Thread by @larsiusprime

I've got a term that crystallizes my root source of skepticism with crypto-backed digital goods:

"Degraded Blockchains."

The promises of crypto:
- Decentralized
- Immutable
- Trustless

Sounds good! However, most services "degrade" these promises in building their service

1/X

So you own the NFT that represents a digital pikachu. It's a number encoded on a blockchain. You own that number, it's immutable, no one can change it without your consent, it's decentralized, it's trustless. Great, great, great!

But all that is given meaning by some app. 2/X

And that app is a centralized, trusted, mutable service. There is nothing that fundamentally connects it to the blockchain the way everything internal to the blockchain is supported by the 3 key promises of crypto.

This is a "degraded blockchain"

3/X

This is without even making any (IMHO valid) critiques about ever increasing transaction fees and transaction times, and the fact that so many solutions to crypto problems seem to always involve skipping over or ignoring the blockchain in some way.

4/X

As always, I'm willing to be convinced if I can find an implementation of crypto avoids these problems. By crystallizing this term in my head it's more clear to me what my objections are -- are there any NFT crypto apps that avoid the "degraded blockchain" problem? How?

5/X

I anticipate that most of the responses will involve Ethereum on-chain scripting and smart contracts, but even those are more vulnerable to degraded blockchain failure than proponents think. Still, send me examples that you think avoid this issue if you've got them.

Fin