blockchain

some good use cases, that are actually not bullshit use cases, of “blockchain”; needs to be organised more:

  • store of value that is decoupled from the State, e.g. in Venezuela / Zimbabwe / other states who practice irresponsible seignorage. (although, who’s taking on the risk of these currencies: cryptocurrency exchanges? and, why not directly exchange with a reserve fiat currency?)
  • reducing transaction costs for local currencies e.g. Totnes Pound, Sarafu-Credit. (although, why decentralise?)

and for TEEs, MPC, FHE, SNARKs, publicly veriable computation in general:

  • deplatforming, i.e. everyone executes some public algorithm on encrypted data. can replace Uber. but also see https://www.wired.com/story/when-workers-control-gig-economy/
  • IDEN3, self-sovereign data / web of trust; can help with credit rating (to read: “On Collusion” by Vitalik)

and for distributed web / file storage:

  • Althea Project, meshnets, for rural communities who are underserved by ISPs and Telecoms
Written on April 23, 2019