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Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#31

Post by dozzie »

patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

> If you pick a particular instantiation of a blockchain-style database, it is a horrible, horrible database.

Blockchain is not a database. It's a document timestamping service (document being a short program that describes where goes what part of a coin, in the case of Bitcoin), it's just a service that doesn't use a central place or a trusted third party to produce (or keep) timestamps.

If you were to use it as a database, then no wonder it would suck horribly. It wasn't designed for that.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#32

Post by acdha »

throaway_388483 wrote: post #26
patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

The biggest challenge I notice in this community is a lack of imagination. At the risk of being critical of HN royalty, Patrick just showed that it's far easier to be snarky than imaginative. Any implementation of a blockchain where a blockchain simply replaces a database is lazy at best, and most likely completely pointless. Almost all blockchain stories that make it on HN are financial implementations that fall in…

This is an odd way to criticize Patrick because it sounds you basically agree with him. Most of the blockchain boostery I've seen has been some combination of inefficient wheel reinvention, unworkable at scale, or an investment scam. The fact that there is the possibility of someone eventually doing something of real value with it doesn't change that or invalidate people objecting to the hype.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#33

Post by zokier »

patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

So where does Certificate Transparency fit in? It is definitely meaningful application, very much not horrible, and large part of it is just blockchain.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#34

Post by wheelerwj »

patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

Thanks for that thorough and articulate response! It seems funny to me that a person who works at stripe doesn't see the value in a fraudulent-transaction-free processing network, but hey, it's cool.

I tried to pick apart the rest of your post but damn if you're not an eloquent writer. You pretty much covered every angle. My only real complaint is your point that "Bitcoin is claimed to be a global financial network and ready for production right now."

Bitcoin isn't claiming anything, it IS a global financial network being used in production right now.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#35

Post by wheelerwj »

vacri wrote: post #20
patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

An addendum from the UX side: bitcoin is not usable by anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time learning about it. It basically requires users to understand what the blockchain is and the limitations of it, whereas other currencies don't require regular users to understand the backend machinery. It can't ever be more than a niche tool, because the general public isn't interested in learning backend machinery for currenc…

You've never met a bitcoin user or tried to use it yourself. Most people whose bitcoin are not incredibly tech savy and set it up in minutes on their smart phones.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

jdmichal wrote: post #27
sayurichick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

really? I read that post as "writing a ToDo app using the blockchain as your datastore versus a traditional database is bad". Well yeah, there are different tools for each job. If everything is a nail and you're only used to a hammer, then of course trying to use this new tool as a hammer will sound silly. I obviously can't predict the future use cases, but an example off the top of my head might be something like a…

As others have mentioned [0], blockchains pay a lot for working in a trustless environment. The real issue is that there's not actually a lot of trustless environments that need such a solution. And there's better solutions in trusting environments. To take your example, a country issuing identification numbers does not have a trust issue. The people generally trust the government to correctly issue and record an ID…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#37

Post by acdha »

kneel wrote: post #25
vacri wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An addendum from the UX side: bitcoin is not usable by anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time learning about it. It basically requires users to understand what the blockchain is and the limitations of it, whereas other currencies don't require regular users to understand the backend machinery. It can't ever be more than a niche tool, because the general public isn't interested in learning backend machinery for currenc…

It can be as simple as scanning qr codes with your phone wallet. Aaron Voisine has done an incredible job with breadwallet, highly recommended.

How do you protect your wallet from theft? Back it up so losing your phone isn't catastrophic? Maintain separate wallets so one accident or compromise doesn't cost you everything? Confirm that a transaction was committed before exchanging anything of value?

Almost everyone knows how to handle real-life concerns like that with traditional currency. If you want something new to get any sort of adoption, people are going to need satisfying answers before they'll feel comfortable putting real value into it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#38

Post by alexjarvis »

patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

Postgres doesn't do distributed consensus though does it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#39

Post by alexjarvis »

arethuza wrote: post #30
baby wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1) It seems like the term "block chain" as used by block chain companies is pointing to what the bitcoin blockchain is but without the proof of work. So, a database which history could be cryptographically audited. 2) I don't think those are necessarily bad points for Bitcoin. Maybe it is run by speculators or gold diggers but in the end many people (including me and friends) have used/are using bitcoin f…

"So, a database which history could be cryptographically audited." Doesn't git already meet that requirement?

No because it's cheap to produce hashes for git.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the community so negative towards blockchain technology?

#40

Post by patio11 »

wheelerwj wrote: post #34
patio11 wrote: post #12

Well since you asked. Blockchain is the world's worst database, created entirely to maintain the reputations of venture capital firms who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into a technology whose core defining insight was "You can improve on a Ponzi scam by making it self-organizing and distributed; that gets vastly more distribution, reduces the single point of failure, and makes it censorship-resistant." Tha…

Thanks for that thorough and articulate response! It seems funny to me that a person who works at stripe doesn't see the value in a fraudulent-transaction-free processing network, but hey, it's cool. I tried to pick apart the rest of your post but damn if you're not an eloquent writer. You pretty much covered every angle. My only real complaint is your point that "Bitcoin is claimed to be a global financial network a…

This would be a good time for me to point to my profile disclaimer that opinions here are my own opinions, not those of Stripe.
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