Uses of blockchain other than cryptocurrency that just came to my mind, some are already functioning or being introduced:
Decentralized, trustless, uncensorable domains that don’t require kyc to purchase.
Decentralized, trustless, uncensorable replacement for certificate authorities that can’t be hacked as easily as CAs can.
Decentralized, trustless, uncensorable server for small data like pgp signing keys, torrent magnet links, file hashes, static websites, code etc.
Decentralized, uncensorable, distributed way to store archival information or historical records like weather data, government document records, wikipedia edit history, book versions. Anything that shouldn’t change or is in danger of getting censored.
Automated financial markets open to the public through tokenization like stocks, bonds, commodities all settled on chain without 3rd parties.
Trustless on-chain contracts/smart contracts that will execute automatically or can be proven without a notary.
Decentralized, uncensorable, trustless identity system
No. Domains can be seized and blocked by countries via dns blocklists, anna’s archive just lost one of their domains recently, so has z-library, the pirate bay… European governments have been forcing isps to introduce dns blocklists for the websites they don’t like. Certificate authorities have been hacked before, can be coerced by governments to perform MITM attacks and require trust. The only reason why certificates are even remotely accessible to regular people is thanks to EFFs certbot, hosting providers can charge thousands of $ per year for a simple SSL certificate. There’s no reason for that when a cert and a domain name could be recorded on a public distributed ledger (blockchain) openly accessible and independently verified by thousands of nodes, no trust, no authority, no single point of failure, almost no chance of a MITM attack. Here I outlined how that would work exactly https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/10423786
Same thing with a pgp key server, magnet link repository etc. How many torrent sites went down and took their content with them? How many open source projects have been DMCAd and forced to shutdown, some without any legal grounds just by threatening frivolous lawsuits? Good luck taking down the entire blockchain, especially one not only dedicated to torrents. Always up, uncensorable, verifiable from beginning to end, publicly accessible with thousands of endpoints. How can you argue that’s not better than a centralized server that lives and dies by the will of one dude or his isp/vps provider or some company or government. Historical data like weather info, currency exchange rates or any other record always up, uncensorable, fully verifiable, freely available to anyone who wants via an online API with thousands of endpoints or by querying your local version of the blockchain instead of through a centralized, often paid online service. Trustless smart contracts are unique to blockchains, you can’t do them any other way because they require a trustless execution layer only a blockchain can provide, otherwise you’d have to trust some 3rd party who controls the computer. Tokenized financial markets give regular people easy access to the market without the need for a broker who will take fees, can dissable buying/selling like robinhood did during the GME short squeeze, can front run it’s clients etc. It’s literally revolutionary tech being adopted by companies in and outside of the financial sector and governments around the world. Insane how people still dismiss it because “bitcoin uses blockchain and bitcoin wastes energy so blockchain bad” even when no proof of work or crypto currency is involved, not to mention that mining, smelting, transporting gold or silver also wastes energy and human work for a pretty useless metal that outside of some niche applications demand for which could be easily satisfied +1000 fold with our current supply is exclusively used to store value, that printing, securing, transporting cash wastes energy and a lot of human work. Digital fiat also has to be handled by a bank that needs servers, milions of ATMs and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES all of whom have to drive to and from work, have their building heated and lit, have a computer and whole infrastructure that needs to be maintained just to function not even 24/7, slower and less reliability than a crypto currency that doesn’t even require proof of work mining anymore, wastes a fuckton more energy and human effort than 10 bitcoin networks ever could. There’s nothing inherently inefficient about blockchains, for example the small data server example I provided is literally pretty much just a decentralized, uncensorable, trustless, permisionless, verifiable, community run CDN (content delivery network) which is more efficient than a single centralized server.
Uses of blockchain other than cryptocurrency that just came to my mind, some are already functioning or being introduced:
Every single one of these already has a much better way of being handled without using an inefficient system like blockchain.
No. Domains can be seized and blocked by countries via dns blocklists, anna’s archive just lost one of their domains recently, so has z-library, the pirate bay… European governments have been forcing isps to introduce dns blocklists for the websites they don’t like. Certificate authorities have been hacked before, can be coerced by governments to perform MITM attacks and require trust. The only reason why certificates are even remotely accessible to regular people is thanks to EFFs certbot, hosting providers can charge thousands of $ per year for a simple SSL certificate. There’s no reason for that when a cert and a domain name could be recorded on a public distributed ledger (blockchain) openly accessible and independently verified by thousands of nodes, no trust, no authority, no single point of failure, almost no chance of a MITM attack. Here I outlined how that would work exactly https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/10423786 Same thing with a pgp key server, magnet link repository etc. How many torrent sites went down and took their content with them? How many open source projects have been DMCAd and forced to shutdown, some without any legal grounds just by threatening frivolous lawsuits? Good luck taking down the entire blockchain, especially one not only dedicated to torrents. Always up, uncensorable, verifiable from beginning to end, publicly accessible with thousands of endpoints. How can you argue that’s not better than a centralized server that lives and dies by the will of one dude or his isp/vps provider or some company or government. Historical data like weather info, currency exchange rates or any other record always up, uncensorable, fully verifiable, freely available to anyone who wants via an online API with thousands of endpoints or by querying your local version of the blockchain instead of through a centralized, often paid online service. Trustless smart contracts are unique to blockchains, you can’t do them any other way because they require a trustless execution layer only a blockchain can provide, otherwise you’d have to trust some 3rd party who controls the computer. Tokenized financial markets give regular people easy access to the market without the need for a broker who will take fees, can dissable buying/selling like robinhood did during the GME short squeeze, can front run it’s clients etc. It’s literally revolutionary tech being adopted by companies in and outside of the financial sector and governments around the world. Insane how people still dismiss it because “bitcoin uses blockchain and bitcoin wastes energy so blockchain bad” even when no proof of work or crypto currency is involved, not to mention that mining, smelting, transporting gold or silver also wastes energy and human work for a pretty useless metal that outside of some niche applications demand for which could be easily satisfied +1000 fold with our current supply is exclusively used to store value, that printing, securing, transporting cash wastes energy and a lot of human work. Digital fiat also has to be handled by a bank that needs servers, milions of ATMs and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF EMPLOYEES all of whom have to drive to and from work, have their building heated and lit, have a computer and whole infrastructure that needs to be maintained just to function not even 24/7, slower and less reliability than a crypto currency that doesn’t even require proof of work mining anymore, wastes a fuckton more energy and human effort than 10 bitcoin networks ever could. There’s nothing inherently inefficient about blockchains, for example the small data server example I provided is literally pretty much just a decentralized, uncensorable, trustless, permisionless, verifiable, community run CDN (content delivery network) which is more efficient than a single centralized server.
Man, if they could understand anything you just wrote I’d think you’d said enough to at least make them think twice.
5% chance they read your comment thoroughly
1% chance they understand what most of that means.