No true Scotsmen have found a use for blockchain. This is another of those articles that defines successful use case so as to exclude blockchain. What about all those bitcoin millionaires? They don't count! What about NFTs? I think it's dumb, so I won't count it! What about inventory and logistics tracking? Not used widely enough to count! What about all those decentralized finance businesses? They aren't real businesses by my definition of businesses! Okay, you win.
We are using blockchain for identity verification in Canada (verified.me)<p>7 banks and 4 telecom companies are nodes on the network. They provide the identity details of a person.<p>Very interesting use case. Take a look
Crypto is a tradable asset, and like any other tradable asset you can make money with it. In other words you can make money with money, just like a bank, only decentralized. It's not about the technology of the banks or crypto per se, but the primary function of what banks actually do, which is save or lend money (really both).<p>If you think crypto currency was created to buy hamburgers, or make your energy bill more efficient to pay, as the saying goes " you can't see the forest for the trees". When was the last time you used bond certificate to pay for dinner?<p>The fact that people are making money and lots of it in crypto using traditional financial instruments is all the proof you need to know that it has a use case.
I'd summarize blockchain like this: computation that is outside any individual's control. It's surprising that it's even possible!<p>It makes the virtual world actually a lot more like the physical world: no one person can alter the laws of physics, just as no one person can alter the laws of Bitcoin (or similar). This property makes me think that describing blockchain as a metaverse is actually pretty accurate.<p>It's intriguing to think that with fully homomorphic encryption, we can have distributed computation that's not only outside anyone's control, but outside anyone's understanding! You can literally imagine an A.I. agent that no one controls - and no one understands.
We are using blockchain in our product for verification of text edits. No one has tracked text editing in this way, making it fully traceable, unwind-able, and outside-verifiable.<p>[0] <a href="https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash" rel="nofollow">https://nebula.mimix.io/msl/specs/ref/hash</a><p>[1] <a href="https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing" rel="nofollow">https://nebula.mimix.io/en/msl/intro#hashing</a>
I am so very tired of these articles and the "opinions" that always leap to the forefront when they receive any attention at all.<p>The funny thing about most them is that they are always, always written by someone "talking their book." In other words, the old guard defending their turf from a new way of doing things. This 2017 article is written by a person who runs a financial services company for elders. A FinServices company, by the way, which is aimed at a market which will never uses crypto or the blockchain. So his opinion is worthless and pointless.<p>The rest of us, those of us whom the banking and finance industries have left behind and ignored, now have the ability to create currency, terms and trade amongst ourselves or anyone who agrees to our terms without being summarily denied, lied to or cheated.<p>Native Americans now have the opportunity to build on their own land by setting up a separate SOR from the one the Government forces them to use and they can document ownership to the farthest point and have it all be maintained digitally. Instead of the old oil and gas software they modified to use to split royalty payments, they can now do it all digitally and those records can be held wherever they want them to be.<p>I could cite new possibilities all day long....but if Bank Of America has enough sense to commission a report about the changes crypto is making in emerging markets, I should not have to...<p>Crypto is NOT for everyone, but neither are credit cards. For some of us the ability to be our own bank and insurance etc is far better than constantly being ignored/denied/fleeced or whatever else wall street and the tech world comes up with next. The simple fact is this: if you don't see the potential, then don't participate. Leave it for those of us who do. Your "but what about" systems whatever they are didn't work for us....but these might if they can be left alone long enough for us to build what we need from the parts we were given.<p>My main worry is that all of you "but-in skis" will cause the powers that be to pay attention to your ridiculous whining and regulate far too heavily and ruin our first real chance to be apart of the global financial system on terms that don't penalize us heavily. As all the others do.
I work for a large organization which is exploring blockchain to link several disparate databases (all with different software, intranets, etc).<p>This is the only reasonable use of the tech I have seen.
I've just started digging into the space, so maybe my question is way off base. I'm hoping someone will at least give me some insight though. Would it be possible to source the same level of credit data in a decentralized manner and use (e.g. send a loan to collections) all in a decentralized manner? If so, what is legitimately preventing the migration of all functions of a modern bank to a decentralized model?
I feel I'm taking crazy pills with all the people screeching the blockchain has no uses. They're as wrong as the people who say it has ALL the uses.<p>Also, a (2017) wouldn't go amiss. This article is about three and a half years old, and for a concept that's supposedly so bereft of use cases, it's managed to be pretty enduring.
I think Gods Unchained, a collectible card computer game, is a pretty cool use for blockchain technology. I'd be much more inclined to "pay to play" if I actually owned the thing I'm paying for and could sell it later. Though I didn't personally get into the game enough to bother spending money on it.<p>Here is a quick MIT Tech Review article on it from 2019: <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockchain-based-card-game-shows-us-the-future-of-ownership/" rel="nofollow">https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/11/693/this-blockch...</a>
“The Baseline Protocol is an open source initiative that combines advances in cryptography, messaging, and blockchain to deliver secure and private business processes at low cost using the public Mainnet for event ordering, data consistency and workflow integrity.<p>The protocol will enable confidential and complex collaboration between enterprises without moving any sensitive data from traditional systems of record.“<p>Note: It is a protocol - not a company or commercial software.<p>You can watch a number of videos of the protocol in action - maintaining state across enterprises of say an SAP installation and Google Sheets.
i worked 2 years ago on an energy trading system on local nets for a local port. I was pretty awesome and connected the energy usage to Ethereum tokens. Producers could sell energy to the grid and Consumers could buy.
It worked and was actually deployed for a few months with few participants. Then it got shut down.
But BChain was a major and important part to it.
The truth is that with blockchain came Bitcoin.<p>Bitcoin's rapid price rise has allowed many people to make money.<p>This has created a number of evangelists with almost feverish pitch of excitement with claims that Bitcoin and Blockchain will change the world.<p>With this, it has also created a backlash of people who are against Bitcoin and Blockchain and refuse to believe there is any value whatsoever.<p>I've seen people on HN embrace all sorts of technology - a lots with very little utility or use cases or actual real-world users. Yet with Bitcoin/Blockchain they argue there is no value whatsoever.<p>The truth is that if Blockchain didn't come with Bitcoin or the potential to make money (or if Bitcoin was more stable around $1) there wouldn't be this backlash.<p>People in tech can become cynical easily and a bit mistrustful of new technology claims. This can be a good thing. But this knee jerk reaction to Blockchain and Bitcoin is highly disappointing to see on HN.
I think there may be some good uses for public immutable records that can be verified as a chain.<p>But none of that requires <i>distributing</i> the block chain.
Fluff piece. Block chain could be used to maintaining and secure digital licensing. We use it for a lot of dumb arbitrary things and so it seems there is no genuine use case.<p>You can use as a ledger to track transactions and make your transaction trackable. Do we though, do we apply this to digital exchange of actual currencies... nope.
The constant conflation of block chain and bitcoin makes the article tiresome. Furthermore the author seems only to propose "everyone uses it" use cases. Imo the most useful use cases are distributed ledgers used between companies who know each other...
blockchain = database<p>distributed blockchain = database in cloud<p>did databases in cloud "change the world"?<p>100%<p>did they change EVERYTHING?<p>depends who you ask! :D
I still think an awesome use case would be a public blockchain for tracking inventions and patents. You could have a searchable index of inventions that anyone could add onto, and every article would be hashed and the signature recorded on the blockchain to serve as independent historical proof. The inventor would then be the only person with the cryptographic key to prove they are the owner of the patent. There could also be a whole other sidechain for tracking licensing agreements, for example.<p>Who wants to help me build it?
Part of the problem is that nobody has a definition for what "blockchain" even means. We all know what Bitcoin means because it has a whitepaper and an implementation. The same goes for all other operational systems that use the same ideas.<p>"Blockchain", on the other hand, just means whatever anybody who wants to ride on hype wants it to mean. For example, some simply take it to mean a series of blocks where each block references its parent block by its hash. To others, that definition makes no sense because that concept existed long before Bitcoin (eg. git).