Ask HN: Name a non-cryptocurrency blockchain project in use in the real world?

[countermeasure]

Over the last decade I've heard lots about the potential of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency.

But I've heard a lot less about how much of that supposed potential has actually been realised.

Every time I meet someone who has anything to say about anything blockchain-related I ask if they can point to a current, real-world blockchain project that isn't basically a cryptocurrency and has made it past being just a prototype or an idea.

Literally nobody I've asked has been able to come up with anything that meets those criteria.

Can you?

[houseatrielah]

You're pandering to the "I hate crypto crowd"; you could have asked this on another forum if you wanted a good-faith answer. From my POV the killer-app of crypto is a USD stablecoin. Argentina's currency is collapsing the 3rd time in like 50 years (40% inflation?). There are other financial instruments beyond the dollar that could be tokenized (US Treasuries?), but most of the world would be happy to more-or-less preserve their purchasing power. They will find some vehicle to approximate the perservation of wealth, whether it's mobile phone minutes (an early digital store of value), physical $20-bills or something else.

Non-financial use cases would rely on a blockchain's tamper-resistance: like timestamp hashes for proof that a video happened at a certain time (only useful if this video is alleged to be faked), or something like NameCoin which was a tamper-resistant DNS prototype. Some people are trying to implement digital identity with blockchains, and others are trying to build a social layer in such a way where you own your 'social/friend network' and can view it with any ux you choose.

I think basically all of the marketing-hucksters have rotated into AI (IBM is running ads for AI, not blockchains), so the hype is muted compared to 2017 or so.

[countermeasure]

HN seems like the ideal place for this question to me.

Your assumption that I'm not hoping for good-faith answers is incorrect and unfair.

[gnatman]

I have a question about the scenario you're describing in Argentina. If I'm an individual in that country and want to protect my money, a stable offshore asset sounds good. And a digital decentralized asset makes sense because then I don't have to rely on banks in my country which might be unstable. My question is, if every individual takes this strategy, does that further destabilize the economy in my country?

[keiferski]

As someone else said, HN is not a good place to ask this question. There is a constant irrational hostility to anything crypto-related here.

It's been awhile since I've followed blockchain tech closely, but with the increasing power of AI tools and the potential for deepfakes, I can see a use case for blockchain in verifying that a photograph is real and not AI-generated.

I also think blockchain is an ideal technology for a world that no longer trusts central authorities. That world seems...increasingly likely to me, so in some sense blockchain's real use case may not have arrived yet. This is not unique or rare; many times in history, a technology's "real use" is not apparent until decades or centuries after its invention. People declaring something dead or useless a decade after its invention are frankly ignorant of how the world actually works.

[joshstrange]

I can’t imagine why HN thinks crypto related stuff is bullshit /s

So your suggestion for how blockchain is useful is something that doesn’t even make sense? How does “blockchain” solve deepfakes/AI-generated images? This is why HN is hostile to this. Blockchain is a cool idea, no doubt, but the applications of it are almost solely crypto (aka scams) or ideas that make no sense and require burning a ton of power for dubious results. How does a blockchain verify a picture is not AI-generated? You’re going to put a picture hash in a chain? Ok, what stops me from putting an AI generated hash in a chain?

So many of these ideas around blockchain love the idea of “trustless” but fall flat on their face when you have to trust what’s being put into it in the first place. Yes, we all can share a glorified excel document of hashes but who decides what goes into that sheet? And what stops someone with more computing power from deciding even if it’s wrong?

[csomar]

If you have a non-cryptocurrency blockchain use, you don't use a public blockchain (expensive). You create your own blockchain. There are several platforms that allow that. For example: https://www.kaleido.io

Maybe reach out to them or look more if they have any notable users willing to share their use case?

[aranchelk]

NFTs.

It's not a terribly interesting answer, but you've asked your question in an uninterested way.

Since there are a lot of good and bad, intrinsic and extrinsic reasons tech does and does not get adopted, I think a better question might be: "Without any BS or deceptive rationalization, what's something that blockchain really would be better at?"

[countermeasure]

Okay, NFTs, fair enough :)

They often run off the Ethereum ledger, am I right?

[dhruvkar]

Cardano is the closest I've seen to building real world applications. They are slow to move, but super methodical.

https://atalaprism.io/

This, I believe, is being used to verify identities of students in Ethiopian universities.

[countermeasure]

I've found a few articles and some discussion about this on social media from 2021, but not much since then.

Any idea whether that project in Ethiopia is still alive?

[brucethemoose2]

One potential issue is that word "blockchain" is now tainted by association. I think useful would projects purposely avoid the architecture just to avoid the stigma.

Another is that p2p projects are really hard to get rolling in general. Crypto was supposed to incentivize this, and we saw how that went.

[eternityforest]

P2P should be easy. Bittorrent has worked for years.

But all the projects try to do stuff that is hard to do with P2P when we haven't even covered the easy stuff.

It doesn't help that IPFS still uses insanely more idle bandwidth than BT and doesn't work in the same use cases because of that.

[lividly3529]

Microsoft is using blockchain technologies to manufacturer Xboxes more efficiently and reduce overhead.

[countermeasure]

How?

[jmorenoamor]

I've been part of a project to use blockchain and smart contracts for the ticket lifecycle of a sports club events.

Buy, transfer, validate at the gate.

All in a private blockchain instance without a "token economy" involved.

Pretty cool thing tonbe honest.

[countermeasure]

It sounds like "private blockchain" means very few copies of the blockchain, or even just one?

If it does, why was it decided to use a blockchain rather than a traditional database?

[nwah1]

If it were useful, after all of the years and effort and hype, you wouldn't even need to ask. There'd be an app on your phone or something that you use every day.

[gjvc]

git

[countermeasure]

Even though I use it every day, I'd never thought of a Git repo as a blockchain before.

But each commit chains to the one before it though, so I suppose it is.

Thanks for this new perspective!

[jki275]

Surely you've heard of HyperLedger?

https://www.hyperledger.org

[countermeasure]

I have, but looking at their website doesn't get me closer to an answer to my question.

They describe themselves as "Enabling developers, enterprises, and organizations to collaboratively build, share, and enhance blockchain frameworks and tools."

So Hyperledger sounds like a framework/platform for building blockchains?

So I'm wondering what blockchains have been built with it, and made it past the prototype stage to be in use in the real world?

[Daeraxa]

LBRY? It does have a currency element for tipping purposes but it isn't its raison d'être

[countermeasure]

I hadn't heard of LBRY before.

A quick look at it has me thinking that it's a content distribution platform, and the blockchain element is that it has its own token that can be used to pay content creators. Does that sound right?

[colesantiago]

No you cannot and nobody can.

Crypto has no legitimate use case other than speculation and enablement of ransomware and encouragement of financial and economic nihilism.

It's too slow, not stable, not backed by anything ever, not used in the real world and certainly not useful to anyone other than scammers.

Stay away.

[mkranjec]

Blockchain document transfer

[quickthrower2]

SSL certs :-)

[countermeasure]

Okay, that's cute :)

[tuga]

ipfs

[countermeasure]

I can see that IPFS is decentralised/P2P, but I don't see how a blockchain is part of it.

Am I missing something?