Sync is nice IMO.

ENS is the root for a very small number of top level domains, half a dozen? Everything else just gets passed to the regular ICANN DNS root because most people don’t monitor their DNS/ENS traces and it would be bad™️ if google.com didn’t actually go to google.com.

ENS is in a weird place because it’s a non-profit operating a namespace database that charges money to update the database, which is just ICANN with extra steps. Both are more distributed than the previous solution, which was Jon, but they’re still a singular organization providing oversight. ENS seems to be struggling to find a way to mesh the whole blockchain ethos with that it can’t just let whoever register google.com (/google.eth/etc.). That’s a social issue that requires negotiation/oversight, not a tech issue. Or at least not one they’ve solved yet.

The Currency applications of blockchains make a lot of sense. It’s what the original BitCoin whitepaper was all about after all. They’re just hamstrung by the people using it for speculation/investment instead of… currency. It’s why virtually every business that accepted BitCoin in the 2010’s has stopped. It’s too volatile unless you’re getting in/out as fast as you can like with a quick transfer to a person that’s waiting for it.

It’s the attempts to graft a database onto blockchains that I find questionably useful. ENS/Handshake are interesting enough, but they are still ultimately a database that resolves via ICANN, plus some extra domains. The only intrinsic difference from just upgrading to DNSSEC or any of the other encrypted alternatives is that it takes more computing power to add or modify a database entry.

For a data carrying Blockchain? Ethereum doesn’t have any real competitors. But a serious contender for what?

Blockchain as a database is a solution looking for a problem. Most of the problems it solves other than decentralization are internal. Changing the format of the database to blockchain doesn’t get rid of existing problems with validation, it just abstracts them one more step. A contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if there aren’t external systems ensuring it’s enforced. Calling that ‘paper’ a ‘smart contract’ doesn’t change that.

I attend a worldwide unicycling convention every other year with thousands of attendees and millions of people have seen unicyclists. I wouldn’t call it mainstream.

Ethereum is still in the “garage band” phase. It (and BitCoin) had some commodity speculators jump in to make a quick buck and generate headlines. But other than that there’s a few thousand enthusiasts and the people they’ve managed to get interested, and little clear idea of where/how to build from there. For basically every blockchain use case the non-decentralized versions are at least an order of magnitude faster and simpler for the end user to understand. Unfortunately “It’s more secure” has never been a huge selling point in tech.

Ethereum has outlasted competing attempts to graft data onto a blockchain. It’s a long, long way from being accepted for general use by anyone who isn’t an enthusiast. The evaluation of a currency/company/blockchain is a measure of investor interest, little more.

You’re also misunderstanding. The problem isn’t whichever blockchain, the problem is that it’s still just a database. Someone has to be trusted to validate an entry. Whether that’s a trusted party, which defeats the point, or a consensus mechanism, which quickly becomes arbitrary/random, that the validation mechanism to interface with the ‘real world’ is the same weak point any other centralized database has. That the nodes are decentralized and cryptographically secure isn’t relevant.

“.onion addresses and bitcoin addresses are secure and decentralized but not human-meaningful;”

All “crypto as in blockchains” requires trust and buy-in to that blockchain, and someone to put it on the blockchain. It being internally secure/trustworthy does not intrinsically mean it’s globally secure/trustworthy.

Cryptography is not limited to blockchains.