Bitcoin Forum

Let me state my bias upfront: I think Blockstack is a fantastic project. I also think that most people that I know will not understand the project. I want better understand why and how regular people may or may not become users of Blockstack.

For the purposes of this discussion, let's please assume that people are motivated by (i) money, (ii) power, (iii) sex, (iv) ease of access, (v) efficiency and (vi) conformity with others. Let's also assume most people are deeply ignorant and irrational and don't understand or care about the importance of network security, even when this puts their own self-interest at risk. Let's also assume people are amoral and don't care at all about liberty or any values unless it advances their own personal gain.

If we take this view of humanity to be true, why will anyone use the Blockstack browser over its key alternatives? These alternatives include (i) the normal internet and (ii) Tor. I agree that Blockstack is censorship resistant and far more secure (which by my value system is extremely important), but I'm skeptical that regular people care about these things. I think it's potentially valuable for criminals, but criminals already have Tor. If this is true, why will Blockstack be adopted? A possible reason is that people may adopt it if there were a decentralized P2P service that was of significant value to users that can only be accessible via the Blockstack browser (e.g., decentralized AirBnB). Another reason is because the price could go up which people like because most people are greedy. I am wondering if there are others that I'm not thinking of. Curious to hear the thoughts of the people on this forum.