
Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back - howard941
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/30/blockchain_study_finds_0_per_cent_success_rate/
======
drexlspivey
Blockchains make no sense when the "asset" they are tracking have to be
imported from the outside world because they lose the trustless property which
is the whole point.

For example supply line tracking blockchains. "Look this piece of beef was at
place X on time Y with temperature Z, I have a hash and everything". Yes but
how do I know that you didn't swap the barcodes or you didn't fiddle with the
GPS or the thermometer was working or a million other things ?

Blockchain only makes sense if the asset is internal (i.e it gets created in
it) because that makes it publicly auditable and you don't have to trust
anyone. Cryptocurrency is the perfect use case and the reason they were
invented.

~~~
sk221
I think blockchains can help minimize trust even if it's dealing with assets
outside the blockchain.

Let's use your beef example. The beef might come from a farm. It's certified
organic. It gets shipped off to a distributor. The distributor sells it to a
store. You go to a store and buy it.

In the current system, if the store is a bad actor (e.g. selling beef it
claims is organic, when it's actually not) then you don't really have a way of
knowing.

However, if the beef was tracked on the blockchain and transferred to you on
the blockchain at the point of purchase, then you are no longer relying on
just the store telling you it's organic. The claim is verified by chain of
custody on the blockchain. So now multiple parties (the farm, distributor, and
store) would have to cooperate to dupe you. You can still get defrauded by the
store if they completely swap the beef. But, they would STILL have to purchase
legitimate beef and transfer it on the blockchain to you. It would be harder
to get away with it vs. just changing the label.

That's just one example of where it can minimize trust. But once more assets
are tracked on the blockchain, you can start to do REALLY COOL things with
them.

For example, imagine using real estate to get decentralized collateral backed
loans on MakerDAO.

I can go on and on about this stuff...but it's really cool and we're just
getting our feet wet with the technology.

~~~
qyv
Replace the word blockchain with database and describe how your example works
any differently. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't. There is nothing in your
example that requires the use of a blockchain. If that beef was tracked in a
standard database they would _still_ need to buy beef that was "legit" as far
as the database is concerned if they wanted to make a legit claim.

Tracking external assets requires trust, period. And that being the case, what
advantage does blockchain bring to the solution?

~~~
arisAlexis
"I'll give you a hint: it doesn't"

It surprises me how much anger and claims of authority people that don't like
blockchain show. Just be modest and open to potential uses of a technology.
Are you a coder? Have you ever used Javascript? If yes then it's creator is a
big proponent of blockchains. Take a moment to think about this. Numerous
other examples too.

~~~
Thiez
Its creator also opposes same sex marriage. Perhaps creating a programming
language doesn't mean you're right in all other contexts.

~~~
arisAlexis
you are confusing social with technical

~~~
Thiez
I'm not confused. Do you honestly believe that all programming language
creators agree on all technical subjects? They can't even agree on curly
braces vs whitespace sensitive. And blockchain is a different subject than
programming languages, they can't make an argument from authority.

------
manmanic
I've been working on DLT / enterprise blockchain technologies since 2014 and
have insight into hundreds of projects, a small number of which made it to
live production. Here is the bottom line: yes, it's mostly hype, but this
technology does have genuine use cases - when you want to build an interparty
database-driven application, and cannot find a suitable place to put the
database, because of business concerns or regulation. This is fairly niche,
perhaps 1% of all interorganizational database applications, but there are
certainly cases where it is the right solution. The majority of blockchain
projects undertaken still do not make sense, but this is gradually getting
better over time.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Can you let me know how these "private" blockchains utilize proof of X to
determine consensus? E.g. proof of work, or proof of stake, or something else?

The thing I never understood with private blockchain tech is that the
"traditional" blockchain (i.e. Bitcoin) relies on proof of work, and the only
way this is viable is to have tons of resources working on these proofs so
that you don't get a 51% attack (there have even been a bunch of articles
about how smaller coins actually are very susceptible to a 51% attack by a
decently funded attacker).

For a private blockchain, though, it never made sense to me as to who would
serve the role of the miners with sufficient incentive to prevent a nefarious
attacker. If on the other hand you are in a system where the participants
agree as to how they will trust each other, well then you'd be back to a
situation where the byzantine model isn't really necessary and you can just go
back to a cryptographically signed ledger a la the Quantum Ledger DB that AWS
just announced.

Would really appreciate someone explaining this one to me!

~~~
JackC
A useful term here is "Nakamoto consensus," which I think refers to the proof
of X thing you're talking about -- consensus schemes that are resistant to
sybil attacks among anonymous validators.

And I think you're right -- adding Nakamoto consensus to private blockchains
makes no sense, because by definition they don't have arbitrary validators.
And without Nakamoto consensus, "blockchain" is just rebranding of old and
boring tech.

~~~
jacobr1
> rebranding of old and boring tech

A distributed merkle-chain database is still pretty innovative. A good example
is git. I think what many private groups want is a "binary git for transaction
data". Everybody can review their own copy of the shared chain with signing of
new links in the chain.

Now that isn't really a full blockchain, but is a different kind of thing from
a central RDMS.

~~~
sfescape
That is a blockchain, and provides the validation and history integrity that
is core to (and where the name 'blockchain') comes from.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Except the issue is that Git, which includes validation and history integrity,
was invented in 2005 and predates the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper by
3 years.

The point being that all the hype about "blockchain everywhere" came about
because of bitcoin. If people are now starting to refer to just the "hash of
blocks with previous blocks" (i.e. the "Timestamp Server" section of the
original bitcoin whitepaper) as blockchain withOUT the proof of work/stake
part, well then you really are just rebranding old tech as blockchain, because
it was the proof of work part that was really the new thing in bitcoin.

~~~
mcguire
Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?

Proof of work is required for distributed consensus; without that you need a
centralized repository like GitHub or Linus to bless the current state of the
database?

~~~
tim333
Well proof of work is used to get consensus and prevent double spend in
cryptocurrency though there are other mechanisms being tried like proof of
stake.

With Git for code you don't really need consensus - I can have my fork and you
can have yours.

~~~
marmadukester39
Unless what you're trying to do is actually achieve and maintain consensus
without a single entity controlling the database?

------
Animats
That's bad. I thought someone would be using a blockchain for some kind of
back-end settlement system somewhere, but apparently not.

On the ICO front, the SEC is now cracking down effectively. First they went
after the outright frauds, such as the coin backed by nonexistent land and
diamonds. They won in court. Then they went after the ones that promised big
returns and didn't deliver. The SEC won again. That settled the issue of
whether an ICO is a security. It is if it passes the Howey Test.[1]

With the legal ambiguity resolved, the SEC started sending inquiry letters to
new ICO proponents with some pointed questions. Many new issuers backed off.
Now the SEC has an assembly-line enforcement process running for ICOs; issuers
can either buy the tokens back and shut down, register as a real security, or
get hammered in court.

List of 934 dead coins.[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._W._J._Howey_Co).

[2] [https://deadcoins.com/](https://deadcoins.com/)

~~~
this_user
> That's bad. I thought someone would be using a blockchain for some kind of
> back-end settlement system somewhere, but apparently not.

The problem in that area is not the previous lack of available technology, it
is institutional inertia. You don't need a blockchain to speed up settlements,
because the technology to do it did exist before. What you need is buy-in from
a bunch of old and conservatively run institutions that do not particularly
like change.

The primary fallacy of all these blockchain proponents is only seeing problems
as technical in nature when they really lie somewhere else. The same applies
especially to smart contracts.

~~~
russdpale
> The primary fallacy of all these blockchain proponents is only seeing
> problems as technical in nature when they really lie somewhere else. The
> same applies especially to smart contracts.

This is a great point, especially with smart contracts, the problem of the wet
code is massively more complex than that of the dry code.

------
api
I said this in another thread but I'll say it again here.

I am downright shocked at just how much of a failure this technology has
turned out to be. How can this many brilliant people work on an area for this
long and produce almost nothing of value?

I suppose it happens in areas of "pathological science" like infinite energy
machines, but those are areas where the tech doesn't work and probably
violates laws of physics. In this case the tech _does work_ in the general
sense but seems to have little to no utility in most cases. When you consider
scams and fraud it may even have negative utility.

I'd like to be proven wrong. I keep waiting for that killer cryptocurrency app
but it never arrives. Meanwhile the core use case of digital money seems
almost abandoned.

It's not even that good anymore for black and grey market commerce. It was in
the beginning because the authorities didn't understand it. It was security
through obscurity. Now they're developing both expertise and legal frameworks
for dealing with it. It's no longer a free-for-all.

I have trouble thinking of another technology that actually works that has
attracted this much hype, brains, and investment and then failed this badly to
deliver.

It's not like fusion, which has a very clear use case but faces so far
insurmountable technical challenges. It's not like nuclear fission power which
works, has a clear use, but has downsides.

I think the nearest comparison I can come up with are failed government mega-
projects like the US Reagan-era "Star Wars" laser missile defense system,
airplane-like space shuttles, or giant planned utopian cities that get built
and then sit vacant.

I'm also shocked and a little horrified at just how much fraud there is in
this space. I'd expect some, but the sheer volume of fraud is breathtaking.
Almost all ICOs seem to be scams. Many exchanges are likely scams. Tether
looks like a scam. It makes me disappointed in humanity that there are this
many bad actors out there just waiting for a new way to fleece people.

Just... wow. What a waste.

~~~
zanny
If money is the root of all evil, give technologists and futurists the ability
to print money they can swindle muggles into pouring their life savings into
as a get rich quick scheme or espouse at a pitch about how life changing it is
and how much excessive amounts of money they need to get paid to copy paste
half the Bitcoin Core or Etherium repo.

You see pretty fast the dissolution of values in the face of potential
fortune. Its an ancient aspect of humanity - the first European explorers in
the Americas would slaughter whole countries on the whisper of treasure to be
had.

~~~
api
Good point about the conquistadors. I've always thought that many of them
probably did come here with utopian ideals about founding pure societies and
bringing the word of God to the natives (in a positive way at least as they
thought of it), but once they got a whiff of gold and riches greed took over
and pretty soon they were committing genocide.

People really do get weird around lots of money, especially if there's an
opportunity to get rich quick. I think some really atavistic predator
instincts can kick in.

------
kdowns
I'm really not surprised. The most interesting thing about your business
shouldn't be your choice in data-store.

~~~
DonHopkins
But what about the Emerging CD-ROM Industry? (I want to know more about Bill
Gate's goat!)

[https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-6501528/microsoft-s-
thi...](https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-6501528/microsoft-s-third-cd-rom-
conference-the-industry)

The 1988 Microsoft CD-ROM Conference held in Seattle in March, attracted about
2,000 industry insiders. The tone and ambience of the conference reflect a
definite change in the industry. Most companies were represented not only by
top management, but by their marketing personnel. Few blue-jeaned engineers or
techies were found in the crowds. CD-ROM appears to have arrived.

FINDING A PATHWAY TO THE FUTURE

In his keynote address, Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and chairman,
reiterated his goat of making computers affordable and attractive enough to be
"on every desk, in every home." Gates reported that less than 50,000 CD-ROM
drives are currently in the marketplace. These are either in very narrow
vertical markets, such as libraries, or are being used by the industry itself.
The problem of low drive sales is compounded by the high cost of developing a
multimedia product. Gates estimated that it costs $1 million for each disk
product, an investment that many companies have been unwilling or unable to
make.

The lack of a "rich standard for audio-visual" components of CD-ROM
development, and the limited tools available to developers today, are two
other important reasons Gates cited for the slow growth of the CD-ROM
industry.

~~~
maxxxxx
That actually was a thriving industry for a few years in the 90s.

~~~
simonw
Yeah CD ROMs were fantastic technology. I had a full encyclopedia on my
personal computer! And so many great games!

They filled the gap very nicely until broadband spread widely enough to allow
the web to destroy any need for them.

------
tuxxy
Not really surprising, to be honest.

I'm really tired of the overused "blockchains are really slow databases"
phrase. They're not, and if you're using one as that, you're doing it wrong
almost 90% of the time.

Here's a great question to ask yourself if you need a blockchain: Do I need
game theoretical enforced security?

There are many networks and protocols that can be improved with such security
mechanisms. There are more that can't be improved. Just in another thread,
someone asked the question if Tor could be improved with it. There's plenty to
experiment with here and figure out what makes a blockchain application great.

The entire idea is that you can incentivize good behavior and disincentivize
or punish bad behavior. Consensus comes into play here when deciding, "Was
this operation done correctly? If so, do this. If not, do that." This has the
ability of enforcing correct operation in decentralized networks. My
associates and I have taken to calling these "Decentralized Incentive
Networks". Yes, there are many problems that have yet to be solved, but people
are working on them. I'm really interested in seeing solutions to the oracle-
problem, but I'm unsure if it will ever be solvable.

Even then, a lot of these applications won't be fit for enterprise (or even
small business) use. Many of these applications will benefit (and survive)
from community adoption and rely on being open source.

Hopefully, when the hype is gone, we will have made some really great
technological advancements to peer-to-peer and distributed applications. This
is where I think blockchain apps will find their niche.

~~~
kllrnohj
The singular point of blockchain is to establish a paper trail. The singular
point of Tor is not to have a paper trail.

Those are literally opposites. Blockchain + Tor would be the sort of complete
nonsense the article is talking about.

Blockchain has nothing to do with security. It's not a security technology.
It's a _permanence_ technology. It ensures that something is never modified in
the absence of a trusted authority which it does _with_ security technology
and distributed proof of work.

~~~
tuxxy
You've completely missed the point. There are people who are using Onion
routing with nodes who are economically incentivized to behave in a non-
malicious fashion. If caught acting malicious, then your node can be
penalized. It's not like you're actively putting all traffic on the
blockchain. You're arguing a strawman here.

I'm not going to speak for these projects directly because I know very little
about them, but I can speak as to how you would incentivize non-malicious
behavior.

~~~
kllrnohj
> You're arguing a strawman here.

You didn't really provide anything to actually talk about. You took two
literally opposite techs and slapped them together and then acted like it was
obvious what that meant.

Blockchain has no application to Onion routing nodes, either. That, again,
would be the sort of thing you _don 't_ want a permanent record to track. Tor
is specifically designed for the routing to _not_ be stable and _not_ be
known. It is fundamentallly the polar opposite of blockchain.

Blockchain is a public list of immutable data, identical for everyone.

TOR nodes form a private list of ephemeral data, fleeting and ever changing.
Unique to everyone.

> If caught acting malicious, then your node can be penalized.

Blockchain literally has nothing to do with this. It has no such capabilities
of any kind. Hell, it was literally built so that you _can 't_ have penalties
as that's governance.

> I can speak as to how you would incentivize non-malicious behavior.

Blockchain doesn't do this, at all. If anything malicious actors love
blockchain because there's largely no capability to recover from a successful
attack.

------
harrygallagher4
I met a blockchain researcher this summer, I was asking her what sort of stuff
she was working on and she started talking about supply chains. Like
drexlspivey mentioned there are a whole host of problems with relying on data
from the real world. My first thought was just... why do you need an immutable
ledger for that? Not to throw buzzwords out, but why not just store
transaction data in a database that scales well? If you're willing to spend
all of these resources on developing some insane database for your supply
chain you must have some real trust issues with your suppliers. I've never
worked in an industry like that but I feel like being able to trust your
suppliers is pretty important, and provided that you do trust them you could
just use a conventional database for all of this and save tons of time and
effort.

~~~
delinka
We decided a couple decades ago that an 'immutable ledger' would indeed be
useful. And you don't have to expend tremendous amounts of time an energy
creating such a thing. See Hash Chain[1] at Wikipedia, and notice the second
sentence.

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

------
TACIXAT
I used blockchain in a project successfully, but it is not a distributed
consensus application. My problem was file sharing. Torrent files send a big
list of SHA1 hashes, one for each piece of the file. I replaced that idea with
a single block which contains the hash of the next block (as well as two other
blocks so verification isn't linear one block to the next). This allows a
single block to represent the entire file, allowing you to get blocks from
many peers while verifying them. You can just send out a coverage map of what
you have, and your peers can calculate what you can verify and send you a
random block from that set.

If anyone is interested, [1] and [2] are the project. No one is using it, but
it's a peer to peer chat and file sharing system.

1\. [https://party-line.lol](https://party-line.lol) 2\.
[https://github.com/tacixat/party-line](https://github.com/tacixat/party-line)

~~~
oldgradstudent
If I understand your short description, this sounds more like a Merkle tree[1]
than a blockchain.

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

~~~
plorkyeran
Depending on how you define "blockchain", it's either the same thing as a
merkle tree or most non-bitcoin things that claim to be using blockchains
actually are just using merkle trees.

~~~
Terr_
> Depending on how you define "blockchain"

i.e.: Depending on whether the person saying "blockchain" is lying to make a
quick buck from the hype-train.

~~~
plorkyeran
Sometimes they're just genuinely unaware of the prior art and think that
chained hashing is a new thing.

------
krmmalik
I've spoken to a number of vendors and come across similar findings as well.
Though of course, this is just observational on my part and not a detailed
investigation or study, but I have been getting much the same impression.
There's a lot of unnecessary hype and people jumping on the bandwagon just
because it's currently a buzzword. That said, I still have a lot of faith in
what Blockchain will eventually be able to achieve. It might just take longer
to get there than we thought.

I remember when I was studying computer science in 1999, even though the
internet had been out a while and there had been lots of talk about e-commerce
no one had really solved the problem particularly well in terms of providing a
platform to the average Joe, but by 2005 things were very different and then
by 2015 there was no looking back. I think it's going to be the same for
Blockchain.

~~~
bognition
> I still have a lot of faith in what Blockchain will eventually be able to
> achieve.

What does this even mean? Its a really beautiful solution its just lacking a
good problem.

~~~
snaky
[https://hackernoon.com/how-blockchain-technology-could-
fix-t...](https://hackernoon.com/how-blockchain-technology-could-fix-the-node-
js-ecosystem-bccc60832900)

~~~
fwip
The solution offered is: "But instead of giving full maintenance or full
publishing rights to new collaborators, the original developer would give new
maintainers or a CI system only signing rights. So they would sign their
releases and after a careful review the original author would countersign
stating that he checked and approves these changes."

This is 100% equivalent to the maintainer merging a pull request. The other
half of the solution is "we need to pay open source maintainers," which
doesn't need a blockchain either.

Blockchain doesn't help this scenario at all.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
I find it a bit odd that this entire article and every comment (so far)
doesn't even mention HyperLedger? [0]

The open source private blockchain project championed by IBM, Intel, Cisco,
etc...

It's powering CLSNet right now. [1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperledger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperledger)

[1] [https://www.coindesk.com/goldman-morgan-stanley-go-live-
with...](https://www.coindesk.com/goldman-morgan-stanley-go-live-with-cls-ibm-
powered-blockchain)

------
simonw
My favourite terrible blockchain idea is real estate on the blockchain.

Because presumably that means that if someone guesses or steals my password,
they now own my house.

~~~
Alex3917
> Because presumably that means that if someone guesses or steals my password,
> they now own my house.

You'll register your private keys with a PKI. In practice the worst case
scenario would be needing to go to the DMV to register your new phone or
something.

~~~
theamk
So if government can change my private keys, this is no longer decentralized
system. How is it different from current system, where county office has a big
database of all the documents?

------
sebringj
I remember random recruiters talking me into speaking with 4 blockchain
companies for remote gigs. I had a hard time understanding the value
proposition and asked the founders types of questions like, why is this
knowledge base better than stack overflow or why does this rating system work
better than other systems? It came down to answer the question because
"blockchain blah blah". Not giving the actual value to the consumer. It was
more touting what the technology allows rather than real value. The killer app
of blockchain is crypto currency at this point IMO. Not much else but I'm
rooting for Vitalik as that dude is a genius and I still feel like something
amazing will come out of his work. I would guess if you are going to use
blockchain for something, make it something that cannot function without it
and is one of a kind in being a new thing that people will want, not a clone
of an existing tech + blockchain.

------
tracker1
Related, NIST's answer to do you need a block chain.

[https://imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed?third_party=1](https://imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed?third_party=1)

------
Elv13
I worked on a project called GNU Ring
([https://www.ring.cx](https://www.ring.cx)) and we used a blockchain for the
distributed name service (match strings to crypto signatures). By default
there is a name server, but if you really, really care about getting tiny more
anonymity, you can spend some CPU cycles and run your own name service locally
or on a server you own.

It also share the cost of running a distributed database among those who care
about privacy while letting those who care less enjoy a simpler stack. A win,
win.

~~~
seandougall
Does it share the cost, or does it duplicate the cost?

~~~
yarrel
It shares it. Each person pays for one node, not all the nodes.

------
lalaland1125
This study is clearly flawed because they didn't consider the real use case of
blockchain: illegal activity.

Blockchain has truly transformed the fields of child pornography, ransomware,
drug markets, and ponzi schemes. Regardless of your opinions of those fields,
you simply have to accept that those areas wouldn't be possible to the extent
they are now without Blockchain based cryptocurrencies.

~~~
godDLL
All that operated just fine before, with WebMoney, Paypal and some turkish
mules that would take the prison time to cash it all out.

~~~
theamk
I feel that ransomware at least would not be possible without Bitcoin. Before
Bitcoin, there were no safe way to get ransom -- Paypal/Western Union would
get blocked real fast, and physical transactions were detected in an old-
fashioned way.

------
russdpale
I find this to be a little short sighted stufy. Perhaps he should ask the
citizens of venezuela if it works? Or people paying taxes in bitcoin in
Australia?

No doubt, there is a lot of hype. No doubt, a lot of people, including
techies, have lost sight of what is important. No doubt, many in the space are
impatient, and do not understand that blockchain development, the _real_
blockchain development is more like development of aircraft frames. Slow is
smooth, and smooth is fast. No doubt, people are trying to apply it where it
is not necessary.

There are, however, a plethora of other use cases. The key though, in my
opinion, is _placing all of it under the hood_ , invisible to the user except
where it is absolutely needed (ie, hi user! here is your wallet).

The truth is that many businesses already run replicated, distributed
databases on replicated, distributed servers, and it is plenty fast since they
don't have to worry about solving advanced cryptographic math equations for
incentive purposes. However, one problem facing generalized platform
blockchains, such as ethereum, is that the current entire concept of business
and how its modeled is far behind what a blockchain can deliver to a business
and its interested parties. The problem, as I see it, is primarily one of
_control_ , and secondly, one of _trust_.. I mentioned the replicated
distributed stuff earlier, and I think it safe to say no current business will
ever open nodes to outside participants (such as customers, or resellers), or
even inside participants (shareholders, employees). Unless shareholders demand
it (for instance, to ensure a fair number of shares can ever be created), a
completely internalized blockchain is pointless and no more trustworthy to
society than what we already have.

Another large problem is obviously power consumption. Every bitcoin maximalist
needs to come to the realization that one of the strongest ways the
established players will fight a new paradigm is by controlling power costs.
For many in the developed world, bitcoin is out of reach, as mining equipment
is expensive, and power makes it impossible to turn a profit. The best
solution to this is green, _affordable_ energy sources and affordable mining
equipment. Proof of Stake is not completely the answer.

Finally, I point to this part of the "study":

> We documented 43 blockchain use-cases through internet searches,

No wonder they got terrible results. Doctors tell patients all of the time to
not google your symptoms, it always ends with cancer. Does this mean doctors
are a failure?

The established financial systems took a thousand years to formulate into what
we know today. Patience is power.

------
frogperson
Tim Bray made a comment at re:invent this week that most of Amazon's internal
work loads rely on DynamoDB and a ledger database that is the pre-cursor to
the new QLDB service Amazon released this week.

To qualify this, when Tim used the word 'most' I don't know if he meant "most
data stored" or "most DB instances". He also didn't give any percentages, so
it very well could be 99% Dynamo and 1% ledger DB. Lastly, Bray didn't include
Aurora or Redshift in that list of "most used database at Amazon", but Dr
Vogel's keynote alluded to a ton of internal Aurora usage.

So, at least some people are claiming successful usage of blockchain in
production. It's just not clear how much. Amazon seems to think there is a
future in it, since they just released 2 new blockchain related services this
week.

------
Brahma111
Oh Boy!! Another case of pre-determined surveys. CLS has already moved to
production on blockchain. De Beers has done the same with Diamonds. Multiple
insurance companies including our start-up are leveraging BC for direct claims
settlement. Is it really difficult to understand that BC technology is not a
hammer and all the use cases are not nails. You are trying to get rid of Big
intermediaries, people. They are not going to make it easy. Every interaction
between parties is going to be more difficult than the previous until critical
mass is attained. But succeed it will and will most likely happen before we
die.

------
arisAlexis
title: "Where is your distributed ledger technology now?"

Just being rational and before reading the article, you can deduct there is
some kind of bias.

"Any claim made for blockchain could be made for databases"

We can deduct here that author has no deep understanding of the technology.

"that's something we can confidently tell you for nothing: no, it isn't"

Author is dismissive and angry (didn't adopt early?)

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needaccount
Great level of precision in this measurement.

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thrkwaway
IMO the killer blockchain app is voting. It makes use of the features that are
unique to blockchain: censorship resistance, decentralization, and trustless
transactions. I've been working on a paper for the last 6 months that details
a system that makes use of crypto innovations like zk-snarks and some other
novel technologies that lays a blueprint for how to use this tech to provide a
voting system that would be beyond any central party's influence and would
securely allow for voting from mobile devices and a host of other things that
are beyond the capabilities of centralized tech - at least beyond the ability
to be done in a manner that anyone would trust.

I've been watching the space since 2010 and can honestly say most projects are
solutions in search of a problem.

