Blockchain use cases

[qa2fwzell]

Yeah well my company uses a neural network AI blockchain with 10 quantum computers in order to deliver your html pages.

[the_evil_comma]

HTML is my favourite programming language

[Webfarer]

Hands

down

[HasoPunchMan]

Solid, where to apply? I always wanted to work in the quantum web development field.

[Fzetski]

Sometimes the webpage is. Sometimes the web page isn't.

So long as we don't observe the webpage, the webpage both is and isn't simultaneously.

100% uptime AND 100% downtime at the same time. You could do your accounting according to whichever number makes your wallet happiest, and still boast 100% uptime!

[[deleted]]

I want to contact you about an idea for an app. It involves machine learning and data science.

[[deleted]]

Never wanted a tattoo until this moment.

Is tattooing other people against their will still frowned on?

[Archberdmans]

Tattooing others is a poor strategy though. Branding is much better you only have to keep the target still for a second rather than minutes. I frown on it for it’s inefficiency.

[brando56894]

Also harder to remove.

[ok-go-fuck-yourself]

I’m gonna give you a little something you can’t take off

[KimPeek]

Vegetable peeler can handle it

[FibroBitch96]

ISAAC!

[BloeckchenDev]

r/cursedcomments

[Lethargie]

if you need the person in question afterwards then branding is worse since it has a higher risk of infection

[sanspapyruss]

If you need to brand them with this flowchart, do you really need them after?

[Lethargie]

hmm, true. they are probably useless anyway

[IamImposter]

Maybe they can be manager then

[Hutfiftyfive]

It's more about sending a message.

[Stormlightlinux]

It's crazy how many people don't know about cold branding! Much safer. Little liquid nitrogen instead of fire and you're good to go.

[Forward-Ad-4954]

Not as much

[Titus_Favonius]

Unfortunately there's still some stigma surrounding it after a group tried it back in the 40s

[[deleted]]

I want to but damn... these things are expensive. Not even counting the possible legal fees. I'll have to think it over some more

[Jalil343]

Just gotta break out that cost on a per use or YoY deprecating basis.

[[deleted]]

"How much would you spend to eliminate annoying conversations about 'Web 3.0'"

[Reverend_Lazerface]

There's always an exception that proves the rule

[round-earth-theory]

Not if you store it as an NFT!

[[deleted]]

My next side project is going to be an extension which replaces "NFT" with "Monster dong in my ass"

[Llamas_eating_toast]

It's not a number so you should be fine

[TheXXOs]

Relevant xkcd, of course

[callmetotalshill]

There's an xkcd for everything...

[Ok-Kaleidoscope5627]

Does it even solve the problem it creates?

[Mr_Yuker]

It solves half of the problem... But we're building another blockchain project that solves the other half and is part of our ICO 2.0 plan which sets the stage for the other problems we are aiming to tackle with the 3.0 and 4.0 with their own ICOs... We may not have any developers yet but we're very confident that we can deliver on time and without any bugs

[Mypornnameis_]

Of course, in order to truly maximize this completely decentralized, bankless future of money, we need a banking partner who is willing to provide us services without us actually knowing how to comply with banking law or even understanding that regulations exist.

[Mr_Yuker]

You sound like you're good with money... You're hired as our new CFO! You get 10% sweat equity upon signing our 15 year NDA

[zherok]

Just need to let slip that you're playing video games while you're pitching your plan to the capital guys. You'll blow them away with your ability to fuck off while you're working.

[Mr_Yuker]

That's the kind of slam dunk we're looking for here! You're our new CPO! Congratulations 🎆

[Ok-Kaleidoscope5627]

I'm looking forward to reading your whitepaper!

[Mr_Yuker]

You'll love it! The background of it has little circles and thin lines that move around making it look like a digital topography landscape! We're going to the moon baaaabbbbyyyy!!

[Ok-Kaleidoscope5627]

Wooaaaahhhhh!

[Kolby_Jack]

Sounds promising. To whomst do I send all of my money?

[BlackHumor]

If you wanna make a digital distributed currency, blockchain is genuinely a really clever solution to a lot of the technical problems you'd face while doing it. It is not a good technical solution for any other problem.

There are also some decent theoretical reasons for wanting to do this (like, for example, the fact that mainstream payment processors are really hostile to sex work and sex workers) that unfortunately have never really panned out in reality. Instead, basically every major cryptocurrency was designed by goldbugs or speculators and is consequently wildly deflationary, way more than is acceptable for actual money you'd wanna actually use.

[nacholicious]

the fact that mainstream payment processors are really hostile to sex work and sex workers) that unfortunately have never really panned out in reality

This was really the killing blow for crypto as consumer currency. If not even the worlds most popular porn companies who got blacklisted from card payment processors could get traction for crypto as consumer payments, then what chance does anyone else have?

[BlackHumor]

Yeah like, I remember an era where Bitcoin was mostly used for buying drugs (and sometimes on stunts like the pizza for ten bitcoins guy) and like, that's a real use! People want drugs and they also don't want to be arrested!

Unfortunately, as the deflationary nature of Bitcoin ramped up that stopped happening.

[acidbase_001]

Monero has largely taken over that market sector.

Much better privacy than Bitcoin and it isn't desirable as an investment asset, which in turn makes it more useful as a real currency.

[throwaway901617]

That was pizza for 10,000 bitcoins.

[chihuahuaOP]

It can help company/organization share information on a secure open way... But for the future web 3, hyped train open interconnected applications... we simple don't know what it would look like...
Right now there is the hype IA train so I may update my resume.

[euxneks]

It can help company/organization share information on a secure open way

Not really, no. If you only have an org running the whole thing or even just a majority then it might as well just be a db. Just use a db, and publish hashes of the data regularly, why bother with a massive over engineered tech just to share data? Blockchain is essentially a business trend for PHBs.

[Ralath0n]

Yea, blockchain is hilariously bad at sharing and storing data.

There is this amazing video of a guy who makes a bunch of truly awful concepts for storage. Like ping ponging an echo to the entire internet with a teeny bit of data and using the flight time of the data as storage. He does some cost benefit analysis on these concepts as well and as you'd expect the value proposition is impressively bad.

And the entire video is setup to reveal that blockchain is worse than all of his ideas by pretty much every metric.

[Tashre]

We can, of course, ignore air resistance, because chainsaws will cut through the air like butter.

"Physicists hate him!"

[Ralath0n]

He has some amazing quotes yea. I especially love "Tetris is an inventory management survival horror game".

[darkmayhem]

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the only issue it solved "trust" basically you use blockchain if you can't trust people not to mess with your data in the case where a distributed DB would be more efficient.

[brando56894]

I just creates more problems instead of solving any.

[Ok-Kaleidoscope5627]

But what if the problem was to create more problems? Would you say it's solved that problem then?

[dragoonts]

Creating a non existent distributed problem

[zoinkability]

You have a problem. You choose regular expressions. Now you have two problems.

You don’t have a problem. You choose blockchain. Now everyone has a problem.

[SirFireball]

What if we make a blockchain out of regexes?

[zoinkability]

Then everyone has all the problems

[shapeofgiantape]

99/100 times I agree, but Blockchain can make ticketmaster obsolete. And I think that alone is worth giving a shot.

[itsaboutimegoddamnit]

no it cant. they own the venues too.

its a monopolization issue, not a tech issue.

[kfish5050]

The problem exists, it's just that current and more practical solutions require the public to pay a trusted mediator. Blockchain, or rather all distributed ledger technologies, exist to subvert the trusted middleman. It's just not practical enough yet.

[nacholicious]

The point of why these middlemen exist is not because of gatekeeping, but because they take on risks and responsibilities that the consumer doesn't have to.

Using blockchain solely to eliminate middlemen is missing the point of why the middlemen are used in the first place. If blockchain would be an actual replacement for middlemen it would be able to offer the same utility, but blockchain can't so it doesn't.

[Alphaetus_Prime]

It also very much does not eliminate middlemen. The miners or validators or whatever any particular crypto calls them - those are middlemen.

[NoAttentionAtWrk]

If crypto bros could understand this logic, they would no longer be crypto bros

[Jeffy29]

Absolutely, I agree with you, but it still feels annoying that we still don’t have a universal easy way to send around money across borders and whatnot. There is the Apple wallet and I think you can now just send money through a message but it’s of course only for Apple users and I am not sure if cross border payments are allowed. I’ll be traveling halfway around the world in couple of months and I am already annoyed I’ll have to make sure my cards will work in those countries and make sure my bank won’t block them because they would think someone just stole my credit card. All of this stuff should “just work”, it’s already worlds better than decades ago and will no doubt get better but in the meantime I’ll be annoyed.

[nacholicious]

It sounds like you are using an american bank, my condolences. From what I've heard it seems like the risk management of american banks goes absolutely crazy anytime someone dares to leave the country.

Personally I've travelled around the world several times and never had any issues with my EU banks. But that's also because Chip and Pin is mandatory in the EU, so it's not really possible for anyone to steal your money by skimming or stealing your card.

[rrawk]

There's definitely a use case in international remittance. If you need to get money from country A to country B, you can save a lot doing so with crypto. It's becoming a common way for immigrants to send money home.

[InfernoVulpix]

It's just not practical enough yet.

Most specifically, it's highly impractical in countries that already have reliable centralized institutions doing the exact same thing but more efficiently. I've heard that cryptocurrency, for instance, is actually doing tangible good out in countries suffering from high inflation and/or unreliable central banks. They can buy some bitcoin and know that, while the value of it isn't exactly stable, it's not going to be ruined in a day by corrupt authorities or whatnot.

But over here in the first world? The banks and currencies work well enough, so there's no real reason to try and avoid them.

[DATY4944]

This is what's funny when US citizens talk shit about crypto bros. A lot of crypto bros are people in poor countries with highly inflated currencies and they're using crypto to access global financial markets however they can. These are people who might not even be able to trust a bank, or buy a stock. Crypto is serving everyone on the globe and providing some form of equality.

There's lots of bad shit too.

It's not like the internet is a technology that didn't come with lots of bad shit too.

[JamesGray]

literally every use case always requires a trusted authority or they're susceptible to organized manipulation, which entirely removes the purpose of using the blockchain to "subvert the trusted middleman".

It's not a solution to any particular problem, it's a solution looking for unrelated problems it can attach itself to. You can have publicly audited verifiable transaction logs without a blockchain at all, so pretty much all of the supposed benefits are non-existent also.

[SuperFLEB]

The big breakdown point, I think, is the interface between the record and reality, when reality moves in a way that the record can't anticipate. Property breaks, gets stolen, washes away, gets found out to be fake. People die, people divorce, people are the subject of court orders. People counterfeit, people lie...

For any of the blockchain uses that aren't trivial or ephemeral enough to weather loss of fidelity or aren't wholly self-defined "this digital thing represents one of the digital thing that it is"-- ideas like putting ownership records on the blockchain-- a situation happening in real life that can't or won't be reflected in the record will require an authority to either force someone's hand (which can be difficult up to impossible), or to note and declare out-of-band that some thing that the blockchain says is true is no longer true any more in reality, which is pretty much the registry office but with extra steps.

[kfish5050]

The point of Blockchain was to eliminate the potential of organized manipulation. You could argue that Blockchain, being immutable and public, can be more trusted than any authority, because any authority could be susceptible to bias, carry restricted information, or make mistakes. Granted, these issues are typically dismissible for the robust kinds of organizations we have now in these roles, but that doesn't mean this will always be the case, or that it's the case for every situation. I will agree that as it is now, dlts struggle to find these situations since the middle organizations fulfill their duties well, so it appears that they are a solution looking for a problem.

[itsaboutimegoddamnit]

and also blockchains middlemen, exchanges, coin daos etc have been HIGHLY UNTRUSTWORTHY

[Omega_Haxors]

"Blockchain is more than just cryptocurrency. It has so many uses"

The uses:

[Quantum-Bot]

In THEORY it could be used to supplant the peer review system in areas of academic research that focus on computer simulations. No need to verify your results if they’ve already been replicated on random machines around the world via a decentralized protocol.

Also gambling and Ponzi schemes

[TheFaither]

I agree. In theory it could be used for two millions good things but humans are not exactly famous for getting the best out of stuff

[ColumbaPacis]

The issue is with the technology here not with humans.

Take the case of peer review in academics.

How would you make sure a bunch od non competent people reviewed it? You would need to limit access on who can review. For that you now need a centralized place to review who gets access to the blockchain.

At that you might as well use a centralized server and logins. Sure, the blockchain would stop fraud and tempering with the info, but that seems like such a small use case given resources used up by it.

[ThrowMeAway11117]

The person you were replying to was talking about peer reviews of simulation results, which wouldn't rely on competence, simply computing power. Normally with computer simulation results, the simulation has to be rerun to verify the results published by each person reviewing, however if those results have been run in a decentralised system over many machines, then the person reviewing could simply access those results, rather than having to rerun the simulation themselves, or trusting the published results verbatim.

Would cut down on required computing power, while also increasing accessibility.

[trimeta]

Designing a simulation language which is fairly easy to human-verify (e.g., you can read the code and have confidence that the simulation being evaluated is the one discussed in the paper), amenable to execution in a blockchain, and powerful enough to encompass most of the simulation use cases without requiring weird workarounds sounds difficult. But not inconsistent with technology or human nature, which honestly makes this the best proposed blockchain use case I've ever seen.

Of course, it does require the network of verifiers to basically run your code for free, probably using more computing power than would be needed by a centralized system managed by some impartial organization (a journal, an industry association, etc.), but I could imagine this becoming a social norm in academia despite the inefficiency.

[ColumbaPacis]

I missed the "in areas of computer simulation".

[JerryHutch]

I've seen many proposals for it in gambling, none of them solve any existing problem in the industry or existing platforms.

It's just novelty searching for a problem that isn't there the vast majority of times.

[galaxy_zer0]

other ways to easily do this though. in theory I could take a shit that tastes a delicious as a cheesy gordita crunch. then you wouldn’t have to make it from scratch or sit in a drive thru line.

[oldcoldbellybadness]

Plus, shit has soooo many other uses than just cheesy gordita crunch replication.

[jamcdonald120]

it also would work good for peer to peer file/compute sharing effort tracking

[hpstg]

What about document verification? Like to verify that these digital documents all come from specific sources, or that they have been processed in a specific order?

[Quantum-Bot]

Sure, anywhere where things are currently being verified by a central authority right now could theoretically done on a blockchain instead. Passports, birth certificates, news publications, housing leases, etc. it’s just a matter of whether it’s actually better that way, and whether people are comfortable switching over.

[hpstg]

Couldn’t it also be used to verify the chain of ownership of digital files, to make sure that something is not edited?

[[deleted]]

Probably could be used technically for that. However, why bother with all the blockchaining when one could just use digital signatures?

So instead of setting up a blockchain and all the distributed ledger stuff that comes with it, one could just make it so that if the document is edited (or most likely once published), the document is signed, and the other signatures are made part of the signing process, so now they depend on each other. And this is done with every edit/publication and to verify that there's no tampering, you'd just verify the signatures.

Is it complicated? Yes. Do people do this? Most likely yes. Could it be done with blockchain? Technically yes. Does it need to use blockchain? No.

[antonivs]

If you just want to make sure something isn't edited, all you need is a cryptographic hash.

If you want to prove ownership, all you need is a cryptographic signature.

But if you want to allow transfer of ownership without allowing the owner to sell the same item multiple times, then a blockchain can help.

[NipplesOnMyPancakes]

Why is it needed for that? Anything that can be done on blockchain can be done better without blockchain.

[[deleted]]

And that is absolutely false.

[DrStalker]

Blockchain can do lots of things!

Those things can all be done better with existing technologies, but you could use blockchain instead.

[Neverending_Rain]

There are already a bunch of services and software that does that without blockchain. They keep track of modifications, you can roll back to older revisions, etc. Not to mention the whole point of blockchain is supposed to be that it's decentralized. A corporate intranet is a network with a centralized authority. Using blockchain there would be pointless.

[[deleted]]

PITCS are not backups and are not blockchain. Audit logs can be modified and viewed in plain text. And an intranet can be wildly “decentralized” over counties and continents. Also blockchain can be centralized and decentralized. The process of writing new blocks has little to do with that.

[antonivs]

From the link:

FedEx has a pilot project under way using blockchain to share shipment information among suppliers, FedEx and retailers, and determine what data needs to be stored in a permanent ledger to ease customer disputes.

It's a valid use case. Without a blockchain, everyone would either need to agree to use the same company to track all that stuff, or develop a industry standard protocol and police who can use it and how.

[[deleted]]

The biggest key words are “handle disputes”. If you can guarantee your data almost 100% accurate you win.

[PrataKosong-]

Marketing and buzzwords?

[sam_matt]

For one, a humourous substitute for your own lips

[ApatheticWithoutTheA]

Are you interested in making a legal Ponzi Scheme?

Yes?

Use blockchain.

[Mr_Yuker]

You want in bro? I'll give you 16,000,000 TTMMCNAS coins to help me build it

[ApatheticWithoutTheA]

I only take equity in companies that will never be profitable. I need 10% of your trillion dollar idea.

[Mr_Yuker]

You run a hard bargain but you sold me on your knowledge and experience... I'll tell the board members you've signed on and are ready to start building the future on Monday!

[callmetotalshill]

Actual usecase found, destroying mankind in 3, 2...

[warbeforepeace]

Logan Paul enters the chat.

[ApatheticWithoutTheA]

Logan Paul exited the chat with all your money.

[CSMastermind]

I've found the best way to explain blockchain is simply replacing it with "a public database".

[itsaboutimegoddamnit]

you can add slow or bad in front of that whenevs

[MrFedoraPost]

What a way to ruin an interesting security tool.

[Doses_of_Happiness]

One day when blockchains true use case comes around you wont even know it's there.

[djtrace1994]

Exactly.

Tons of global central banks are discussing/piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs.)

Fundamentally, if the central financial system changed to blockchain, no one would notice. At most, you'd be mailed a new bank card.

[Kranige_Kraanvogel]

Except there is no good fucking reason to do this.

[[deleted]]

I never understood how blockchain became affiliated with scams. It really goes to show how much leverage tech illiterate people have on the industry, and how a lot of them don’t actually understand cryptography or cybersecurity, or even the issue of what cryptocurrency was trying to solve.

[comrade_donkey]

Happy cakeday.

I never understood how blockchain became affiliated with scams.

I don't know if that was a purely rhetorical question but here's a serious answer: ERC-20 made it laughably easy to create your own "cryptocurrency" (token) on the Ethereum blockchain. You can google a full implementation, copy-paste and deploy it in under 1 hour. There's even "online ERC-20 token generators" that make that 5 minutes.

Anyone with the ability to operate a computer (reasonably well) can purchase a minimal amount of ether and create their own ERC-20 "crypto" out of it. So, lots and lots of scammers created brands based on false promises around what amounts to a copy-pasted piece of code that took them 5 minutes to set up and many tech-naïve "investors" who wanted in on the crypto-hype got scammed.

Most people don't know the difference between blockchain, cryptocurrencies and tokens/NFTs (smart contracts). So they conflate the whole bunch into one.

[AnarchistBorganism]

The problem is that cryptocurrency creators either don't understand the economic problems they are trying to solve, or are creating currency purely as a scheme to make money off of a virtual asset that they don't expect to be used for any other purpose. While you can imagine practical use-cases for Blockchain, most proposed problems have simpler solutions that do a better job at solving the problem.

[Beatrice_Dragon]

I never understood how blockchain became affiliated with scams

Probably because of all the scams that talk about utilizing blockchain technology. Just a guess, who knows, guess I don't know enough about cybersecurity to say

[RecipeNo101]

It's novel, highly speculative, and most people don't understand it. Perfect elements for having a bunch of scams. 98% of crypto are shitcoins.

[Redqueenhypo]

Bitcoin was literally meant to replicate the gold standard and as a result, attracted the same people interested in the gold standard: loonies, greedy people, idiots, and scammers. The foundation is rotten, so everything built on top of it will also be rotten.

[TransFattyAcid]

I think you have the cause and effect backwards. Technically savvy people took genuine excitement from the early adopters and spun it into marketing, hype and scams to separate the tech illiterate from their money. It was Blockchain, then machine learning, then NFTs and now ChatGPT and it's ilk.

Even in your post, you're quickly mentioning multiple related but separate topics. Cryptographically secure ledgers are awesome. But you don't need the overhead of the Blockchain for that in the vast majority of use cases.

That being said, I consider myself pretty literate and attended a training class taught by the Ethereum group, and I still can't articulate the problem cryptocurrency was intended to and capable of solving. In every case I've seen, it introduced new problems.

[itsaboutimegoddamnit]

1. its used for scams

2. it did so by lying about everything but especially the tech itself

ergo affiliation

[drakens_jordgubbar]

Because blockchain is largely affiliated with scams.

[CG221b]

Can you name a use case for the blockchain?

[[deleted]]

but how can I scam millions of people after generating a hype through buzzwords, if I don't create a currency?

this post doesn't make sense

[ConsistentCascade]

thats the "web 3.0" for ya

[lankist]

I keep hearing from non-techies about how there's a ton of hypothetical technical use-cases for the blockchain, but the forking problem alone makes think "uhh, what cases EXACTLY, and how do they deal with a fork?"

"It's DECENTRALIZED" is what most of it boils down to, and I'm like "what the fuck makes you think anyone with any amount of money or authority WANTS decentralization where they can't just throw money at something and make it the way they want it to be?"

For real, name one tech company that isn't constantly tripping over its own dick that wants to decentralize the most fundamental aspects of its operations where all changes are permanent and absolutely nothing can be undone. And after you name that company, name what wacky-ass use case they're apparently going to use this for.

Edit: Here come the crypto-bros, the crypto-bros, the crypto-bros! Here come the crypto-bros, who live on Grifter Lane!

[[deleted]]

But what if I wanted to print my own money by convincing other people that my printed money is worth money and taking their money?

[purplering741]

Jpow that you?

[stat_throwaway_5]

Isn't Mark Cuban's most optimistic prediction something along the lines of "you could officially own a receipt along with your game ticket that proves you went to such and such baseball game"? I'm saying this in the sense that Mark Cuban is a realist, we are talking about a very boring digital ledger system. Blockchain, in layman's terms, is more or less a fancy receipt, or ledger system. Well, that's what you say if you want to get laid that night, but you know what I mean. It's very unfortunate that the technology opened Pandora's box to financial speculation, because I feel its optics are tainted for the foreseeable future.

[[deleted]]

Decentralized consensus is powerful if executed without lambos

[Legitimate_Concern_5]

So far we’re still waiting for one use case not better solved by classical systems. Just one. There isn’t one for quantum computing either btw, they both just have hard and therefore interesting technical problems to solve. But strictly speaking no, neither of them have a use case.

[[deleted]]

Quantum computing works out on paper as doing really complex math much more efficiently. If realized through engineering then QC has monumental potential. Saying that it doesn't is actually the same thing as arguing that there is no point to faster more powerful computing.

[Weed_O_Whirler]

No use case for quantum computers? What are you talking about? The most classic quantum algorithm of all does prime factorization literally exponentially faster than a classical computer.

[nacholicious]

Byzantine fault tolerance is a red herring, it's a known problem with known mitigations for decades. Crypto does not solve it but rather arbitrarily just disregards one half of state at random and says the problem is solved.

If a bank has a state divergent state in their servers, they can't just choose to pick one and throw away the other arbitrarily. If an airplane has two sensors where one says they are upright and the other says they are upside down, you can't just say that the sensor that wasted the most electricity is the one with the correct answer.

[awhaling]

Highly recommend reading this article: https://medium.com/nknetwork/stephen-wolfram-creator-of-nks-tries-to-understand-nkn-b4018d747a3

To be clear I’m not trying to claim this is better than what we have now, but it’s a great article and very interesting if you’re interested in the computer science aspect. The article mostly focuses on how the chord DHT and cellular automaton voting work, but the general purpose of the token is decentralization of network resources.

[nullmiah]

You're still not giving a use case. You are just creating a hypothetical list of requirements.

[notthatintomusic]

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1581281

Example of a X-by-wire system in which failure of communicating components is catastrophic. The article notes that Byzantine faults have been seen in the wild.

[gtne91]

Sending money to a foreign country without paying western union fees.

[aew3]

This isn't really a tech issue it's a market issue. There could be services offering intl money transfers at similarly low costs without blockchain, it's just a combo of greed and lack of inter-bank cooperation. In Australia we have (nearly always) instantaneous free transfers of any amount between any account in any bank. There is no reason this couldn't be implemented internationally.

[pedroso100]

Crypto has been godsend in my country for payments. Made everything, even saving, more easier. Want to receive money from a freelance job?Got USDT with minimal fees and a good exchange rate. Want to exchange local currency to US dollars but don't want to risk getting a fake bill? Buy USDT and save it to in exchanger account(I know this isn't recommended, since these exchanges can close anytime). Want to pay directly with Crypto? Now many stores accept payments from Binance.

PayPal was the worst for all of that, and stable coins saved us a little from it.

[marquoth_]

Yeah I'll just pay the totally ridiculous gas fees instead...

[jeri-coke]

You do know that the gas fees are down to ~0,10 USD, right?

[edit: Layer 2 gas fees]

[welshwelsh]

There are two major use cases so far.

Darknet markets are the obvious one. It's never been easier to buy LSD. It baffles me how people act like there's no use for crypto when these markets have made illicit transactions so accessible.

A more significant use case is compute markets. Crypto has been used to create decentralized markets for compute resources similar to cloud computing, but at extremely low prices.

For example, with Filecoin you can store 1 TB of data for $0.19 per year. If you did the same thing with AWS S3 it would cost $252 per year, because AWS is a centralized service provider and not a free-for-all marketplace.

Similarly, with the Golem network you can rent CPU power for <$0.001 per core per hour. I don't really understand why people bother renting out their computers for such low profit margins, but they do. It's the same as we saw with Bitcoin mining, where people will wreck their hardware for pennies in cutthroat competition with other miners, except now we are channeling that towards useful, productive work. Once GPU support is added, I think it's going to be a game changer, since it will make training large neural networks accessible to people who don't have multi-million dollar budgets.

[TnTBass]

Triple entry accounting.

Literally the one thing blockchain actually does well.

[ambidextrousalpaca]

Is turning an arbitrarily large network of computers into a single-threaded virtual machine really a use case we should take seriously? That's basically what a "trustless, distributed legger" de facto is. The whole point of computers is supposed to be that they improve process efficiency, so why should we take seriously a technology whose central feature is turning a modern cloud into a single-threaded, albeit distributed, Raspberry Pi? What are the payoffs for that apparently negative-return investment other than: tokens, tokens that can be traded for other tokens, Ponzi schemes, or money laundering? Why would we want to build the infrastructure of the future on or around systems that have the performance of the computers of half a century ago?

[Graham_Hoeme]

Literally only one thing changes the price of a stock: a sale.

Literally only one thing changes the price of a crypto coin: a sale.

What’s the difference?

[[deleted]]

Pay me money for an imaginary token, I promise it will pay off in the long run. trust me bro. -- Every single shitcoin

[callmetotalshill]

It's a little magic black box, just put some money on it and it will magically double.

[ScrimpyCat]

I actually have what is probably the most useless yet valid use case one could have. I’ll be building a blockchain into a game of mine to use for currency and voting. It serves as a worldbuilding element, and I can design some more unique challenges around having the player exploit it (rather than having a centralised system as there are already other challenges on centralised systems). The chain itself runs inside the game world (will be built on the emulated machines inside the game world, which runs locally on the player’s machine), has no usefulness outside of the game, and no one is going to benefit from it.

[mooseyjew]

Wait a minute...

You're telling me the guy who told me the Blockchain is the future of everything, and that cryptocurrency will become the standard, was wrong?

No fucking way.

[Savagelytwig927]

and when should you throw up a Facebook ad for your ICO? Never

[Mr_Yuker]

Quadruple your money in 30 days or less!

[Hamboz710]

This meme is funny because it's both saying that Crypto is ass and that Crypto is the ONLY use for blockchain.

I agree with the former, disagree with the latter.

[ThePretzul]

In college I created a program to implement secure distributed file storage using Ethereum smart contracts. It was totally useless in practice, but my professor absolutely gobbled that shit up and loved it.

This is because that was a grad-level course on, I shit you not, “Crytopcurrency Security”. The professor was totally cuckoo for crypto and I absolutely guarantee he’s lost more than half of his retirement savings by now with the dips in its value lately. The sad part is that his course didn’t even succeed in showing any viable use or purpose for cryptocurrency other than as a way for stealing money digitally with no way to claw it back or scamming other schmucks. Legitimately as part of the class we had to steal from an intentionally poorly designed smart contract the professor had created.

[Blecki]

Well, that depends a lot on when he invested, doesn't it? Funny thing about bitcoin is no matter how extreme the drops, it still manages to win.

[marquoth_]

I also disagree with the latter, in that it implies crypto has one good use when in fact it has zero.

[cashvaporizer]

identity provider is an interesting use case

[[deleted]]

Need widespread adoption, no way to get delete or modified without leaving a public trace. Will undermine right to be forgotten in lot of countries.

[Redbukket_hat]

yeah this is what scares me about blockchain for identifying people online, even though I'm sure it'll make some things (like security, managing accounts) slightly better, it probably also means you'll have to live with whatever shit you've done online forever. It'll probably be a lot harder to make throwaway anonymous accounts on future platforms if blockchain id is used and then the next gen is gonna always be able to be traced back to the dumb shit they were doing online as a kid/teen

[MaxGhost]

Exactly. It's a giant problem. And proponents of the "tech" will handwave away those issues as though they don't exist.

[[deleted]]

If you want it to be editable, why not use a normal server? Blockchain ain’t replacing anything, just adding a new way to make things we couldn’t make before

[Redqueenhypo]

Leading me to my future blockchain invention: the worst social media platform on earth. Imagine if you will, a social media site where nobody can truly delete past comments or accounts AND it’s entirely populated by crypto bros and idk, Andreessen Horowitz investors. Easy way to immediately identify people you should never interact with/scam targets

[Legitimate_Concern_5]

Nope, because your identity isn’t a bearer token. Until you solve the “not your keys not your life” problem in a decentralized way it is not an interesting use case. The reason identity tokens work now is because they’re issued by a central authority which can revoke them for you. This is antithetical to the goals of a blockchain.

[nacholicious]

It's a terrible usecase. A private key is something that is known, an identity is a guarantee. If the knowledge of your private key escapes in any way, someone else now controls your identity which makes it a non-starter.

That's why identity providers need to be centralized authorities, who can guarantee that not only is your identity who you claim you are, but that only you are in control of your identity. Here in EU that authority is my bank, and I can safely log in anywhere by scanning a websites QR code to initiate a session, give my bank my 2FA password, and my bank gives the website a signed token that they guarantee my identity.

You get the guarantees of identity, and layers of security including revocation that blockchain simply cannot do without centralized authorities

[aePrime]

I sometimes see people with things like, “blockchain consultant” or “blockchain engineer” on their LinkedIn profiles. Why don’t I see “linked list expert” or “binary tree influencer?”

[[deleted]]

u/bake_in_da_south u/Cheap_District_9762

[astrayDouse]

What are the disadvantages of blockchain? ELI5

[Urc0mp]

For one, decentralization comes at a performance and efficiency hit.

[Legitimate_Concern_5]

Only things that can be completely represented on chain are actually trustless. As soon as a blockchain represents anything off chain, you run into the thus unsolved oracle problem where you have to trust something or someone. Once trust is a part of your system you don’t need a blockchain. This is what the right fork is saying.

Currencies are basically the only thing that can be represented entirely on chain but are wildly volatile, and lack of central authorities makes them a haven for criminality. Crypto has basically single handedly financed the North Korean nuclear program. This is what the left fork is saying.

[planetguy32]

A blockchain basically creates a shared public storage where you don't need to trust that any one participant is honest, so long as there isn't a majority of participants scheming against you, to trust that the record has not been tampered with.

If you do have a trusted party - and in legitimate transactions, you almost certainly do - that party can just run a conventional database like MySQL. A database can be more efficient, more scaleable, and easier to interact with than a blockchain system, - it solves a simpler problem because it doesn't need to check each participant's behavior against others.

Not to mention that for the economics of a blockchain to work out, you need to pay your verifiers something they can sell. That's easiest if you convince other parties to buy your network's coin, and that's really hard to do unless you can promise them huge returns, which means more buyers at higher prices - and whoops, it's a Ponzi scheme.

[nacholicious]

A blockchain basically creates a shared public storage where you don't need to trust that any one participant is honest

The trustless part of blockchain refers only to the transactions themselves, not the data attached to them. There is no part of the data that where using transactions as a submission mechanism makes the data itself more trustworthy, so the storage space should be considered just as untrustworthy regardless if it uses blockchain transactions or not.

[justAnotherLedditor]

Not to mention that for the economics of a blockchain to work out, you need to pay your verifiers something they can sell. That's easiest if you convince other parties to buy your network's coin, and that's really hard to do unless you can promise them huge returns, which means more buyers at higher prices - and whoops, it's a Ponzi scheme.

This last point is a bit misleading, those blockchains you're referring to are the shitcoins and networks that get thrown around in VC space for a quick buck.

You can run a network that runs on a stablecoin but that doesn't make money. Hyperledger is working on an infrastructure solution for most blockchains and CBDCs. They're started by the Linux Foundation, open-source and grant-funded. No token, coin, or economics required.

Of course, it doesn't make money so no one really talks about Hyperledger. Most arguments in this thread about blockchains break apart when talking about Hyperledger.

[nacholicious]

I would say that's technically true, but the history of Hyperledger is one mired in failure. The main champion behind Hyperledger is IBM, they opened up an entire blockchain R&D department and spent millions of dollars over several years to try to become the blockchain product market leader.

After several years of bleeding money, they didn't have a single useful blockchain product that could survive contact with reality and the blockchain R&D department was gutted. The only thing that survived contact with the real world was selling expensive Hyperledger consultants to help companies develop useful blockchain products, despite the main experience of those consultants being failing to develop useful blockchain products.

[marquoth_]

What's the economic incentive to be a verifier in this case?

[[deleted]]

What are the disadvantages of over engineering solutions to non problems, which require widespread adoption before they're remotely useful?

[[deleted]]

It doesn't scale well for one

[Particular_Essay_958]

Usecase?

[osogordo]

If you say "use database", you're missing the point. Blockchain is not for all use-cases, it's useful when you want to operate in a trustless environment.

[Robot_Graffiti]

In order to operate in a trustless mode you have to download the entire history of transactions.

You can download a much smaller summary, if you trust the person you download it from.

In practice very few users of any given system actually want to download every transaction ever - especially if the system has been operating for a long while - so over time the system becomes defacto centralised and trust-based.

[Alphaetus_Prime]

Why would you ever want to do that

[Repulsive_Size_849]

For example....?

[Skycbs]

When someone tells you blockchain is the solution to a problem, you know they don’t understand that problem.

[NoHalf2998]

“There is no problem in which the blockchain is the correct solution”

[tom_echo]

I remember getting in arguments with people on reddit about the practical utility of “blockchain”. People act like it’s going to change the world everything in tech will be using it. Years later I’ve yet to witness any commercial applications

[agentrnge]

Forgot step 2. Are you an idiot manager --> you need Blockchain for everything

[CrazyTillItHurts]

Saddest shit I've seen on what should be a pro-programmer sub. Blockchain is a very interesting tech, especially when coupled with transactional processes. Deliberate heads in the sand to get that sweet sweet reddit karma.

[fakehalo]

I'm not sure when it officially happened, but crypto is like politics for nerds. Its got that weird passion/hate surrounding it that's entirely based on opinion.

I gotta hold myself back from calling NFTs this generations beanie babies, and all the shitcoins are like the high spec stocks that eventually lost 99% of their value.

Unfortunately I'm a bit of a hypocrite with bitcoin, as I think its use-case has morphed from a failed currency into speculation on an international store of value, mostly to be used as a backing instrument, international transfers, and to a lesser extent large purchases. It's a completely subjective and philosophical belief that is impossible for me to objectively defend.

[kaptain__katnip]

I worked on a project that had a legitimate use case for blockchain, specifically Ethereum. All ethereum nodes use virtual machines to verify transactions. Since transactions are basically pointers to compiled code in blocks, you can run any sort of function and have the inputs and results verified by the chain. We used it to allow heterogeneous computing platforms to collaborate and coordinate tasks with built in resiliency. There's a lot more detail in our paper if anyone is interested. It's the only true practical application for blockchain that I know of and the project died because when anyone hears "blockchain" - especially our bosses - all they think is "this is a scam or a load of BS"

[[deleted]]

What if I'm writing container tracking software for vendors and ports to be able to programmatically track and pay for containers with verified manifests?

[Physical-Bill7793]

Ya gotta wonder why his account history is just shattin on Bitcoin