For the past few years, we’ve been hearing about all the amazing things that Nakamotoan blockchains could be used for(e.g., [2]). As the technology matures, reality has been sorting out what is likely to work and what isn’t.
This week Jonathan Keane writes about “5 Apps Already Being Built on the Decentralized Web”. Specifically, he’s talking about applications that are using Blockstack which is a software layer that manages cloud storage. Blockchain manages identity and metadata, and all data is encrypted. Essentially, this replaces a conventional database with encrypted records accessed through a decentralized blockchain.
The overall goal of this decentralization is to eliminate censorship (and tax collection). They think that “major internet players wield too much power over users, and this is exactly what Blockstack was created to disrupt.” One founder went so far as to assert that with blockchain technology, it’s not “don’t be evil”, it’s “can’t be evil”. (Obviously, this is true only for certain values of “evil”.)
Keane gives an optimistic view of this technology which has attracted some investment and has a number of applications cooking. His list gives us another reading on where blockchain technology may actually be used.
OpenBazaar
This system is actually operating. It is a clone of Silk Road and other market places, which provides wide open market for anything. Openbazaar actually only uses one part of OpenStack, though who knows. This is a classic Nakamotoan use case, making the world safe for money laundering and illicit commerce. How this isn’t “evil”, I don’t really see.
Casa
Casa aims to be a clone of AirBnB, paid via Bitcoin. It’s not clear what the business model is, exactly, but they aim to compete on price: blockchain is cheaper than corporate servers. Whether they can catch up to AirBnB’s massive user base remains to be seen. Customers care about convenience, not back end processes, so who knows? And how many people want to be paid in Bitcoin? Do people really want a less regulated AirBnB?
We’ll see.
Afia
Afia is said to be another entry in the growing field of portable health records. The idea is to hold your own records securely encrypted, and, presumably, provide them to other digital systems such as providers and insurance companies. The goal is to reduce the risk when third parties hold personal data.
Regardless of the blockchain technology, this idea depends on those third parties participating in the scheme. I.e., they must not hold records of you, and they must accept your records from you. This requires quite a bit of trust, and a ton of social engineering. We’ll see.
Guild
Guild is a clone of medium, yet another blockchain based blogging platform. The idea apparently is that the Internet isn’t unfettered enough, what is needed is the ability for anyone to post anything they want. Blockchain technology assures that people can post anonymously, and there is no way to block or delete content.
In the forty years of the Internet, we have run this experiment many times. It never works. In fact, this approach has reduced the Internet to a near useless patchwork of junk information, slander, and propaganda. This is certain to encourage and sustain ‘evil’.
Ongaku Ryoho
Ongaku Ryoho is a clone of music streaming apps. The music (however obtained) is encrypted in your cloud storage, metadata is managed with the blockchain. This replicates the servers of a streaming app with a decentralized system.
The economic case is to cut out the middle man, to let artists publish directly to consumers. It’s not clear, but it’s probable that it will be difficult to enforce copyrights and licenses on the content. It will be difficult to “take down” pirated material, once it is in the system.
This could potentially work pretty well, because music consumers are pretty motivated to get their music, and everyone hates the music industry. Everything depends on whether they can get content, and that will depend on how good a deal this is for artists. If artists’ rights are protected, it will work, if not, it will just be another pirate kingdom.
“Disruption” But Not Especially Innovative
Overall, these coming-real-soon-now applications may “disrupt” current Internet businesses, but they are certainly not especially innovative. The innovations are mostly in the back end processing, which users neither see nor care about. Will this be enough to successfully overtake existing companies? I doubt it, but much depends on the details of the user experience.
Some of the ideas are banking on the dubious proposition that people want a less controlled Internet. There are certainly people who grate under the ability of big companies to censor them, turn over data to the government, or get hacked. But most people really wish for a much more filtered experience (which is part of why Facebook succeeds). So it isn’t clear that these apps will have anything other than a niche appeal.
- Jonathan Keane, Blockstack Today: 5 Apps Already Being Built on the Decentralized Web. Coindesk.September 2 2017, https://www.coindesk.com/building-blockstack-five-firms-show-us-just-platform-capable/
- Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, New York, Portfolio/Penguin, 2016.
Crytptocurrency Thursday
Robert McGrath's Blog 