Notes
Blockchain Scalability
- Obviously a massive problem. Ethereum 10tx/sec vs Visa 80K/tx
- Notable comment
- the current state is horrific. As volume increases, things get worse (more latency, fees go up). "Scalability is moving in the opposite direction"
- Each marginal customer in Visa cost LESS, but with blockchain each marginal customers cost MORE
- Overall, technical attendees believe the scalability problem would be solved (likely with feature tradeoffs) but no agreement on how quickly.
ICO / Token offerings
- 80% of ICO last year had negative returns
- Earliest ones (Bitcoin, ETH) had best returns with declining returns for newer ones
- Less mega $ ICO are expected, more around $20-30M
- Conflict arising between ICO and VC fiduciary responsibilities
- US companies will domicile in Cayman and other countries to get around emerging US regulatory tightening
WilmerHale partner (and ex-SEC staffer) on ICO clampdown
- SEC is trying to tap down ICO very aggressively. SEC was caught off guard last year by the explosion of ICO and working to get it cleaned up. Getting this cleaned up and tapped down is the SEC’s #1 priority
- There clearly be a flurry of SEC enforcement actions
- Lots of discussion of Security vs Utility token classification. The general feeling is that utility token must have immediate use and demonstration of value when ICO raised. A “Chucky Cheese” token that can be used immediately after issuance (few startups are doing this. hard for some applications) and for which it is hard to see how the problem could be solved without using a utility token
- Lots of challenges. "Do we really need SC for these proposed applications?"
- SC are immutable. How do you handle changes or amendments?
- All the data is public. How do you handle private data?
- “It is impossible to code on Ethereum” "Why do we need to learn another language for SC?
- SC is painful today but less painful than 3 months ago and trend line is improving but too slow
- Severe lack of tools for SC; open source and big sw companies need to improve
- Ethereum is the leading environment for SC but other platforms have better developer experience
Use cases and non-crypto apps with network usage
- CryptoKitties using 15% of Ethereum's network remains stunning.
- A few promising companies presented (FirstBlood – gaming (1000 sessions per day), possibly Bloom for credit score)
- [Paul view: But many teams and ideas seem focused on ICO fundraising and technical challenges, and not details of customer willingness to use/pay and 10x uniqueness versus non-blockchain apps]