Where are we in Blockchain Technologies Development?

Hello Steemians! So the Steem platform was temporarily unavailable for several hours today. Couldn't browse Steem through @partiko app gave me withdrawal syndromes and more importantly it led me to think about which stage are we in this blockchain revolution 😂. We all read about how blockchain can provide trust and transparency as a service. We expect blockchain technologies to transform the way many industries operate in the future. However, how far are we from realization of those goals?

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Personally, I always like to compare blockchain technologies with the internet technologies. However, I will disagree when people say we are at the late 1990s and early 2000s when the dot-com bubble formed and subsequently burst. I think blockchain technologies are still at the relatively early stage of development likened to the 1980s of internet technologies.

Brief History of Internet Technologies

The internet actually started development in the 1960s stemming from the development of NPL Network and ARPANET. Both were not created with mass adoption in mind and were purely meant for research purposes. Along the way some other networks were developed and as time went by, standards and protocols started to be developed.

The 1980s was essentially the era of protocols. During this period, the TCP/IP protocol suite was formalized. SMTP, DNS, BGP and the OSI reference model were released. All these laid the groundwork for the internet we know today. These protocols are being used in the background and most internet users probably never even heard of them. They are just there serving you silently.

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Finally in the 1990s, the World Wide Web emerged which led to a web browsers war and eventually mainstream adoption. It was also during this time which we saw the dot-com bubble formed and eventually burst in the early 2000s. The rest, as they say, is history (sorry for the cliche).

Drawing Comparisons

We all know that the very first cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. It was made possible by a few technologies/concepts,

Decentralization
Incentivized P2P System
Cryptography
Blockchain

The concept of leveraging blockchain technology to build dApps was spearheaded by Bitcoin (technically, Bitcoin is the first dApp built on blockchain to provide P2P transfer of value) but it wasn't the original intention. Ethereum came into the picture to popularize the concept of building dApps on blockchain technologies.

Circling back to Steem being down today. It showed that the dApps being built on blockchain are still far from being stable and highly available. This reinforced my opinion that we are still at an early stage of development in terms of blockchain and dApp technologies. We have yet to see a foundation so strong that we can be sure that services will always be running stably. Much like internet in the 1980s, we are still trying to lay the foundation for something great. This foundation is sure to be worth a lot if it is adopted by the majority. Which is precisely the reason why there are so many dApps platforms/protocols vying to be the standard for all dApps in the future.

Is the "Dot-com" Bubble of Cryptocurrencies Over?

The magnitude of the crash of the cryptocurrencies market from its January 2018 peak seemed to be similar to what happened to NASDAQ during the dot-com bubble illustrated in the image below:

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However, if I were asked to pinpoint at which stage the cryptocurrencies market is at in the picture, I will say that the it is not even in the picture yet. As mentioned, we are in the 1980s of the internet. Imagine if we were to put a dollar value on the internet technologies in the 1980s, what will happen? People will find it difficult to valuate the TCP/IP protocol or DNS because their value are not apparent. Just like people find it to valuate Bitcoin, Ethereum and Steem.

Unlike the internet technologies, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies were designed to carry value from the start. From a certain perspective, this is somewhat unfortunate because being early adopters and investors, we will be subject to extreme volatility due to the uncertainty of the technological development and adoption. At the same time, it is a good thing. Because by having value at the start, it incentivize developments on the technologies. That is why blockchain technologies are developing at such rapid pace.

Hence, to answer my own question, we are not past the "dot-com" bubble of cryptocurrencies yet. In fact, the real bubble has yet to come. I think true "irrational exuberance" will set in when there are means for mass adoption and easy institutional investments. When that day comes, it will be like the 1995 of the dot-com bubble.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts on the state of blockchain technologies and do you expect more growth in the cryptocurrencies market.