How To Stop Being An Ostrich: Creating Real Value With Blockchain

By VOLT CMO Jack Collier

There is an interesting human phenomenon known as the ostrich effect. It is the act of wilfully ignoring the information around us that we feel to be uncomfortable or inconvenient. Over the past 10-15 years as a handful of tech companies have centralized control over our digital lives, we have engaged in a collective act of sticking our heads in the sand. The experiences and products they created were so easy to use and addictive, that we collectively chose to ignore the potential dangers they posed to privacy, fairness, economic opportunity, innovation, and personal freedom.

With the rise of AI, this problem is only accelerating. As we look across the digital landscape, and the broader social landscape since they are now inexorably intertwined, the control that a few companies exert feels so absolute that the potential for getting out from under it seems almost impossible. So the question becomes, do we necessarily remain ostriches, or is there another way forward from where we are?

The right solution for the wrong problem

For years, blockchain technology has been vaunted as the solution to many of the problems and excesses of centralized tech. It was meant to be a technological revolution that would help pull our heads out of the sand and see the real challenges in front of us. Blockchain based projects have been positioned as the solution for everything from privacy, security, and data sovereignty, to fairness, openness, and economic participation. But when we look at the data around adoption and real usage, these well-intentioned promises have yet to materialise. 

Currently, the best estimate for blockchain based app usage is around 40M daily active users (from latest a16z state of crypto report), most of whom only use a limited range of decentralized finance (DeFi) apps for trading crypto currencies, compared to over 5B daily active users on traditional app platforms like Google and Apple. 

There are a number of reasons for why this is the case but blockchain technology has, until recently, largely been used to solve the wrong problems. The origin of the technology was a response to a very real financial problem. After the financial crisis in 2008 it became clear that we could no longer trust banks or governments as financial intermediaries to hold our assets or what should be our sovereign property, including our personal information and data. Bitcoin was born to remove intermediaries and create a truly distributed, private, and equitable alternative financial system. But what began as a way to create secure and transparent distributed networks quickly morphed into an entire industry trying to find ways to apply the technology to other problems.

From gaming and messaging, to deeds and medical records, there was a drive to put everything on chain. But, in truth, there wasn’t and still isn’t much need to do so. For most people the current technologies they are using work fine. Unless you have an ideological commitment to the values of decentralization, you are unlikely to trade off familiar platforms for something that is usually slower, more complicated, and requires learning a new technology stack if you’re a developer or a new way of using apps if you’re an end user. 

Rather than seeking out a clear product market fit, and finding real problems where decentralisation is both a necessary and sufficient solution, the industry has instead continued to wait for the “killer app” that would bring mass adoption. It may be time to move beyond this illusion.

The right solution for the right problem  

I am in no way diminishing the importance and role of blockchain technologies. In fact, very much the opposite. I’m a firm believer that there are a number of problems that only decentralized technologies can address. When we focus on the right problems it will lead to adoption and usage not only by existing communities, but also by millions of developers, startups, scale ups, and enterprises who would not have otherwise explored the technology.

One place that we have seen a clear need in the market, which only blockchain technologies can solve, is compute power. To build innovative products has always required access to compute power. But, what was once possible with a few servers in someone’s garage has come to require entire racks of servers in centralized data centers, and now hundreds if not thousands of GPUs which are primarily accessed through a few large companies.

The lack of access to affordable compute power not only limits competition, but also creativity and experimentation since young companies that should be pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and creating imaginative products are instead rushing to market to try to stay competitive. This is true across the tech space, but even more so in the field of AI, where access to compute is critically important and severely limited. This is where DePIN comes in.

Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (or DePINs) like VOLT are able to provide instant access to tens of thousands of underutilised GPUs around the world. Rather than getting locked into long term contracts or having to wait hours (or sometimes even weeks) for access to GPUs at prices that most developers and small businesses can’t afford - devs, startups and scale ups can now instantly access the resources they need, scale when they need, spin up clusters where they need on demand - and do all of this for 70% less than major hyperscalers.

This fundamentally changes the equation. 

With DePIN, networks teams have the ability to experiment, play, test, innovate, and bring their full creativity to their work without worrying about their infrastructure costs making their business unsustainable. This can create a sea change in the AI space, finally giving startups and scale ups the chance to compete against the tech giants and bring their products to market.

This is not possible with centralized platforms. This is something that only blockchain technologies can power, and something the market desperately needs. It is blockchain technology being used as the right solution for the right problem.  

Seeing it in action

DePIN doesn’t just have the potential to solve a critical problem - it is already solving that problem. And not just among existing blockchain communities.

VOLT just announced that it has surpassed a substantial sum in on-chain revenue. This is revenue being generated from real usage. Projects ranging in size from a few developers just starting out to established teams with well loved products are using VOLT to power their growth in the AI space. Many of these projects have never used blockchain technology before and are turning to VOLT not because of the technology in itself, but instead because it provides them the best possible solution to their current needs. 

When technology works, and solves real problems, people will use it. It really is that simple.

For too long we have chosen to be ostriches and keep our heads in the sand about the reality and dangers of the digital world. This is in part because we either didn’t see another way forward, or any other path forward seemed too difficult or unrealistic. VOLT is changing that. Decentralized GPU networks solve a real problem in terms of cost and accessibility, and in doing so also make AI development more fair and open, leading to greater innovation and creativity. 

I invite you to go see for yourself what real change can look on our explorer or at VOLT.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn