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Comment by freeflight | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a coder so my understanding of the technology is very limited, but couldn't we use the blockchain to P2P host something besides a crypto currency, something like a public discussion platform that's tamper/censorship proof? The crypto currency feature could still be kept in place as a payment for people doing the actual hosting, but it would only be there to help facilitate the platform itself and not it's sole purpose.

Is that idea even viable or am I vastly misunderstanding the technology behind BC?

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That totally works today. Its one of the many applications of blockchain tech due to its "immutable ledger" property. Egs: ipfs.io Besides this there are even many cool applications such as "golem.network- airbnb for computing", "filecoin.io - airbnb for storage" ,"ethereum dapps" etc.

After a quick glance ipfs.io looks exactly what I've been thinking about but in a much more dry way.

As I see it, right now there is an opportunity window for a P2P hosted social discussion platform. That's because many big social media companies have been increasingly cracking down on user submitted content, leaving a lot of people to wonder where they could participate without having all their content at the whims of some commercial third party, which can be bullied to censor/delete by state actors at any point in the future.

One could argue Thor offers such a place, but imho in terms of usability Thor is far off from something everybody can use easily.

The challenge is getting the market to value the token that miners are paid in, such that the chain is sufficiently protected by their proof-of-work. Digital money may be the only thing valuable enough to absorb the capital loss associated with the energy spent on proof-of-work, whereas a messaging board -- or any other application that creates relatively little value -- will not generate enough profits to cover the miners' work.

The only reason the Bitcoin blockchain is mined so heavily is because of its tokens' high price -- and sufficient market depth, which can absorb miners cashing out their earnings -- which basically sets in motion something that can't be stopped until it reaches non-profitability, unless the entire world decides to forego profitable Bitcoin mining.

But that's pretty much the same challenge any cryptocurrency faces and even BC faced in it's beginning. BC got past that hurdle to a certain degree, why can't something with actual "usability for the masses", in the form of an open, transparent and uncensored discussion platform, do the same?

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