I am coming here from as a non-tech background person and I was wondering if anyone can give a non-tech explanation on why Blockstack is so attractive? I have asked a few software engineer friends and all they said is that playing after the api it’s a game changer and everything is ‘decentralized’, but as a non-tech person I don’t quite get it. I hear it’s like an identification layer for the internet that gives the user control on how to spread their information and with whom. Any insights are appreciated.
Seriously though - what’s the killer use case @nguyenloc?
I get that it’s a new way to organize the internet, but why will everyday users and everyday developers just trying to make livings and take vacations give a crap?
You should read White papers, watch Blockstack clips on Youtube, Github, etc. I dont have time to explain all that stuffs to you. Btw, I bought Blockstack username. https://explorer.blockstack.org/name/nguyenloc.id
Why should many many people like me bought username NOW?
But why would a developer user blockstack as the ground layer for building their app if their goal is to get broad adoption? If it’s a ‘new internet’ without many users, why would a developer want to build there? There’s a chicken and egg problem that must be solved by finding a real use case to build momentum. What is that use case for blockstack that drives true adoption?
That’s why incentive economics come in mate. Blockstack gives Users, Devs, Miners, others it.
At this time, they even boot the system by “a bunch of rewards”
I think Blockstack team’s very clear that they are building the SYSTEM, not an apps.
My formula is Blockstack ~ Linux + incentive economics
I bet one year from now, we will see some Amazing apps.
I’d recommend reading the following two Medium articles, in particular the second one. I think both articles do a nice job of explaining the technology and then describing why developers would be interested in making a dApp on Blockstack. Again, it’s all conjecture on if there will be both wide-scale adoption of users and developers, but these two articles give a good explanation so you’re then able to better inform your opinion. Would appreciate your thoughts if you care to respond. Cheers!
The one thing those articles do not answer on @1MQUmVYAYyQ4xiKtrGqx is the question whether proof-of-burn mining can be done with regular GPU, Asic or even CPU mining rigs.
Proof-of-burn mining is the destruction of bitcoin. The idea is that the bitcoin being destroyed contains proof-of-work and thus acts as a proxy for the proof-of-work of the Stacks token received in exchange for it’s destruction.
One way to answer your question about mining hardware is to say that that anyone will be able to mine STX tokens because your hash rate won’t matter. Another way to answer is that only BTC miners can mine STX tokens cost-effectively because they will have the only hardware to create new BTC for the purposes of destroying to make STX.
What I would like to know is whether Stacks can be mined with SCRYPT? That’s really all that matters. It would be great if STX can be mined with GetPimp.org and the likes. Anyone know?
You can read about proof-of-burn mining on page 9 of the token whitepaper: https://blockstack.com/tokenpaper.pdf . STX is not be mined with scrypt PoW.
I am new to this. Just signed up. From my on-boarding experience, the barrier of entry is quite high.
I think this is a very fair, important and fundamental question. Yet, few if any seems to have the patience to really give a insightful answer. It is surprising and discouraging, given the ambition of blockstack.
If you consider yourself a religious person then perhaps a fitting analogy to describe Blockstack and the movement towards a decentralized internet is the Catholic church vs Gnosticism.
So if I understand correctly Blockstack users will just have to send their BTC to a STX blackhole address in order to receive Stacks in return? No mining hardware required?
That’s generally correct. Proof-of-burn is destruction of BTC to create STX. However, we don’t know many details of the exact mining algorithm yet – only what is in the whitepaper.
