I've been dabbling recently, and as I've said before I'm quite put off by the limitations of Ethereum. As it stands now, it's main use case appears to be the development of new cryptocoins, perhaps voting applications..? And yet, every now and then you come across a nugget of true insight when working with the Ethereum protocol, for instance the gas payments to nodes to run code effectively should stop DDoS attacks since it would require vast sums of money to disrupt the network. It remains to be seen how valid this idea is in practice, but you could look at ideas like that and say, "Yeah, that seems like a step forward."
Anyways, if Ethereum really will become Web 3.0, then comparatively speaking I'd say we're not even in the 56k modem era yet.
Once there is a proper infrastructure for trusted Oracles, there will be lots of interesting applications: small group crowd funding, payment distribution from trusts,execution of wills.
While I would love for this to be a thing, most cryptocurrency enthusiasts seem to distrust anything and everyone. How would one develop an oracle trusted enough that it would be accurate while not being vulnerable to sudden betrayals? There are for example plenty of stories from Eve Online (closest example of a lawless/trustless universe) where a very trusted middleman suddenly changed behavior when the benefits became great enough.
Especially when a cryptocoin includes strong anonymity, betrayal has very low downside since no retribution would be possible. However even if such anonymity is not present, it may not be possible to get retribution if the entity on the other side is (for example) the mafia.
A blockchain can only process its own data, no external api call allowed. Unfortunately a lot of interesting applications require access to external data. Thats what oracle are for. They import external data into the blockchains, embedded in transactions. Yes it does undermine the security model of the blockchain, but they are some work arounds. For example, you can have several oracles, and you can decided to only accept data that was provided by a majority of oracles, thus rejecting outliers.
Uhh, with the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.
With the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.
Anyways, if Ethereum really will become Web 3.0, then comparatively speaking I'd say we're not even in the 56k modem era yet.