
Can the blockchain make Uber, Spotify and Airbnb obsolete? - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/can-an-arcane-crypto-ledger-replace-uber-spotify-and-airbnb-f8ce3846d84a#.cmvle3j0f
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cscharenberg
From the article: "Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb, and the rest — is just a
glorified listing service, enhanced with some combination of real-time
connections, trust-building systems, and transaction-easing tools.

I don't understand this at all. The author seems to be arguing that the
blockchain, which is "a cryptographically protected shared database " is
actually the major part of Uber, Spotify, and AirBnb's business. That seems
like a fantastical, ludicrous statement. The author is dismissing the entirety
of the business logic, management tools, and user experience as being
irrelevant. It's the other way round: these business could operate with pen
and paper because the storage mechanism is irrelevant. But they couldn't
operate without a all the operational and user experience in place.

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will_brown
I think you are right vis-a-vis the article...but maybe the author does have a
point that "Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb, and the rest" could be disrupted
through decentralization making the centralized services obsolete?

Example, I have an underutilized asset I want to leverage in the "sharing
economy", say a house I want to rent. As long as the end user trusts the
transaction is legit, which I think could be achieved through a decentralized
system, I don't need the "tools" of these centralized services.

~~~
forthefuture
In your example how do you tell renters you have a house for them?

If the answer is "some service like Airbnb that uses the blockchain", I'd
contend that the end user really doesn't care what it's built on.

The service is the marketplace, not the legitimacy of the transaction.

The problem that decentralized services will always have is that someone has
to make them, and those companies will lose out on all the benefits of a
centralized system (primarily control). A centralized competitor will exploit
those benefits with no detriment because again, users don't care what's behind
the front end they interact with. Any company looking to build something is
going to have a hard time explaining to free market investors why it is in
their best interest to relinquish control for whatever the blockchain gives
them in return.

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todd3834
I'm very enthusiastic about Bitcoin but I feel like there is a massive number
of people who would have an extremely hard time figuring it out. For that
reason, I'm skeptical about mass adoption until things get easier for the less
technical folks.

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tracker1
I don't know if you ever get the option to down-vote an article, but I really
wish I could with this one.

The entire premise is pretty backwards as the infrastructure for all of these
services goes quite a bit beyond the data and payment channels.

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ilaksh
See also reddit.com/r/rad_decentralization, named-data-networking, and web
assembly. I think ultimately a common cross-environment cross-language
platform with semantic versioning and a peer-to-peer module registry will make
it much more practical to adopt and evolve these types of systems.

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roymurdock
This is an interesting, thought-provoking piece. Don't be discouraged by the
linkbaity title. The author himself acknowledges the linkbaityness:

> Any reasonable answer to these questions has to be: Not yet. Not for a long
> time. But a person can dream, no?

But there's a cool idea lurking somewhere just beyond his grasp:

> Windley is excited about using blockchains today to build registries. We
> need directories to find things; here’s a way to “put a directory on”
> anything without requiring a private-company middleman. The companies won’t
> go away. But, as with email, he says, their services will be interoperable,
> and you’ll be able to switch providers.

A blockchain is a ledger (piece of paper that records transactions) with
perfect memory of every single transaction that has ever occurred within a
certain network. This makes double spending within the network impossible as
you can trace every single "coin" in the network back to its origin, verifying
that your trading partner does, in fact, have the coin he claims to. This
removes the need for a trusted third party to oversee/verify transactions.

The author misunderstands the properties of the blockchain, instead seeing it
as some kind of handwavey tool that can decentralize any kind of listing +
licensing + verifying-as-a-service type businesses.

If you got every Uber and Lyft driver to sign up on a single block chain,
thereby creating a "distributed" ledger, you would basically just have an
excel spreadsheet full of names, numbers, and constantly updated ride metrics
(which both companies have right now). But the reason Yelp/Uber/Spotify/AirBnB
exist is because they actively verify and license products
[restaurants/drivers/rentals] and resolve customer/provider disputes.

The blockchain stores and remembers - it cannot license or remediate. This
requires human action, usually in the form of a centralized, for-profit
organization.

The cool idea is that if you were an organization that _only_ focused on
building these distributed ledgers, vetting and aggregating quality products
[restaurants/drivers/rentals], you could then force Uber and Lyft into a much
tighter competition as their pool of inputs (drivers) would be coming from the
same source, rather than two walled-off ledgers. This is where the idea of a
union/collaborative comes in - strength in numbers. If the labor market was
tighter and there were some sort of driver certification process besides
getting a license, a driver's union would solve the problem of too much
corporate power, not enough labor power in negotiations.

But at the end of the day, you need someone to code and maintain the
distributed ledger and to spearhead and guide the union/collaborative. There
is no such thing as pure decentralization.

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lyall
Obligatory
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

