There are a lot of misinformation in the mainstream media about what Bitcoin, Blockchains or Distributed Ledgers can do or cannot do. The whole business model of “evangelists”, journalists, authors and vendors is to get their audience and customers excited (“blockchain will save the world!”) to generate revenues through clicks and sales. Accuracy is secondary for them. Truth does not sell well because it is often complex and boring. Even University professors can get the concept of distributed ledgers wrong – but this is the focus of another blog post.
Luckily, I got your back and will share the best sources of information to learn about what blockchains are actually good for.
Blogs
I recommend these blogs from experts who know what they are talking about:
- Jimmy Song Medium – Start with Why Blockchain is Not the Answer then Why Blockchain is Hard and The Truth about Smart Contracts
- Nick Szabo Enumerated is a great source of information about money and smart contracts. Read the classic Money, blockchains, and social scalability about trust minimization
- Paul Sztorc Truthcoin – Start with Private Blockchains, Demystified then Two demand categories for bitcoin and when B2B blockchains make sense
- Gideon Greenspan Multichain – Start with Avoiding the pointless blockchain project
- Su Zhu & Hasu Uncommon Core with the “Bitcoin Skeptics Series” (1) (2) (3)
- FTAlphaville has great pieces debunking the hype around blockchains, such as How blockchain takes us back to medieval times and Facebook’s Libra will not help the unbanked
Articles
These are must read articles:
- Gaurav Rana Timechain – A decade of misunderstanding blockchain
- Vili Lehdonvirta The blockchain paradox
- Steve Wilson What is consensus about?
- Nic Carter Blockchain Is a Semantic Wasteland
- Elaine Ou Bitcoin’s Anarchy Is a Feature, Not a Bug
- Bruce Schneier There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
- Jim Waldo A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Blockchain Universe
- D Baur & N Van Quaquebeke The blockchain does not eliminate the need for trust
- John Wolpert The Value of Being Stupid about Blockchain
- Colin Platt Analysing Costs & Benefits of Public Blockchains (with Data!)
Obviously, I also recommend my own articles, on this website (use the tags DLT and blockchain) and on my medium page:
- Blockchain technology — a very special kind of Distributed Database
- When do you need blockchain? Decision models
- The series “Decoding Blockchain” (1) (2) (3)
Enjoy!