Blockchain: A Loser in 2020?

December 31, 2019

I recently completed a report about Amazon’s R&D work in blockchain. If you want a free summary of the report, write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. If not, no problem. You will want to read “Please Blockchain, Prove Me Wrong.” The author likes to use words on some online services stop list, but that’s okay. The writer is passionate about the perceived failings of blockchain.

Blockchain is, according to the write up:

a solution looking for a problem.”

More proof needed, you gentle but skeptical reader? How about this?

According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, blockchain is still “sliding into the trough of disillusionment,” meaning the technology is struggling to live up to the expectations created by the hype around it.

There you go. Proof from a marketing company.

DarkCyber’s view is that encryption is likely to continue to toddle forward. Also, the charm of the distributed database continues to woe some people’s attention.

There may be hope, and perhaps that is why Amazon has more than a dozen patents related to blockchain technology. We learn from the impassioned analysis:

Blockchain’s purported promise is such that everyone is willingly taking a multi-faceted approach, not giving much thought to the possibility that its potential may, in fact, be limited. Or maybe blockchain is just the first iteration of something far more powerful, a base we can build on to restore our faith in decentralized systems.

To sum up, for a dead duck, there are some feathers afloat. And there are those Amazon patents? Maybe Mr. Bezos is just off base and should stick to bulldozing outfits like mom and pop stores and outfits like FedEx?

Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2019

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