One ring to rule them all
The first time I remember hearing about bitcoin was in some morning special on NDTV. It was in 2013 about bitcoin crossing the 1K barrier. I was doing my B.Tech then in Coimbatore. I don’t remember any mention of the keyword blockchain or even if it did I didn’t notice.
The news about Bitcoin then(2013) to me was what it was in 2017, just news.
Around 2017 is the time I started hearing about the keywords blockchain, shared ledger and even the existence of other crypto currencies. Friends, Romans and all other gentlemen I knew had already invested in 5 different coins, some boasting 4X and 5X returns and plans to purchase Harley-Davidsons or holding it till it converts into a Mercedes Benz.
Me in 2017 had some cash on him. I had been working for 2 years then. I did some reading, I thought I got what a blockchain is then, I don’t think I still get it now.
After the expertise that I gained after reading two blogs on Bitcoin, I had the same thing that SJ Surya had to say to #Atman Silambarasan TR in Manaadu. “I am convinced, but I don’t want to take a chance”. Convinced about bitcoin and it’s potential, but not enough to invest any money into it and expect a return. I felt like I was 10 years too late to join the party even though the whitepaper was published in 2008. Since then I had made my peace with Bitcoin and never looked back at it.
Back then I did hear about Ethereum, Ripple and the like but was never really intrigued to look into it.
Cut to 2020, I randomly stumble upon a tweet thread describing the pain points that ENS solves.(Think of it like DNS, but maps your public key to your user name in a shared memory). This was pretty much the “sillaraya sethara vitta” moment for me personally. Though the concept had existed long before with the likes of namecoin, I came to know of them only in 2020.
What followed was a personal ens name, easwar.eth
Pinning a static html in IPFS to redirect to my personal blog. https://easwar.eth.limo
I am writing this post because of a profound question raised by my friend, “Idhunala(easwar.eth) yaarukku enna prayojanam bro?”
Nalla kelvi… Adutha Kelvi…
Currently there is none and whatever use case is achieved is pretty much superficial.
To be honest what drew me to it was, it took me back to the days when I created my first email id in order be on Orkut. I now have unified my payments and web portal, what I would like in the future as a consumer is,
The ability to send and receive email/text as easwar.eth
Get it linked with my Aadhar.
Hopefully rest of the use cases will follow to make my life easier. I don’t want to remember my pan, uan(epfo) or my aadhar ID. And I want to use it across services, both local and global.
Currently as a consumer the hurdles I faced during the process are as follows
Gas Cost
I have heard about intestinal gas causing heart attack like symptoms to old people. But the Ethereum gas gives assured heart attack to the young and old alike. It cost around 20K in total with about 90% costs being the gas charges. I did think of waiting till proof of stake released hoping for drastic reduction in gas charges, but I don’t think easwar.eth would be available then.
Wallets
It’s kind of scary to not be able to recover forgotten passwords and the backup code(seed phrase) is stored in some other ecosystem.
Crypto Exchanges and Regulations
The whole onboarding experience is brutal, I had to try out three crypto exchange apps before I got my kyc approved by WazirX. The only document they didn’t ask me was my horoscope. Add to it, I couldn’t pay using UPI. Had to configure a mobikwick wallet, load money into it and then purchase eth from there.
And an additional gas cost to transfer eth from WazirX’s wallet to my private wallet.
Atleast for the time being I don’t see any reason for mass adoption.
But what I wonder is will ENS ( or similar services) get mass adoption without the push of Big Tech?
Will Big Tech adopt the concept of a portable identity still retaining the essential ingredients to trap people into ecosystems?
Does public goods like these need a push from an external agency(Big Brother). Like how TRAI came up with the mobile number portability rules and enforced it upon the operators to create a level playing field.