Blockchain isn’t a fit anywhere solution. But where it fits, it works.

It’s sometimes been sold as a wonder tech for all human ills. Of course it isn’t, and whilst the applications may be diverse, in practice there’s only a small number of viable uses.

Have a read of this short post from Cygnetise on the problems of trying to shoe horn blockchain into places it probably shouldn’t go.

One of the success stories is of course crypto currency, a new invention, whereby the blockchain technology doesn’t need to interface with non blockchain systems. Because that’s one of the main issues of blockchain, the compatibility within commercial systems. It may be a good solution, out of context, but business systems are like a jigsaw, and unless everything fits together it’s not viable. Totally automated businesses may yet come to pass, like the DAO, they Distributed Autonomous Orgnaisaiton, a prototype ‘crypto venture fund’ which didn’t really survive the hack it experienced.

There’s lot’s of problems with attempting to ‘write humans out’ of the business process in this way. Even if a totally formulaic enterprise were able to be fashioned, and codified, so it ran entirely on code, it would immediately come up against the same problem, that being non codified enterprises outside of itself. Basically, a totally ‘smart contract’ system, an autonomous business, is theoretically possible, but would not be able to deal with conventional enterprises.

If an Ai platform started created autonomous enterprises, all networked together, that would be another story. Probably one with a bad ending for all of us.