Mikael Koivukangas
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

“There is the question of who will have an incentive to create these things.”
Great point, and something that most people in the blockchain crowd seem to be missing. Just because you invent something that works doesn’t mean you’ll ever see a cent of income, its the application, not the technology, that matters.

I think in the end most of the current work is purely a waste of time for now, and the benefits will be seen later when verticals start developing their own versions of these services (more later on why that’s going to take a while)

Sort of like VDI, Virtual Desktop Interface. It’s not the inventor of VDI that’s making a killing off HIPAA, it’s Citrix.

“[…] and there is no single sign-on that enables someone to buy services without ‘having an account’[…]” Technically this isn’t true anymore: Within 5–10 years the only log-in you’ll need is either a chip ID card, your bank’s ID eVerify/eID system, or your phone using your PayPal or equivalent. These already exist today, but widespread adoption will occur slowly.
Why is it slow, you ask? Well, while it only costs roughly $0.20 per verification, these services (SEPA) are packaged at a minimum of $6000 per month for a package of 30,000 verifications for banks, which is why most companies aren’t (yet) able to take advantage of them.

Then there’s oAuth, which anyone could use to develop their own eID verification system without customers needing an account, but there’s a problem: There’s a big fight for IT professionals as it is, so all the major corporations are gobbling up all the talent, leaving very little for the other 98% of the economy. Schools, libraries, stores, pharmacies, transportation companies all need their own in-house IT development through some means in order for this “Web3.0” thing to become real.

“ Also, the foundational technologies are so deeply flawed, that I am wondering if it is a Tower of Babel that will collapse. IoT has not taken off because no one trusts all those devices, which have been proven to be insecure.”

Technically no one trusts the technologies used to make IoT possible. In other words, it’s not that I don’t trust my fridge to do my shopping for me, I just don’t like the idea of it being facilitated by a more-or-less public WiFi. Even private WiFi networks can be hacked relatively easily since most consumer routers don’t come with stellar security measures or ways to monitor them.

    Mikael Koivukangas

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