The secretariat of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change has a ‘climate chain coalition’ that for three years has been studying and testing ways to use blockchain to manage inventories of GHG gases. That is, as physical, tradable commodities. That was an $80 billion market before the pandemic. Also like the watch market, fragmented, non-transparent at an aggregate level, weak on price discovery, and therefore inefficient even before we get to its ecological value. There’s land registry in Georgia (the country) and the education system in Ethiopia too, for example: both using blockchain to improve ‘line management’ with transparent, real time accounting of physical and human stock. Each of these sectors poses its own challenges when it comes to tech integration, and we’re not going to ever see the sort of panaceas that some tech fantasists promise. Far from it.
That said it would be interesting to see which sectors of the economy are able to demonstrate tangible viability of blockchain next. This from the starting assumption that current arrangements are letting everyone down, and incremental (read “practical”) solutions can themselves be costly and ineffective in the medium to long term. Perhaps luxury goods will follow suit at some point, if and when they’ve figured out direct utility. The baby steps taken by VC are quite promising in this regard, and I don’t underestimate the power of the peer demonstration effect. But new stuff takes time. Comfort levels need to grow before risk averse executives are ready to move.
I’ve advised on the above and am happy to be skeptical like you. All i know is that investors - be they individuals or institutions - or citizens and consumers for that matter - want accountability, authenticity and validation of physical goods and for services. We can all see that current systems are far from amazing, including in and around the watch hobby.