realise the issue. There's lots of routes to crypto's downfall, and all of them are vastly more likely than any "application" taking off.
kmlx 4y ago
there is a huge new market for crypto currencies that you are missing: ransomware. it's billions of dollars, new players every year. and cryptocurrencies work great for it. it's a killer use case.
nathias 4y ago
Why are you pretending like crypto is somewhere in the future, all the things you list are already done and being used by people. If you don't use crypto, great, this means you live in a system that works for you, but if that changes you'll be happy others have created many tools you can use.
personjerry 4y ago
I have no say in the "viability" of blockchain as a technology, but my understanding is that future work is usually built on existing work, regardless of current feasibility. For example, the legend of how Space Shuttle components are transported by trains and thus built into sizes suitable for train tracks, which are built based on the size of wagon tramways, which were built on the size of rutted roads, which were originally built by the Romans for their horse drawn carriages, and thus the Roman road gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches is now part of the spec of the Space Shuttle. I don't think anyone can deny is that there is a significant amount of engineering work that is going into blockchain technology. Thus I suspect there is going to be nontrivial amounts of future technology built on blockchain or blockchain related infrastructure.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

You don't think some things will stick? Key revocation certificates come to mind as a good case for a public blockchain. NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly. The whole trustless thing means users can provide compute for each other rather than tolerating an ad-riddled central point of failure. You know, the stuff that doesn't need hype and is just the right engineering call.

mjburgess 4y ago
Ownership is an interpretation of the blockchain and therefore still requires someone to interpret it. I'm not sure what you're thinking about domain ownership (I'm open if you can explain), but my sense is that contracts of ownership arent suitable for blockchains -- nor indeed, for any presently imaginable computable system. Rights are fundamentally modal, ie., "what ifs". The exercise of a right changes depending on context, and that context includes how a given society inteprets its meaning at any given time. Hence lawyers, judges, etc. Algorithms are fundamentally non-modal constructs, ie., "always if". And whilst "perhaps" (but probably not) reality can be described by an algorithm, it isnt any that is "always if" at the level of social phenomena. Ie., maybe atoms are simply deterministic, but their aggregates (eg., people) are not. And so it is unlikey any finite computable representation of social life will ever, eg., account for "a change of taste in the law". Blockchains are distributed immutable logs which impose massive computation costs on appending to them. They're a niche technology that, does actually, model money. That's about the best use-case as a model for money. But they're terrible at implementing money. Beaten by a simple piece of paper at every turn.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  That's a lot of words to say nothing in particular. Ownership is an interpretation - I agree with that. It may be an interpretation of the blockchain (Namecoin). It may be an interpretation of the land deed (house). It may be an interpretation of records that a registrar stores (DNS) or at RIPE (IP addresses). I don't see any reason blockchain is any different from the others. People either respect the underlying data storage or they don't. Algorithms have nothing to do with it, nor do computational costs. Moving paper isn't cheap either.
  - cguess 4y ago
    Either courts recognize it or not, and no court in the world has recognized any blockchain as a valid proof of contract of anything. Nor should they, laws are never immutable and always up for interpretation, which is why courts exist in the first place.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      I'm not sure about courts, but the government over here will definitely recognize that I owned the coins and that I later stopped owning them - by collecting taxes on the transaction. I have't seen anyone trying to push that on to courts, which indicates that the expectation is that courts have the same idea on coin ownership.
      - cguess 4y ago
        I'm talking about the "use blockchain to prove ownership of a domain" or whatever else people are talking about. Money is different as the non-fungible part of money already exists. It's called cash, and even ownership of that is able to be adjudicated. They can sue you for back taxes and you can sue to say you do not own certain taxes.
        rhn_mk1 4y ago
        In this context, maybe a closer analogy would be information "ownership". While in a typical database, you can order the change of an entry by fiat, you can't do that on blockchain without the crypto key. Revealing a secret cannot be forced by the court, be it a password, or a recipe. Best courts can do it "encourage" one party to do it. Even then it might be in vain, if the information was forgotten. Courts do deal with it somehow, more out of necessity than choice. That would be more similar to getting the keys to a domain or any other blockchain asset.
dmitriid 4y ago
> NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly. How do handle domain squatters and legal disputes? > whole trustless thing means users can provide compute for each other rather than tolerating an ad-riddled central point of failure. What compute? If you exchange money, you explicitly trust that person to provide you with services or goods (and/or explicitly trust the "smart" "contract" running the transaction to be correct which, you know ... [1]) [1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=almost-300000-stolen-from-olympus-dao-later-returned https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=almost-300000-stolen-from-o...
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  1. You don't. But if you choose to use an nft domain it's probably because you think these are lesser evils when compared to broken references when domain ownership lapses or changes hands. 2. I'm talking about providing compute in lieu of money. I want to be able to tell users of a service: you can pay me $5 per month for access via my node, or you can run your own node on that phone you have lying around with a cracked screen, and then you don't need to pay anything.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > You don't. But if you choose to use an nft domain it's probably What if I chose NFT domain to scam people, impersonate someone or squat? > I want to be able to tell users of a service: you can pay me $5 per month for access via my node If you exchange money, you explicitly trust that person to provide you with services or goods (and/or explicitly trust the "smart" "contract" running the transaction to be correct which, you know ... [1]
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      > What if I chose NFT domain to scam people, impersonate someone or squat? Well that's a shitty thing to do, and a limitation of the technology, but it doesn't make all uses of that technology invalid. > If you exchange money... You're missing my point. It's the case where no money changes hands that I'm interested in. If we have technology that can function without custodial trust, then I can pay my subscription fees by helping host the site that I'm subscribing to. I wanna turn everybody's pile of phones with bad batteries or busted screens into a distributed datacenter which we can use as a cheaper alternative to aws & friends provided we're willing to cooperate with each other.
manigandham 4y ago
Humans are messy and rely on trust to work together. That's why we have laws and a judicial system that can create, interpret and enforce actual contracts instead of the cold logic of "code". It's also why Web3/crypto is encountering all the problems solved over time by the traditional finance system as it converges on the reality of human nature and how people actually behave. There are use-cases for a completely trustless interactive ledger - however these are so niche as to be irrelevant for the vast majority.
threeseed 4y ago
> NFT's for domain ownership makes a lot more sense than paying monthly The cost of the domain is insignificant when compared to the cost of the site itself e.g. development and hosting. You're solving a problem I can't imagine more than a few dozen people deeply care about.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I'm sure there are more than dozens interested in publishing a site without a persistent billing relationship with a cloud provider. If you're hosting on IPFS you just have to make sure that some device somewhere has your content pinned. There's a raspberry pi in my closet... Data is referenced by cryptographic hash so there's no need to authenticate the source. The hardest problem in that space is getting new hashes to your audience when you make updates.
nradov 4y ago
Certificate revocation checks already work fine without a blockchain. No one pays monthly for domains; existing registrars let you pay in advance for multiple years and are quite cheap. You should read the NIST blockchain technology overview because you clearly don't understand how to make the right engineering calls. https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/final
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hiq 4y ago
> Key revocation certificates come to mind as a good case for a public blockchain. It's not. It already exists without a blockchain[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_Transparency [0]: since it's a source of confusion, with the definition (and explanation) of what a blockchain is given there: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_good_reaso.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Re: CT, > Logs are operated by many parties, including browser vendors and certificate authorities. Why should we trust browser vendors and certificate authorities? They're high value targets and therefore more likely to be targeted. As for Schneier, he asks: > Would you rather trust a human legal system or the details of some computer code you don’t have the expertise to audit? If I don't have any evidence that the code will fail in the way I'm worried about, but I do have evidence that the legal system frequently fails in the way I'm worried about, then maybe the code. But whatever the case, I definitely prefer a legal system that has to worry about being replaced by code than one whose dominance is assured.
  - hiq 4y ago
    > Why should we trust browser vendors and certificate authorities? They're high value targets and therefore more likely to be targeted. You're mentioning that as if blockchain somehow solved this problem. It doesn't. At best, blockchain moves trust around and you end up with a system that won't resist the test of time and end up converging to what you already have, but worse.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      If you can generate a valid revocation certificate in the first place, you're already trusted. There's no need for additional trust in this case, just a place to put it that's hard to censor.

hatchnyc 4y ago

Every cool new revolutionary, game changing, disruptive tech I can think of has had some kind of “killer app” that lead the way to widespread pubic awareness. Peer to peer had Napster, AJAX had Google Maps, microservices had services of large scale tech giants, and even blockchain originally had Bitcoin. In each case people were doing some cool new thing and we approached the technology trying to figure out how it was accomplished. I am not aware of a single such example for Web3 nor has anyone I’ve asked been able to name one. The killer Web3 apps are at best hypothetical imaginings of what someone could build with it someday, and even that take is quite generous. It is a technical buzzword in search of funding which is not a proven solution for anything at all.

roenxi 4y ago
If I wanted to send you $50 worth of assets, literally right now, what alternatives do we have apart from crypto? Certainly nothing that does such a good job of preserving our relative privacy to each other. I don't want to, but it is still an interesting question. There are capabilities here that have never existed before, it seems likely that something radical will happen in time. There is already a lot of money sloshing around, and it takes a while for innovations to sink in.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  If you require that level of privacy you are either -Buying drugs or illegal porn -A terrorist -A libertarian that opposes taxation That's not how society works thank god.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    I don't see how I would buy drugs or conduct terrorism on HN. And while avoiding tax on $50 might be a win, it is a boring part of the scenario. I don't want to post PII info publicly from this account. But, in practice (ie, we're long past theory) if I want to accept payment as roenxi I can. And if I use something like Monero, it'll be extremely anonymous. There'll be a use for that sort of tech to someone and for legitimate purposes.

latexr 4y ago

> Web3 is just another problem domain people up the pyramid chain are looking to expand their MLM into. Since blockchain (as with herbal life, etc.) isn't effective at almost anything, this will pass. What do you mean when you say “this will pass”? Herbalife¹ has been in business for over forty years; Amway² for over sixty; Watkins Incorporated³ for over one-hundred and fifty! The MLM business looks alive and well. I wouldn’t be surprised (but haven’t checked) if the widening gap in income inequality resulted in more people falling for scams and get-rich-quick schemes. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalife ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amway ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkins_Incorporated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkins_Incorporated

MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Stupidity and greed never passes. Fortunately in my country people are forced to invest in a pension plan so they can't blow it all on crypto. We don't have 70 year old people flipping hamburgers at McDonald's lol.
- mcosta 4y ago
  You are a lucky guy. In my country we are forced to pay the pensions of others.
mjburgess 4y ago
I meant the web3 phase of it. But as far as crypto, as soon as it starts to even plausibly compete with any aspect of the finical system, it'll be regulated to oblivion -- even if it were a good idea. No government on the planet would tolerate a rival private army, nor likewise a rival private economy. It's tolerated at the moment because crypto is just casino chips, and mostly a "useful honeypot" for exposing its criminal users via pretty transparent public records. However blockchain is also just such bad technology with no competitive use cases -- unlike herbal life products, you can't drink a blockchain ledger. My sense is that the emporer here is so naked, and the product so useless, that each time the fantatics try to undress him, many realise the issue. There's lots of routes to crypto's downfall, and all of them are vastly more likely than any "application" taking off.

kmlx 4y ago

there is a huge new market for crypto currencies that you are missing: ransomware. it's billions of dollars, new players every year. and cryptocurrencies work great for it. it's a killer use case.

nathias 4y ago

Why are you pretending like crypto is somewhere in the future, all the things you list are already done and being used by people. If you don't use crypto, great, this means you live in a system that works for you, but if that changes you'll be happy others have created many tools you can use.

personjerry 4y ago

I have no say in the "viability" of blockchain as a technology, but my understanding is that future work is usually built on existing work, regardless of current feasibility. For example, the legend of how Space Shuttle components are transported by trains and thus built into sizes suitable for train tracks, which are built based on the size of wagon tramways, which were built on the size of rutted roads, which were originally built by the Romans for their horse drawn carriages, and thus the Roman road gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches is now part of the spec of the Space Shuttle. I don't think anyone can deny is that there is a significant amount of engineering work that is going into blockchain technology. Thus I suspect there is going to be nontrivial amounts of future technology built on blockchain or blockchain related infrastructure.