[hiq]

As usual, all of these "use cases" suffer from the problem at the boundaries (see also Oracle problem), namely that you can automate everything on the blockchain you're using, but once you're back in the real world you no longer have any guarantee. Your new layer of abstraction just leaves you with a more brittle system.

* insurances: you still need somebody outside the smart contract that needs to connect it to what happens. You've just moved the trust from one place to another, and you're not better off.

* transferring money is faster in many countries than it is with (e.g.) BTC when you include the wait for the confirmation blocks. It's also bound to become faster and cheaper, while many blockchains (especially BTC) seem stuck with their processing time. Even countries with slow bank transfers now tend to have a fast solution, like Zelle in the US. Add problems like volatility of the cryptocurrency with the respect to the currency that actually matters, high (and volatile) fees, and transfers via cryptocurrencies is only attractive in a few countries and will only remain so as long as these countries do not improve.

* with art you again have the same boundary problem: the blockchain you use doesn't know what's happening, and only the law will resolve your conflicts.

> efficient, transparent and enforce standardization

So far the blockchain systems have been less efficient than non-blockchain ones they purported to replace, see the usual comparison with the Visa network for example.

Transparency and standardization are orthogonal to the use of a blockchain: using one doesn't mean you can't be opaque or follow any standard.

[philippz]

But this is only because businesses have yet to be built around this technology. These things will change. We are super early. We should not build these use cases everyone is asking for right now. The tech is still early and has to figure out many things. There is a lot of innovation happening on the base- and interoperability level, and it needs a lot more abstraction (e.g., network and account abstraction) to make things more usable.

Standardization also plays a huge role, and yes, in many ways, it's a technological chicken-and-egg problem whereby systems have to work with each other and the chain in a way that makes intermediaries as obsolete as possible.

The transfer speed of money or the general transaction speed - well, that's something that is being solved as we speak. These systems (e.g. Ethereum) have to mature, and many ways are being explored, using known principles like separation of concerns, e.g., separating settlement, execution, and data layers - but in a decentralized manner.

The public and many entrepreneurs need to understand how early this tech is and rush use cases that don't add value as of now. You must go deep and understand that this has to grow from the bottom up.

[hiq]

> this is only because businesses have yet to be built around this technology

No, these are fundamental problems that time can't solve. Businesses aren't built around this technology because it's not advantageous to use it in a legally compliant environment.

Companies in this field keep adding new layers of abstraction pretending they're solving a problem; they're just moving it to somewhere else, but the fundamentals remain the same. Basically running in circle.

[philippz]

It is hard to comprehend what it'd mean to have the world connected via distributed ledgers that provide transparency and would be able to automate a lot of what we do to a much higher degree.

We're not running in circles.

> Businesses aren't built around this technology because it's not advantageous to use it in a legally compliant environment.

This is just one of the reasons. The technology is also not scalable and abstracted enough yet. No one is pretending anything here.

[LoganDark]

> It is hard to comprehend what it'd mean to have the world connected via distributed ledgers that provide transparency and would be able to automate a lot of what we do to a much higher degree.

idk, take your phone thing as an example. Blockchain doesn't solve anything, because nothing stops me from reselling the phone without transferring the insurance, or transferring the insurance and keeping the phone. The whole problem is that it's not linked to the phone itself.

instead of going on about benefits, what is an industry that currently suffers from an actual problem that a blockchain could solve? because right now I'm not aware of any problems in society where blockchain is the solution