A blockchain is a specific set of choices suitable for a narrow set of use-cases
I was recently at an &quot;Emerging Technology&quot; conference for emerging technologies that was targeted at non-technical entrepreneurs and innovators. 90% of the conference was focused on blockchain, while the remaining was focused on AI. During the entire conference, blockchain was being touted as a silver bullet for many problems, and many of the people at the conference ate it up.<p>The best anecdote to summarize the conference was a speech by IBM where they covered a project which they did with major retailer to track a supply chain. The speaker mentioned some impressive results which caused a noticeable people around me to literally say &quot;wow&quot;. However, they did not once mention specifically how blockchain was the cause of these results or give reasons why blockchain was superior. From what I could tell as an engineer, the entire application could have been built without blockchain.<p>I was surprised at how blockchain was being touted as the next technological revolution (and very light on the details) and was concerned at how quickly the other attendees accepted blockchain as it was being sold. I left the conference thinking that it would only be a matter of time before blockchain would be touted as a silver bullet in the larger community due to conferences like these (although I am sure they&#x27;ve been happening for a while, and this was my first exposure). It will not be long before a large number of software projects will be based on blockchain needlessly, and&#x2F;or the engineers will be arguing with management why using blockchain is a mistake.