Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder and lead developer for Ethereum [ETH] does not get the point of big tech conglomerates creating their private blockchains.
Speaking in reference to IBM’s latest attempts at establishing a blockchain for food tracking, Vitalik told that this is ultimately “wasted time” unless it is permissionless. Buterin made these statements in an interview conducted during the DevCon 4 conference early this month in Prague.
According to Buterin, he doesn’t “understand this deeply, but the detail that jumped out at me is they’re saying ‘Hey, we own all the IP and this is basically our platform and you’re getting on it.’ And like, that’s… totally not the point….”
He called the attempt by large tech companies such as IBM trying to create a blockchain as just marketing skits to stay relevant in a changing tech world.
The idea behind IBM’s food tracking blockchain is merely to track food from its source to the consumer, which according to Buterin “the project has potential value”. He did, however, express his reservation about the capability of a large company such as IBM in executing it.
“Sometimes it is for marketing hype. Sometimes it is just people who are genuinely excited about blockchains and want the thing they are personally excited about and their job to align more with each other, which is a totally legitimate, human thing to want to do” he said.
In Buterin’s opinion, cryptocurrencies have thus far succeeded in applying technology to improving cross-border payments and functioning as money (at least internet money).
“All of the other ideas — whether we’re talking about products or the self-sovereign identity stuff — that’s clearly something that still needs much more time to be worked out before we can see [whether it] makes sense at scale,” he added.
Buterin did, however, recognize and acknowledge the idea of authentication of university degrees which is currently being implemented in Singapore. This particular use-case allows institutions to digitally issue education certificates on a blockchain.
