My advocacy for Blockchain can be described as Blockchain maximalism, a term that clearly evolved from Bitcoin maximalism.
I have some Bitcoin maximalist friends who believe that there is only Bitcoin and no Blockchain. They see Blockchain as merely a technology adopted to achieve Bitcoin and not something with general applicability. They can provide answers to all future questions that are related to Bitcoin.
I also have some friends in the internet technology field who consider Blockchain as a toy based on the evaluation scale of internet technology. They believe that Blockchain has low throughput and they are skeptical about its ability to construct "useful" tools.
However, since the rise of the DeFi market last year, some Bitcoin maximalist friends and friends in the internet technology field have started to change their views.
In the eyes of Blockchain maximalists, the innovations introduced by Bitcoin, whether it is introducing economic games into software systems through PoW algorithms or constructing an open database through a chain structure, have their own general technological significance and can definitely be applied to other fields. The vision of Blockchain is clear, but the specific evolutionary path to reach that vision requires experimentation. The most reliable way is to try all possibilities through permutation and combination.
Although this approach is often mocked as "holding a hammer and looking for nails," in reality, most new inventions in history have been promoted and applied by holding a hammer and looking for nails. When holding a hammer and looking for nails, the scope of experimentation and search converges. If one approach doesn't work, you try another one. Future generations can continue to build on the efforts of their predecessors, and conclusions can be drawn after trying different approaches.
In the eyes of Blockchain maximalists, all attempts are worthy of respect. If someone wants to refute a path that they don't believe in, they should be praised as heroes.
Blockchain maximalists rarely criticize others. They are more concerned about what combinations others are trying, what possibilities they are trying to validate, and whether there are any new ideas. Currently, public chains are basically trying three major directions to solve the throughput problem: improving consensus, solving it through sharding and multi-chain systems, and solving it through layering.
Of course, the best scenario would be breakthroughs in all three directions, leading to widespread adoption of blockchain applications. But even in that case, there is no need to worry about competition. Even if all three directions develop, they would only be equivalent to small water channels in the face of the next wave of DeFi/DApp.
PS: I am preparing to write some certified content, gradually moving a portion of my blockchain-related content from Weibo and Twitter to Mirror. This article serves as the beginning.