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Comment by htormey | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think comparing the timelines of vastly different technologies like this is helpful.

Prior to the web, in the 1960s/1970s we had packet-switching networks, such as ARPANET which were the basis of modern computer networking.

The original ARPANET (precursor to the internet)was just used to connect computers at research institutions. I.e it wasn’t used by that many people relatively speaking.

It took another 20 years for the web to come along and more for it gain widespread adoption.

Is Bitcoin, a very low level protocol, more analogous to ARPANET or the web? Even if you dislike crypto, is this comparison really helpful?

All technology is built on the shoulders of previous giants. Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard. I.e it’s going to take a long ass time. Hence I’m not surprised at how far we have come since BTC was released.

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>Is Bitcoin, a very low level protocol, more analogous to ARPANET or the web? Even if you dislike crypto, is this comparison really helpful?

ARPANET knew who it was for and what it was for: for researchers to share data and compute resources that would otherwise be expensive to do across vast distances. Audience and use case. What's the equivalent for cryptocurrency?

>Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard.

Who actually wants that, and for what practical purpose?

Whilst it's certainly a valid point that different technologies don't have exactly the same adoption curves, we're not talking about decades of behind closed doors innovation to make microcomputers people would want to use packet switching technology to share stuff on, we're talking about adoption curve of the most-hyped thing since the "information superhighway" of the 1990s, something which involves stadium sponsorship deals, Sand Hill Road and more electricity consumption than most countries. And generally the "it's like the early days of the web" stuff is coming from pro-crypto people, usually those who are pretty keen on stressing that their portfolio is not an experiment as doomed to obsolescence as a 1960s comms network (and that POS and faster transaction throughput on different blockchains isn't "better"). The issues the present crypto industry suffer from for the most part aren't scaling or lack of technology, they're philosophical.

I disagree, I don’t think this is just about adoption curves and hype cycles.

I think fundamentally the infrastructure required to build decentralized applications is hard and has pushed the limits of computer science (zero knowledge proofs etc).

I think people have inflated expectations about how long it will take this technology to mature. Today it’s still very technically hard to build a scalable dapp that’s easy to use. Assuming this is something consumers actually want as opposed to a solution in search of a problem, this will take more time to solve.

Sometimes greed makes people think a technology is a lot further along than it actually is.

> Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard.

Yep. This blockchain/PoW/PoS way they’ve come up with to do it, with a built in cryptocurrency, doesn’t really cut it.

The trade offs to be “sufficiently decentralized” make it slow, expensive and unscalable. Making it effectively useless for real-world applications. The whole of Ethereum has as much power as a raspberry pi.

> Even if you dislike crypto, is this comparison really helpful?

AFAICT the comparison is only made because, faced with a decade and a bit of failure to deliver, cryptocurrency and blockchain proponents need an argument as to why it's still going to be HUGE, and is still a case of "just you wait, you'll see", rather than admitting it's not looking very hopeful.

So if Bitcoin was the "ARPANET" what's that make NFT's? The most utterly useless offshoot of "blockchain" I've seen yet

Email was a massive hit from day 1 on the Arpanet.

Whereas crypto still struggles to do anything novel or get popular with anyone outside of speculation.

> Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard.

Have you heard of git?

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