Hello everyone!
Few years ago (exactly 4) I posted very optimistic entry about that brand new technology - blockchain:
@ghua/here-comes-the-blockchain-revolution
I thought it is gonna be the same revolution as internet was - oh dear, time to reassess that claim :)
I am in no way an expert on all those newest blockchain technologies that are popping up and disappearing so quickly nowadays, so if you know any interesting blockchain/token/DeFi or other tech - please let me know about it in the comments!
Blockchain definitely changed a lot of things - it spawned new technologies and new concepts, but did it deliver what it promised?
I don't believe so - right now there are popular coins that can be send quickly and cheaply (ie XLM), but their price fluctuates which makes then not that great for everyday use. The concept of gas didn't work so well for ETH based inventions - costs are massive when ETH price is high.
Same with BTC and it's transfer fees - you cannot really use it to transfer money because of the costs. It makes BTC unusable as everyday coin. Still great for financial speculations though :)
In my opinion the biggest achievement of blockchains are NFTs. And while people are laughing at the idea of paying thousands of dollars for some pixels/bytes everyone technically can copy, I personally believe it slowly started changing the world of collectables and games, especially on platforms which don't use expensive gas.
Let's take for example WAX blockchain - right now it is a platform to quite few big brands: Funko with their NFT series (Iron Maiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Big Boy), Topps (baseball), Atari, Bratz.
Funko so far does the most interesting way - once you get cards from several collections, you can get special redemption coin which allows you to get a rare physical pop. Or you can get Legendary or Grail cards which are redeemable on their own. The only problem is that they are US centered and there is a deadline for redemption. What happens after it I have no idea. But it easily can get better, and as Funko Pop collector the whole idea is tempting - you don't have to deal with physical product unless you want to (oh dear, so many smashed/scratched Funko boxes I got), you can trade it in a very quick way, the trading fees are low (and may be lower in the future), it's pure fun.
Another interesting area of development is games - there are quite few right now, I played Alien Worlds and Splinterlands.
In both of them you can get some virtual currency which tradeable, or you can also get some items in form of NFTs which you can sell on marketplaces. And this the direction I would love to see games go: instead of buying games, we should be playing them for free and game creators should live off the blockchain fees triggered by us selling in game items. I believe it is not that hard to achieve: what we see now is blockchain specialists trying to make games, which so far is not going great (that said I really like Splinterlands - it has potential).
In terms of DeFi - I just use Binance Earn function or staking on WAX. On some coins it has great APR compared to regular banks but still I don't think I would trust it my savings. And it is not Binance itself as I believe they are safu enough, it is me not trusting the whole process of having large sum of money on network account which can be accessed by anyone who knows the right combination of numbers. It is just something in my head :/
Another interesting thing are raffles - especially once that you stake coins and winnings come from the interest. I believe it is fantastic was for gambling, way better than Lotto. If you know any good site, please let me know in comments.
That's it for now, thanks for reading. It is my first post on Hive ;)