Title: I often hear these things touted by blockchain advocates: data ownership, supply chain, and &quot;cutting out the middleman&quot;<p>I want to debunk these statements once and for all.<p>Myth #1 Blockchain changes data ownership, giving power back to the consumer<p>Anyone who becomes privy to some data has some ownership of it. Blockchain doesn&#x27;t change that. If you want to share something with only a few select people you need inherent trust or an NDA.<p>Myth #2 Blockchain can revolutionize supply chain<p>Its a datastore with some cryptographic identity checks and tamper proof guarantees. It can&#x27;t prove that a package made it from A to B or that it stayed at some ambient temperature IRL. It only records that someone attested to that, not whether its true.
An ordinary database will do for an audit trail.<p>Myth #3 It cuts out the Middleman<p>You dont need blockchain to cut the middleman out of indusrty X. Any service trying to do this wants to be the new middleman with lower service fees cos&#x27; blockchain!<p>Here are some axioms which I think will drive future blockchain use cases<p>1. The transfer of value must occur on the chain<p>This is why digital currency is the #1 use case. We&#x27;re already accustomed to digital value transfers when we use modern banking, the transfer of value is a few digits on our screens.<p>2. If you can&#x27;t do 1) then it must be enforcable off-chain<p>Take for example buying a house. I sign some papers at the bank and some more with an agent and then we all agree I own a house and owe the bank some money.
We sign the papers because then its enforcable by law. Keyword &quot;enforcable&quot;. If the legal system agrees a cryptographic signature on a digital record achieves this purpose then its as good as the paperwork.<p>We&#x27;re a few years away from proper legal recognition of smart contracts. Ricardian contracts seem to be a step in the right direction.<p>Thanks for reading and hope it clears things up.
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