I feel both very enthusiastic & skeptical about blockchain.
In the last decade it has been designated by many as the way forward, some form of transactional, Internet of value & next step in business integration.
What scares me the most is no big alternative seems to have emerged in this area to compete with blockchain?
I hope I am missing something, any idea?
You might be interested in raking a look at Holochain:<p><a href="https://holochain.org/" rel="nofollow">https://holochain.org/</a><p>I'm by no means an expert in the technology, but it's one attempt at a blockchain alternative that I'm aware of, albeit with different philosophies regarding global consensus.
Isn't each of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies an alternative? Many of them have wildly varying implementations - different designs, levels of security, speed of transaction, transaction number limits, no blockchain at all, proof-of-stake vs proof of work etc.
Blockchain solutions are touted as improvements and replacements for solutions that already exist. It's not that blockchain solves problems previously not solvable.<p>Read <i>Attack of the 50-Foot Blockchain</i> for some perspective.
One alternative I could think of are chunks or clusters of centralized systems which are then inter-connected among themselves to form a decentralized whole (kinda how the internet works!).