TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology with experimental instead of theoretical knowledge on the subject matter.
No it wasn't.
ARPANET [1] was made for transferring software and allowing remote access into the large mainframes on the network. Email came in 1971 and then 6 years later audio was being transferred. So it was always intended to support binary transmission and streaming video was being demoed by the BBC not soon after.
The reason to be nitpicking is that the original protocols were flexible and efficient enough from day one to support a myriad of use cases. Where as platforms like Ethereum are already struggling with a lack of flexibility and a lack of efficient and cheap data transfer.
I could have said, "Well blockchain is important because I used Schmaltz, Goober, and Cookie deployed on Flanders, Homer and Kearney, the open API just works out of the box," and by your logic I'd be some wizened mage on the subject.
There is a cliff on HN, but you might want to invest in a parachute.
"Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing."
Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. And it's not a magic bullet statement either.
I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyone with technical background can understand.
Again, Tim's post may be right, but it really falls short here and that's a big problem for the perception of blockchain. Until you can get people to understand why it's valuable, without the answer being to go and spend hours reading when there's perhaps no certainty of what you learn being valuable, it's always going to face this scepticism.
It's not helped by the fact that the scammers and the non-scammers talk about it in the same kind of way, so you end up unable to distinguish the real information from the "blockchain doublespeak" - again, certainly without a lot of research. If you're busy you end up developing a heuristic where you file all of this in the mental waste basket.
I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities.
Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.
The people I've talked to in finance are really excited about Blockchain/DeFi because it's an opportunity for arbitrage in a completely unregulated market.
If you really want to talk about a true tech visionary, use:
Douglas Engelbart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
Mother of All Demos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
> The 90-minute presentation demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor.
> December 9, <<<1968>>>
1968, not 1991.
It sounds good, but ALL the money needs to be taken out of the ecosystem.
They need to go back to the drawing board and work in silence and fix their core problems: scalability, respecting core financial laws such as AML and KYC, and then they need to present their platform.
The problem with that is that it's fundamental research, making no money, possibly for decades.
Ain't no one got time for that.
It is unquestionably amazing. But it's not the reality.
Most data is not stored on the blockchain but instead in proprietary databases due to the prohibitive cost. And even if it was free the VCs are pushing hard for a defensible moat i.e. lock your users in with proprietary data and features.
We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain.
> We've seen this play out with OpenSea and how its view of NFTs is different from what's on chain.
If anything, the NFT ecosystem proofs this point. It consists of a dizzying array of aggregators, lending platforms, fractionalization platforms, alternative marketplaces, curation tools, API providers, all interacting with another. The fact that OpenSea retains a large marketshare among marketplaces is true (though now down to 60% - https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT), but hasn't stopped this interoperability at all. Because in fact, what matters is on-chain, not what OpenSea exposes.
NFT doesn't even store its data.
It's not even a true protocol that mandates things ensuring stability.
You're buying thin air.
The big question is of course how best to deal with all the scammers in specifically the cryptocurrency space ?
It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is whether or not that's something actually useful, and for the vast majority of people it clearly isn't.
And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)