Do you really need a blockchain?
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Nothing is "necessary" for you
Perhaps in response to the ubiquitous blockchain scams of 2017-2018, the cryptocurrency world is now increasingly skeptical (and rightly so) of decentralized projects that promise mass adoption. However, perhaps it was too cautious, and now there is a voice in the community, and everyone is beginning to question whether the blockchain is really useful, and whether it is necessary to use the blockchain in some application scenarios. Well, the answer is of course no, but what in the world is "necessary"?
In economics, a product (good) is necessary only if it solves a particular problem because there is no substitute for it. But such cases are very rare, such as the following:
oxygen:You need oxygen to live and there is no substitute for it.
Electricity from the power supply bureau:High fixed costs and low marginal costs create a natural state monopoly and you have no choice
There are also cases related to strong brand loyalty, which we will not delve into here. But it is also enough to show that it is difficult for us to find products without substitutes. If a problem is big enough (and painful enough), then you have to believe that the world must have found many ways to solve it.
A blockchain-powered decentralized system is not oxygen, and you can certainly easily replace it with a centralized system. So do you still need it? Probably not anymore. In the same way, you basically don't necessarily need any of them.
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give it time to grow
When new technology first appears, it's always all sorts of bad. They are bad not only because of immaturity, but also because of the lack of an ecosystem that can make the best use of them. Take the automobile that appeared at the end of the nineteenth century as an example:
Poorly small value:Cars were very slow back then, like 10-20 mph. A normal horse can easily run 30 miles an hour. And compared with horses, cars are noisy, unreliable, and expensive to maintain.
The ecosystem has little to no:Back then roads were made for horses, not cars. No highways, no garages, no gas stations... nothing for cars, but a whole ecosystem for horses and buggies.
If you were to ask people in the late 19th century if they really needed a car, the answer would be no. It would be crazy to say yes, and so is most new technology, including blockchain. Maybe 50-100 years from now, when we look back on this journey, we will look back on the cars at that time.
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The pain point is just a certain range of itching
Decentralized systems like blockchain bridge the trust gap. But the so-called "trust gap" is actually like all pain points, and the definition of pain is not so clear. The pain point is not a certain point of pain, but a certain range of "a little itchy". Let's take a specific use case of Taraxa to talk about this "itchy scope", which will include some details hidden in each condition defined in a business contract (such as a non-disclosure agreement).
As an example, one of Taraxa's clients is an asset leasing company in Japan. They have leased assets for years through a profit-sharing business model and have never had a trust issue. Why? So they have a long history with their clients, they're in an established industry, the players are big names, and any potential malicious behavior is likely to be negligible.The trust issue here is not a "pain point", but "a little itchy".
Once the client enters the international market, the issue of trust comes. They started dealing with new partners, new users, people they didn't know well. They also do not speak the local language, do not understand the local culture, and most importantly, they face a much more complicated business environment than Japan. Their users don't submit accurate data and don't trust the data they collect.The original "a little itchy" problem is becoming more and more "painful".
In this case, we integrate a hardware/software blockchain solution to step in as a trust anchor, allowing all stakeholders to at least reach a consensus on the origin and immutability of data generated by an asset, thus laying the groundwork for trust. Base.
So, is a blockchain solution like this a "must have" with no substitutes? of course not. Alternatives are everywhere. For example, they can clearly mark the price and charge a uniform fee instead of using a profit-sharing model; they can also slow down the speed of global expansion and gradually build trust with a small number of customers. It's just that the economic gains brought by these programs are not so attractive in comparison.
Back to the key question: "Have you really created concrete value with blockchain technology?" This time our answer is, "Yes! We have!" Customers have thousands of orders that cannot be completed (dozens of devices per order), because a trust gap could keep them from getting what they deserve. And our solution helped them complete these orders effectively and generated huge profits.
It is actually very simple to generate income and increase value, and it makes sense. This may not shock the world like shouting to create a "decentralized world", but it is a way for every new technology successfully created by human beings to reach the public.
