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All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything? I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far: https://news.ycombinator.co

All this crpyto technology is fascinating. But is it used for anything? I asked this in an Ask HN today, but got no answer so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852389 It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects, what are the reasons we expect that some day we will? What could be a near term use case?

wredcoll 3y ago
Literally no. No one is using it and no one has come up with a use.
- kinakomochidayo 3y ago
  That's odd, Blackrock just created the BUIDL tokenized fund on Ethereum. Seems like there's definitely a use for it. https://securitize.io/learn/press/blackrock-launches-first-tokenized-fund-buidl-on-the-ethereum-network https://securitize.io/learn/press/blackrock-launches-first-t...
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Wouldn't any company using blockchain technology be a blockchain project?
- stnmtn 3y ago
  Sure, but if every blockchain project is just "building something for the blockchain" then where is the actual value?
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    You seem to be drawing a distinction here between companies that are building something for blockchain vs building something for people. Alright, I'll bite, here are some projects that use blockchain for things besides trading tokens or improving blockchain technology: - https://sarcophagus.io/ https://sarcophagus.io/ - https://www.gitcoin.co/ https://www.gitcoin.co/ - https://docs.kleros.io/ https://docs.kleros.io/ There's many more. Many don't have a lot of adoption, and I don't know if they will. But at the very least it's often interesting to see how traditional systems are reimagined in order to enable decentralized, trustless, computer programs (with humans interacting at the perimeter) to fulfill roles which would traditionally be filled by centralized, trusted intermediaries (often humans). If for no other reason than getting a front seat as many of them fall apart spectacularly but also because it's intellectually fascinating to see problems approached in an inverted manner.
    - troupo 3y ago
      > But at the very least it's often interesting to see how traditional systems are reimagined in order to enable decentralized, trustless, computer programs They are not re-imagined. It's a combination of a still on-ongoing gold rush (well, the end tail of it) and people pretending there are purely technical solutions to all problems. Almost every single of those "interesting re-imagining" projects rather quickly rediscovers why traditional systems are the way they are, and end up being shittier versions of those.
      - pcthrowaway 3y ago
        > well, the end tail of it Whatever your feelings on the impact of the technology are, you can't possibly know this > Almost every single of those "interesting re-imagining" projects rather quickly rediscovers why traditional systems are the way they are, and end up being shittier versions of those. I pretty much agree with this, though I'd suggest "most" rather than "almost every". Most scientific studies may fail to support their hypothesis also, that doesn't make them uninteresting.
        troupo 3y ago
        > I pretty much agree with this, though I'd suggest "most" rather than "almost every". The absolute vast majority (outside of scams, obviously). > Most scientific studies may fail to support their hypothesis also, that doesn't make them uninteresting. Scientific studies don't pretend to be re-imagining anything.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Most of those are scams.
hot_gril 3y ago
Its main purpose is internet currency. The only serious uses surround that via smart contracts, like decentralized exchanges or provably fair gambling (unsavory as that is). Any time someone says "the currency aspect is separate from blockchain," I'd be wary, seeing how the entire point of blockchain is decentralization via proof of work or stake. NFTs can make sense in theory as an alternative to the already-popular video game collectibles, as silly as that premise is, but they never really got traction, and again that's related to currency. There's been a lot of vaporware around things like corporate blockchains to track assets, which don't even make sense in theory.
- ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
  Are you using it as internet currency? I don't know anyone who paid anything with it in the last 12 months.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Yes
  - doublepg23 3y ago
    I’m using the Bitcoin Lightning Network to support podcasts every week or so. https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/boost/ https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/boost/
    - ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
      Interesting. Reading through the page, that sounds super complicated though. Couldn't the podcasts simply put a lightning invoice (Which is just a string of text I guess?) on their website with a text like "Support us via Lightning: 1f73ac220b9..."?
      - lawn 3y ago
        With a regular cryptocurrency they could just post an address or QR code and anyone can send it using a wallet at any time (no need for them to be online or anything).
yieldcrv 3y ago
a better question is to look at how people use it, the frictions they encounter, and who works on solving those frictions just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space, many people solve frictions and compete with each other. it willfully ignores that all currencies are 99% held as stores of value and the M0 money supply is a tiny fraction used as cash and for merchant transactions, a distribution also mirrored in the blockchain space but ignorantly used to discredit it despite ironically showing how well it works as a parallel economy. additionally due to the structure of blockchains as a pay to write database, most use cases that aren't related to stores of value or trading are intrinsically tied to something financial which makes the standard impossible
- FactKnower69 3y ago
  >just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space This is such a great comparison! Crypto and "financial services" are both a massive waste of labor that produces zero material wealth and mainly exist to facilitate money laundering and further upward siphoning of wealth. This is why Janet Yellen is currently throwing a tantrum that those big meanies in China aren't playing fair by using their labor to actually manufacture things instead of shuffle fake money back and forth between different buckets until more money appears out of thin air: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-china-clean-energy-subsidies-excess-production-capacity-2024-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...
- mand1575 3y ago
  Given that we are now entering another crypto hype cycle and blockchain technology, discussions often veer towards crypto and the allure of embedded tokens. I’m going to stick to the realty and opportunity: utilizing blockchain in fixed income finance. Having spent two decades navigating the complexities of Wall Street, I know the critical problem plaguing the fixed income market: the overwhelming amount of data generated during the origination of debt instruments and the subsequent challenges in reconciliation during clearing and settlement. Night cycles, calling Bloomberg to fix security master. Calling DTCC to settle trades. Blockchain is the best technology to solve this. Only if applied correctly. Otherwise, it’s a waste. We started with a fundamental goal: to debunk the myths and misconceptions surrounding blockchain in the securities space. Despite the pervasive FUD propagated by the media, we have now proved to regulators that securities originated on blockchain are indeed securities – not merely speculative digital assets. At its core, we are looking to address the root cause of friction in fixed income trading: the lack of direct origination and data quality across market participants. By leveraging a permissioned network, we have proved by recording of municipal loans and securities on our blockchain. While it may not be the flashy product that garners headlines, this milestone marks a significant step forward. We also trained all of FINRA’s fixed income examiners…. Our next step is to bring brokered CDs, directly to the investors, giving them access to negotiate with the issuers. From there the goal is to extend to real-time clearing and settlement, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency across the fixed income ecosystem. Here's how a trade moves through our system in current state…it’s a mental journey. https://www.chicagofed.org/markets/view-lasalle-street/us-reg-authority https://www.chicagofed.org/markets/view-lasalle-street/us-re...
orthecreedence 3y ago
I think it could be used for some kind of permissioned, collectively crowdsourced database that's (mostly) free from the control of a single group of administrators/gatekeepers. I guess kind of like a decentralized wiki. In my view, blockchains shine where you need auditable global state, bonus points if you don't want central control in your operations (obviously this then kicks the can to the core devs). This use-case is fairly miniscule for most applications, though. As far as currency, I think they also have their use-cases as well but most people don't want a global audit trail of all their purchases. Things like Monero and Zcash shine here. The value fluctuations are obnoxious, though. I'm saying this as a big blockchain skeptic. I think most of the things people use them for are silly.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  Shared append only, very slow database. It’s a very specific setup but maybe there’s some scenario for it.
  - everfree 3y ago
    I think a shared, "slow" database could be useful for property deeds. Give the state admin access to override the typical transfer process in case of theft, and then you're left with a 24/7 accessible public database of property deeds, where the current owner and full history of a deed (transfers, liens, easements) can be accessed and verified by any joe with a computer. It could be useful for professional licenses, too. Everyone could have a verifiable history of someone's professional license - when it was issued, when it was revoked, again mathematically verifiable. You could be sure that someone's record was never changed or deleted without leaving an audit trail. Though to be fair, the important part of this is the chain of cryptographically signed and timestamped events. It could work without strictly being a blockchain. You could imagine something that behaves more like a git repository with a flat file database in it.
imchillyb 3y ago
Banks have been using the Ethereum blockchain for behind the scenes bad debt transfers for about seven years now. Banks don’t want to deal with treasury departments nor do the banks want to be beholden to federal governments regarding prime rates. Ethereum allows banks to circumvent these types of issues because rates are dictated by banks not by governments and their treasury departments. Crypto currency is coming soon. It’s only a matter of time and validating processes now.
- ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
  How can a bank transfer debt via Ethereum? Isn't "debt" a contract between the bank and a user? How do you transfer that and to whom?
- maxcoder4 3y ago
  That sounds suspicious. Maybe a few years back out would work, but now cryptocurrency is pretty regulated. And at the same time it's not battle tested. Any CFO who signs of on something like that risks shareholder fury when anything goes wrong.
- lottin 3y ago
  What?
- schmichael 3y ago
  Citation needed (from a non-crypto-booster source)
throw_e5caa2819 3y ago
(made a throwaway for this) I have personally used cryptocurrency (Monero) to buy small quantities of substances for personal use from darkweb marketplaces a while ago. This has been a great experience, I think the system of public vendor reputation , reviews, user discussions, independently published test results etc. adds a significant layer of safety to this process compared to random local 'street' type transactions of this sort. Whether you approve of this or not, crypto is a very important layer in this system, I feel like this is the only actual use it has currently, although it's obviously not something crypto advocates like to advertise.
tdudhhu 3y ago
Some days ago ICP showed it can run ML on a blockchain. While this is nice and does show that distributed computing is a real possibility I also don't think that anyone is going to switch from Amazon/Azure to ICP any time soon. But I must say the idea is really nice. It's very easy to develop Actor model based software and deploy it on ICP.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  > ML on a blockchain I would actually love it if you had a link with more info on that. Don't take this the wrong way, but my first guess would be that that basically isn't true; either it's not actually machine learning (as is understood today) or it isn't actually a blockchain but rather normal distributed computing being "verified" via blockchain somehow? Would love to be proven wrong though.
  - dlubarov 3y ago
    There are basically two approaches to on-chain inference: consensus-based approaches (several parties run inference and give a claimed result), and zkML (one party runs inference and proves the result cryptographically). zkML can be done using general-purpose ZK libraries (since they support arbitrary computations), or there are some specialized tools for proving ML inference, such as https://github.com/ddkang/zkml https://github.com/ddkang/zkml. It's currently pretty expensive to prove huge models like LLMs, but there's a lot of work being done to make it more practical.
  - tdudhhu 3y ago
    https://internetcomputer.org/ https://internetcomputer.org/ A YT video about this: https://youtu.be/wk3FxuA5DKs https://youtu.be/wk3FxuA5DKs I am still very sceptical about this because it looks very slow, but it seems to work.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
valcron1000 3y ago
> It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. > If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects HN is very adverse to the blockchain space. This is not the best place to look for people using the technology since 9/10 times you would get downvoted to oblivion
ForHackernews 3y ago
> What could be a near term use case? Ransomware, evading currency controls, funding North Korea.
toenail 3y ago
> But is it used for anything? What people like you usually miss.. hodling bitcoin IS one of its uses, store of value. > It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. You haven't missed anything, that's why we say bitcoin, not blockchain.
scyclow 3y ago
People love shitting on NFTs, but there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs and smart contracts. And once you have digital objects that you actually care about, all the web3 infrastructure is surprisingly useful.
- akira2501 3y ago
  > there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs Is that a "good art" scene, or a "good" art scene?
- darby_eight 3y ago
  > there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs and smart contracts I'm still not quite getting the idea here—these assets only really "exist" in web3 apps, right?
  - tdudhhu 3y ago
    Yes, they can prove ownership of an art peace but can not prove the art peace even exists.
hanniabu 3y ago
Here's a bunch of usecases I put together a while ago https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/32b0f933618a3229efe3fbc01cbb03df https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/32b0f933618a3229efe3fbc01cb...
willmadden 3y ago
We use it every day for cross-border payments.
hem777 3y ago
My non-techie brother has been staking his 1 ETH he bought couple of years ago and has earned today, in his words, “slightly more than from my insurance savings account in the past 10 years”. I think that’s a really nice use case.
albrewer 3y ago
If anything will get us out of this ad-ridden hellhole of the centralized internet, I think it'll be cryptocurrency that allows users to transfer tiny amounts of money to a site instead of an ad platform paying the site fractions of a cent for my view. Like if all I need to do is transfer $0.00001 to the site for my view and it's guaranteed to be free from ads or data hoarding, sign me tf up.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Once you set that up as crypto, thats it, thats the price. With the present model ad agencies can play all sorts of games with this price, inflating or deflating it to suit immediate business needs. Its a whole meta that will poof into smoke. So unless the new crypto meta captures the benefits to ad agencies the current “estimate” model of pricing has, it won’t see daylight.
  - kandel 3y ago
    Why? It's easy to do it as a varied cost.

wredcoll 3y ago

Literally no. No one is using it and no one has come up with a use.

kinakomochidayo 3y ago
That's odd, Blackrock just created the BUIDL tokenized fund on Ethereum. Seems like there's definitely a use for it. https://securitize.io/learn/press/blackrock-launches-first-tokenized-fund-buidl-on-the-ethereum-network https://securitize.io/learn/press/blackrock-launches-first-t...

pcthrowaway 3y ago

Wouldn't any company using blockchain technology be a blockchain project?

stnmtn 3y ago
Sure, but if every blockchain project is just "building something for the blockchain" then where is the actual value?
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  You seem to be drawing a distinction here between companies that are building something for blockchain vs building something for people. Alright, I'll bite, here are some projects that use blockchain for things besides trading tokens or improving blockchain technology: - https://sarcophagus.io/ https://sarcophagus.io/ - https://www.gitcoin.co/ https://www.gitcoin.co/ - https://docs.kleros.io/ https://docs.kleros.io/ There's many more. Many don't have a lot of adoption, and I don't know if they will. But at the very least it's often interesting to see how traditional systems are reimagined in order to enable decentralized, trustless, computer programs (with humans interacting at the perimeter) to fulfill roles which would traditionally be filled by centralized, trusted intermediaries (often humans). If for no other reason than getting a front seat as many of them fall apart spectacularly but also because it's intellectually fascinating to see problems approached in an inverted manner.
  - troupo 3y ago
    > But at the very least it's often interesting to see how traditional systems are reimagined in order to enable decentralized, trustless, computer programs They are not re-imagined. It's a combination of a still on-ongoing gold rush (well, the end tail of it) and people pretending there are purely technical solutions to all problems. Almost every single of those "interesting re-imagining" projects rather quickly rediscovers why traditional systems are the way they are, and end up being shittier versions of those.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      > well, the end tail of it Whatever your feelings on the impact of the technology are, you can't possibly know this > Almost every single of those "interesting re-imagining" projects rather quickly rediscovers why traditional systems are the way they are, and end up being shittier versions of those. I pretty much agree with this, though I'd suggest "most" rather than "almost every". Most scientific studies may fail to support their hypothesis also, that doesn't make them uninteresting.
      - troupo 3y ago
        > I pretty much agree with this, though I'd suggest "most" rather than "almost every". The absolute vast majority (outside of scams, obviously). > Most scientific studies may fail to support their hypothesis also, that doesn't make them uninteresting. Scientific studies don't pretend to be re-imagining anything.
hot_gril 3y ago
Most of those are scams.

hot_gril 3y ago

Its main purpose is internet currency. The only serious uses surround that via smart contracts, like decentralized exchanges or provably fair gambling (unsavory as that is). Any time someone says "the currency aspect is separate from blockchain," I'd be wary, seeing how the entire point of blockchain is decentralization via proof of work or stake. NFTs can make sense in theory as an alternative to the already-popular video game collectibles, as silly as that premise is, but they never really got traction, and again that's related to currency. There's been a lot of vaporware around things like corporate blockchains to track assets, which don't even make sense in theory.

ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
Are you using it as internet currency? I don't know anyone who paid anything with it in the last 12 months.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Yes
- doublepg23 3y ago
  I’m using the Bitcoin Lightning Network to support podcasts every week or so. https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/boost/ https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/boost/
  - ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
    Interesting. Reading through the page, that sounds super complicated though. Couldn't the podcasts simply put a lightning invoice (Which is just a string of text I guess?) on their website with a text like "Support us via Lightning: 1f73ac220b9..."?
    - lawn 3y ago
      With a regular cryptocurrency they could just post an address or QR code and anyone can send it using a wallet at any time (no need for them to be online or anything).

yieldcrv 3y ago

a better question is to look at how people use it, the frictions they encounter, and who works on solving those frictions just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space, many people solve frictions and compete with each other. it willfully ignores that all currencies are 99% held as stores of value and the M0 money supply is a tiny fraction used as cash and for merchant transactions, a distribution also mirrored in the blockchain space but ignorantly used to discredit it despite ironically showing how well it works as a parallel economy. additionally due to the structure of blockchains as a pay to write database, most use cases that aren't related to stores of value or trading are intrinsically tied to something financial which makes the standard impossible

FactKnower69 3y ago
>just saying “speculation” as if thats not a use case misses that “financial services” are our biggest industry on the planet and thats mirrored in the blockchain space This is such a great comparison! Crypto and "financial services" are both a massive waste of labor that produces zero material wealth and mainly exist to facilitate money laundering and further upward siphoning of wealth. This is why Janet Yellen is currently throwing a tantrum that those big meanies in China aren't playing fair by using their labor to actually manufacture things instead of shuffle fake money back and forth between different buckets until more money appears out of thin air: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-china-clean-energy-subsidies-excess-production-capacity-2024-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...
mand1575 3y ago
Given that we are now entering another crypto hype cycle and blockchain technology, discussions often veer towards crypto and the allure of embedded tokens. I’m going to stick to the realty and opportunity: utilizing blockchain in fixed income finance. Having spent two decades navigating the complexities of Wall Street, I know the critical problem plaguing the fixed income market: the overwhelming amount of data generated during the origination of debt instruments and the subsequent challenges in reconciliation during clearing and settlement. Night cycles, calling Bloomberg to fix security master. Calling DTCC to settle trades. Blockchain is the best technology to solve this. Only if applied correctly. Otherwise, it’s a waste. We started with a fundamental goal: to debunk the myths and misconceptions surrounding blockchain in the securities space. Despite the pervasive FUD propagated by the media, we have now proved to regulators that securities originated on blockchain are indeed securities – not merely speculative digital assets. At its core, we are looking to address the root cause of friction in fixed income trading: the lack of direct origination and data quality across market participants. By leveraging a permissioned network, we have proved by recording of municipal loans and securities on our blockchain. While it may not be the flashy product that garners headlines, this milestone marks a significant step forward. We also trained all of FINRA’s fixed income examiners…. Our next step is to bring brokered CDs, directly to the investors, giving them access to negotiate with the issuers. From there the goal is to extend to real-time clearing and settlement, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency across the fixed income ecosystem. Here's how a trade moves through our system in current state…it’s a mental journey. https://www.chicagofed.org/markets/view-lasalle-street/us-reg-authority https://www.chicagofed.org/markets/view-lasalle-street/us-re...

orthecreedence 3y ago

I think it could be used for some kind of permissioned, collectively crowdsourced database that's (mostly) free from the control of a single group of administrators/gatekeepers. I guess kind of like a decentralized wiki. In my view, blockchains shine where you need auditable global state, bonus points if you don't want central control in your operations (obviously this then kicks the can to the core devs). This use-case is fairly miniscule for most applications, though. As far as currency, I think they also have their use-cases as well but most people don't want a global audit trail of all their purchases. Things like Monero and Zcash shine here. The value fluctuations are obnoxious, though. I'm saying this as a big blockchain skeptic. I think most of the things people use them for are silly.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
Shared append only, very slow database. It’s a very specific setup but maybe there’s some scenario for it.
- everfree 3y ago
  I think a shared, "slow" database could be useful for property deeds. Give the state admin access to override the typical transfer process in case of theft, and then you're left with a 24/7 accessible public database of property deeds, where the current owner and full history of a deed (transfers, liens, easements) can be accessed and verified by any joe with a computer. It could be useful for professional licenses, too. Everyone could have a verifiable history of someone's professional license - when it was issued, when it was revoked, again mathematically verifiable. You could be sure that someone's record was never changed or deleted without leaving an audit trail. Though to be fair, the important part of this is the chain of cryptographically signed and timestamped events. It could work without strictly being a blockchain. You could imagine something that behaves more like a git repository with a flat file database in it.

imchillyb 3y ago

Banks have been using the Ethereum blockchain for behind the scenes bad debt transfers for about seven years now. Banks don’t want to deal with treasury departments nor do the banks want to be beholden to federal governments regarding prime rates. Ethereum allows banks to circumvent these types of issues because rates are dictated by banks not by governments and their treasury departments. Crypto currency is coming soon. It’s only a matter of time and validating processes now.

ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
How can a bank transfer debt via Ethereum? Isn't "debt" a contract between the bank and a user? How do you transfer that and to whom?
maxcoder4 3y ago
That sounds suspicious. Maybe a few years back out would work, but now cryptocurrency is pretty regulated. And at the same time it's not battle tested. Any CFO who signs of on something like that risks shareholder fury when anything goes wrong.
lottin 3y ago
What?
schmichael 3y ago
Citation needed (from a non-crypto-booster source)

throw_e5caa2819 3y ago

(made a throwaway for this) I have personally used cryptocurrency (Monero) to buy small quantities of substances for personal use from darkweb marketplaces a while ago. This has been a great experience, I think the system of public vendor reputation , reviews, user discussions, independently published test results etc. adds a significant layer of safety to this process compared to random local 'street' type transactions of this sort. Whether you approve of this or not, crypto is a very important layer in this system, I feel like this is the only actual use it has currently, although it's obviously not something crypto advocates like to advertise.

tdudhhu 3y ago

Some days ago ICP showed it can run ML on a blockchain. While this is nice and does show that distributed computing is a real possibility I also don't think that anyone is going to switch from Amazon/Azure to ICP any time soon. But I must say the idea is really nice. It's very easy to develop Actor model based software and deploy it on ICP.

ShamelessC 3y ago
> ML on a blockchain I would actually love it if you had a link with more info on that. Don't take this the wrong way, but my first guess would be that that basically isn't true; either it's not actually machine learning (as is understood today) or it isn't actually a blockchain but rather normal distributed computing being "verified" via blockchain somehow? Would love to be proven wrong though.
- dlubarov 3y ago
  There are basically two approaches to on-chain inference: consensus-based approaches (several parties run inference and give a claimed result), and zkML (one party runs inference and proves the result cryptographically). zkML can be done using general-purpose ZK libraries (since they support arbitrary computations), or there are some specialized tools for proving ML inference, such as https://github.com/ddkang/zkml https://github.com/ddkang/zkml. It's currently pretty expensive to prove huge models like LLMs, but there's a lot of work being done to make it more practical.
- tdudhhu 3y ago
  https://internetcomputer.org/ https://internetcomputer.org/ A YT video about this: https://youtu.be/wk3FxuA5DKs https://youtu.be/wk3FxuA5DKs I am still very sceptical about this because it looks very slow, but it seems to work.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

valcron1000 3y ago

> It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. > If nobody is using blockchain technology outside of blockchain projects HN is very adverse to the blockchain space. This is not the best place to look for people using the technology since 9/10 times you would get downvoted to oblivion

ForHackernews 3y ago

> What could be a near term use case? Ransomware, evading currency controls, funding North Korea.

toenail 3y ago

> But is it used for anything? What people like you usually miss.. hodling bitcoin IS one of its uses, store of value. > It looks like not a single HN reader is using blockchain technology for anything. You haven't missed anything, that's why we say bitcoin, not blockchain.

scyclow 3y ago

People love shitting on NFTs, but there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs and smart contracts. And once you have digital objects that you actually care about, all the web3 infrastructure is surprisingly useful.

akira2501 3y ago
> there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs Is that a "good art" scene, or a "good" art scene?
darby_eight 3y ago
> there's still a really good art scene based on NFTs and smart contracts I'm still not quite getting the idea here—these assets only really "exist" in web3 apps, right?
- tdudhhu 3y ago
  Yes, they can prove ownership of an art peace but can not prove the art peace even exists.

hanniabu 3y ago

Here's a bunch of usecases I put together a while ago https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/32b0f933618a3229efe3fbc01cbb03df https://gist.github.com/hanniabu/32b0f933618a3229efe3fbc01cb...

willmadden 3y ago

We use it every day for cross-border payments.

hem777 3y ago

My non-techie brother has been staking his 1 ETH he bought couple of years ago and has earned today, in his words, “slightly more than from my insurance savings account in the past 10 years”. I think that’s a really nice use case.

albrewer 3y ago

If anything will get us out of this ad-ridden hellhole of the centralized internet, I think it'll be cryptocurrency that allows users to transfer tiny amounts of money to a site instead of an ad platform paying the site fractions of a cent for my view. Like if all I need to do is transfer $0.00001 to the site for my view and it's guaranteed to be free from ads or data hoarding, sign me tf up.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Once you set that up as crypto, thats it, thats the price. With the present model ad agencies can play all sorts of games with this price, inflating or deflating it to suit immediate business needs. Its a whole meta that will poof into smoke. So unless the new crypto meta captures the benefits to ad agencies the current “estimate” model of pricing has, it won’t see daylight.
- kandel 3y ago
  Why? It's easy to do it as a varied cost.