
Ask HN: Ex-blockchain engineers, why did you get out? - hadsed
I&#x27;m trying to understand more about blockchain technology, but I struggle with seeing where it&#x27;s useful and where it isn&#x27;t. Would love to hear from people who have actually done some work in the area.
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RichardHeart
Blockchains increase trust and immutability at cost of scaling, speed,
expense, over other digital systems. If you don't have people trying to fool
you by doublespending (it's like a race condition) then you don't need a
blockchain.

Blockchains aren't just for currency, but their best use case is surely
currency, for only the currency project can recuperate the massive
externalities (costs) of running the system, for the profit margin is almost
100 percent. What that means is, for a blockchain to make sense for you, you
really, really need to need the anti attacker parts of it for it to make sense
over any other system.

Current real world uses are timestamping, (recently Peter Todd timestamped all
of archive.org, so people can't go back and make changes to fool people.)
Bitcoin (currency). And as a tier 1 trust layer to support tier 2 protocols
that have faster, cheaper, more stateful transactions (counterparty,
mastercoin, rsk, sidechains, lightning, etc. a few of those need opcodes added
to the btc network.)

Trust is expensive, bankers hours are comedic, much of the world loses large
percentage of currency value every year, bitcoin can solve much of that.
Databases and merkletrees already do a great job if you don't have advanced
attackers. Blockchains are much less exciting than bitcoin.

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itamarst
As far as I can tell the only current real-world use case for blockchain
technology is flight capital from China
([https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/01/19/2182669/chinese-
capit...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/01/19/2182669/chinese-capital-
flight-is-back/) \- see graph at the end).

~~~
eadz
... and bitcoin of course.

~~~
saurik
I don't understand your comment, because that's the entire point of the person
you are responding to: that only current real world product of blockchain
technology is Bitcoin, and the only real world use case of Bitcoin is flight
capital from China; like... what exactly do you mean by "and"?

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DrNuke
Black and gray uses only? Create a temporary environment, allow two users
enter by blockchain, let them exchange their sh*t inside and destroy the
environment after that. Financials from the beginning to the end then,
insiders job.

~~~
hadsed
Can you explain the idea a little more? What's an example of an environment?

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arcaster
I'm considering entering the space as a NCG, luckily I have good connections
and experience in the space. My alternative is to leverage my startup
experience and just work in some other industry that interests me. My one
doubt with blockchain is that there isn't a ton of non-enterprise money in the
space. Seems like founding in just about any other industry is likely more
profitable and more technically reasonable.

~~~
hadsed
What interests you in starting a blockchain company then?

