Introduction
The blockchain technology is the core concept behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But cryptocurrencies are only one possi...
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Thanks for sharing, Damien! It's interesting to read about the potential of blockchain from someone who actually seems to understand what's going on. I've spent some time reading articles on the how and why of the blockchain and though I can't claim to fully understand the technology, I'm slowly getting the gist of it.
The potential of blockchain technology seems huge, but do you think it already has made an impact on society right now?
And are there any risks in using blockchain technology? For example, It feels like so few people have a grasp on the workings of it, that it seems almost trivial for people to capitalize on the hype around the word and the lack of knowledge of others. Just a thought!
I think I agree on the last thought. Cryptocurrencies gained a lot of attention and it’s obvious a lot of people don’t fully understand what’s going on. They see it as a quick way to make money, and it looks like a lot of them don’t realise they could actually lose a lot. I mean, Coinbase even send an email to its users recently warning them to ‘invest responsibly’.
As far as the impacts on society, I don’t think they are that big so far. One of the problems seems to be that blockchain doesn’t scale so well. You may have heard about the amount of energy needed by the bitcoin blockchain to validate its blocks. Potential is huge, but some problems will have to be solved first I believe. And one of them is absolutely educating people on what this technology can and cannot do.
The cryptocurrencies example is quite disappointing to me. It looks like a potential alternative money is just another speculative tool that just consumes a shit ton of energy. On the cryptocurrencies front, it appears we went completely backwards.
Thanks for sharing. It's interesting to get some more insight into where this is heading. I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels slightly disappointed by the unkept promise of cryptocurrency.
Very interesting, I was totally waiting to read about different usages of decentralized ledgers, thanks!
I've actually been in part of the consultations around use case 6 in the UK. The timeline is definitely 10+ years however the land registry is 100% backing this movement which I was completely staggered by when first attending the meetings.
It's going to be a huge programme of work but the attitude towards it from those involved in it's mobilisation definitely points to this use case being fulfilled.
Watch this space.
That's interesting. I always thought this case would be exclusively developed in poorer countries first. Do you know what triggered this in the UK? Or was it just a simple realisation that blockchain could really be a better way to do things?
Without divulging too much detail as I don't have my notes to hand it was primarily the cost savings. The UK is still using hugely manual processes and processing. I'll add further info once I'm home.
coindesk.com/uk-land-registry-plan...
The blockchain can also enable new kinds of games:
CryptoKitties is a game, where you breed and trade kittens. Each one is unique and its ancestry can be determined via the blockchain.
I disagree with your ideas on cryptocurrency. Having a native token in a blockchain to reward miners for both: a) processing transactions b) safeguarding against double spends are absolutely crucial. A "blockchain" amongst 12 private banks, is no more than a shared central database, except the fact that they put it on-chain is going to make it wayyyyy less efficient. You can find more here: ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/05/02/152...
I feel like, for any application of the technology, there needs to be widespread interest and not targeted usage. With a small number of parties interested in processing transactions, you'd likely end up with one entity with too large of a share to make the system trust-able.
I haven't heard anything about that French management school, but "Marseille-Management-School-Coin"(TM) sounds like something only that French Management School would be interested in processing transactions for. You end up taking their word on it - which you would otherwise so using blockchain doesn't provide any benefits and is just a gimmick.
What you'd need is a large number of schools processing transactions for DiplomaCoin(TM), which then guarantees trust to a degree larger than any one (or two) of the entities could achieve alone.
And then, you have scaling to worry about. What is super annoying about this use case is that schools have a large number of students all graduating simultaneously 3 times per year (end of fall, spring, summer semesters). So there's the concern of overloading the system at those times.
And it sounds like a lot of the examples have the same problem of a single or very few parties interested in processing transactions -> blockchain is only a gimmick for these examples.
I think inter-bank lending would be a good use, lots of interested parties, not too many transactions.
EDIT: Looked up the number of students who graduate per year, it's 3.5 million. If we assume the 8 transactions/second standard then it would only take 5 days to process those. I think that's reasonable - although I'm not sure what universities could achieve in terms of transactions/second.
EDIT2: ~3.5 million/year for US schools alone, for all associates/bachelors/masters/doctoral.
Very nice article!! Thanks for sharing