Sure. But are those problems worth solving? How many VCs does the world need to pump cash into NFT-enabled video games before we ask the question, "why?"

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/nba-top-shot-creator-dappe...

I'm concerned after reading https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/shard-chains/ that sharding is aimed at letting individual dApps roll up transactions -- i.e. the individual app would be the effective shard key -- and thus that would introduce some notion of centralization into the system.

One benchmark is 1,700 tps for VISA. https://phemex.com/blogs/what-is-transactions-per-second-tps

If not, why not? Especially after 10+ years of development and intense VC funding (as is the parent article's point).

This is a protocol that rolls up ETH transactions and executes them in batch, in an attempt to alleviate scalability concerns. I can't really speak to the side/unintended effects of transaction rollups on a blockchain, but I'm interested in learning.

This excerpt from the FAQ

> It is worth noting that anyone can become a relayer so long as they have staked the required bond in the smart contract. This incentivises the relayer not to tamper with or withhold a rollup.

kind of bothers me. It does not seem like such a small step to go from 'decentralized' to 'cartel of relayers' to 'central bank and subordinate branches'. And the fact that this protocol is unavailable to US persons is interesting, though perhaps standard for the space right now.

Probably the fact that, despite having been under development for > 10 years, we haven't seen any ground broken by any blockchain technologies for any reasons other than speculation or triviality. Which is what the other 95% of the article focuses on. The inefficiency of the development process, not necessarily the technology, although yes, the latter is a factor.

What I mean is, if blockchain is going to be a revolutionary technology backing all finance, where is the evidence it can handle the kind of transaction volume that, say, major credit card networks generate?

Can't speak for everyone. But from my perspective, it's because certain "applications" are being marketed very heavily to non-technical people who aren't able to reasonably assess the viability of the technology. I'm thinking of NFTs in particular. The only other popularized non-NFT applications are cryptocurrencies, which are pure speculation (i.e., gambling).

In short, that's a moral issue. People were outraged by the Madoff scandal (and others), and this doesn't look a lot different to people who understand the underlying technology. Nobody wants their mom going broke because they bought some hyped-up blockchain thing on the advice of some super-hustler internet marketing influencer out looking to make a buck.

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Are you? What is it? Specifically.

The parent article's point is that most currently popular technologies found an application rather quickly, whereas blockchain technologies have been around for a long time (in tech terms) and still have not made ground.

A functioning political system shouldn't only have ever have 2 viable candidates. Much less have the only viable candidates belong to one of two viable political parties, both of which have cartoonishly stable views over time.

Maybe the broken, overly simplistic US political system is a _symptom_ of shockingly terrible education outcomes. Not vice-versa. Like many of the other social ills currently ravaging American society.

Notice when things aren't getting done by the time they were estimated to be done, and notice if the person seems to be continually pushing back completion dates. After a day or two of "thought I could get it cone but couldn't", it's negligent to _not_ dig in to _why_ the person is struggling. Really not meaning to be snarky, but if a manager isn't doing this, I'm not sure what exactly they are doing.

IME most solid engineers prefer autonomy and trust over schedule and process, and would strongly resent having to spend their time in a meeting because their manager was unable to do people management.

Where is the incentive for a company to actually bother reaching into the ledger to determine who holds royalty rights? The underlying media pointed to by the NFT is not restricted, it's infinitely reproducible and thus valueless. Why not just right-click save-as and display the media, bypassing the metadata encoded in the NFT?

It seems like there'd have to be some person or collection of persons who are responsible for enforcing that the company treat the terms of the NFT as a binding agreement. Using force, if necessary, either legal or physical. Something almost like... a legal system associated with a state. Which would be centralized. Which would beg the question, what's the value of the decentralized ledger in that case?

Let's substitute "digital signature"/"NFT" for "tulip", or "star", or "moon crater", or "beanie baby", or "MLM beauty product". How is the market for NFTs any different from these essentially ponzi-scheme markets?

"NFTs allow digital artists to profit from their work!"

I mean, sure, but again, they are selling digital signatures with no inherent value that they need to "make a market for". The money they are making isn't because of their art, it is because their sales skills allow them to convince greater fools that inherently worthless digital signatures are actually worth something.

Would we say "selling stars enables amateur astronomers to profit from their work"? Or would we rather say selling stars enables scammers to scam people who don't know any better? Or charitably that selling stars enables charitable people to donate money to whoever is selling the "star", both parties to the transaction recognizing that there is nothing of value being exchanged.

The latter would be forgivable but it also seems highly unlikely there would be a large market of altruistic donators wanting to provide patronage specifically via NFTs. We have a large and robust financial system that is perfectly capable of facilitating low/no-cost donations. It seems more likely that illegitimate or shady capital needs ways to achieve liquidity and legitimacy. And the whole "supporting artists"/"allowing artists to prosper" narrative is a fantastic (and sufficiently complex) cloak that would achieve that while avoiding scrutiny.

tl;dr When a market for an inherently valueless, infinitely reproducible resource pops up out of nowhere and begins to rapidly inflate, it seems likely there's some sketchy stuff going on under the hood.