
Elph wants to be the Netscape for cryptocurrency - saratgr8
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/13/this-new-startup-wants-to-be-the-netscape-for-crypto-and-some-investors-think-it-has-a-shot/1/
======
tigeba
After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically
different ideas about what "Netscape" means.

~~~
nostrademons
I see Coinbase as "the Netscape of crypto". They're the company that is making
it easy for ordinary people to get involved with trading or holding crypto
assets, basically the on-ramp to the cryptocurrency world.

Ironically, Coinbase sees themselves as "the Google of crypto". Having worked
at Google, this seems nonsensical to me. Google was built at a much later time
in the dot-com boom, when the Internet had expanded so much that you couldn't
have a single on-ramp to it, you needed a satellite overview (in this
particular case, literally) to make sense of it all. IMHO the Google of crypto
hasn't been invented, because the market for it doesn't exist yet.
(Conventional wisdom is that currency is a winner-take-all market, in which
case the market for "the Google of crypto" will _never_ exist, because the
industry will never get complex enough that you'd need one. I'm not entirely
sure that conventional wisdom is correct in this case, though.)

Elph sounds much more like "The Macintosh of crypto" \- both because of the
app store they're building, and because their focus is on making things that
are currently complicated point-and-click.

~~~
tigeba
It is interesting to me when these X for Y comparisons land for various folks.
I have to conclude it worked for Elph or at least didn't substantially hinder
them since they picked up investors. I find it very surprising that Coinbase
would see themselves as the "Google of crypto" and not the "Paypal of crypto".
Considering they are so highly curated, they could stretch it to the "Yahoo of
crypto" but that sounds worse :)

My view of Netscape was that it was a fantastic browser, and it was quite a
bit better than NCSA Mosaic that it replaced. That said at the time, I think
the majority of internet users problems were much more fundamental, like "How
do I get this stupid modem thing to send me the internet". I think it could be
argued that the "getting connected to the internet" piece is an analog to
'getting connected to ethereum / blockchain", but its unclear to me how the
winners translate over.

EDIT: I reserve the right to be completely missing the point. Feel free to
call me out in 5-10 years.

------
astrodust
They could probably be the literal Netscape if they made Verizon the right
offer for the brand.

------
pilingual
I see what they are trying to do but I don’t see why staking a coin is
necessary. You should be able to figure out what is a scam and what is
sovereign through data.

Further, I don’t understand why Coinbase doesn’t leverage its flagship app
instead of owning Toshi, Cipher, and funding this. How often does one use
Coinbase? If you are a serious trader you are using their web site. You should
be able to buy crypto and apply crypto to dapps in the same place.

~~~
shreybear
"You should be able to figure out what is a scam and what is sovereign through
data." Right but wouldn't a tool to help people learn this help?

~~~
QML
Doesn't Toshi have a reputation system already (I presume that's the tool
you're referencing)?

------
cvaidya1986
This is a no brainer. Should be huge in 5 years if it becomes THE destination
for dApps.

~~~
astrodust
How do you see them succeeding?

~~~
shreybear
what other apps do this?

~~~
astrodust
"My startup is the first to make parachutes out of concrete!"

Not every "first" idea is going to succeed.

~~~
shreybear
Well, it also helps if the idea they're tackling is a burning need, which one
would think it is. Being first doesn't guarantee anything, but it doesn't
hurt.

~~~
astrodust
Nobody needs dapps. That's the problem you need to solve first.

------
scottybowl
What does that even mean

~~~
svnsets
I took it as they want to be irrelevant and outpaced by all of their
competitors in the next 5 years.

------
ErikAugust
Everyone wants to be some analogy. "The Netscape of Crypto"? "The Macintosh of
Crypto"? That's all marketing and it should mean nothing.

~~~
dick_sucker2
How about the Amazon of reviews?

> The ELPH token is used in conjunction with the Elph Protocol to approve and
> rank dApps in the dApp store.

It looks like the system can be gamed for profit.

------
Zaskoda
I bet they're not the only ones working on this.

~~~
toppy
Brendan Eich is working on something similar -
[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

~~~
theamk
You almost got me scared there! I was going to switch to Brave on my tablet to
get better power saving / faster experience via adblocking. However, having
blockchain in the browser would defeat the whole thing, making everything much
slower instead.

Luckily, they only seem to incorporate BAT, which is fully opt-in, and seems
to have no overhead for regular users.

~~~
berberous
FYI - using the Metamask plugin with Chrome/Firefox (which allows you to use
DApps; Elph is basically just combining the two) does not slow anything down.
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it is definitely not the same thing as
keeping a Bitcoin or Ethereum node running.

------
gdsdfe
somebody is already doing this = [https://status.im](https://status.im)

~~~
Alex3917
I'd say this is actually more similar to
[https://mobius.network/](https://mobius.network/)

------
xtacy
Does [https://www.elph.com](https://www.elph.com) work for anyone?

~~~
codewithcheese
Yes works for me, Singapore VPN IP.

------
ForHackernews
Everyone needs to stop using "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency".

I thought this article was going to be about cryptography, not more hype for
dunning-krugerrands.

~~~
shkkmo
Yeah, I found the title very confusingly ambiguous. While we can't force the
world to use language a certain way, can we at least have non-ambiguous title
for HN posts?

~~~
shkkmo
Thanks for changing the title!

