
Ask HN: Are there any substantial examples of blockchain solving a real problem? - louwrentius
There are many startups and companies involved in blockchain technology.<p>I’m wondering what kind of ‘significant’ problems they solve and by this is not possible with regular technology.<p>I have a strong sense that blockchain technology is a solution that has yet to find a relevant problem to solve.<p>I think the same is true for cryptocurrencies but I would like to keep those out of the discussion, if possible.
======
joosters
Many people solved their lack of money problems through launching blockchain-
related companies. The actual systems they launched can't be considered
substantial, functional, or often even real, but the (actual) money that
poured into their own bank accounts was substantial enough. Does that count?

~~~
Trias11
I think OP's context on the question is which real world problems for other
people were solved with blockchain better than with other means.

Parting suckers with their hard earned money is not likely count.

------
JackFr
41 comments when I write this.

There is a ton of ‘will’, ‘could’, ‘might’, but no ‘is’. The concrete examples
pointed to are sales pitches, announcements, protocols, consortia being
organized.

It looks a lot like the answer is no.

That may change I suppose, but it really seems like no one is doing anything
practically useful with it.

~~~
noxer
It's hard for people to simply skip this thread if they can't answer the
question. Hence we have now 144 comments and beside my own post I could not
find anyone actually answering the question.

------
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
I don't consider myself an expert here, but I believe there are few or no
problems that only blockchain technology can solve. Rather, it's about _how_
it solves problems.

If you solve a problem with non-blockchain technology, you will get a
centralized entity of some kind. Be it a bank, a SaaS service, a social
network, a database, or whatever. Sure, it can be open source, but it's still
centralized in one way or another, and decisions must be made be someone. If
you are the owner or have privilidged access, you may do bad things (alter
data, abuse user data, increase prices, etc).

With blockchain technology, you can get around having a centralized entity.
Instead, you are developing an incentive schema that allows distributed
ownership and decision making, so that all participants have power and are
incentivized to behave in the best interest of all.

Besides money, there are many other cases where this make sense, but is the
downside of having a centralized entity really large enough to justify the
downsides of blockchain (hard to develop, slow, hard to use and manage, etc)?
Probably not right now, and maybe it will never get to the point.

IMO, a well-run, transparent, centralized entity can be more trustworthy than
a complex technology that is potentially exploitable, buggy, you don't fully
understand, and is difficult to change once to initial incentive schema is in
place.

~~~
Taek
A well-run, transparent, centralized entity can easily become an opaque and
corrupted entity over time.

A well designed decentralized system will maintain its integrity indefinitely.
In practice we've only really seen this play out with Bitcoin so far, but
that's because the space is young and people still haven't really gotten their
heads around the exact strengths and weaknesses of a blockchain.

~~~
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
> A well-run, transparent, centralized entity can easily become an opaque and
> corrupted entity over time.

And the opposite can also happen. Humans are good at quickly adapting to
circumstances and fixing "bugs" in organizations through firing/hiring, new
organizational structures, or other means. That's what markets do.

A "perfectly designed" decentralized system may be superior, but I don't
believe it's possible to perfectly design an incentive structure from the get-
go. The world is incredibly complex, and once you have a bug or mistake in
your decentralized system, it's doomed because it can be exploited. There are
already countless examples of various tokens and blockchains being
hacked/exploited. A centralized, human-led organization is less efficient, but
more resilient to such things.

This is similar to the AI question. Are you willing to put your full trust
into a system with dynamics not fully understood, or do you put your trust
into humans running centralized systems? By "not fully understood" I don't
mean the algorithms, but the emergent behavior of an incentive structure,
which is incredibly complex because it deals with human agents.

~~~
AkshatM
> This is similar to the AI question. Are you willing to put your full trust
> into a system with dynamics not fully understood, or do you put your trust
> into humans running centralized systems?

Tangent, but this is poor phrasing. If posed this way, an astute response
would be that we don't fully know how human brains or emergent group behaviour
in humans works either (which is why the social sciences are so hard!), so how
is the second option meaningfully different from the first beyond tradition?

The key thing that separates AI systems and human systems is lack of intuition
for AI behaviour. So the question should really be phrased: is it safe to
trust a system you don't have an intuitive model for?

There are some cases where the answer is yes e.g. we trust airplanes built and
ratified by experts even if we don't know how airplanes work on the
presumption that, at least in the conditions we care about, airplanes have
been tested and behave correctly.

~~~
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
Agreed about poor phrasing, it isn't really about "understanding". But we know
that humans are robust through millions of years of evolution, and we know
that, mostly, their incentives are aligned with other humans. I don't think it
has much to do with intuition either though. For example, I believe I have a
pretty intuitive understanding of what most current AI systems do (that's the
field I work in), and that's exactly the reason I would not trust them to make
fully autonomous decisions in cases where they need to be robust to humans
trying to exploit them. I have absolutely no intuitive understanding of how
airplanes work.

> There are some cases where the answer is yes e.g. we trust airplanes built
> and ratified by experts even if we don't know how airplanes work on the
> presumption that, at least in the conditions we care about, airplanes have
> been tested and behave correctly.

A big difference is that airplanes do not interact with humans, and humans
have no incentive to exploit airplanes. They are a system that purely
interacts with the physical world, or physics, which seems to be simpler to
model than human behavior and is not fundamentally adversarial.

With many blockchain networks, e.g. Bitcoin, you are in an adversarial
environment - exploiting the network yields huge payoffs. With a fully
autonomous AI-based decision making system you can get something similar,
depending on where it's applied. For example, tricking recommendation systems
to uprank your product, automated trading systems (responsible for flash
crashes), impersonalization through voice/face recognition, etc. To be fair
though, most AI systems are not deployed in adversarial environments, but
blockchains seem to be, since you can almost always profit from exploiting
them.

------
kd5bjo
In a sense, git is “blockchain technology” that predates the buzzword: every
commit is cryptographically hashed, including the hash(es) of its parent(s).
This lets anyone verify all the involved commits back to the beginning of the
chain, and is what enables the 3-way merge algorithm without a centralized
server.

What it doesn’t include is any kind of proof-of-work or proof-of-identity,
which some people might consider necessary for something to be “blockchain
technology”.

Edit, to the downvoters. In order for me to produce better commentary on this
topic in the future, I would like to know: Do you view these statements as
incorrect, misleading, or simply unhelpful?

~~~
yaantc
The distributed operation I consider necessary for something to be called
blockchain technology. Git is an example of a Merkle tree [1], which
definitely is a key component of a blockchain but not enough on its own. One
also need a distributed consensus mechanism.

The distributed operation is both necessary, and the key challenge for
blockchains. There is a heavy cost to secure distributed operations. My
personal opinion is that most people don't care so much about distribution,
they're fine with a few trusted/regulated actors using more efficient
centralized schemes. And this is, in a nutshell, the big challenge of
blockchains IMHO. And why some people are tempted to drop the challenging
part, put a centralize scheme on top of a Merkle tree and call it a blockchain
to ride the hype. I don't think this is correct, both technically and
ethically. It's "merklewashing" ;)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree)

~~~
kd5bjo
That makes sense. So, continuing with the git/source control analogy, what’s
missing is a distributed mechanism of both publishing new forks and then
deciding which of those forks “wins”.

It sort of happens now in an ad-hoc way, if you include blogs and such with
big fork announcements that sometimes result in an effective change of
ownership, but that’s a slow, rare, unreliable process at the moment.

------
Taek
The strongest use case right now in the blockchain space is Bitcoin as a
sovereign money. It's an asset with substantial liquidity that has incredible
protections against asset seizure and strong independence against capital
controls.

It's the type of thing that you go 30 years without needing it, but then when
you do need it you really badly need it. Bitcoin does this well today and
there are plenty of people who proactively plan for financial contingencies by
holding some percentage of their portfolio in self-custodied Bitcoin.

We also have several examples (Greece a few years ago, Venezuela recently) of
this playing out in favor of the prepared in the real world. When your
country's financial system melts down, your Bitcoin holdings can give you
liquidity and options despite everything else around you being completely
disfunctional.

~~~
louwrentius
The coins went down hard in march along with the financial markets...

~~~
Taek
Doesn't matter. If capital controls get put in place and bitcoin also loses
80% of its value, you still have 100x the liquidity that you would have
without it.

~~~
louwrentius
Always the 'if's...

------
momokoko
Paying bribes to government officials.

Large transactions for illegal goods such as drugs.

Transferring money out of controlled currencies.

This isn’t meant to be a joke. I’m illustrating that the price of
cryptocurrency is indeed backed by some of its utility and not 100% a money
making scheme.

~~~
me_me_me
Dollar is by far biggest offender is all of those categories, but bitcoin is
the currency of evil, eh...

~~~
realtalk_sp
That's a horrendous argument. 'Nefarious activity' is a vanishingly small
fraction of how dollars are used. Not so for crypto. And the reason for the
discrepancy is obvious: it's much harder to identify and counter illicit
activity conducted via crypto.

~~~
me_me_me
It depends on crypto, so lets talk about the biggest one, bitcoin. You cannot
money launder bitcoin. Because all transactions are tracked, as opposed to
dollar. Bitcoin is not anonymous.

Also where do you base your case though? What % of bitcoin is used for crime?

All i have seen is total amounts, and bitcoin nor other crypto coins don't
come even close.

Heck, all major banks were openly laundering narco money and nobody gave fuck.
What makes you think that bitcoin changes anything?

~~~
realtalk_sp
'Here's how criminals use Bitcoin to launder dirty money'
([https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/11/26/bitcoin-money-
lau...](https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/11/26/bitcoin-money-
laundering-2/))

'Bitcoin Money Laundering: How Criminals Use Crypto'
([https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/bitcoin-money-
launderin...](https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/bitcoin-money-laundering))

'Bitcoin Has Lost Steam. But Criminals Still Love It.'
([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/technology/bitcoin-
black-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/technology/bitcoin-black-
market.html))

~~~
me_me_me
Bitcoing tumblers are obfuscation method and are definitely not preventing you
from tracing money. Its a way of making it harder to trace all the money.

Also its public which tumbler was used for laundering so it can become target
for law enforcement too.

It sounds like you feel really strongly about the subject and don't like
crypto at all but I think you are being unfair here.

~~~
realtalk_sp
So the solution is to make currency flows centralized, traceable, and subject
to government regulation? Fascinating...

~~~
me_me_me
I would take a notch down from intellectual superiority.

I have never claimed cryptocurrency to be better solution than fiat money.

I am simply pointing out that false claims and perceptions that are often
being spread.

There is a lot issues with bitcoin but that doesn't make fiat somehow flawless
solution.

And just be be precise...

The idea behind bitcoin is not to directly controlled by government. That is
exactly what government can't do with bitcoin and what they are doing now -
print money like crazy in a hope that ceos of multinationals somehow fix
current crisis.

Government and law is absolutely required to go after criminal elements. You
cant solve crime with blockchain.

------
anotheryou
I still like it as "proof of existence", proofing that you where in possession
of a certain information at some point in time. (by publishing the hash on the
blockchain).

I think this is already relevant for court cases.

~~~
PeterisP
This use case, _especially_ for legal proof in court cases, has been solved by
digital signatures with timestamps - essentially, you hash the document; and a
third party issues a digitally signed certificate that they verified that hash
at this specific day and time). The technical infrastructure and legal process
for that existed before Bitcoin was invented and the blockchain boom, I recall
doing some work on these things back in 2002 or around that time.

It does rely on having some trusted authority making (signing) that timestamp,
but for the legal system that's not a problem, probably the other way around -
having a digitally signed document with a timestamp from some official
provider will be trivially accepted by the court, but any custom solution that
somehow places data on some public blockchain will require an extensive and
possibly expensive process to get acknowledged.

~~~
anotheryou
Well than this at least makes it decentralized and cheap (though of course
that central entity _could_ provide that as well in theory...)

~~~
PeterisP
Yes, it makes it decentralized, but so what? The whole point of this
discussion asked by the OP above is to question _why_ (and _IF_ )
decentralization is an advantage - what practical benefits does it achieve for
this particular use case?

Decentralization is a trade-off; it almost always incurs an efficiency cost
compared to an equivalent centralized solution, so the question is if it
brings some specific benefits that justify the drawbacks.

Regarding costs, as I mentioned above, the verification in court (which is the
whole point of this service) would be much more expensive for the
decentralized scenario and the timestamping services are trivially cheap
already, so if we look purely at costs then decentralization does not provide
any advantage.

~~~
anotheryou
I agree.

> timestamping services are trivially cheap already

what does it cost, where can I do it right now?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have the Internet Archive archive a document and it’s hash. Courts have
accepted Internet Archive snapshots as evidence.

More costly services would be something like DocuSign.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
How can I have the Internet Archive archive a specific file (pointed to by an
URL - one for the document, one for its hash)?

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow](https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow)

Please be mindful about request rate and content size, we don’t want to abuse
the Archive.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Thanks a lot! I was not even expecting a CLI, I just could not find the
possibility on web.archive.org to request a page to be saved.

Now that I scrolled down it is so obvious I do not know how I could have
missed it. Thanks again!

~~~
toomuchtodo
Happy to help!

------
_bxg1
For blockchain to be useful, your use-case has to:

1) Involve coordination between parties who don't trust each other; if they
trust each other, a regular database will do fine and be much more efficient.

2) Exist completely within the ledger; once something is _in_ the ledger it's
tamper-proof, but bad information can still _enter_ the ledger from the
outside world. This is the reason it doesn't serve much purpose for anything
physical, like delivery confirmation. If someone wanted to fake a delivery
they could just... enter fake information.

That makes for a very narrow set of legitimate use-cases, most of which are
crypto-currency, whose status as a "solution to a problem" is dubious at best.

------
simonw
As a blockchain skeptic the replies to this post have so far further cemented
my skepticism.

Providing an example of blockchains solving real problems aside from
cryptocurrency should be trivially easy at this point: well funded companies
have had /years/ to do this now.

It's not just startups either - IBM and other big consultancies have been
pushing blockchain solutions really hard.

How much longer do we have to wait for someone to build something that's
actually useful, and that genuinely couldn't have been built cheaper and
faster without a blockchain?

------
ankit219
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has used blockchain based
solution to curb spam calls and messages. (Slightly old link here:
[https://www.livemint.com/Industry/RRuPzidooMxh8pspZhTlrI/Tra...](https://www.livemint.com/Industry/RRuPzidooMxh8pspZhTlrI/Trai-
orders-telecom-firms-to-stop-spam-with-blockchain-tech.html))

India has a huge problem with spam calls and messages (not so much in times of
Corona, work from home, and lockdown) and how the phone numbers of users are
obtained. There are lists of emails and phone numbers that is bought and sold
in an informal market too. There is no first hand record of consent about
whether or not any registered entity can call or message me. Almost everyone
receives messages and calls from unsolicited numbers asking to buy insurance,
loan, or a credit card. Its a huge problem so much that an average customer
would get 2-3 calls a day. TRAI tried to curb it earlier with a DND mechanism,
but that did not work given it is very easy to register a new handle, and no
easy way report a caller/message sender.

What they are proposing is to have consent in a blockchain is that there would
always be one final state. I dont know much but it means only registered
telemarketers would be allowed to call and to only those where consent is
explicit and recorded in the blockchain. No mining but seems like an effective
solution on paper.

More links: [https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-
news/bl...](https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-
news/blockchain-fight-against-spam-may-not-be-landslide-
victory/amp_articleshow/72193464.cms)

This is a presentation on the same: [https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-
Presence/AsiaPacific/S...](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regional-
Presence/AsiaPacific/SiteAssets/Pages/ITU-Asia-Pacific-CoE-Training-on-
Distributed-Ledger-Technologies-\(Blockchain\)-Ecosystem-and-
Decentralization/TRAI%20presentation.pdf) (cant verify the date, apologies)

~~~
noxer
Seems like any Database could be used for this. If there is a central
authority its almost certain no blockchain tech is needed at all. A central
authority does not disabled swarm intelligence or something. It does not have
to use its power against all others. Centrality ruled systems work very very
fine as long as the central authority has the same goal as the other parties.
If there is a central operator for anti spam call database and they do their
job correctly there is no reason to not trust them and replace them with
complex distributed agreement mechanisms. especially not if they in the end
are in control of "the blockchain" anyway.

------
stephenr
It solves the alarming number of people without yet another buzzword on their
cv/resume.

------
noxer
There is something like a blockchain called XRPL. It is currently used to make
cross border payments cheaper and faster for corridors where the traditional
way (nostro/vostro accounts) is rather expensive mostly due to low liquidity
between the 2 assets and high counter party risk or the foreign currency. For
example USD to MXN. Lots or people send money to this way. AFAIK only a few
millions a week are transferred this way by now but doubling every few month.
Probably still in the single digit percentage of all the money send to Mexico
but due to covid19 we all know that doubling is a freaking fast growth rate so
this could soon make up a significant portion for that corridor and obviously
there are other popular but not efficient corridors. Apparently it's up to 40%
cheaper and if it's used more the liquidity will grow which may make it even
cheaper.

I would like to point out that any blockchain like thing with some kind of
coin/token with value could be used for this. Like in theory this could be
done with Bitcoin it's just very very slow and due to the rather high
transaction fees its probably not really interesting.

After years of being interested in blockchain tech and hundred of hours
research this is the only real world use case that is deployed, used and most
importantly generally makes sense, that I know of. There are a bunch of other
projects like Brave that are technically deployed and working but IMO do not
solve a problem just recreate the existing problem with a fancy token.

~~~
noxer
Little update:

Ripple the company that builds on the XRPL, recently released new numbers.
They say that the volume in dollar that used the XRPL for cross border
payments, has increased by 294% in the last quarter. % is hard math so for
thous who don't know, that means nearly tripled in 3 month. Obviously it can't
grow that fast for long but still impressive and a clear sing that it actually
solves a real problem.

------
riffraff
"dark web payments for illegal stuff" seems to have been a fairly good match
for cryptocurrency, a pretty specific case of wanting a system not relying on
a single authority.

------
Thomashuet
Certificate transparency ([http://www.certificate-
transparency.org/](http://www.certificate-transparency.org/)) solves the real
problem of allowing website owners to check that no one issues illegitimate
certificates for their domains. I believe it is technically a blockchain
although it doesn't have most attributes traditionally associated with
blockchains (decentralized, PoW).

~~~
louwrentius
So this is not really blockchain tech right?

------
fmjrey
[https://originstamp.org/](https://originstamp.org/)

~~~
louwrentius
Maybe this is relevant to someone but I can’t imagine a large scale need for
this.

This is not ‘substantial’

------
leu-mas
Self-sovereign identity is probably the most viable use case at the moment. No
third party needed to manage your identity, replace keys, and broadcast
updates to the world. Additionally adding the dimension of time, where you can
differentiate between something signed while a key was active vs something
signed after the key was retired.

Some argue this is the only data necessary on-chain — all other application
data can remain in normal data stores while the identities interacting with
that data are immutable and auditable.

Laying the groundwork for a lot of neat stuff
[https://identity.foundation/working-groups/identifiers-
names...](https://identity.foundation/working-groups/identifiers-names-
discovery.html)

~~~
louwrentius
I wish you all the best but I don’t really understand the problem you are
trying to solve here.

------
xupybd
I understand it can make for hard to tamper with historical data. For things
such as temperature records of transported food and medical goods this can be
very valuable. As you can have mobile record taking and storage. While having
confidence that the data has not been altered.

~~~
Shmebulock
While having confidence that the data has not been altered _after_ being added
to the blockchain.

~~~
paulgb
Reminds me of this: [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-
da-vi...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vinci-on-
the-blockchain/)

------
dgrin91
Blockchain solves one fundamental problem: trust. If you have a solution that
fundamentally relies on trust and you want to get rid of that, Blockchain is
the answer. If you're OK with trusting someone/thing, then Blockchain wont add
any value.

The obvious and biggest application of this is money. The original Bitcoin use
case. Today the banks handle all our monetary transactions and we trust that
they don't act maliciously (we also do a lot of auditing/regulation/manual
verification, but ultimately that is imperfect so it really boils down to
trust). If you want to have a truly trust-less monetary system the only
solution I can imagine is blockchain.

Another potential solution I can see for blockchains: Certificate Authorities.
Today CAs ultimately roll up to one of a handful of root CAs. In other words,
there are a handful of entities that we just implicitly trust. They get
audited, regulated, etc, but ultimately we just trust them. If you want to
move to a truly trust-less CA model it has to be on blockchain.

There is also a third, kind of cheat answer: automation. You obviously don't
need blockchain here, but if you want to automate something and you need to
get funding from a VC, or a boss, or anyone else, blockchain is a good
buzzword to throw in there to get some extra $$$. This is less true since the
crypto crash, but still provides some value.

~~~
louwrentius
Yes, it's all about trust. The levels of trust we have maybe not perfect, but
they seem good enough, in a way that it's very hard and implausible to me that
crypto or blockchain will ever serve a need.

But mostly, again: your answer is all about hypotheticals, not about the
'now'.

------
robcohen
Blockchain usage right now is minimal, largely due to the fact that for most
use cases it’s too expensive (the cost is high, confirmation time is long).

For most use cases, Ethereum is too expensive and the blocks are too full, the
same is true for Bitcoin.

Once second layer solutions are more mature and layer 1 blockchains are
substantially cheaper due to new consensus protocols, you will see more
applications for blockchain.

Until then, blockchain is too expensive for the free world, and is largely
only somewhat useful to those in failed states.

------
tyingq
Assuming the only real use case is when all parties don't want to trust a
central authority, the use cases do seem limited. Because once you have to
trust anyone, you might as well use a simple ledger/database.

In the airline space, for example, all the airlines pay OAG to file schedules.
OAG is a central authority they trust, and pay. Blockchain _could_ replace
that, and save them all some money. Hasn't happened though.

~~~
acqq
> Blockchain could replace that, and save them all some money.

I don't think that can be proved to be true? I can easily imagine that any
blockchain would introduce obvious weaknesses in the process for everybody,
and such which can be avoided by having a central authority, which keeps the
central authority option being cheaper for everybody.

------
nevermindme80
Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the project I am describing below.

You have a stab at one of the most important issues within the space here. You
are right, most projects either do not have any utility or they are so far up
their idea and tech that they think it will produce value by itself.
Unfortunately, most things end here. For most, this value will never surpass
the simple value of "exchanging value" or "storing value" (both are important
I agree, but we are talking about tech, not money).

However, that is not how it should be. Projects should be building and solving
issues, adding utility and providing solutions, otherwise, we are stuck in a
system which produces the point zero problem. This can get us cemented in the
past with no hope of any future.

Check out cyber. It is a decentralized google with a mission to open the
semantics field and decentralize the service of the internet with the use of
blockchain and economic incentives.

It's not an idea. Both, the chain and the initial app are working as planned.
Yes, the project is still in testnets, but, it is 100% open-source and the
idea is provably implemented.

Cyber managed to prove that it can change the current search mechanism and
make it work. The main use of the network is to build an open, decentralized
knowledge graph, by the users themselves to create a shared database of
knowledge. All transactions in the network are made to target that purpose in
one way or another.

Cyber utilizes the use of computation, bandwidth and storage and produces a
useful computer with several use-cases, with the most obvious is the creation
of an open and provable search in a trustless and censorship-free environment
without the illnesses of web2 tech..

~~~
noxer
What problem does it actually solve? We already have web search it may not be
perfect and certainly does not fit in with the ethics of some people and has
many many other problems we could and should address. But factually we still
have functional web search already. Its not a problem waiting to be solved
with blockchain tech. So it looks like it does not solve a web search problem
it solves a niche problem for cyperliberalism or something while the real
world does not have a search problem.

Don't get me wrong. the Project might be awesome. I may even use it some day.
But I see it a niche project like I2P or Freenet, It's good that we have these
for when we might need it but there is no way people will replace something
they use now with it.

~~~
nevermindme80
Spot on. Well, let's take this part by part. What problems exist with the
current search:

1) It is centralized

2) Your data is being used without your approval

3) Companies like Cambridge Analytica build on the semantics field and use it
for economics, politics and other purposes. The fact that a semantics field is
closed, leads to magnitudes of problems in almost all the fields of your life

4) You cannot search for anything freely. The internet was originally intended
for the search of scientific papers, today this is not available. You might
say. Hey, i don't nee it. Then its a bit hard to argue. You might not. But the
reality is that its the most valuable database we have as humans, our
knowledge, which is today projected not by scientific research, but by
Wikipedia (owned by alphabet) and by companies like Cambridge Analytica, who
build on the semantical field

5) Results aren't provable. At all. There is no proof for any root results -
blockchain solves this

6) There are no incentives

7) Knowledge graphs are owed to 90% by one company, which means that the
answers you're searching for. The knowledge you're acquiring today is 90%
follows a black-box principle and has in it what you are lead to believe etc,
etc, etc.

TBH, there are about 100 reasons why search should be changed and is crazy
underlooked by a lot of people as a problem

This is the very tip of the iceberg. And Im glad you bring this up

~~~
noxer
1) Arguably it is centrally controlled but technically its not centralized
there is no SPOF. So the kind of centralization you refer too may be unwanted
for valid reasons but does not affect its function.

2) That's not an inherent property of web search at all. Its the business
model of some web search provider.

3) All true but again has nothing to do with web search. The whole privacy
things in general is a problem of web monetization anyway. Private data is
collected for ads not for search results. web search is not broken, web
monetization probably is.

4) I can search the internet freely. I may not find what I'm looking for
because there are laws preventing people from putting stuff on the net and in
general webhosters are usually privately owned and can decide to not allow
certain things. So if you can't find X its probably because X is not on the
net or its intentional hidden because its somehow illegal or just generally
unwanted or there is simply no one somehow motivated to host it. The internet
is kinda backward if you want to insert something you have to play for that
while if you take something is usually "free". So for something to be put
online there must be a some kind of motivation else simply no one will do it.
This is not a flaw in web search at all. What the internet originally was
intended to do seems to be irrelevant. The internet we have now is what we
deal with and if enough people want to make a scientific paper library, well
then they can build that perfectly fine on the internet we have today. But
like I said there must be some kind of motivation. but you can't blame the
lack there off to Wikipedia or it's owners and certainly not to web search.

5) Web search is not querying a database where you get 3 results if there are
3 matching entities. Everyone can implement web search the way they want it
and think its the most useful. There is nothing to prov. If I search for
"1999" I would expect a search engine to give me stuff mostly related to the
year 1999. But 1999 is also a prime number. The name of a bunch of albums,
tracks, movies and what not. Is the search result now bad because it mostly
assumed a year? Its good for me as it did what I expected but may be bad for
someone else.

6) Money is the incentives for web search. Obviously that is far from perfect
and has a bunch of known flaws but again has nothing to do with web search.
Also decentralization/blockchain etc. can not remove the incentive money from
the system.

7) That sounds little bit too much conspiracy-theories-like for me. True
knowledge over a specific topic is the same regardless of where you got it
from.

I already agreed to that in my first reply. There is bunch of stuff concerning
with today's popular web search services. But its function not broken and I
don't see why it would need to be replaced. If a wheel rolls but sometimes
breaks we should address that maybe change the material? maybe put some rubber
on it? But not re-invent the wheel.

~~~
nevermindme80
1) Of course, there are SPoF =) One is called google =)

2) Not exactly, it's the follow up of a closed semantics field and the client-
server model. The internet can be very different. As it was intended to be

3) Again, we are talking about the semantics field. Web search doesn't work,
as in barely

4) No, you cannot. You are searching through blackbox intermediaries. Always.
Its called a knowledge graph. Moreover, you cant search for nearly 80% of the
things. I don't need an ISP telling me what I can or cannot search. Currently,
according to freedom house, ~24% of the internet is free. Why should I care
about censorship of ISP's? For all I know (minor in history) censorship killed
more people than all of the liberals put together. An example, holocaust or
let's get closer to today's reality. COVID and whats happening in counties
like China, Russia, etc

5) what it doesn't do now, doesn't mean it shouldn't do. The whole idea is
that I want to know that what I searched for can be provable and relevant.
With the current page rank its impossible. That has to be changed

6) No, it doesn't and it shouldn't! It allows you to change the flow of
monetization and empower a non-zero sum game + let eCommerce flourish fairly

7) I wish it was. But this is just the reality

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. People search for questions, in which,
it should be noted, there are no bad intentions. People get answers. It's as
simple as eating a cake =) What has to be changed is several things: \-
Location-based addressing has to go (thanks ipfs, dat, swarm, git, and any
blockchain or tangle like protocol) \- blackbox opinions \- data loss and re-
selling \- one at a time ISP architecture \- censorship \- the understanding
of how we use the internet as client-server \- the number of beneficiaries has
to grow, drastically

~~~
noxer
Googles search I decentralized. It may be centrally organized/ruled whatever
but operational it's decentralized. Also it's not the only web search so web
search in general in not centralized and the only real SPOF that could
globally take down web search is the internet itself/DNS and all that stuff
that could global break.

You try really hard to intentional misunderstand me so I won't reply any
further. Like I said it my first post "It solves a niche problem for
cyperliberalism" all your arguments go straight in that direction. The real
world don't care. And no I don't like that but I accept it as a fact. You
probably should too.

------
barthvr
Some stores use it to store the production chain metadata of their products :
when it was produced, by whom, etc, and make this information public. As
anything stored in the blockchain can't easily be faked, it allows customers
to check the authenticity of what they are buying (ie where has this product
been farmed, cooked, by whom, etc).

~~~
heisenzombie
I don’t think I get this. How does the blockchain part help this problem, over
just publishing the data?

~~~
jpalomaki
Using a (widely trusted) blockchain you could provide a mechanism for people
to make sure you have not tampered with the historical records.

------
jasonv
I check out the websites of companies mentioned in blockchain press pretty
regularly. I haven’t figured out what a lot of them do.

The few times I’ve dig into a blockchain company that had a $100MM theft, it’s
hard to understand where those “assets” came from, and who the customers/users
were that deposited those assets, how the businesses were built, etc.

I’m guessing some are smoke and mirrors, and others are stealthy and/or
opportunistic.

If there’s a list of viable blockchain companies doing business that is
documented and can be understood, would love to get a pointer to it.

------
jones1618
Forbes - 30+ Examples of Blockchain in Practice
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/14/30-real-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/14/30-real-
examples-of-blockchain-technology-in-practice/#2dca99cb740d)

The biggest use "in the wild" right now is in multi-party smart contracts
where no one party is an authority of trust.

~~~
louwrentius
I'll take a look but in what real life situation would that be a thing?

My mind just melts reading that page. None of those things seem to really
solve a 'real' problem to me.

------
rich_sasha
Blockchain has one genius product: cryptocurrencies. They totally have a use,
by technology enthusiasts, people with deep distrust of governments, and last
but not least, criminals. You can’t have a trustless, decentralised currency
using other technologies at present.

As for other applications, yeah they are all made up so far. And anticipating
any other comments, the world could easily do without cryptocurrencies.

------
dr_win
Blockchain might be a relevant tool for a group of strangers to maintain books
(a database) which cannot be easily tampered with (or it is virtually
impossible). Prime example is sound money. But it could go beyond that. Say
you can run a land registry or domain name system this way.

~~~
louwrentius
We already have all this stuff???

------
pleasereadthis
government land ownership records

this is being tried already in parts of the world

here: the ledger is public, the government is a body made of many independent
small entities with not necessarily aligned incentives

would help to avoid corruption and maintain a legitimate source of truth

~~~
louwrentius
We could do that with git.

~~~
pleasereadthis
Hmm. Interesting food for thought.

If we also added the following conditions: \- All agents of the government
sign their commits \- Whenever a commit is made to a copy of the repository
(perhaps all government agents make a commit to a single repository hosted by
the government) then there are several independent parties that make copies of
this commit, and in addition there exists a mechanism to establish consensus
between these copies of the repository when a conflict arises

THEN we might have something that could replace a blockchain.

Conversely, if the government agents all committed to a single repository and
nobody bothered with making immediate copies and consensus, then the agent
could double spend / rewrite the repository.

------
keiferski
Blockchain has existed as a widespread technology for what, a little over a
decade now? And people are already proclaiming its fundamental uselessness?

Seems like a massive lack of patience and long term thinking. It took nearly a
century for the first airplane to go anywhere and another half-century for it
to be widespread and practical.

~~~
Avalaxy
For information technology that's really long. It didn't take us 10+ years to
find a useful purpose for smartphones or the internet. If for many years so
much money is thrown at it and so many intelligent people are working at it
and nothing fundamental comes it, I think it's safe to conclude that it's
nearly useless.

~~~
sparkie
> It didn't take us 10+ years to find a useful purpose for smartphones or the
> internet.

It took decades before the internet and mobile phones had any significant
market penetration, and then within the space of a few years there are fewer
people without it than with it. Technology adoption typically follows a
Gompertz function: initially slow, but then rapid adoption before declining as
there's no larger audience to adopt it.

Bitcoin presents a fundamental shift in how we treat money which can have a
knock on effect on every other industry, just as the internet did. If you
think it's time to call it off after 10 years (despite continued new interest
over that time), this is a bit short-sighted.

The issue with "cryptocurrency," is unlike Bitcoin, they don't actually
provide us with any new innovation. They are scams designed to enrich their
creators, who pretend that changing a few variables in a codebase can
replicate the invention of Bitcoin. All "cryptocurrency" are useless because
they don't have the permanent fix for inflation that Bitcoin has. They
introduce inflation by design - they are fiat money made digital. Bitcoin's
key innovation is the fix for inflation, which is now impossible to replicate
because Bitcoin already exists.

~~~
louwrentius
The internet and smartphones were popular and we understood the applications.
The tech was not good enough to make the visions come true.

With blockchain it’s reversed: we have suddenly tech but after 11 years still
no idea other than use it to sell drugs, and boil the oceans.

~~~
sparkie
> The internet and smartphones were popular and we understood the
> applications.

Who is "we?"

A small group understood the applications early on and was way ahead of the
curve. Obviously costs coming down in the 90s enabled a wider audience to
access the technologies - but most were clueless of its potential _until_ they
were already using it.

This is the case for Bitcoin now. Selling drugs has little to do with it,
other than demonstrating the future role of the State meddling in people's
personal finance. Bitcoin is about sovereign control of one's own property - a
way of saving money which cannot be unjustly taxed. All other applications of
the technology will emerge from the fact that it's _better money_ for anybody
who actually has any.

Are you just another Krugman, who still didn't realize the internet's
potential in 1998?

> “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in
> ‘Metcalfe’s law’ becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each
> other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the
> economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”

Oh, and "cryptocurrencies" are like the Intranets of the 90s. Everyone wants
their own, for now, until they realize that being part of the global digital
money network has far more advantages than trying to work with walled gardens.

~~~
louwrentius
Everybody wanted a pocket computer and when that finally became viable with
the iPhone, the market exploded.

We knew what we wanted, but the interface was a problem and Apple solved it.

We knew what we wanted but we could not get there, until then.

None of the bitcoin/blockchain people can exactly explain why blockchain or
bitcoin is relevant. Even after 11 years they can't.

> than demonstrating the future role of the State meddling in people's
> personal finance.

A citizen pays their due taxes, as required to run a decent society.
Cryptopeople just want to have a means for tax evasion: to support criminal
behaviour.

> Are you just another Krugman, who still didn't realise the internet's
> potential in 1998?

Haha, I don't think so. The purpose of the internet was very clear. It was
just too hyped. But it recovered. crypto and blockchain are hyped, but the
purpose is not clear at all. Big difference.

> Oh, and "cryptocurrencies" are like the Intranets of the 90s. Everyone wants
> their own, for now, until they realize that being part of the global digital
> money network has far more advantages than trying to work with walled
> gardens.

We have already money. And we already have means to pay people in other
countries. And they are overall more convenient and the transaction costs are
not an issue for most applications.

~~~
sparkie
The smartphone wasn't a new invention - but a continuation of the mobile
phone. Mobile phones had already hit mass adoption in the developed world
before the smartphone appeared. People knew what they wanted because they were
_already using_ the technology. This isn't the case with bitcoin, which most
people have never used. The more accurate comparison is mobile phones in the
1980s, which people didn't know that they needed or wanted. In fact, many
laughed at the idea of carrying around a briefcase to call people on the move,
which was necessary as the early handsets weighed in at several kilograms.
Very few had the insight at that time to envision the phones of today.

The relevance of Bitcoin has already been explained to you: it provides for
the first time in history, a form of money which is inflation-proof,
censorship-resistant, easily verifiable and possibly private (or at least
plausibly deniable), making it potentially unconfiscatable.

Bitcoin isn't merely about transaction costs or means of paying people. It is
about having sound money. It has a use case for anybody who wants to save
money, which is impossible to do with fiat money, because it is rapidly
devalued due to the monetary policy of central banks.

Other "crypto" or "blockchain" is irrelevant. We can agree on that. Only
Bitcoin matters.

Just because _you_ have not seen the need for Bitcoin yet, does not mean there
is no need for it. You are like those who would mock the mobile phone or the
dial up internet of the '80s, with very little insight into what value Bitcoin
can bring to the world. Bitcoin will be used to bypass warrantless
surveillance and State-enforced restrictions, and yes, even to avoid paying
taxes - which you might consider "criminal behavior," but this merely
highlights your state-worshipping world view. Tax is theft - and a significant
amount of "criminal behaviour" is coming directly from the State itself.

------
kalium-xyz
The author of this post seems to dislike “blockchain” as a concept
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703081)

~~~
louwrentius
Yes, that is true.

------
mantenpanther
Double Spending

~~~
louwrentius
Blue showers

------
blablabla123
Paid services that require billing in unreliable networks. If IOTA had a high
quality implementation, it would be really useful I think. (Obviously it
suffers severe problems, both on the spec and implementation side since years;
and they are slow to fix them) On the other hand, I think "standard
blockchain" isn't enough. I'm no expert but mainstream blockchain solutions
have some not so nice properties: processing power/energy waste, vulnerability
to 50% attacks, slow processing.

That said, cryptographically signed GDPR conforming Event sourcing might be a
good idea. I wonder if that would still count as blockchain though.

------
cryptica
The main use case for blockchain is as a financial instrument to represent
shares in a community's economy. A community economy is like a national
economy except that the value of its currency does not rely on the coercive
legal powers of a government. Aside from that, it functions exactly like any
normal economy; if participants in this economy (token holders) export more
services than they import, then their cryptocurrency's total value (market
cap) will go up relative to other national currencies.

I think cryptocurrency is the best use case for blockchain technology. It is a
very narrow use case but an extremely important one. It gives a group of
people access to powerful financial tools that are otherwise completely out of
reach for regular people.

The idea that communities can have their own micro-economies is going to be
radical and completely change how we do business.

One specific use case which I've identified is the ability to use a
cryptocurrency to represent shares in a business. It offers small businesses
powerful financial tools which are not available to normal businesses of that
size. For example, you can use business profits to do token buybacks (which
are like share buyback which corporations use); with decentralized exchanges,
it's even possible to do buybacks without relying on any intermediaries (e.g.
no accountants or brokers). Token buybacks are a simpler alternative to
distributing dividends to shareholders. Token buybacks (and subsequent burning
of bought tokens) allow a company to pay shareholders through capital
appreciation by diluting the cryptocurrency's total supply; this gives small
businesses access to the same financial tools which big corporations use to
reduce their shareholders' tax liability among other things (capital gains are
typically taxed much lower than income and only paid when they are realized;
I.e. when tokens are sold). Also, having a tradable cryptocurrency gives a
business exposure to influential outsiders (e.g. journalists, wealthy
investors, politicians) who have an incentive to participate in the underlying
small business and then use their influence to help grow that business and its
cryptocurrency. 'Airdrops' can also be carried out in highly targeted ways to
create a favorable economic and political environment for the business.

With cryptocurrency it's also possible to pay contributors (employees) using
the token instead of fiat. It also helps make sure that contributors'
incentives are aligned with all other stakeholders. I'm currently part of a
business which works like this. We have 7 contributors and everyone has only
been paid using crypto for the past few months. We have a buyback-and-burn
deflationary mechanism in place so everyone knows that each token is (on
average) guaranteed to always go up in value. You can also pay for marketing
and other services using the token - I was quite surprised by how many people
were willing accept our cryptocurrency in exchange for services; it feels like
the majority of people.

~~~
louwrentius
Thanks for your effort to reply. But I'm sorry: I'm not really convinced.

> does not rely on the coercive legal powers of a government

It's always this extremely paranoid negative view on governments that seem to
fuel support for blockchain.

Obviously, there are some 'bad' environment, but if your mistrust of
government is that bad, no blockchain is going to fix your problems.

I could be mistaken myself but I think a lot of people may on a fundamental
level misunderstand how trust plays a role in our societies.

------
kalium-xyz
Git comes to mind.

~~~
louwrentius
Not blockchain as we all understand it.

~~~
kalium-xyz
The sqlite creator puts it better then I could have: [https://fossil-
scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/blockchain.md](https://fossil-
scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/blockchain.md)

I work on tezos smart contracts for tokenized decentralized rewards issuing on
baking (mining but delegated proof of stake so efficient and not killing the
planet). This however has jackshit to do with blockchain as a datastructure as
there is no representation of it within the tezos smart contract language
(michelson). This is useful and maybe what you understand as blockchain but I
cannot name any specific application that you (going by your blog) will not
spin of as being pointless because of some buzzwords because its easier.

------
bitconion
problem #1 - protect freedom, liberties

problem #2 - adaptation to the needs of the complex system like modern society

those are kind of ‘significant’ problems, technologies like Internet,
blockchain etc, provide sequential approximations to the solution of those
problems.

~~~
louwrentius
Only hypotheticals and that after 11 years. And so tied to an almost paranoid
distrust of government.

------
garmaine
> I think the same is true for cryptocurrencies but I would like to keep those
> out of the discussion, if possible.

A bit strange to exclude the one and only answer to your question.

------
nvoyageur
I’d like to go back to 1988 and ask “Is anyone actually using the Internet?”

I’m sure the responses would be similar. Blockchain is still in its infancy,
give it a decade or two and I think you’ll be surprised how it became “an
overnight success”.

~~~
bdcravens
Not equivalent. In 1988, we didn't have the levels of investment in Internet
we've seen in blockchain. We didn't have Internet-only companies launching. I
suspect very few people had the word "Internet" on their resume. To compare
things based on nothing more than the number of years, and ignoring the
context of the times, is intellectually dishonest.

------
chpmrc
Git uses, in fact, a "blockchain". There's no mining involved (although, given
how hard some code reviews can get I'd argue there is still "proof of work"
lol) and anyone can create new blocks and is free to accept or reject them.

Like someone else already said I think it's less about the "blockchain" and
more about finding ways to decentralize traditionally centralized services.

~~~
Taek
I really don't like the idea that a blockchain is just a chain of objects that
commit to eachother by hashing. That is not what anyone in the industry is
referring to when they say "blockchain".

A blockchain is a trust minimizing, independent network which allows
participants to interact with eachother such that:

1\. Everybody knows who did what, in what order 2\. Significant confidence
exists that the order is fixed / finalized (git can't give you this) 3\. There
is no set of controlling parties that could reasonably be expected to change
the rules of the system, even if they were all trying to work together.

When someone says "blockchains are going to change the world", they are
talking about the above three properties, not about the ability to commit to a
thing that commits to other things.

~~~
chpmrc
Well, that's the marketing interpretation of "blockchain", the same way the
media use "hacker" nowadays to indicate anyone who breaches an information
system. A blockchain is simply a data structure. In git you can achieve 1 by
signing commits, 2 by simply comparing what you have with everyone else has
(if the majority of the network wants the history to be changed it will
change, no matter the technology), 3 can definitely be achieved even for
cryptocurrencies (51% attack and the like).

At the end of the day distributed trust literally means we all trust each
other to do the right thing because, at the end, it's more cost effective and
more beneficial for everyone. Directly from the Bitcoin whitepaper:

"The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker
is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to
choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or
using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by
the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else
combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth."

------
koonsolo
I'm an old man, so let me show you how to frame thinking about blockchain.

I experienced the 90's, so let me tell you why email will never take off,
since we have a trustworthy postal service:

1\. Almost nobody you know has an email address, but everyone has a real
address.

2\. People want to have something they can touch, a personal, perfumed
handwritten letter. Not a cold virtual thing with printed letters.

3\. You can enclose a polaroid picture in an envelope, this is impossible with
email.

4\. If you really want, you can send a VHS video tape with the post. This is
impossible with email.

5\. They say email is faster, but if you need someone urgently, you just call
them.

So therefore, email will never become as popular as sending envelope mails. I
rest my case.

~~~
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
As a counterexample, look at how sure people and companies were that AI would
take off and solve most problems in the 80s. Historically, you can find plenty
of examples for both over- and underhyped technologies. It's a complex world,
and trying to project these historical events onto new technologies is
useless. It's like saying, "well, look at what the stock market did 20 years
ago, it has to go up today!" \- You may be right or you may be wrong, but
unless you have huge leverage and build the future yourself you're just
tossing a coin here.

~~~
koonsolo
I agree with you.

Maybe the main point I wanted to bring across is that blockchain will not live
in the present, it will live in the future.

The polaroid picture in my email comparison it really nice in that sense.
Nobody was taking digital photo's. For a long time it was even unclear if
digital photography would ever surpass traditional. (and some companies made
some painful decisions here).

Nothing important is in the blockchain yet, so what can you really accomplish
with smart contracts now anyway?

But I agree with you that it is unclear if it will take of or not in the
future. But you cannot dismiss a technology because it is not viable in the
present.

~~~
louwrentius
I find your examples / analogies not convincing.

Email and digital photography have very clear benefits and those where totally
transparent from the beginning . I can see none for bt.

~~~
koonsolo
Hindsight is 20/20.

You probably never lived in the age where people were convinced that digital
photography would never reach the quality of "real" photography.

If blockchain ever takes of, I'm sure it was all obvious from the start to
everyone.

I've lived long enough to know human reasoning.

~~~
louwrentius
No, that analogy with digital photography is really bad.

You know, it was immediately clear why digital photography would be so
beneficial: no film. Instant gratification / feedback. So less hassle.

It would be only a matter of years before the tech - as with moore's law -
would catch up. Which it did.

Blockchain is not obvious at all. It doesn't seem to solve a problem we have.

Maybe blockchain shows that we do trust each other more than we think.

------
alanfalcon
In this whole thread, there's not one mention of the word "scarcity".
Blockchain allows for digital scarcity. For me, the problems that blockchain
solves, it solves through the creation and enforcement of real digital
scarcity.

I find that it's not hard to imagine some problems that exist due to the lack
of digital scarcity (pre-blockchain). I invite you to open your mind and
imagine some for yourself.

~~~
louwrentius
I don’t understand what this ‘scarcity’ would mean. And you give no relevant
examples.

~~~
alanfalcon
Scarcity meaning that if person A owns it, person B/C/D etc. cannot, because
(in this example) there is only one. Most digital files are infinitely
copyable, and there aren't good DRM solutions for managing this conundrum that
actually give real ownership rights to the owner... until blockchain.

Why is this a problem? Ask a creative content creator.

How is blockchain solving this in practice? One example:
[https://www.niftygateway.com/](https://www.niftygateway.com/)

~~~
louwrentius
I'm sorry, this doesn't make sense to me. If I buy an image, no block chain is
going to stop me from making copies. I see no explanation on how this would
work.

~~~
jones1618
It's not explained well but this allows you to own the "original"
photo/painting/document, etc. in a provable way. An artist could offer a
limited edition digital "print" and you could collect it, exhibit it and
resell it because your ownership is certifiably authentic.

If you don't think that's valuable, consider the value that humans put on
first edition books, signed original works, ownership of exclusive editions,
etc. Everyone can own a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Dune" for a few
dollars but signed, first editions goes for thousands of dollars.

------
cryptica
I think this question is a bit like asking "Are there any substantial examples
of real problems solved by incorporating companies and turning them into
publicly-traded corporations?"

This question may also have been baffling to most people when corporations had
just been legalized.

The answer is; it solves problems for participants and creates problems for
non-participants. That's why it will definitely succeed as an economic
instrument.

------
koonsolo
Blockchain for reliable car history:

\- Garages log maintenace + mileage.

\- Accidents are logged.

\- Spare part replacements are logged.

\- Government logs changes of owners (maybe privacy concern here?).

You sell or buy a second hand car? You verify the blockchain history if
everything checks out.

This is a nice use case since multiple parties come into contact with a car,
and so a central entity is hard to create.

And as an added bonus, the transaction of changing car ownership can be done
with a smart contract to atomically transfer both money and ownership. Less
shady things.

~~~
sparkie
\- You owe somebody money and a court declares that you pay up and uses a
legal warrant to take your car as collateral.

What use is your internet token now?

The problem with tokens which merely proxy ownership of something else is that
this link can be undone by humans in the real world, and then the ledger does
not map to reality. If you need the ledger to map to reality, you need
somebody who has the authority to adjust the ledger without having every other
user of the ledger sign off such modifications. Inevitably: the ledger ends up
being controlled by a single authority - at which point you figure that the
blockchain was actually a waste of time because the central authority could've
done it cheaper with MySQL.

It only makes sense that the internet token represents ownership of the token
itself. If it is a proxy for ownership of something else, it is no better than
a penned signature on paper. It's not the paper that is valuable, but the car.

However, with Bitcoin, it is the bitcoin itself which is valuable. The bitcoin
isn't a proxy for some other wealth, but the token encapsulates the wealth.
Given that we have a token which can encapsulate wealth, what purpose are
there for N other tokens which purport to do the same thing?

~~~
koonsolo
This is an argument for the ownership part, but doesn't dismiss the history
part.

Ownership is indeed trickier, but nothing says that you have to undo previous
entries, you can add a new entry tagged with the "official authority"
certificate.

Central authority will remain a big problem in the car industry, also because
cars go over country borders all the time.

~~~
sparkie
The history can be managed by having every log entry be hashed and each new
entry refer to the previous hash. Each time the log is updated, the new hash
is reported to the vehicle authority, which can prevent modifications to the
history.

No blockchain needed.

Of course, this can be sidestepped by having work done on the vehicle and not
updating the log. How do you prevent that?

~~~
koonsolo
Which vehicle authority are you talking about? There is no such thing as a
vehicle authority.

You buy the second hand car with history, not the one without.

------
sparkie
Bitcoin solves a real problem: It creates a permanent fix for monetary
inflation, which allows people to save money without being taxed on their
savings.

The rest of "cryptocurrency" is snake oil. Most of it attempts to reintroduce
inflation and undermine the fix which Bitcoin introduced. While they may come
up with a bunch of reasons for their decision to mint new tokens - the sole
purpose of the new inflation is to enrich the creators, who intend to exchange
their zero production cost tokens for some other tangible wealth before the
naive buyers of the tokens realize they've been scammed.

Building on top of Bitcoin is the way to solve real problems because each
development strengthens the permanent fix on inflation and enables Bitcoin to
be more accessible.

A "blockchain" is just a linked list where each tail item is content
addressed.

~~~
louwrentius
Bitcoin is imho a terrible solution because it’s unstable / volatile and it’s
totally a ponzi scheme + piramid scheme.

I want my money to be backed up by a government that wants to keep society
stable.

Sad to see that bc is always so tied to distrust of governments. That way of
thinking seems so naive.

~~~
sparkie
Bitcoin isn't "unstable". It's very stable, as money is released on a very
predictable and predetermined schedule. You know precisely how much inflation
is going to occur and when it will end.

The only "volatile" is the exchange rate market of Bitcoin to USD. Obviously,
this is going to be volatile for some time because demand varies from day to
day. What's obvious, however, is that the trend in demand is continuing to
increase over time. If you look at purchasing Bitcoin to hold for 4 years or
more (or indefinitely), then you aren't concerned about the day to day
fluctuations in the exchange rate.

If you purchased Bitcoin at any time in the past 10 years, and held onto it
for 4 years, there is no point at which you could've made a loss. In fact, on
average, you would've almost doubled your money if you converted it back to
USD after 4 years.

They say past performance is no indication of success, but next month we enter
another "quantitive hardening" period in Bitcoin, where the new supply
released over the next 4 years is half of the supply released over the
previous 4 years. If the rate of growth in demand stays the same, the exchange
rate will continue to rise - but that itself causes an increase in demand
because more people want to hold onto an appreciating asset rather than a
depreciating dollar. Especially true given that the Fed has committed to
rapidly devaluing the dollar this year in a struggle to deal with COVID-19.

Bitcoin doesn't care about the virus. There's nobody to bail out bitcoiners.
The State is the virus, and Bitcoin is the remedy.

~~~
louwrentius
> What's obvious, however, is that the trend in demand is continuing to
> increase over time.

That's exactly what I would say if I have cryptocoins

That is the pyramid scheme part. Convincing people to buy as not to miss out.

------
crispyporkbites
Here’s some examples of things that blockchains can/do help with:

\- Currencies that cannot be manipulated/controlled by a government / external
forces (plenty of examples why that’s a real problem in history, including
runaway inflationary policies, payments restricted from certain individuals eg
sex workers)

\- Cheap accounting (see digital autonomous companies), you can run a company
with lower costs by programmatically handling all transactions. eg running a
justgiving type site should be cheaper on a blockchain, in theory

\- Fully traceable payments (i.e. knowing who paid who how much throughout
history, makes paying taxes, illegal transactions easier)

\- A single place where a piece of data can be guaranteed to be accurate (eg
you can publish data on a blockchain and prove it was published then at a
later date, and there’s no way to manipulate this)

There’s more, I’m sure... Whether these justify the hype or are big enough
problems are different questions

~~~
louwrentius
I was not interested in hypotheticals, I want actual substantial evidence that
it solves anything practical now, after 11 years.

~~~
crispyporkbites
These are all things that are implemented now...

------
rohamg
Asking "what is blockchain good for other than cryptocurrencies" is like
asking "what is internet good for other than websites" pre-broadband

Blockchain TODAY is the backbone for a $200B financial system that lets you
store or transfer billions of dollars worth of value within minutes for cents
in transaction fees, completely peer-to-peer with no middle men

Scalable blockchains will generalize this same benefit to let developers add
crypto into any kind of application (just like we had web-apps, we'll have
crypto-apps):

– Instant global p2p payments

– Completely transparent, efficient marketplaces / clearinghouses with no
switching costs

– Ability for users to own their own data and assets, removing liability for
platform operators but also eliminating lock-in

– Open source, open state, serverless code that runs directly on-chain and
thus can be built on with no platform risk (google "blockchain composability")

– Software that can be governed / controlled by the users that have stake in
it

~~~
acdha
> Asking "what is blockchain good for other than cryptocurrencies" is like
> asking "what is internet good for other than websites" pre-broadband

You mean, email and group messaging, file transfer, reference lookups, access
to remote servers and other things which people were paying for and generating
real business value from?

There were plenty of companies which were generating value significantly prior
to broadband becoming universal and that was despite the much higher barriers
to entry (computers were far more expensive, phone charges were a major
barrier for non-rich people).

The blockchain comparison isn’t valid either because despite a much longer
period of time before showing positive results there isn’t much real-world
impact: the paper value may look high, almost all of that is within the system
— the number of outside businesses which would have problems if it disappeared
is close to zero, and a large fraction of the people “using” it are using a
middleman service rather than directly participating.

~~~
rohamg
i would argue what blockchain has given us today with permissionless open
finance, decentralized organizations / voting, NFTs / digital art, etc. is
plenty of early indications of value. also the fact that the token business
model exists is precisely the reason there's less of a traditional "ARR"
mindset in the tools and apps.

the criticism isn't entirely invalid: the blockchain space has a lot of
proving to do – there's a lot more work ahead than behind

~~~
acdha
Okay, so where’s an example of that providing value for anyone outside of the
blockchain field? None of those are new activities so it should be easy to
find areas where a blockchain reduces cost or adds value in comparison.

~~~
rohamg
i posted below about big pharma using blockchain to share private data as an
example, as another: most of the gamers / digital art enthusiasts are
newcomers to the "blockchain field" and only in it bc of the value they derive
from the scarcity / durability and therefore tradability of these items

------
chrisco255
Yes. Decentralized finance is coming and it's maybe the most important
technology of the 21st century. If you want anything resembling autonomy and
liberty in the future, and if you want to avoid ending up in a world straight
out of a Black Mirror episode, I recommend supporting open-source monetary
blockchain systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum. There will be an attempt at some
point by governments to centralize blockchain technology. China is already
doing this. Western societies should embrace freedom and openness in finance.
Besides being aligned with our core principles, it's incredibly powerful, and
it can power the capital infrastructure in very innovative ways if we let it.

To your point, cryptocurrency enables reconstructing the entire financial
infrastructure on blockchain. Everything from car loans
([https://twitter.com/DMMDAO](https://twitter.com/DMMDAO)) to rental real
estate
([https://twitter.com/RealTPlatform](https://twitter.com/RealTPlatform)) to
interest-bearing savings accounts
([https://compound.finance/](https://compound.finance/)) to derivatives and
trading ([https://www.synthetix.io/](https://www.synthetix.io/)), to
decentralized storage ([https://sia.tech/](https://sia.tech/)), etc. There's
hundreds of projects I follow regularly and I find new ones cropping up all
the time. There's a Cambrian explosion of apps in blockchain right now.

I recommend reading
[https://bankless.substack.com/](https://bankless.substack.com/) and
[https://thedefiant.substack.com/](https://thedefiant.substack.com/) to stay
on top of the topic. Watch some of the presentations from ETHDenver 2020 that
was held 2 months ago
([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgz9NU06t_FkT0Py1Vadczw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgz9NU06t_FkT0Py1Vadczw))

Follow some of the thought leaders on Twitter, et al. Tons of promise in this
space.

~~~
jpmoral
The OP specifically asked to leave cryptocurrencies out of it and judging by
the post does not consider finance to be a 'substantial' example. Are there
any concrete examples where blockchains are both useful and necessary?

~~~
chrisco255
Yes I literally posted 5. The disentanglement of blockchain from
cryptocurrency is senseless. The entire point of a blockchain is to serve as a
distributed ledger. If it's truly decentralized, it has to be monetized
somehow to incentivize the maintenance of the blockchain.

Hyperledger is a blockchain that is mainly used for these private blockchains
that are used in corporate settings. However, a public chain has 100% uptime,
is permissionless, and is by far the most useful application of the tech.

[https://www.baseline-protocol.org/](https://www.baseline-protocol.org/)
Baseline Protocol is a collaboration between Ernst & Young and Microsoft to
use Ethereum as a secure, cross-enterprise business process collaboration
layer, which is powerful but you'll have to some knowledge of how back offices
in enterprises currently work in order to grasp it.

Finance is incredibly substantial. Everything you know is powered by finance.
It's a multi hundred trillion dollar industry.

~~~
jpmoral
You haven't explained how blockchain is both useful and necessary in finance.
The useful part you asserted without elaborating, the necessary part I don't
see.

