Blockchains and Decentralization: Yes, But Does it add any VALUE?

I expect anyone who enthusiastically gets involved in the crypto-blockchain-decentralization space is prone to becoming somewhat myopic in their perception of the world... so these words I'm about to write here undoubtedly will fall on the eyes and ears of a less-than-unbiased audience.

A few days ago, a new venue called Blurt saw the light of day. The "short version" would be that it's basically a "re-imagined version" of Steem, where everybody gets to start over — in terms of content, reputation, etc. — but participants also get to have amounts of the resident BLURT token in equivalent amounts to a snapshot of Steem wallets at some point in May 2020.

As far as I can tell, some things are going to be different from Steem/Hive, and some things are going to be the same.

At this point, I have pretty much zero editorial commentary on whether or not it will "work," nor on where it thinks it's going to "go."

The Paint Isn't Even Dry!

The first 10 days of Blurt appear to have been a bumpy ride! There have been an assortment of glitches and problems with getting the main site to even run properly, and yet — at least reading between the lines — the biggest concerns of the people who did get onboard seems to NOT be to have a fully functioning front end, but where can they trade the token.

OK, so there isn't even a working "product," and all people can think about is heading for the nearest exchange...?

Not related, there are also lots of conversations about people being able to create their own plug-and-play copies of Blurt... which, again, isn't even working yet!

About That VALUE...?

I look at something like this, and find myself stuck with the question "where's the VALUE?"

And when I say that, what I really mean is "What is its purpose for EXISTING?"

Of course, if you're in business and investments, you also know that the world is filled with people who are firmly convinced that they can build the proverbial "better mousetrap." And I have no issue with that... it's what free enterprise is all about.

The "problem" I find myself looking at is that nobody's actually working on that mousetrap; people are just banking on the idea of the mousetrap... and sometimes it feels like there was never actually an intention to build the mousetrap, just to get people to throw money at the concept.

But at some point, you DO need a deliverable!

On a Much Greater Level

I don't have any emotional/financial investment in whether or not Blurt becomes a thing; nor in whether or not it spawns 100 copies of itself.

However, the preceding segments I wrote here strike me as symptomatic of a much broader issue facing the entire blockchain/cryptosphere: the innovative and groundbreaking utility of the technology AND the potential of cryptocurriences to serve as alternate payment systems not only for the "unbanked" but for everyone in an increasingly unstable world of fiat currencies... seems to repeatedly get usurped by a bunch of sheep running around asking "When Moon???"

How will the cryptosphere ever get taken seriously when we constantly direct most of the focus on highly dodgy notions of how to make back 10x our investment in a week? How can you hope to create actual financial instruments when all the talk supports the image of wildly unstable exotic derivatives.

Of course, this whole ball of wax looks ever so much like the Internet itself, 25 years ago... with a large number of people running around pitching the POTENTIAL of the web in order to score a high-flying IPO stock, rather than actually developing the reality of the web.

Maybe my approach is just very old fashioned... but don't we need to start focusing more energy on actual use cases, rather than chasing magic airdrops from increasingly harebrained projects?

Thanks for reading!

What do YOU think? Do we spend too much time worrying about the next price rally, rather than actually BUILDING things? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.) Created at 20200715 15:46 PDT 0078/1306

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