[Avalaxy]

We keep seeing a lot of examples of how Machine Learning can really innovate and reinvent all sorts of processes (i.e. the vegetable sorting we saw on HN yesterday), but when it comes to blockchains, it seems that it's mostly talk about how it could potentially change everything, but so far I haven't seen many very useful examples that couldn't have been done without using a blockchain (the whole blockchain thing often seems to be used just for the coolness factor).

Can anyone provide some ideas of how I, as a solo entrepreneur, could improve software by using a blockchain? I get how it might provide tremendous values for bigcorps, but I'm not part of that audience.

[gbarc888]

This is a good flowchart that tells you if you need a blockchain: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn1YcTwVMAAvzac.png

[heliumcraft]

http://dapps.ethercasts.com/

[Avalaxy]

Are any of these dapps really in use and making a difference? It seems to me that the listed dapps are mostly technical proof of concepts. For example: a decentralized actuary sounds great, but I find it highly unlikely that the industry is really accepting it. Same goes for flight insurance and option exchanges.

[heliumcraft]

Yes and no. Basically there was and still are major obstacles to widespread adoption. For example, VERY recently stuff like https://metamask.io/ and Mist has been released, which make this sort of apps more accessible to the average user. light clients protocol are still under development, there is lots of important scalability improvements on the roadmap (proof of stake, instantaneous transactions, unlimited txs, etc..). Decentralized storages such as swarm, IPFS, maidsafe etc.. are still under development. Overall, there is a lot of experimentation and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. If you want to develop production ready stuff that your grandma can use today, you might be better off waiting 2-5 years until it's sufficiently mature and all the use cases are obvious. If you like to experiment with new paradigms, new architectures, and explore new business models then it's an exciting field to be in.

[Avalaxy]

Yea that last point is where I'm struggling with. I've done quite a bit of software dev in the Bitcoin space. I built at least 5 different wallet apps (mostly contracting), but I'm still struggling with how I can use blockchains to build other stuff than payment systems. The distributed storage definitely sounds interesting and I can see how that would benefit certain scenarios.

[heliumcraft]

Have you given a look at ethereum? Generally the community there doesn't care too much about wallets, that should tell you something :)

For usage, one of the mains advantages would be for systems that you don't want to use a centralized system anymore - for whatever reason from privacy to control over your data to simply infrastructure reasons (i.e you want 100% uptime and no censorship), and want to transform it into a decentralized system.