Ask HN: Have you seen any Web3 products with broad adoption? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you seen any Web3 products with broad adoption?

5 pointshubraumhugo5 comments

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like storing the history of a car on chain, transparent supply chains, public voting... this all sounds interesting but never made it to product market fit. I always assume that I'm wrong, so I'll keep looking for successful applications :)

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> Use cases like storing the history of a car on chain, transparent supply chains, public voting...

What you'll tend to find is that adding computers and cryptography can't solve this problem. Because it still relies on someone to truthfully put data into the database. The sketchy used car salesman can still swap the sticker saying "look for the blockchain under address 123456" with one saying "789123" like they do today, or just lie about the sales price when selling it off. That's the fraud that happens today.

Similarly, supply chains: it doesn't matter where the supplier entered "2,000 bananas", whether it's a database or a blockchain if an empty box still shows up on your doorstep.

Public voting? There's no way to tie an address to an identity; what's preventing someone from doing a Sybil attack? DAOs try to work around this with "one vote per dollar", which is not a voting structure everyone thinks is useful, for hopefully obvious reasons. If you can tie an address to an identity, you have to be careful not to lose the pseudonymous property: you might not want your boss to know which way you voted.

They could mail a qr code would would connect address to voters. That's how many voters get a voting card/ballot now. They could issue a qr code for identity for a driver lic or passport. Using those two keys you could allow a person to vote.

In no way does it make sense to involve a blockchain.

It rarely makes sense to use a blockchain with trusted or known entities.

Patience, grasshopper. We're still learning. It's early times yet, and we're not dealing with HTML and CSS simplissimus. It's mostly money right now. Money hardens everything.

I think a killer app in voting will materialze soon enough. What do you mean my vote didn't count? I can show you it counted. It's right here on the blockchain. If you can't manipulate my vote, you can't manipulate my democracy, and my democracy is being a seriously manipulated.

What makes you think that solutions for problems you mentioned don't exist yet or are not in adoption mode right now? How do you define "broad"?

I think the question you are asking is like going back to 2007 and asking what successful mobile apps exist?

But I'll tell you what I'm looking at, and we'll see if I actually build it, and if I do, if it is successful.

I have a start-up (https://ayvri.com) which (if you want to get all buzzwordy) is like strava meets the metaverse. It's used by every paraglider in the world, tons of hikers, commercial drone operators, etc etc. Polaris Automotive is one of our customers, we've worked with RedBull Wings For Life World run as well - pre-covid.

I'm looking at the possibility of having the gps data operate as a decentralized blockchain. Why? Because everyone who wants to use our site has to upload their GPS data to us, but they are also uploading to other places too. We are integrated with Strava, but we haven't integrated with other apps yet, and don't want to build a different integration for everywhere that data may come from. Your GPS data is yours, you should be able to store that in your wallet and give us - or any other app you wish - the ability to access your data.

So, we've got this virtual world digital twin as well as a use case for having decentralized data. What's also nice about GPS data is that it's yours, it's immutable (your run from 3 weeks ago doesn't change) it's standardized (for the most part), you don't ever give your data to anybody else, you always own it, it will always be something you did, or somewhere you were. You don't want to sell or trade it, but when you go to a platform or app, you want that platform to be able to access your data, and you don't want to upload it all over again.

One way I like to describe this distributed data concept is that it's like going to the gym. You pay your local gym to use their weights to get you fit. When you want to go on a ski holiday, you don't have to go to your gym and say "hey, I'm going skiing, the muscles and fitness I've been working on at your gym, I'd like to take those with me for a few weeks". I know, sounds ridiculous, but that's kinda how it is with the current centralized data. Your thoughts, actions, photos, whatever, are uploaded to the app, and then the app owns them, and you can keep copies somewhere, and when you want to use YOUR digital property, the digital stuff you made, you can upload to a new app, but will you? Can't you just go and do the thing, and have it all work?

So, will we be successful? Who knows? I'm also wondering if we can convert from a current company structure to a DAO so that the users of the community can decide what's best for the community. Part of the reason to do this is that I'm too busy with my other start-up, but also because I think the overly crowded market of fitness apps is a great place to experiment with these kinds of initiatives.

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