Blockchain is just a ledger. Most systems don’t need a ledger, they need a database. It was a solution looking for a problem in most cases and the marketing/business types don’t listen to the engineers if the engineers are even in the room.
Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by TehBamski@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
halloween_spookster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
it does still hold value, but the value is super niche and generally shouldn’t be exposed to the user… it’s an implementation detail
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
If I understood it correctly, the main problem it can solve is lack of trust. If the involved parties can’t find a single authority to trust, they can use a blockchain instead.
Finding cases like that is a bit tricky. For example, you trust your ISP, your bank, maybe even your government… to some extent… They’re not your best friend, nor do they have to be. You can still trust them enough to take care of certain jobs. You pay your ISP via bank transfer, and they provide the service you signed up for. As long as there’s just enough trust, the system still works and there’s no need to use a blockchain.
Same goes for banks. Most people trust that the bank isn’t going to run away with your money. As long as that trust exists, there’s no need to use a blockchain.
scytale@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Not an expert, but IMO, it’s because it was misused. Cryptocurrency is just one application of blockchain technology, but people equated blockchain to crypto, and crypto was turned into an investment scheme instead of an actual currency. Then came NFTs, which people turned into rugpull scams. And news of the volatility of cryptocurrency and all those NFT scams drove away any chance of regular people adopting anything blockchain-related.
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Turned out that those in control of the tech could control the tech, so contrary to the hype nothing was free, decentralized and scalable. Never.
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The money behind the hype went into “AI” instead
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I’ve also heard the theory before that even GPUs went pretty much straight from mining cryptocurrencies to then be used for training LLM models.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
AI became the new buzzword
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
So whenever there’s a new tech innovation, there are two instances of it.
The first is the actual tech innovation, that often finds a specific use in a few industries, then just becomes part of how things are.
The second is the venture capitalist innovation. It has nothing to do with the technical stuff (as long as the tech is complex enough to impress the average 5th grader). It’s more a concept or an idea, and a lot of big promises of unending potential. And as soon as the potential is there, stock prices go up. And that’s the only point.
The second one blows up big, then deflates quietly when the next thing takes everyone’s attention away. The actual tech innovation usually just finds its niche and quietly chugs away.
Any time anybody talks about a “tech revolution” or some similar word vomit, they’re presenting the second thing. Currently we’re on “AI” (i.e. LLMs), which will become a niche novelty when the next big thing comes along (I give it a few more years).
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Currently we’re on “AI” (i.e. LLMs), which will become a niche novelty when the next big thing comes along (I give it a few more years).
I think llms are overhyped. But at the same time, their two main uses are “better google” and porn, both of which I would hardly describe as “niche”.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
They’re here to stay. But things are ridiculous with every chat app adding AI companions or jetpack for wordpress begging me to generate an AI image
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
AI is the new crypto, crypto sitll here but its largely used by shady people and conservatives love to invest in a scam.
Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
With the recent payment provider shenanigans I wonder if crypto could somehow have its revival among normal people.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
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It’s actively transforming global agriculture. While the USA failed to innovate Canada has integrated blockchain into it’s agricultural sector to facilitate unparalleled trackability.
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Blockchain transactions are painfully slow compared to other payment processers. BTC is only 7 transactions a second. VISA handles 65,000 transactions per second.
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Crypto currency isn’t backed by a nation’s GDP; which is effectively the mechanism that gives money value. However USA just passed laws recategorizing crypto issuers as financial institutions; that must comply with regulations such as having a % of their liabilities(crypto) as collateral (Cash). So we shall see where things go.
hisao@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Crypto currency isn’t backed by a nation’s GDP
Stablecoins? USDT is the most traded crypto globally since 2019.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Well the value of the USD is based on the bond market which is essentially based on USA’s GDP.
I’m not saying stable coins don’t exist. I’m explaining the fundamental valuation difference between crypto and national currencies.
Also traded /= transacted. In the context of OPs question, the existance of stable coins has not pushed the needle on crypto from a trading asset to liquid transactable colloqueal currency.
kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Canada didn’t integrate blockchain into agriculture on a whole. The article you linked was a pilot study.
dhork@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
VISA handles 65,000 transactions per second. That’s one of the major reasons we’re not seeing more widespread adoption.
I thought they were gonna fix that by running a bunch of bar tabs
Ziggurat@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
It’s actively transforming global agriculture. While the USA failed to innovate Canada has integrated blockchain into it’s agricultural sector to facilitate unparalleled traceability.
This example is a nice summary of the issue with block chain. Sure it can be done with block chain.
However, is it really doing it better than SAP or whatever large corporate program used to do it? Is there an ecosystem of thousands of specialised consultant that will tailor a solution for your need? Most managers tends to be conservative with tech, they want a brand they know (Microsoft, SAP) wich can provide a support contract and be sued, and with sales-person wearing a tie. The cryptobros and theirs block chain based startup do not match.
Ziggurat@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
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yarr@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
It’s still out there and going amazing!!! Despite the lack of mainstream media coverage, blockchain and smart contacts couldn’t be doing better.
On an unrelated topic, does anyone want to buy some NFTs? I can give you a really good deal. No take-backs, though.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
From what I’ve heard, the biggest problem is the inputs. You can write a ‘smart’ contract that says ‘if I get a pizza, user9000005 pays user30000004 XXX bitcoins’ but there’s no direct sensor for ‘user9000005 has a pizza.’ Someone has to manually put it in. At that point, it’s not automated. It’s just a payment processor with way less certainty, so why bother?
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why less certainty? It’s more certain and less censorable than any other digital payment method.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
It’s harder to doctor, but that’s not really the big worry with a contract. Contract disputes are usually more along the lines of ‘he didn’t pay me’ or ‘she didn’t deliver the goods.’ It’s much rarer for it to be an ‘I signed a contract that said BLAH, but they forged a contract to say BLAGH and faked my signature on it.’ As for censorship, I’m not sure what you mean. A government would find it difficult to obscure an on-chain contract but that’s also not really an issue. I don’t want to guess what you mean.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Yeah, there’s this whole concept of “Oracles”, which were supposed to be trustable sources for facts, but they can mainly deal well with things like stock prices or weather data.
It would also have been possible for these Oracles to employ people to fact-check things in case of a dispute. So, user30000004 might claim that the pizza has been delivered and wants their money for it, while user9000005 says nothing got delivered, so then you have someone physically drive out to user9000005 and see if there’s pizza there or not.
But yeah, you still have the problem that a pizza isn’t hard to hide/eat, so you’d need to do some expensive detective work to try to figure out the truth. And that just isn’t worth the cost…
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Expensive and useless. Decentralization was an illusion and they don’t solve any real problems
SomethingBlack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
To call it useless is just untrue. There are many possibilities, Crypto is just a black hole eating the hype and funding that would otherwise go into valuable tech
IncogCyberspaceUser@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Also, NFTs. Wasn’t there a supposed use case for contract authenticity or something?
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Oh that? It was bullshit just like AI.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Nothing because it was all bullshit because the underlying technology is just fundamentally flawed.
This isn’t news, lots of people always saw this when Bitcoin came out, but tech bro’s kept pushing it right until AI came out, then the completely forgot it ever existed
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Out of those I only know blockchain being used in spain as a way to ensure legality of accounting books, and that business are not commiting fraud by deleting invoices. Not in a public ledger or anything, just a hashed chain that they need to send to irs equivalent.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Things are still happening, it’s just slow to adopt.
E.g.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The vast majority of it was driven by speculation and outright scams. The few who were genuinely trying to make a currency couldn’t make something competitve with existing systems, as they all ended up with the same problems and then some. Usually, blockchain based systems are very slow, expensive, centralized (in who has control over it), hard to regulate, and insecure.
N0t_5ure@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s in the same place as those NFTs that sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s being used for what it’s very good at. That means very little applications (although there are some), on a different scale, and certainly nothing that can promise a quick buck for free. Basically, empty promises just farted out.
Most of the real world usage were bogus, either because they did not actually work as advertised, or because they had lots of negative properties for businesses (imagine a system that would try to prevent fraud if done well… nobody wants that). There’s also the issue that a lot of “funky, interesting stuff”, once you filtered out the bad and the ugly, were just… less efficient, less useful versions of what we already used to do.
There are still people clinging to it (and the recent fuckery in the US might revive that… although for all the bad reasons), but the press moved forward to the next thing.
Sineljora@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Idk, they’re currently in use at financial companies and adoption is increasing. There’s still a lot of regulatory uncertainty though.
Etterra@discuss.online 3 weeks ago
They were desperately waiting for you to figure those enough promises and now that AI has dominated the narrative, they’ve either skunk off to try and get in on that, or finally just cut their losses and tried to rebuild their ruined lives.
MITM0@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
AI has taken the spotlight, but this is a good thing.
BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately distributed ledger software never seemed to get used for what it should given the crypto craze.
spongebue@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And what exactly should it have been used for?
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
really anything with a centralized database, especially multiple databases. The name itself. Distributed ledger. Says what it does. shipping in regards to supply chain management where all parties can trace without everyone have to have it all on their own databases and thing like customers can know details without having to access the companies databases. same with verification of information like health records or content. Its like having a record of authenticity
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Money got involved and fucked everything up.
As usual.
bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Its in the cloud
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
I don’t know. But apparently “fintech” is still a thing - or at least there are ghost job descriptions for it.
hisao@ani.social 3 weeks ago
I personally think what they do for general audience is way too niche and it all starts to make sense when you massively decentralize and switch to crypto for everything regarding money. Now do we see a massive surge in big P2P decentralized systems for end-users? I don’t see it. There are few alternatives for some chat apps here and there and that’s it. So maybe it’s just too early. Prime time of this tech is yet to come. If someone builds a huge P2P cryptopowered platform level of Steam or YouTube that’s when you should expect to hear about all this stuff solving real problems.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It doesn’t have the backing of a powerful government unlike fiat does, so its effectively worthless in the eyes of the average person.
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Vaporware turns out to be vapor. Shocking.
grey_maniac@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
trackerware corporations couldn’t maintain their monetization stranglehold