Generally the use case for decentralized systems is if you want to disintermediate an existing middle-man who has proven untrustworthy, expensive, or problematic in some way. Or, you want to enable a group of parties to coordinate their activities in ways not previously possible without a (currently non-existing) trusted intermediary. The middle-man function is automated and federated. That’s it.
Any business model dependent on a middle-man is potentially a business model for decentralized systems, if the economics, risks and feature requirements compare favorably. Bitcoin addressed arguably the most impactful one - money - but there may be others.
>this even seems more useless than Ethereum, where I can see at least some applications thanks to the blockchain.
DFINITY is a “blockchain” in the general meaning of the word, aka a public decentralized computing platform with a native currency and attendent economic incentives. It may use other data structures under the hood than most current blockchains, but the use cases are mostly the same as Ethereum.
educate yourself and try again.
i work with bchains since 2013 and ethereum is a major driver for a lot of innovation and real life applications. i've built an energy trading platform on top of it that allows local business to localize their energy management. its deployed and working, granted , in a small poc here in Adam. but still.
also what do you think powers 99% of all altcoins?
This seems to be just like Ethereum without the blockchain. What does "building directly on the internet" even mean? What do I ever need distributed, cryptographic consensus for? The use-case escapes me completely, this even seems more useless than Ethereum, where I can see at least some applications thanks to the blockchain. But that thing without the blockchain just doesn't make any sense. But hey, it got WASM, so must be cool.