A question in the new user survey:
"Which will be the No 1 use case for “mass adoption?”
My personal view is that it’s too early to know what will be the no. 1 use case. It could be blogging, it could be a Twitter-like app, it could be a Patreon like app for supporting artists, it could be security of IoT devices or security of deploying cloud infrastructure, or software package manager or (most likely) we are not even thinking about the first app that goes mainstream.
The main point is that at this point in time rather than trying to pick winners we are focusing on making it super easy for developers to rapidly develop apps. They need to write less code, their apps are more secure by default, they don’t need to manage a lot of infrastructure etc. This enables faster innovation and we can get to killer apps (notice plural) faster.
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Definitely too earlier to tell. Who would guessed a top use for TCP/IP is sending selfies back and forth?
I suspect that apps that can most benefit from the characteristics of Blockstack’s underlying blockchain - bitcoin - will be most successful. Blockstack, like bitcoin, will enable apps that run counter to the wishes of powerful interests: platform owners and others. Will be interesting to see what emerges!
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Maybe these IoT devices have chances to become mass-adopted?
https://qubit-labs.com/ai-iot-big-data-technologies-made-in-ukraine/
Forgive my ignorance and lack of knowledge in the following questions:
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What do you mean by “using the characteristics of bitcoin blockchain”?
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How can a “decentralized Facebook/Google/Amazon” monetize if they are trusting a digital store of value for selling and advertising?
@arooj Let me try to take a crack at this:
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We chose the bitcoin blockchain because it is the most stable and most trusted blockchain. But a knock-on benefit of this is it’s incredibly easy to integrate bitcoin more deeply to Blockstack applications. So anything that differentiates bitcoin from other blockchains is going to be something that a blockstack application can take advantage of.
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There are a number of different monetization models that blockchains/cryptocurrency enable that are outside the realm of what’s available now. First one that comes to mind are micropayments. This will enable sending small usage-based payments to any service provider. Also in blockstack larger applications will be able to start their own tld (i.e.
.fbor.goog) and sell the domains on that to users (i.e.jack.fbandjill.fb) for a price. These are just a couple of examples of the new monetization strategies available to blockstack application developers.
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Thank you for your reply, good sir.
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How can a developer of a blockstack applications start a new TLD? Thanks again
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@jackzampolin regarding your point #1, isn’t there a risk to building apps that rely heavily on/integrate closely with bitcoin? One advantage of blockstack is that it uses a virtual chain so that the underlying blockchain can be swapped out, correct? So if a number of apps, especially killer apps, tightly integrate with bitcoin and it’s uses, it seems like that would do one of two things, or maybe a bit of both:
- Apps lose value (potentially for both users and app authors) if Blockstack migrates to a different level 1 blockchain.
- Blockstack becomes de facto tied to bitcoin, and thus loses it’s claim to be blockchain independent.
Very well suited applications of the block stack technology are those that require reliable knowledge of the digital identity of a business partner. At present, using the traditional Internet model (e.g.: sending E-Mail) it is almost impossible to provide a partner with a document simply and securely, because most people do not use PGP and there is no convenient standard process for certifying public keys.
After about a week of learning how Blockstack works, I can say: Really new and useful apps need this technology urgently, better today than tomorrow. We’re going to develop one of those killer apps.
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