51–60 of 576 posts
Blockchain reminds me a lot of peer to peer e.g. Bitorrent. At the time people thought it was also going to change the world and usher in a new era of decentralisation.
A centralized database of fungible and useful assets is going to eventually be hacked. Just ask OKTA about that. Whereas there is no central point of hack for a well designed and tested blockchain. Distributed custody in an adversarial environment with mutual trust and dis-trust. Yes it's not everything, but tradfi solutions are not 150% bulletproof either - they may only seem that way to the outside, but there are m…
Does anyone want or need “bulletproof” anything? The one feature of any transaction or contractual framework that I’d be most reluctant to give up is the one where they are fungible and reversible e.g in courts. Features luge secrecy, resistance to hacking, corruption, and so on seem to be second to this in nearly every case in the regular/legal economy of open democracy (I.e the part of the economy that matters).
It even exists now, if you mis-send USDC/USDT you can petition Circle or Tether to reverse or change a balance. Commonly required when sending USD* to an address that can't move it out or handle it.
But ALSO a lot of payment systems that people like are in fact not reversible, even by courts. And people like them that way - it prevents fraud. Fedwires, Swift wires. Consider selling a high value item: there are few ways of electronically transferring amounts that can't be frauded out later. This is why many used car sales are done via cash - can't undo cash!
A centralized database of fungible and useful assets is going to eventually be hacked. Just ask OKTA about that. Whereas there is no central point of hack for a well designed and tested blockchain. Distributed custody in an adversarial environment with mutual trust and dis-trust. Yes it's not everything, but tradfi solutions are not 150% bulletproof either - they may only seem that way to the outside, but there are m…
* Centralised database is eventually going to be hacked. * Decentralised blockchain can't be hacked because it's well designed and tested. Problem is neither of these statements are always true.
Also don't forget insider problems. Every major financial institution has massive insider threat problemss.
> I am talking committees formed in parliaments and central banks around the world to discuss its benefits, serious universities dedicating whole programs on the subject, elite investors pouring money into its potential, and the list goes on. This worries me too. These people don't understand much beyond a 3 minute sales pitch
True, but there is a long list of "smart" intellectuals/academics/investors who are believers in the space, which is where "am I going insane?" part comes in.
I think you have too much hubris. What do these people know that you do not? What non technical things do they know that you do not, that totally change the context and the reasoning behind these solutions?
Public writable block chains seem to be a dead end due to the cost of 'proof of x' in any Sibyl safe way. Private blockchains, such as for cross company account clearances, complex asset exchanges (planes, land) may help dislodge the rent seeking lawyers. They can be publically readable also which could be useful, e.g. For querying a land registry.
By the way, as far as I understand, git is an example of a private blockchain.
With git, you have to manually resolve merge conflicts.
With blockchain, the general point is to use PoW (or something equivalent) to automatically do a vote on which is the correct version. Isn't that also the case in a private blockchain?
It's all in Timothy May's email signature from the cypherpunks mailing list: Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero knowledge, reputations, information markets, black markets, collapse of governments. The key concept is: sovereignty. In the end, this will reshape the nation state.
A centralized database of fungible and useful assets is going to eventually be hacked. Just ask OKTA about that. Whereas there is no central point of hack for a well designed and tested blockchain. Distributed custody in an adversarial environment with mutual trust and dis-trust. Yes it's not everything, but tradfi solutions are not 150% bulletproof either - they may only seem that way to the outside, but there are m…
Does anyone want or need “bulletproof” anything? The one feature of any transaction or contractual framework that I’d be most reluctant to give up is the one where they are fungible and reversible e.g in courts. Features luge secrecy, resistance to hacking, corruption, and so on seem to be second to this in nearly every case in the regular/legal economy of open democracy (I.e the part of the economy that matters).
what about your bank account?
Blockchains are excellent for logging that uses trustable peer participation, distributed append, and tamper resistance. For example, each peer can add their own chain links, and also see all the chain links added by other peers, and also be sure that the log hasn't been corrupted by any of the peers. Some examples IMHO are logs of participation (e.g. voting), agreements (e.g. contracts), exchange (e.g. payments), an…
This sounds very close to a git repository, which Linus wrote using only SHA libraries.
The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)
That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read.
Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.