Popular news aggregation and discussion website Reddit has changed its terms of service, allowing users to earn, purchase or sell currencies and items that can be cryptographically verified. The change in terms also explicitly outlined a clear separation in the definition of non-tokenized Web 2 virtual goods and tokenized Web 3 virtual goods, with a member of the Reddit product team disclosing plans to sunset the former.
Its a solution looking for the right problem. Unfortunately, all the problems it can solve, have already been solved in other ways.
the problem doesn’t even exist unless you take extremely paranoid and terminally libertarian assumptions
Well, things like “How do we make sure the person who claims to own this house actually owns this house” is definitely a real problem. But we’ve already solved that problem in another way. And we’ve spent hundreds of years ironing out all the little kinks in the system.
And the problem with blockchain (and every other ‘disruptive’ technology) is that it goes “Nah, we’re going to throw all those unneeded things out”. That then goes massively wrong, because, surprise, the system isn’t complex for no reason.
“how we determine property ownership” is a solved problem
“how we determine property ownership without central governmental registry and enforcement” is a problem that arises when you want everything solvable without government at all. then it fails and they rely on other enforcers instead, for example giant corporation that grew in the meantime. it’s all very libertarian
That’s a good way of putting it. Reminds me of how the technology behind gorilla glass had been around for decades, but its use suddenly exploded when smartphones came along and needed something like it. Wouldn’t surprise me if Blockchain ends up existing as a niche thing for a long time until a killer app for it comes along.
In some ways yes, but current solutions arent always the best solutions. They aren’t always the most secure, or the fastest, or the most private, or the most trustworthy. With almost all main stream solutions, you have to trust some company, and then they have their fees, and sell your personal information to data brokers, and they try to get you in debt, etc. It’s not a solution looking for a problem, it’s a solution that isnt nearly as easy to use as current systems (yet), but all the hype has let scammers ride the wave.
Crypto is far from perfect, we have plenty of work to do, but don’t discount it entirely. There is a lot of smart people with good intentions working on the core technologies, that want to see a better world, me included. Definitely continue to be skeptical, but don’t write it off.
In the world of technology crypto is a rather old technology now, and so far the core technology has proven not to be applicable to any actual constructive real world scenarios, and the only existing things using the technology are all pyramid schemes.
And it is not a question of it having to be further refined or anything like that, the problem lies with its core concept, which makes it completely unsuited for any actual life uses capable of replacing existing technology.
Also, understandably people have long since grown weary of the constant claims of “just wait and see” or “you just don’t understand the technology”, made by cryptobros who have monetary interests in the thing and wants to inflate the artificial worth of their doomed investments by attempting to find new marks willing to shoot actual fiat into the project.
Just want to say that I wholeheartedly agree with you.