Digital Ocean customers back away from blockchains

Junior cloud Digital Ocean has reported a marked dip in customers using its IaaS services to run blockchains. Speaking on the company's Q2 2022 earnings call, CEO Yancey Spruill warned investors that "key growth drivers in our business are being somewhat offset by macro weakness, which has resulted in a reduced expansion spend …

[Flak]

Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

Those familiar with Gartner's hype cycle concept will not be surprised:

https://blogs.gartner.com/avivah-litan/2022/07/22/gartner-hype-cycle-for-blockchain-and-web3-2022/

A solution looking for a problem?

[Howard Sway]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

"For example, wouldn’t it be helpful if you had a car accident, that you received your insurance payment for the damage within ten minutes? That could conceivably happen with the combination of Web3 and other technologies, like AI and IoT. It’s just a matter of time before it does."

Gartner, as ever, full of crap. I particularly like this one for the fact that the "analyst" has chosen to write "wouldn’t it be helpful if you had a car accident" in his masterpiece, along with suggesting that, you know, you could possibly do shit with Web3 and AI and IoT and shit, and possibly some other shit, innit?

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

That's some fine hand-waving there with "other technologies".

Other technologies being some kind of time-dilation bubble giving your insurance assessor time to investigate, liase with other parties/witnesses/police, apportion responsibility, and calculate a settlement figure - all while you sit around for 10 minutes after the accident waiting for your payout.

Even for a Gartner analyst, this is a new level of complete ignorance about what actually happens.

[ThatOne]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

Ignorance? It's marketing talk, the promise wonders will happen if you buy the magic product(s). In this case if you buy in the current fads ("other technologies" probably means drones and NFTs).

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

At least drones have some kind of viable, believable and remotely feasible use cases. NFTs are a gigantic steaming pile of festering bullshit designed to part even more fools from their money.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised about Gartner given the utter nonsense they come out with month after month, year after year, but that lunacy about getting your insurance payout 10 minutes after an accident because magic is, well... so obviously ridculous and detached from reality even by Gartner's low bar.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

"At least drones have some kind of viable, believable and remotely feasible use cases. NFTs are a gigantic steaming pile of festering bullshit designed to part even more fools from their money."

Parting fools from their money is the feasible use case for NFTs.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

And then, increasingly often, the fools are parted from their NFTs, as Molly White has so helpfully documented. It's the scam that keeps on taking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

Seems like marketing talk often is based on willful ignorance.

... combined with the fervent hope that potential customers are simply more ignorant.

[fidodogbreath]

Re: Blockchain Hype Cycle --> Trough of Disillusionment

And obviously "not enough blockchain" is the reason your insurance company wants to collect your premiums but take their time paying claims.

[Doctor Syntax]

"That vertical is under extreme pressure,"

So it's not standing up too well.

[Doctor Syntax]

"the company reported a $7.4 million loss"

A drop in the Ocean.

OK, that's enough for now.

[Charlie Clark]

I believe this is yours, sir. Yes, it has a copy of Andy Zaltzman's big book of puns in the pocket.

[Doctor Syntax]

Cheers, Charlie. I wondered where it had got to.

[TeeCee]

He offered no explanation for why customers had cooled on the distributed ledger tech.

Er, can't be arsed? There's a newer, new shiny?

Oh, I know. Money's tight right now, so any project which involves spending a shitload of cash and time to do something they already do, but in a more complex manner, just to fill a spot on their Wankword Bingo card, gets killed off.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: cooled on the distributed ledger tech

Finally realised it isn't the bestest magic bullet eva, and are focussing on stuff that is actually useful...?

[iron]

> If those numbers seem tiny – a single Azure or EC2 instance could cost the same for a few hours of operation

Actually they seem pretty huge, my monthly Azure bill is roughly a single pound sterling.

It's amazing what you can do with "serverless" compute.

[doublelayer]

Now I'm wondering what your function does and how often you trigger it. The big cloud's pricing for storage and bandwidth is rather high, so it can't be using very much of those. I'm also pretty sure you're not running this as a public service. Still, if you're comparing like for like, Digital Ocean has serverless now as well.