Blockchain as a service

One of those beautiful logical oxymorons, blockchain as a service — “B.S.” to those of us who admire at least its staggering chutzpah — as the instant solution for people who, one one hand, so distrust financial intermediaries that they would cast their ledger into monstrously slow, inflexible and environment-massacring gears of a blockchain but, on the other, so lack resources or expertise in distributed ledger technology to do so, that they would hand the entire implementation over to a random startup, who will charge them handsomely, and in perpetuity, to implement a “proprietary” open-source software solution for them.

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If blockchain itself is to all intents a bust — beyond the sovereign wallet (and, ahhh, discreetly financing drug trafficking and terrorism) no-one has come up with a plausible use case yet, in ten years of trying — then combining it with the boneheaded rentier carry-on of software as a service is essence of extra-virgin, first-pressing snake oil.

Yet the airwaves are full of it. So, what do you call someone who (1) wants to re-intermediate a technology whose sole apparent benefit is disintermediating, and (2) who doesn’t trust Clearstream or Visa, but is prepared to trust a couple of guys in Bulgaria who met on 4chan?

Hopefully not “your Chief Technology Officer”.

See also

• Software as a service
• Blockchain
• Snake oil
• Rent seeking