Blockchain tech is a next generation internet still in its early days. I don't think it will go away. What do you think these networks will look like in 20 years?
It might be a negative for society now (I assume you are referring to the shady nature of using it as an alt currency), but it's precisely the tech you need to provide an alternative against Facebook or other walled gardens many people love to hate on here.
It solves multiple problems at the same time. Content creators can get paid by design, tech is open an transparent and scalable. It's unlike anything we've seen before.
Just as an example, have you heard of smart contracts? There's a cambrian explosion happening now among networks, everybody tweaks something to be different from others. I suggest you to take a look around, there's a shocking diversity.
> How does cryptocurrency help with any of that?
How can a globally spanning Turing complete computer help? I don't know, but we will see attempts.
> Citation needed.
Haha, I always forget we are at academic level of discussions :)
But for fun's sake, go to https://coinmarketcap.com/ click a random currency and click source code / read the whitepaper.
> Currently the Dash network has ~4,800 active masternodes [8]. By requiring 1,000DASH collateral to become an active masternode, we create a system in which no one can control the entire network of masternodes. For example, if someone wanted to control 50% of the masternode network, they would have to buy 4,800,000 DASH from the open market. This would raise the price substantially and it would become impossible to acquire the needed DASH.
Oh my god
> Bad actors could also run masternodes, but not provide any of the quality service that is required of the rest of the network. To reduce the possibility of people using the system to their advantage nodes must ping the rest of the network to ensure they remain active.
Oh my goddddd
Nobody making this has any clue about distributed systems, do they
With my brief experience, they compute the state of a transaction in which everybody agrees. Why is that cool? You don't need an authority to tell who is right.
> What do you think these networks will look like in 20 years?
My prediction is that some useful inventions will be adopted by regular people ok with regular old reputation based trust. And then some actual useful things will happen.
I was reading a report from my country's central bank experiment with e-money. A PoC token thing with a one time use rule enforced by a trusted network of intermediaries. They expressed some discomfort with this being a scalability issue and also not allowing offline transactions in case of infrastructure issues.
Ironically I found myself thinking that this could be solved by a digital equivalent of cheques.
It might be a negative for society now (I assume you are referring to the shady nature of using it as an alt currency), but it's precisely the tech you need to provide an alternative against Facebook or other walled gardens many people love to hate on here.
It solves multiple problems at the same time. Content creators can get paid by design, tech is open an transparent and scalable. It's unlike anything we've seen before.