[rubyfan]

You suggest Docusign could compromise their core business and therefore the customer problem is lack of trust in Docusign?

So how big is such a market of potential customers that don’t trust Docusign to not tamper with the attestation? I’d hypothesize the potential customer segment is very small.

Big companies that need Docusign have incentive enough to get it right and typically have rigorous standards to making decisions like this. If lack of trust were an issue with customers, Docusign will have solved that issue already. Trust is not likely an issue for customers.

For choosing a Docusign over a Hellosign, price at scale however is an issue. If blockchain solved the cost at scale issue then you’d be on to something but I don’t think it does. Other tech solutions like S3 or R2 probably have a more material impact on a real customer problem like cost at scale than blockchain could hope to. Though I’d guess the cost Docusign and others charge has little to do with underlying data storage or infrastructure costs.

[wallacoloo]

> So how big is such a market of potential customers that don’t trust Docusign to not tamper with the attestation? I’d hypothesize the potential customer segment is very small.

This is sort of my point. This market probably exists, and it's almost certainly too small at the moment for Docusign/Hellosign/etc to consider going after. Which means any nimble startup that wants to can claim that market without much competition. That forms your core set of users, who are sticky to your service, and from whom you can fund development into adjacent markets (e.g. any attestations which are currently secured only by reputation. there's a fair amount of that in the auto industry, in housing/property, and in supply chain management, at the least).

I'm not saying that of all the business opportunities around, this is the best one. But it is a business opportunity, in an environment where most other investment opportunities are heavily oversubscribed.

> I always go back to, who’s going to invest in actually building the new blockchain solution and for what reason?

This was the original line I was responding to. Have we settled it? VCs would be one group to invest, and for the reason that there's an underserved market that no one else appears interested in serving and with the possibility to expand from there. Apparently, neighbor poster has actually already invested in this. So that seems pretty cut and dried to me.

[rubyfan]

Um no. I didn’t say “no one.” I said who and for what reason.

In my opinion, some rando startup deciding to do it (no offense to @knurled99); or a hypothetical rando VC deciding to back it still doesn’t make it a real threat to the sector.

It’s real if it changes the game and takes meaningful market share - not just a proof of concept or boutique outfit catering to the blockchain echo chamber.

This type of blockchain hype is the original point of my comment, implementations of blockchain for X absolutely exist and there’s plenty of examples. That was never in question. My point was to turn and run because the motive for using blockchain is hype or bullshit like many AI/ML, big data, no code/low code outfits tend to be. Sell you on new tech everyone seems infatuated with but don’t understand.

To the original point of debate…

> Someone is going to roll a decentralized ID system on blockchain and tank this whole sector...

There are a whole lot of things that could disrupt the document signing industry but blockchain on its own isn’t the thing. Again, who and for what reason matter a lot more than whether they use blockchain or traditional cryptographic hashing and S3.