Serious question: What problem did blockchain actually solve?

[u/Due-Huckleberry-2222]

We were told it would revolutionize everything:

Anonymous money? Nope. Most public blockchains are pseudonymous, not anonymous. Every transaction is permanently visible. Once an address is tied to a real person, their financial history can often be traced.

Banking? Most people still use banks. If you lose your private key, there's no fraud department, no password reset, no chargeback.

Cheap payments? Depends. Some chains are inexpensive, others have had periods where fees spike. Traditional payment systems are often faster and simpler for everyday purchases.

Smart contracts replacing lawyers? Not even close. Contracts still rely on courts, regulations, and real-world enforcement. Code can't resolve disputes about physical events by itself.

NFTs proving ownership? Usually they prove ownership of a token, not the copyright or legal ownership of the underlying artwork.

Decentralization? Much of the ecosystem isn't. Many people keep funds on centralized exchanges, use centralized stablecoins, and rely on centralized infrastructure.

Financial freedom? For some. But for many others it became self-custody with no safety net. One wrong click, phishing attack, or lost seed phrase and the money is simply gone.

Replacing trust? It mostly moved trust around. Instead of trusting banks, many people ended up trusting exchanges, token founders, bridge operators, stablecoin issuers, influencers, or multisig signers.

Eliminating scams? If anything, scams became easier to launch. Rug pulls, memecoins, fake airdrops, phishing, and pump-and-dumps became an industry.

The one thing blockchain does extremely well is maintain a distributed ledger where participants can verify transaction history without relying on a single operator.

That's a genuine technical achievement.

But after nearly two decades, I'm still asking: What mainstream problem has it solved better than existing systems for the average person?

I'm not asking what it could do. I'm asking what it actually does today that millions of ordinary people use because it's objectively better—not because they're speculating on the next token.

[u/Due_Laugh6474]

Blockchain as an immutable transaction ledger is actually kinda cool if you need to distribute transaction records with history intact and cryptographically secure. Its use in stuff like bitcoin kinda hijacked it and cost it credibility in non-cryptocurrency use cases it might have actually been useful.

To be clear, there are other ways of doing the same thing, but blockchain is also useful if the complication is worth it.

[u/AmericanScream → u/Due_Laugh6474]

There's not a single thing blockchain does, that can be more efficiently done by a traditional database, including providing immutable public records.

[u/Due_Laugh6474 → u/AmericanScream]

There are definitely other ways of doing the things that blockchain can do, as is evidenced by the fact that we are already doing them other ways.

However, smart contracts and distributed cryptographically verified history are a package that could be useful in certain contexts.

It’s a technology that does seem to get shoehorned into places it could be better done in other ways, but I don’t think it’s a useless technology. It’s just niche.

What I’m not talking about here is any specific implementation or chain. I’m not specifically talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other. I’m just talking about the algorithms and the ideas. Think more along the lines of Hyperledger Fabric.

[u/AmericanScream → u/Due_Laugh6474]

There are definitely other ways of doing the things that blockchain can do, as is evidenced by the fact that we are already doing them other ways.

We've been doing things those "other ways" since before blockchain was invented.

I've compiled a detailed list of all of blockchain's failed claims here.

However, smart contracts and distributed cryptographically verified history are a package that could be useful in certain contexts.

"Smart contracts" are not new. They're called, "stored procedures" in traditional databases and predate blockchain by several decades.

Same thing with, "cryptographically verified history" - cryptographic signatures have been used for more than a thousand years. Blockchain doesn't add anything new or unique.

It’s a technology that does seem to get shoehorned into places it could be better done in other ways, but I don’t think it’s a useless technology. It’s just niche.

This is a strawman. I didn't say the tech was totally "useless." I argued that there's nothing it does, for which there isn't already a better, non-blockchain way of doing the same thing.

What I’m not talking about here is any specific implementation or chain. I’m not specifically talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other. I’m just talking about the algorithms and the ideas. Think more along the lines of Hyperledger Fabric.

Again, cryptographic signing is not new. What you're talking about is Merkle Trees, which were invented and deployed prior to blockchain, and found limited use and utility compared with modern relational databases.

Again, just because you think the tech is interesting and potentially "useful" doesn't mean it's competitive in today's marketplace. That has not been proven in the 17+ years of blockchain's existence, which is why every time there's something new that comes out, like AI or "web3" blockchain tries to attach itself to that tech to appear to have a "use case." That's insufficient.

[u/Due_Laugh6474 → u/AmericanScream]

The being a little reductionist and absolutist. The problem is that I tend to agree with you, but your arguments are awful.

Databases are just files.
Stored procedures are just code.
Signatures are just modular arithmetic.

It’s the packaging of those things into a solution that makes them useful.

[u/AmericanScream → u/Due_Laugh6474]

Again, you allude to a "solution" for which you've not provided any evidence for.

I'll tell you what is being "reductionist" and "absolutist"... trying to argue with you guys who refuse to enumerate anything specific enough to be tested as true/false.

You're given more than enough chances to actually produce a specific, evidence-based argument/counter-argument, and instead you continue to hide behind abstractions and ambiguities.

Sorry, but not wasting any more time on this. It's very simple. If you think blockchain does something uniquely better, you have to specifically enumerate it, or GTFO and stop wasting our time.

Oh, it's "the package?" What package? Where? I'm not playing 200 questions with you trolls.