Ask HN: What would be an alternative to blockchain and crypto?
I feel both very enthusiastic & skeptical about blockchain. In the last decade it has been designated by many as the way forward, some form of transactional, Internet of value & next step in business integration. What scares me the most is no big alternative seems to have emerged in this area to compete with blockchain? I hope I am missing something, any idea?
You might be interested in raking a look at Holochain:
I'm by no means an expert in the technology, but it's one attempt at a blockchain alternative that I'm aware of, albeit with different philosophies regarding global consensus.
Isn't each of the hundreds of cryptocurrencies an alternative? Many of them have wildly varying implementations - different designs, levels of security, speed of transaction, transaction number limits, no blockchain at all, proof-of-stake vs proof of work etc.
Blockchain solutions are touted as improvements and replacements for solutions that already exist. It's not that blockchain solves problems previously not solvable.
Read Attack of the 50-Foot Blockchain for some perspective.
One alternative I could think of are chunks or clusters of centralized systems which are then inter-connected among themselves to form a decentralized whole (kinda how the internet works!).