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Comment by philippz | Hacker News Reader

* Insurances (e.g. your travel insurance) are contracts. They should be digital, standardized, on a public ledger, so that I can travel anywhere and prove that I have one instead of having to bring, a fakeable piece of paper.

* If I resell my phone, transfering the remaining guarantee and/or insurance should be nothing else then a transaction. On the blockchain that's 10x more efficient than the status quo.

* If an artist sells his art the first time for $10, and the person resells it for 10000$, then the artist should be compensated too. Royalty mechanisms can solve for that and avoid secondary markets or at least create a more beneficial secondary.

There are an endless amount of examples which will make a lot of things more efficient, transparent and enforce standardization on a global level. Long way to go, but absolutely worth it.

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As usual, all of these "use cases" suffer from the problem at the boundaries (see also Oracle problem), namely that you can automate everything on the blockchain you're using, but once you're back in the real world you no longer have any guarantee. Your new layer of abstraction just leaves you with a more brittle system.

* insurances: you still need somebody outside the smart contract that needs to connect it to what happens. You've just moved the trust from one place to another, and you're not better off.

* transferring money is faster in many countries than it is with (e.g.) BTC when you include the wait for the confirmation blocks. It's also bound to become faster and cheaper, while many blockchains (especially BTC) seem stuck with their processing time. Even countries with slow bank transfers now tend to have a fast solution, like Zelle in the US. Add problems like volatility of the cryptocurrency with the respect to the currency that actually matters, high (and volatile) fees, and transfers via cryptocurrencies is only attractive in a few countries and will only remain so as long as these countries do not improve.

* with art you again have the same boundary problem: the blockchain you use doesn't know what's happening, and only the law will resolve your conflicts.

> efficient, transparent and enforce standardization

So far the blockchain systems have been less efficient than non-blockchain ones they purported to replace, see the usual comparison with the Visa network for example.

Transparency and standardization are orthogonal to the use of a blockchain: using one doesn't mean you can't be opaque or follow any standard.

But this is only because businesses have yet to be built around this technology. These things will change. We are super early. We should not build these use cases everyone is asking for right now. The tech is still early and has to figure out many things. There is a lot of innovation happening on the base- and interoperability level, and it needs a lot more abstraction (e.g., network and account abstraction) to make things more usable.

Standardization also plays a huge role, and yes, in many ways, it's a technological chicken-and-egg problem whereby systems have to work with each other and the chain in a way that makes intermediaries as obsolete as possible.

The transfer speed of money or the general transaction speed - well, that's something that is being solved as we speak. These systems (e.g. Ethereum) have to mature, and many ways are being explored, using known principles like separation of concerns, e.g., separating settlement, execution, and data layers - but in a decentralized manner.

The public and many entrepreneurs need to understand how early this tech is and rush use cases that don't add value as of now. You must go deep and understand that this has to grow from the bottom up.

> this is only because businesses have yet to be built around this technology

No, these are fundamental problems that time can't solve. Businesses aren't built around this technology because it's not advantageous to use it in a legally compliant environment.

Companies in this field keep adding new layers of abstraction pretending they're solving a problem; they're just moving it to somewhere else, but the fundamentals remain the same. Basically running in circle.

It is hard to comprehend what it'd mean to have the world connected via distributed ledgers that provide transparency and would be able to automate a lot of what we do to a much higher degree.

We're not running in circles.

> Businesses aren't built around this technology because it's not advantageous to use it in a legally compliant environment.

This is just one of the reasons. The technology is also not scalable and abstracted enough yet. No one is pretending anything here.

> It is hard to comprehend what it'd mean to have the world connected via distributed ledgers that provide transparency and would be able to automate a lot of what we do to a much higher degree.

idk, take your phone thing as an example. Blockchain doesn't solve anything, because nothing stops me from reselling the phone without transferring the insurance, or transferring the insurance and keeping the phone. The whole problem is that it's not linked to the phone itself.

instead of going on about benefits, what is an industry that currently suffers from an actual problem that a blockchain could solve? because right now I'm not aware of any problems in society where blockchain is the solution

> Insurance

All blockchain proves is that you have access to someone's insurance key. While it would be a bit more difficult or costly than faking a card, it's not impossible. And most places I've been to don't even care about the card or the insurance number, they just ask for my regular ID and insurance provider to verify with.

> resell my phone

Two things: 1) The status quo could be that the new owner has the serial number of the phone. The fact that it isn't this simple (if it really isn't this simple) is because the seller doesn't want to make it that simple. 2) Insurance is particular to a person and their activities. For things such as aftermarket phone insurance the price you pay for the insurance will be based in part on your individual risks. This is obviously not transferable.

> Art

Royalty mechanisms aren't controlled by the artist, and can be, and have been, eliminated by marketplaces. https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2022/10/24/nft-cre...

I just gave some examples. Tech is early, and the businesses around this new environment still have to be built. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem.

It's very early, as I stated in another answer on the same comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=philippz#34479955

It may be early, but it's also actively competing with other systems. Those other systems aren't going to just stay stagnant until blockchain is ready.

Which other systems? Databases?

But what sets append-only databases apart from blockchains for any of these examples? Why can't I symmetrically say, "It's very early for append-only DBs, and new businesses around them still have to be built"?

But what sets append-only databases apart from pen and paper?

Easy. Unlike pen and paper, the operator of an append-only database can publicly distribute it in real-time so that interested parties can read it and audit it for consistency. I don't see what the distributed consensus required by a blockchain adds on top of that, unless you're saying that all these applications require a zero-trust source of truth.

> unless you're saying that all these applications require a zero-trust source of truth.

Not all of them, of course. It's not a wonder child that aims to solve all of humanity's problems. It'll bring humanity closer, though and make it more efficient in many ways. People always try to look so narrow at it.

There are plenty of use cases and attributes (permissionlessness, immutability, zero-trust sources, etc.), and of course, not always all of these count all the time or are even desired. But it allows us to have and apply those as needed in an interoperable way.

But why do you think that its permissionless and zero-trust properties allow blockchain technology in particular to "bring humanity closer and make it more efficient in many ways", better than other technologies can? In other words, why are these properties so important that a blockchain is to an append-only DB as an append-only DB is to pen and paper, by your own analogy?

> If an artist sells his art the first time for $10, and the person resells it for 10000$, then the artist should be compensated too.

This is far from axiomatic[1].

Also, presumably you can move up a level of abstraction and sell the identity that bought the artwork for $10000. The blockchain doesn't need to know that the keys have changed hands.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

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