Over the weekend I was brainstorming ideas for personal projects. One of the ideas that didn't make my list was some application that uses the Blockchain.

I had been thinking of trying to use the blockchain ever since I first learned of it in 2013. All I could think about was how much potential this technology; with a decentralized network the sky is the limit.

But I had (and still have) no idea what to do with it.

So, for brainstorming I came up with a list of criteria I wanted for this project:

1. It used BlockChain: I think the BlockChain is a cool technology and I wanted to use it.

2. I was creating a product or service: I wanted to actually create potential value. If it was a successful project I wanted to be able to sell it and make money.

3. I don't want to make another cryptocurrency: These have been done before. And I also don't particularly care for them.

4. Avoid using BitCoin (or any other cryptocurrencies): I wanted to create something that hadn't been done before and I felt that using cryptocurrencies was too limiting in scope. Plus, I wanted cold hard cash if I was going to make money.

I did not get too far into brainstorming before I knew something was amiss; I didn't quite understand how the block chain works.

I didn't realize what bitcoin mining was actually doing. I had always thought that bitcoin mining was simply solving increasingly more difficult problems in order to gain bitcoins. Ultimately, I thought it was a method to control inflation. In reality, those 'problems' that miners solve are the authentication of bitcoin transactions.

And like that I had a realization. A "Well, duh." realization.

What was this realization? Just because a network is decentralized doesn't mean that it doesn't require as much computer work to operate; actually it requires more.

Why more? It has to deal with things that a normal network doesn't need to worry about. For instance, keeping transactions in order (so, money is not spent twice). To a normal system this task is a simple series of database calls; 'a database says that dollar was spent, so it cannot be spent again'. With decentralized networks, there is no database (in the traditional sense) to ask this question.

So, blockchain gets around this by having 'miners' process transactions and save them to a public ledger. This takes time and lots of power to complete. Why? Because the processing has to be 'labour' intensive in order to prevent DDOS and other malicious attacks from tampering with the public ledger.

But you ask 'these are things that all networks have to worry about, right?'

Yeah but not on this scale, because they don't have the massive security risk that is a public ledger.

Heres the kicker: people don't just do this work for free. Bitcoin 'miners' get paid to do all of this processing by means of receiving new bitcoins.

Now, how the hell am I supposed to meet criteria #4?

The problem with the blockchain is that it was designed to solve the problems of currency and solved them with dynamics of currency; i.e. we need you to process transactions, so we will pay you some of money. Because of this it is hard, if not practically impossible to translate the blockchain to anything outside the realm of currency.

A prime example of this is Ethereum, who is a platform for people to build contract and organizational applications with a decentralized network. The catch; almost every action taken on the platform requires the use of 'Ether', their own currency.

The blockchain is brilliant and genius at solving the issues with cryptocurrencies, but that is about all it is good for right now. I ultimately stopped my research into using blockchain after realizing it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.