Blockchains are an incredible technology. It is obvious that their first attempted uses are contractual and monetary, because blockchain guarantees can make things better fastest in those arenas. The unfortunate part is it doesn't seem like anyone has really figured out the how yet.
I am reminded of the Web, Amazon was the first company to really "get" e-commerce and made all the money - there will likely be a similar story with blockchains 10 years from now.
My point? There are many incredible technologies, but not all are "secret weapons" that justify a seismic industry shift. Not all are suitable or able to upend existing technologies.
Fitness of purpose is contextual. Some of the most amazing innovations in computer science cannot be captured by one industry. Most do not lead to widespread disruption.
We're already 14 years in. Where is the evidence it can make anything better? Why hasn't the amazon thing happened in the last ten years of blockchain?
To be fair, Amazon didn't hit their stride as a retailer until the 2000s, roughly 20 years after the internet's "big bang" date.
And while we're 14 years into distributed ledger technology, we're only 7 years into turing-complete distributed ledger technology, which I would argue is the actual innovation.
I don't understand setting the internet "big bang" date somewhere in the 80s.
The big bang was the web which was at least 1990-1993 (CERN says 1993). In 1990-1993 and beyond for the next few years a tiny portion of US households even had a computer that was capable (modem, etc) of getting on the internet/web. Arguably until AOL it was also extremely expensive. When I got on the internet it was with an inflation adjusted $5000 computer, per minute long distance toll charges, and paying an ISP (also by the minute).
For the entirety of the existence of blockchain we've had ubiquitous broadband, social media, smartphones with always available data, etc. The conditions for the first 14 years of the web were vastly different and disadvantaged compared to the last 14 years in which blockchain has had plenty of time, audience, etc for widespread adoption and yet it still hasn't happened.
> blockchain has had plenty of time, audience, etc for widespread adoption
Blockchains have been in a dial-up era. Bitcoin only supports balance transfers and has a hard-coded throughput limit of 1 Megabyte every 10 minutes (1990s modem speeds), and that effectively represented the state of the art of blockchain technology for 6 years. Until 2015, you couldn't even run a simple script on a blockchain (I don't count Bitcoin's extremely limited stack-based language).
The official 1983 birthday of the internet is very much analogous to the 2009 birthday of the blockchain. It was the "spark moment" where the tech was there but extremely limited, and thereafter was a long "dead period" where it didn't do much for a long time as it waited for the world to catch on. Then 10 years later in 1993, the underlying internet technology saw its first really useful framework built on top, the web. 7 years later in 2015, the underlying blockchain technology saw its first really useful framework built on top, a turing-complete programming language. It would take the web another 20 years until the 2000s to build its first true killer apps, and I predict that blockchain's true killer apps (e.g. an Uber killer) won't be seen until the late 2020s to early 2030s.
> Arguably until AOL it was also extremely expensive. When I got on the internet it was with an inflation adjusted $5000 computer, per minute long distance toll charges, and paying an ISP (also by the minute).
Until layer-2 technologies (conceived ~2017 and still maturing), blockchains were also extremely expensive, peaking at tens of dollars for a simple transaction or hundreds for a more complex one. When I first interacted with a blockchain it was through a heavy client that downloaded tens of gigabytes of data to my computer, extremely low network bandwidth for transactions, zero hardware support for key management, one shady exchange that required international money transfers, and effectively zero support for publishing code on the blockchain. That's all changed now.
> For the entirety of the existence of blockchain we've had ubiquitous broadband, social media, smartphones with always available data, etc. The conditions for the first 14 years of the web were vastly different and disadvantaged compared to the last 14 years in which blockchain has had plenty of time, audience, etc for widespread adoption and yet it still hasn't happened.
The internet was a technology built on the progression of hardware and software tech; blockchains are built much more on progression of software tech. Blockchains as a framework need to get good enough to be able to support killer apps; they are not good enough today, but they are in intensive development along straightforward roadmaps to alleviate a lot of the pain points.
Public auditing software that transparently shows how government or charity funds are being spent in real time - from the incoming tax proceeds, through each agency and department, down to (when appropriate) every individual purchase, with each transaction digitally signed by a person who could be held accountable.
If you are comparing the state of the internet in 1983 (calling it the "big bang" because TCP/IP was standardized!!!) and equating it to the release of a software client that could be downloaded and run in 2009 I'm not sure that we can have a rational debate on this.
The US Census didn't even track /access to a computer/ until 1984[0], at which point roughly 18% of the US population had "access" to a computer either at home or at work. Note that "access to a computer" != access to the internet. At the end of 1985 there were 2,000 total hosts on the internet[1]. You can't even find internet usage statistics until the early-mid 1990s at best because it was almost exclusively a tiny network of government and academia.
If you are comparing blockchain transaction costs peaking at tens or hundreds of dollars to a minimum several thousand dollar investment and (at least for me) internet access prices of roughly $3 per minute[2] as late as 1994 I'm not sure that we can have a rational debate on this.
If we are comparing technical complexity I'll take early blockchain over serial ports, Hayes commands, CHAT scripts, PPP/SLIP, installing your own TCP/IP stack, etc any day of the week. Note that if you were doing any of this in the 1980s/1990s you were either stumbling through it or flipping through pages in a book. For any technical challenges of blockchain it's always been a Google search away.
If you are comparing the state of software development from 2009 - 2015/2017 to the first 10 years of the internet I'm not sure we can have a rational debate on this. Needless to say because of the maturity and ubiquity of the internet and the software ecosystem, etc and the efficiencies it enabled by 2009 the situation each of these technologies matured in cannot even be compared.
If we're being extremely generous the five years (from 2017 - present) and tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested in blockchain is more than enough for some kind of application or use case to have emerged to trigger mass adoption. Yet here we are with a tiny fraction (1% at best) of the five billion people on the internet having anything to do with blockchain.
> If you are comparing the state of the internet in 1983 (calling it the "big bang" because TCP/IP was standardized!!!) and equating it to the release of a software client that could be downloaded and run in 2009 I'm not sure that we can have a rational debate on this.
In 1983 the TCP/IP internet protocol was standardized, but so nascent as to be basically useless. In 2009 the Bitcoin internet protocol was standardized, but so nascent as to be basically useless.
Because both are internet protocols, they are directly comparable in some ways.
> The US Census didn't even track /access to a computer/ until 1984[0], at which point roughly 18% of the US population had "access" to a computer either at home or at work. Note that "access to a computer" != access to the internet. At the end of 1985 there were 2,000 total hosts on the internet[1]. You can't even find internet usage statistics until the early-mid 1990s at best because it was almost exclusively a tiny network of government and academia.
Usage of Bitcoin wasn't tracked during its early days. Note that "access to bitcoin" is not the same thing as being able to use it safely, which for less-technical users wasn't until the advent of licensed exchanges (such as Coinbase) and hardware wallets in 2012-2014. You can't even find node or participation data before about 2015 because it was almost exclusively a tiny network of cryptography and civil rights enthusiasts.
> If you are comparing blockchain transaction costs peaking at tens or hundreds of dollars to a minimum several thousand dollar investment and (at least for me) internet access prices of roughly $3 per minute[2] as late as 1994 I'm not sure that we can have a rational debate on this.
In order to take advantage of those sometimes hundreds-of-dollars DeFi transactions, you need to do a ton of prerequisite research so that you know how to safely manage keys and seed phrases, avoid scams, grant contracts no more access to your wallet than required, set gas prices, know what to do if a transaction gets stuck, and know the relative level of reliability and software maturity of each crypto network, for starters. For most people that requires a time investment of hundreds of hours or more, or dozens of hours at best if they are already tech savvy with a basic understanding of cryptography. It might as well be an amount of money (and people do end up "paying tuition" sometimes by falling victim to lost keys, scams, pump and dumps, etc).
Today, the internet doesn't require thousands in hardware and $3 per minute - you can buy a cheap phone and pop a cheap sim card in. I believe crypto will eventually reach this level of maturity, where grandma can execute a DeFi transaction cheaply, safely, and reliably - just as easy as clicking "confirm" on a web page.
> If you are comparing the state of software development from 2009 - 2015/2017 to the first 10 years of the internet I'm not sure we can have a rational debate on this. Needless to say because of the maturity and ubiquity of the internet and the software ecosystem, etc and the efficiencies it enabled by 2009 the situation each of these technologies matured in cannot even be compared.
1983 to 1993 as the internet's "spark period" (progress at the protocol layer) and 1993 to 2009 as its blossoming at the application layer.
2009 to 2025 as the blockchain's "spark period" (progress at the protocol layer - major upgrades to the Ethereum roadmap extend roughly this far), and 2025+ as its blossoming at the application layer.
> If we're being extremely generous the five years (from 2017 - present) and tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested in blockchain is more than enough for some kind of application or use case to have emerged to trigger mass adoption. Yet here we are with a tiny fraction (1% at best) of the five billion people on the internet having anything to do with blockchain.
As of June 2022:
> According to data acquired by Finbold, about 10.2% of the global population using the internet owns some form of cryptocurrency (as per a survey carried in Q3, 2021 and published on January 26, 2022). Thailand accounts for the highest share at 20.1%, followed by Nigeria at 19.4%, a similar percentage to Philippine users. United States users rank in the 14th spot with a share of 12.7%. [1]
That's a figure of 10.2% of global internet users, so if you think only "1% at best" have anything to do with blockchain, then I'm "not sure that we can have a rational debate on this." In America, the figure is 56%! [2]
You plucked that 2017 date as "the date that blockchains are now scalable", but that's not exactly fair. That was the conception date of rollup tech - when someone first documented the idea to structure a chain in that way. Rollups are still not mature as of today - their date of full maturity is likely to be closer to 2024 (or 2025-2026 for the zk proof variety).
In the end, it's not a race and the exact timeline doesn't matter all that much. The important point to take in is that blockchain technology is still progressing at a very fast pace, and the tech will be able to do a lot more another five years from now than it's able to do today (and I am always happy to discuss the exact technical changes that are being made).
None of what I said seems irrational to me, and I think you are being unfair to the discussion process by categorically dismissing my arguments as such.
Usage of bitcoin statistics are available since epoch. Blockchain advocates always seem to forget about the public nature of blockchain when I bring up adoption. Look at a blockchain explorer. It’s all right there.
Your references to the UI/UX nightmare that still is blockchain only further highlight my points.
The surveys are hilarious. Setting up an account on Coinbase with an email address to trade on their internal order book has nothing to do with blockchain. It could just as easily be swapping virtual poker chips on a gambling website. Yet in a survey that counts as “blockchain”.
I generously “plucked” 2017 because that’s what you put forth as a best-case date to start triggering adoption. Yet here we are.
Timeline matters (though not a race) because blockchain is a doomsday preacher - “it’s about to happen” and then it never does.
Amazon’s book unit was profitable within a couple of years (say by the time Clinton was re-elected), and that pattern continued for each business line. They invested all of the profits in expansion so “analysts” would say they were doomed but anyone who looked at the numbers could see they could report a profit any time they wanted by halting expansion.
Comparisons to the internet timeframes are hard to make because there’s a key difference: computers were expensive and slow, and network connectivity was very limited. The Apple II was a major advance in accessibility and that brought the price down to roughly the equivalent of $6k today - and you still needed to buy a monitor and modem to get online! This is a huge contrast to the way blockchains have been basically globally available since day one.
It’s also worth noting that the internet and the web are not the same. While the latter’s popularity depended on things which weren’t available earlier like GUIs, better displays, etc. that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plenty of people paying for network access before then. There were clear uses of value to many people – people loved email, software downloads beat shipping floppies by mail and led to the shareware business model, services provided access to information like real-time stock quotes, etc. - and profitable businesses existed before the web came along. If memory serves, the first wedding from an online relationship happened in the late 70s, too, so it’s not like people were only paying for business reasons.
The contrast with cryptocurrencies is substantial: many people saw the value, it was just a question of whether they could afford it and as soon as prices dropped waves of people came online and never left. Blockchain apps have had enormous investment but there hasn’t been anything like that other than speculation on whether a number will go up. It’s been quite noticeable that none of the people who’ve asked me for tech advice for years have ever asked about a blockchain tech or mentioned using one except the guy who likes trading penny stocks instead of going to casinos.
> computers were expensive and slow, and network connectivity was very limited
Blockchains have been expensive and slow, and functionality was very limited.
When Bitcoin launched, you couldn't run turing-complete scripts, it only supported balance transfers. It had a hard-coded 1 Megabyte per 10 minutes throughput limit (slower than dial-up). There were no transaction privacy tools.
That has been changing. The first turing-complete chain, Ethereum, was launched in 2015. It launched a sustainable consensus model in 2020, and switched over to it ("merged") in 2022. Private smart contract support came in 2020-2021, with projects like SCRT and Aztec. Layer-2 scaling technology is just beginning to hit its stride this year, with several competing companies. Still on the base layer roadmap is single-slot finality, data availability sampling to expand the chain's storage capacity, zero-knowledge-proof based VMs to expand its execution throughput, and state and history expiry to automatically prune it.
Once all of those technologies are complete and have had a chance to mature (much like dial-up matured into broadband), I expect blockchains to look more attractive for certain applications.
I was responding specifically the implicit assumption that the timeframes can be directly compared — since things happened on different scales, that doesn't make sense especially when you're comparing different things. The number of people using the internet changed as a function of reasonable speed/price connectivity becoming available where they lived so the process was a lot slower than shipping an update to a blockchain network because it involved things like getting permits and deploying crews to install cables.
That said, even if you want to ignore Bitcoin, things like Ethereum still are lagging far behind — if that network shut off tomorrow, nobody not involved in selling tokens would notice. The same would not have been true of the web 7 years, or even 2 years, after it launched because tons of people were using it for things unrelated to selling web services.
It's certainly possible that at some point some level of functionality will make it more attractive but I suspect that this will involve rolling back parts of the current sales pitch and that will unfavorably affect the cost relative to other models like distributed ledgers or standard APIs.
> the process was a lot slower than shipping an update to a blockchain network
The process of creating a system for private, energy efficient smart contract transactions took 12 years. To make them scalable and foolproof for the general public will likely take another 5-10 years.
Blockchain updates are less like the process of laying physical cable, more like the process of building up a very large piece of software with lots of moving parts, like an operating system. They both require a lot of effort, but with laying cables the effort is physical and legal whereas with operating systems (and blockchain platforms) the effort is heady and research-oriented.
We've seen that shipping an update to a blockchain network can be extremely slow indeed, if that update requires a lot of R&D.
My home state passed a law allowing me to pay taxes in bitcoin as well, there was the Ecuador thing.
The hydraulics behind financial movements take decades to really shift, and I still regularly use crypto when sending or receiving money from international friends because international payments are a cartelized mess.
Investment dollars cannot make regulatory and social shifts happen sooner.
Decentralized ledgers are very different because they reuse existing trust relationships - that’s why they’re so much more efficient and safe to use.
This is an important point to understand because when cryptocurrency salespeople use those experiments as examples of real-world adoption they don’t spell out the connection — fully aware that if the Fed sets up a distributed ledger, it won’t have a step which involves making Bitcoin holders wealthy.
> My home state passed a law allowing me to pay taxes in bitcoin as well,
Do they actually accept bitcoin or do they just convert it into hard currency first? For example, when Colorado did this they implemented it by using PayPal and converting to USD at the time of the transaction so it’s like paying with a credit card including the single vendor charging a processing fee.
> there was the Ecuador thing.
Yes. Specifically the one where people protested against it, most people never use it, and the country has lost most of the money it put in? You were going to mention that, right?
The biggest reason is social, or occasionally legal. There are tons of barriers in place to getting the legal system to agree that smart contracts are legitimate - which creates a barrier to real world, because regulators of real world business want to see contracts and legal language. (And you can't get away from if if you're operating a physical store with physical employees)
The only group that has managed to beat this was early Uber, and their political lobbying arm was legendary.
I am reminded of the Web, Amazon was the first company to really "get" e-commerce and made all the money - there will likely be a similar story with blockchains 10 years from now.