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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

#31

Post by iopq »

c3534l wrote: post #26
terravion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As opposed to now, when we have frequent bubbles and bursts and more inflation?

It's hard to say what's better.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#32

Post by wyldfire »

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…

Why doesn't the financial industry consider a public blockchain?

How do big financial companies consider resolving adversity like judgments/liens/etc against an settlement based system that's an automaton?

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#33

Post by TuringNYC »

polack wrote: post #10
gregoryrueda wrote: post #8

Is this so they can build their own Blockchain?

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.

That surprises me -- they make a lot of money from swaps and other non-exchange settled contracts' volume, especially if such contracts can be traded easily across banks. MarkItPartners is an excellent example of how all the banks made a lot of money through a consortium pushing a unified standard. Why try to make money off a patent when they can grow volume on their core product?

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#34

Post by [deleted] »

wyldfire wrote: post #32
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…

Why doesn't the financial industry consider a public blockchain? How do big financial companies consider resolving adversity like judgments/liens/etc against an settlement based system that's an automaton?

[deleted]

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#35

Post by gnarbarian »

TuringNYC wrote: post #33
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.

That surprises me -- they make a lot of money from swaps and other non-exchange settled contracts' volume , especially if such contracts can be traded easily across banks. MarkItPartners is an excellent example of how all the banks made a lot of money through a consortium pushing a unified standard. Why try to make money off a patent when they can grow volume on their core product?

because they would love to unilaterally control critical pieces of next gen digital currencies enabling them to bludgeon competing standards / companies out of the market with IP licensing fees.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#36

Post by buckie »

jaekwon wrote: post #30
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/ E…

Smart contracts definitely have a tradeoff between new toolset/languages vs infrastructure level features. With smart contracts, anyone can write code for the chain vs the "write your application to be deterministic" approach where new code needs to be at a minimum vetted by some central org/group, though they're usually written by the vendor/provider/etc. Each has its strengths/use-cases. For inter-org I prefer the smart contract approach vs the intra-org can see the benefit of using regular code -- it's not like you're worried about malicious code in the intra-org case. I do think that smart contracts increase the utility overall (sorta like having SQL for a DB > not) and improve its reliability (accidentally non-deterministic code can be a bit worrying).

As for Tendermint BFT, it's one of the few that somehow I never got to dig into at JPM. Do you know if Tendermint BFT's performance & performance-vs-scale numbers are published? These are notoriously hard to come by and I'm always curious for more data-points on the matter.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#37

Post by gnarbarian »

CalChris wrote: post #20
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 colorful Andrew Jackson quote. The Bank War was a little more complex and Jackson himself was no innocent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_War He also said: All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary. John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!

I am a firm believer that we should not judge people from the past using the moral standard of today. Remember that even Obama opposed gay marriage up until a couple years ago.

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#38

Post by murbard2 »

jaekwon wrote: post #30
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/ E…

If you want a deterministic smart contract language, you're better off avoiding the EVM, or worse, Solidity.

Tezos (plug, plug, I'm the lead on the project) has a VM with a full formal specification, and even a rudimentary embedding in Coq. It's statically typed and purely functional.

https://tezos.com/language.txt

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#39

Post by j1vms »

polack wrote: post #10
gregoryrueda wrote: post #8

Is this so they can build their own Blockchain?

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.

> GS thinks they will make more money on their own when they built up a nice patent portfolio in this space.

So instead of contributing back to the community on a openly-developed technology (not talking about R3, but Satoshi's blockchain concept), they could decide that the best course of action is to patent encumber the shit out of it!

Re: Goldman Sachs Drops Out of R3 Blockchain Group

#40

Post by appleflaxen »

wyldfire wrote: post #32
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…

Why doesn't the financial industry consider a public blockchain? How do big financial companies consider resolving adversity like judgments/liens/etc against an settlement based system that's an automaton?

the real answer is because they have a monopoly on clearance mechanisms in the status quo, and want to retain control over it.
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