gibsons77

The monetary system itself is a big contributor or climate change. Kings used to require empires in order to protect their gold stores. I think securing the longest PoW (or PoS) chain is a very good use of resources, as it's tantamount to a king protecting his gold.

These guys are working on a solution to general authentication for the web https://universallogin.io/

I'm sorry to be that guy, but I really think blockchain offers solutions to these types of coordination problems. For example, Aragon just launched their mainnet today. They made a platform that allows distributed collaboration between groups of people. I think this could potentially reduce bureaucracy and reduce the time between idea and implementation. I have zero stake in Aragon btw, I just find it fascinating and it gives me some hope that humans can come together to positively affect the world.

Perhaps there's a reason why smart people are attracted to it.

Is this a competitor to something like Enigma?

And you're of course free to have your own opinion. I'm not as quick to dismiss them simply because I acknowledge that new technologies have historically been ridiculed by experts at least initially. But healthy skepticism is always warranted.

I agree. You would need an oracle in order to put physical things on the blockchain, and that is subject to incorrect data or tampering. It's non-trivial, but not technically impossible.

Those are blockchains which come to global consensus, which I don't think would work here. You would either need a state channel (2nd layer) or a DAG structure.

I agree for this particular case, which is why I think a DAG with local consensus (something like IOTA) is more applicable for this application.

This is the example I was referring to: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8358773. The problem is one where there are multiple vehicles, from different manufacturers, that must communicate with each other in real time (say at an intersection) and must make decisions based on messages being relayed to them. This is easier if they are all following the same protocol.

Well.. It will change some aspects of our world. Particularly financial assets at first, but increasingly it will play a role in any peer to peer exchange requiring trust. Simple past examples are systems like OpenPGP that bind public keys to owners. Programmable blockchains allow generalized applications requiring decentralized trust. A good example of a use of blockchain outside of financial assets is in trust management of vehicular networks. In order for vehicles to communicate amongst each other, they need to trust that the messages they are receiving are authentic using a decentralized consensus mechanism and some sort of Bayesian Inference Model.

So in short, it is an extension of the internet (trust layer) and it will change the world. So I don't think that's nonsense to say, but I can see how these claims would appear to be exaggerated to someone with limited exposure to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

No they do not. REP token holders get a "house take" in some contexts. Augur isn't a company, so a business model doesn't really make sense. Augur is a protocol, and the Forecast Foundation is a non-profit that supports some development.

As much as everyone likes to shit on crypto, this is exactly what public programmable blockchains will be used for.

That's the only thing blockchains solve is the decentralization of trust. Oracles provide a bridge, and it is possible to make trusted decentralized oracles.