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Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

wsj.com

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Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#21

Post by c3534l »

gnarbarian wrote: post #11
polack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other members was not happy when they found out that GS applied for patents that could affect R3. My guess is that GS thinks they will make more money on their own when they built up a nice patent portfolio in this space.

Reminds me of this quote: "Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the ban…

A rousing quote from a genocidal madman who didn't understand finance and crippled the US economy for nearly a hundred years.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#23

Post by terravion »

c3534l wrote: post #21
gnarbarian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this quote: "Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the ban…

A rousing quote from a genocidal madman who didn't understand finance and crippled the US economy for nearly a hundred years.

Genocidal I can grant, but we are talking about bank policy here. It seems that all evidence says that the 100 years after Jackson were objectively some of the most economically dynamic for the United States, especially in comparison to Europe or any other place in the world during that period. How was the economy crippled?

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#25

Post by buckie »

I can't say I'm all that surprised. R3 serves as both an R&D lab and a place to connect vendors and potential clients. Moreover, the focus is on private/permissioned blockchain tech. The tech in this space is still quite immature overall and pretty much everyone has had a hard time building actual blockchain infrastructure vs things that are sorta like a blockchain. If you can't show clients value for their membership in R3 (because the tech's not there) then what's the value of staying a member (especially if you've seen all the vendors in their portfolio already) vs rejoining when things change? This isn't R3's fault of course, as I think the tech in this space is just getting started and they're in a great place to help it along; members will come and go.

I spent a year investigating blockchain applications for JPM so I've seen most of the permissioned blockchain solutions that are out there. Unfortunately, none of the solutions I saw were real blockchains. The more technical groups in banks (which GS has) surely realize this as well. The solutions I've seen consistently lack at least one of the following necessary features:

- Fast, Deterministic BFT Consensus (mining doesn't work as intended in private contexts[1])

- Smart Contracts (you need a deterministic language)

- Signed Transactions (TLS based authentication trades security & audibility for speed)

- Cryptographic data structure for transaction storage

There are other features you need, but these are the big distinguishers I noticed. While technically you don't even need smart contracts or fast BFT consensus, I believe the tech isn't useful enough to justify the migration costs without them.

Disclaimer: I'm a founder in the private blockchain space[2] and founded specifically to make an infrastructure that addresses these issues.

[1]: http://kadena.io/blog/MiningInPrivate.html [2]: http://kadena.io

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#26

Post by c3534l »

terravion wrote: post #23
c3534l wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rousing quote from a genocidal madman who didn't understand finance and crippled the US economy for nearly a hundred years.

Genocidal I can grant, but we are talking about bank policy here. It seems that all evidence says that the 100 years after Jackson were objectively some of the most economically dynamic for the United States, especially in comparison to Europe or any other place in the world during that period. How was the economy crippled?

It was my understanding that (and especially absent a central bank) the US economy became prone to frequent and periodic economic panics, uncontrolled periods of inflation and deflation, and general financial instability.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#27

Post by CobrastanJorji »

terravion wrote: post #23
c3534l wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rousing quote from a genocidal madman who didn't understand finance and crippled the US economy for nearly a hundred years.

Genocidal I can grant, but we are talking about bank policy here. It seems that all evidence says that the 100 years after Jackson were objectively some of the most economically dynamic for the United States, especially in comparison to Europe or any other place in the world during that period. How was the economy crippled?

You are referring to the time period immediately preceding but not including the 1940s and 50s?

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#28

Post by pfranz »

terravion wrote: post #23
c3534l wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rousing quote from a genocidal madman who didn't understand finance and crippled the US economy for nearly a hundred years.

Genocidal I can grant, but we are talking about bank policy here. It seems that all evidence says that the 100 years after Jackson were objectively some of the most economically dynamic for the United States, especially in comparison to Europe or any other place in the world during that period. How was the economy crippled?

I can't speak for the 100 years, but I always thought his determination to pay off the national debt was a big contributor to economic problems[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson#Panic_of_1837

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#29

Post by tootie »

gnarbarian wrote: post #11
polack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other members was not happy when they found out that GS applied for patents that could affect R3. My guess is that GS thinks they will make more money on their own when they built up a nice patent portfolio in this space.

Reminds me of this quote: "Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the ban…

GS didn't receive any direct bailout funds. Only what it received via AIG which wasn't all that much.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#30

Post by jaekwon »

buckie wrote: post #25

I can't say I'm all that surprised. R3 serves as both an R&D lab and a place to connect vendors and potential clients. Moreover, the focus is on private/permissioned blockchain tech. The tech in this space is still quite immature overall and pretty much everyone has had a hard time building actual blockchain infrastructure vs things that are sorta like a blockchain. If you can't show clients value for their membershi…

Kadena seems like a solid team, kudos for their work.

Smart contracts require you to work in a completely new language and toolset.

You don't need smart contracts to create a blockchain application, if you use the right libraries (e.g. go-merkle) and write your application to be deterministic. See Basecoin in the page below:

http://tendermint.com/ecosystem

If you want the benefits of Tendermint BFT consensus but w/ Ethereum's virtual machine, take a look at Ethermint.

http://github.com/tendermint/ethermint

Disclaimer: I'm a founder at Tendermint, the OG BFT blockchain engine. ;)

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