Lol, the reason the phone number is used as an identifier is because because it's a pain to have more than 1 or 2. It's an anti spam measure not a technology problem. You can key a database by anything unique. Icq used chronological numbers for fuck sake. Blockchain doesn't solve anything here.

It's not the ID, it's that a phone number is relatively difficult to obtain (not hard, but still a limited resource) and unique. A crypto stake / wallet / something of value on the blockchain could easily meet such a criteria if well designed.

Yes could, but why? Why when any topic comes up “Blockchain zomg!!!!111”?

I used to be real hardcore into bitcoin, around the $1-10 range. You people need to give it up already and quit annoying the rest of us by trying to force fit an insanely inefficient technology into every aspect of life.

“Preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

ok, I'll bite, how does blockchain solve spam, and how does it do it better than that same process using an email as an identifier?