Ask HN: Do you know of any live B2B applications built on blockchain?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34166206

by gathersight • 4 years ago

5 5 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Other than large enterprise DeFi projects (e.g. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs etc) are there any blockchain applications aimed at the B2B space?

I'm struggling to find anything that I'd consider to be an app, product or platform built on a blockchain.

biorach• 4 years ago

2 hours and counting...

codegeek• 4 years ago

I work in b2b space and I have no clue where could Blockchain be used other than "nice cool thing".

hayst4ck• 4 years ago

Frankly, I'm too the point where this question is a bit too close to "Do you know of any condition that can be cured by snake oil?"

Before anyone says that's hyperbolic, the wikipedia page for blockchains uses the words snake oil itself (for some specific use cases): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

I suspect you might get more mileage out of looking for b2b uses of the underlying data structure which is merkle trees, which we have to thank for git (and apparently DynamoDB and Cassandra).

This article actually looks pretty good: https://medium.com/geekculture/understanding-merkle-trees-f4...

I feel like there is more marketing behind the word blockchain than technology. Blockchain seems like it falls squarely into the buzzword category. I feel like I'm completely crazy, but I have never met a person who used the word blockchain enthusiastically who seemed like they knew anything about anything.

Talking about blockchain before what its used for? I probably won't take the person seriously.

Talking about a project that used blockchain non-gratiutitously and how a blockchain enabled it? Maybe interesting.

I'm not looking to smash curiosity, but when I've tried to answer this question myself the buzz is so overpowering.

I guess what I am saying is that I am curious too, but not hopeful.

(8 hours and counting...)

gathersight• 4 years ago

I agree. Four years ago I dove deeply into blockchain and token models for a marketplace project I was working on and failed to find any startups or initiatives that looked anything like a customer facing product or platform. Four years on and nothing has changed. Still no case studies, no success stories.

Here's an illuminating transcript from Molly White (crypto sceptic) around the idea that blockchain is a 'solution looking for a problem' https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain-solutionism-lecture/

bsldld• 4 years ago

I don't have any project up and running, but I had tried in the past(and still looking) to get like minded people to work on an open source project to make education equity-based rather than loan-based. It has a genuine use for federated/permission-oriented distributed ledger. Iroha under the hyperledger umbrella was a good choice for the project.

If anyone is interested to know more then the project idea and rationale is available here: https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org

Ask HN: Do you know of any live B2B applications built on blockchain?

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