In theory it was all supposed to be easy and great: decentralization, autonomy and transparency. However upon implementation a dirty truth is revealed: Blockchain technology only improves the performance of machines and not people.
In this post @BlockRush will analyse whether or nor Blockchain technology has gone from innovation to pointless distraction.
1. Decentralization
Decentralization - the primary selling point of Blockchain technology has done more to spread confusion than peace. For one thing, people confused it with democracy.
After years, it is now that people have learned that Decentralization is not Democracy.
Consider these facts:
- Over 60% of Bitcoin's mining power is locked in China making the network subject to the whim of the miners and Chinese government.
- Ethereum decentralized yet not democratic. The minority of investors who own a majority of the network dictate for it.
- Steem is decentralized yet hosted on the centralized Amazon and among a few randomized "witnesses".
- Presearch is a Blockchain powered search engine yet they only thing decentralized is perhaps their tokens as they only serve up search results from the centralized Google and other social media sites.
What is the use of decentralization if a system is still autocratically controlled?
2. Autonomy
Let's face it, the autonomy thing is not working. Instead of having a single centralized command and conquest station which would have made progress easy, the Blockchain industry has become another Libya where progress has come to a standstill as there is no unity governance front but several autonomous self governing fronts and sections.
As we speak, there is absolutely no cohesion in the Blockchain industry. Consider:
Every single developer, institution or company wants to build their own Blockchain instead of joining an already existing Blockchain network. The result is that every single day we have new Blockchain networks springing out of forks and clones and there is absolutely no inter-connectivity between any two Blockchain networks.
One would expert that even the already existing and established Blockchain networks would have unity among them but this is not the case. Everyone is against the other as investors are against developers and users are against exchanges.
Bitcoin miners, developers, users and investors are all so against each other that they would rather split the network than come to a consensus, after the Bitcoin Cash split we have another split in November and now there are even rumors that Bitcoin Cash could split.
Ethereum has already split and Steem would have split over a million times already if not for the clause its founders put in its code to prevent Steem from splitting.
Its not a battle of the fittest; its an issue of each man for himself, God for us all. Believe it or not; unity is strength as divided we fall. The Blockchain industry is not neutral to this reality.
3. Privacy
Facelessness is another high selling trick of Blockchain technology that is not selling very well. Despite the fact that people are aware of the reality that governments and corporate giants are spying on them - that has not caused them to adopt Blockchain technology.
It turns out that people simple do not care much about their privacy. Most people have nothing "confidential" to hide from the NSA, CIA or Facebook except for pornography. Most civilians have nothing in their inboxes and drives other than videos and picture of moments shared with family and friends as well as a few work related files - there is not much to hide.
The alt coin ZCash which boasted of anonymity thought it would take the world by surprise, however it got its worst surprise not by the fact that few people used it, but that of the few people who even used it - any of them barely used its anonymity feature.
An overwhelming percentage of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency users use centralized online and exchanges which take ways their privacy and autonomy. Almost all the exchanges and wallets we use comply with AML and KYC policies yet we use them because no one cares that much about privacy.
Yes, people do not care about the NSA, CIA or anyone else spying on them. The only ones who are actually trying to hide something are those who want to hide their millions from the unforgivingly notorious IRS - or those upto to some grave mischief.
If you want more confirmation of this; you should see the face of now exile self-sacrificial whistle-blower Edward Snowden after he found out that his liberal American society did nothing to protect him. What an irony that the most fascist nation on Earth is host to an anti-fascist privacy whistle blower while the so called "liberal" American side cannot even support Blockchain ICOs.
However, no one wants to pay 50%+ of their earnings to some tax man to feed their most hated bureaucracy: the government. Its no surprise that almost all the top corporations in the world including Google, Apple and even Facebook use offshore headquarters setups to deduce their taxes under the name of tax avoidance(not evasion).
Recently, even three of the world's top footballers: Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Brazilian football star Neymar have all been found guilty of defrauding the state millions in taxes.
Bottom line, common people do not care about their privacy being violated since they have nothing to hide from the government or anyone else - excerpt for taxes. Tax avoidance and evasion may be the only motivation for people who want to use crypto-currencies for private transactions.
4. Transparency
Transparency was one of the selling points of Bitcoin, however it turned out to be another underused feature.
Consider this: when you visit a crypto currency exchange and see the block explorer revealing the lastest transaction activities, it feels great right? But what does that do?
- Does that make your transactions any faster?
- Does that reduce the cost of your transactions?
- Does that make your transactions any more credible than those on Paypal or Visa?
- Do you even understand what those data are?
- Do you even need to see that data at all?
5. Speed
For any digital system to be able to scale up to support millions and billions of users who generate trillions of transactions, it would be need to be very fast.
Already, several centralized digital system such as Facebook, Google, Visa, Mastercard and domain systems are doing fine. However Blockchain technology has promised to be faster and more powerful.
Has this promise being realized? NO.
- Bitcoin confirmation times have always been slow and now there are reports it takes days!
- Ethereum is becoming congested already and simple cannot handle the load on its main net - even though nothing major has been built on it yet.
- Steem is doing well but only because we have less than 200,000 members and support only text - images are hosed elsewhere and videos are not supported. Again not everyone is actually posting at every minute.
Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain; and here we still are with nothing but confusion, segregation and greed. But who are we to judge? Blockchain is still very young perhaps with time humans will learn to better adapt to this wonderful technology.
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@blockrush
you intelligently analysed the flaws in blockchain technology in your 5 main pitfalls...i learnt a lot today...thanks for all and keep it up...upvoted
helpful - so you got my upvote and resteem - do you know #BeerSaturday?
nope please!
@detlev, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
Truths
@billykeed, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
I read it. A real good read. I commented.
I agree strongly in some parts and not others.
Point 3, yes I don't care if someone knows how many #solarcoin I'm granted for my solar energy generation, in fact it could help me prove my carbon credentials if I was a business.
Points 1, 2; this has actually been solved by #gridcoin, there is on block chain voting on all key issues and anyone can raise a new vote. Its also based on an altruistic endeavour (like #solarcoin is too) and this helps quell anger, we are all aiming to make the world better, and make a currency too.
Point 5, well if you look at international money transfers and exchange fees, even Bitcoin is still cheaper and faster, and the cryptos I just mentioned are even cheaper and faster than Bitcoin. If you take the entire crypto scene as a whole, it has masses of unused bandwidth; the problem as you pointed out is the stupid in-fighting between fanboys. I hope to see AI multiwallets that will choose how to pay based on what assets you have, those which the seller accepts, takes fees and speed into account. If you are buying a house, use Bitcoin, it's price is stable and 6 confs in an hour is quite acceptable, if you want to buy a coffee then maybe STEEM is better; this is the power of cryptos open source base.
Point 4 yes most people don't use transparency to it's potential but that's just lack of imagination, I post real time solar energy generation onto the #solarcoin blockchain, if all other solar producers follow suit that will create a new resource of energy and climate data. I already mentioned #gridcoin using blockchain voting, transparency is used in every vote.
I would add an item to your list, and this is the root cause of many of the other issues and why innovation is stifled and many dont hear about the cryptos like those I mention; the original idealism of crypto to make a better world is overshadowed by get-rich-quick thinking right now.
@scalextrix, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
My response to this is simple.
Blockchain is an infant, and babies cry.
They cry because they cannot express what they really want to say through words because they have not learned them yet.
When you hear a baby cry, it is loud and seems to make no sense at all.
Then after some trial and error you figure out why the baby has cried, fix it and the baby is calm again.
great thinking @michaeldavid!
Thanks @blockrush!
@michaeldavid, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
checked it :)
Thanx for voicing it so well. I have some doubts but I am still way ahead financially because of this tech. Not blinded by the money like some. I have a different set of doubts....
Quite informative
@samminator, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
Good post! Almost nobody is talking about the cons of cryptocurrencies. I actually like the technology which is brilliant, but I agree that we loose more control about money.
Bitcoin can be made unavailable by simply shutting down the internet or power.
Another thing to consider is, that in my eyes financial system is right before shutdown (could even take some years, but won't take too long). People won't accept a cashless world before things are so bad, that you have to accept it to be able to pay.
Almost nobody talks about this scenario being maybe created right in front of our eyes without noticing it too much.
very true!
@n3bul4, have you seen my latest post? you would love it > https://steemit.com/blockchain/@blockrush/brexit-chain-10-ways-blockchain-could-make-post-brexit-england-great-again-blockrush
good
Very helpful. Thanks!
Great post. Very well thought out.
Interoperability issue i guess, will be solved once this marathon for establishing themselves as a dominant technology will come to halt in future ... the race has just begun, at the moment everything is speculative, and whales are dictating where the money sould flow rather than investors digesting the core technology itself....time will come; prople will decide whether to watch tom cruise or bratt pitt or none of the above.
A very critical analysis, you made some good points and I suffered from cognitive dissonance while reading it, I had to come straight with some of the facts you present here.
Yet I remain confident that there are a lot of bright people working diligent to make blockchain technologies live up to it's expectations.