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The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

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Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#281

Post by nemo44x »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #266
maxthegeek1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15% is a lot.

Yeah, and people would rather give Steam a 30% cut than use their own distribution channels. Convenience and stability really, really matter.

Indeed they do! And that's where the value is.

Why can't a blockchain technology in a matter of years offer the same type of convenience and stability with a much lower price due to the decentralized nature of it all?

Right now they can't you're right. But there is no reason to believe with certainty they won't in the future. Of course they might not but I'd bet the other way by virtue of the plain as day benefit they offer motivating iterative improvement over the many coming years.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#282

Post by nosuchthing »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #244
lawrenceyan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all say that they'll never roll back or retroactively make any changes. But inevitably, they always do. I thought Ethereum might have been different, but of course I had to be disappointed. The problem with blockchains is that they still fundamentally fail to solve the problem of mob rule, though, I suppose you could argue that's one thing you'll never fully get rid while the human element is still involved. Rob…

Here is a proposed solution to mob rule: https://github.com/neyer/dewdrop With a much simpler version of the same concept here https://github.com/neyer/respect I think it's doable.

Filtering out everything but the users you have established relationships with will just push you into a filter bubble echo chamber.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#283

Post by ninjakeyboard »

The article ignores incentives - that the effort in trying to find a new block may be better than the double spend. You'd have to buy a big ticket item, and get really lucky as well so you have a fairly small window to catch up and get head. So bitcoin works partly because the incentives to be an honest member outweigh the potential benefit of attack vs the cost and risk of simply not winning in the window within which you can double spend.

I'd consider some of the other uses of block chain such as permission-based approaches, and the other applications like luxury goods in supply chain to prevent counterfeit goods from entering.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#284

Post by nemo44x »

gamblor956 wrote: post #258
nemo44x wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The customer benefit is that because the business is run more efficiently things can be priced cheaper. This gets passed down to the consumer and producer. It's far more than escrow. It's a distributed business where many of the functions of the business are automated all enforced on the same blockchain. Could be crazy - I'm not pitching this! I'm sure many people have better grasps of the potential and i…

You must not have any experience on the operational side of a real business? Everything you've described (i.e., payments) can already be handled by existing automated financial systems like ADP, Peoplesoft, Intuit, etc. Order status is already handled by existing invoicing systems (i.e., Square) and delivery providers (i.e., UPS). And all of these systems can be made to integrate with each other; plenty of businesses…

And plenty of cuts are taken and taken and taken. There is an inherit inefficiency that exists right now because it is indeed necessary. The people, private systems and other parts that makeup the "trust" of it all that makes it work.

Now imagine we could do this in a public way that can't be cheated easily at all? We create new efficiency, ironically, by centralizing much of this on a globally distributed blockchain with computational rules enforcing the flow of business. Suddenly we don't need these companies because their most valuable asset, trust, has been automated away.

The business that figures out how to do this will claim the market of existing companies.

Software eats the world. Why wouldn't it continue to in a way that eats the existing software centralization?

It doesn't mean it's free but it certainly looks to have the ability to outperform current business models which came to be because they outperformed previous business models.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#285

Post by nemo44x »

zilchers wrote: post #254
nemo44x wrote: post #98

If I had a Bitcoin for every skeptic that posts a blog on why it can't work... This may just be my general observation but I feel like Silicon Valley hegemony has a grudge against crypto currencies and I'm not sure why. For an industry that has constantly tried new things and saw potential where no one else did, I just don't see the love for the potential of smart contracts, DApps, etc. And how this is just the begin…

I could be wrong, buy I didn't read this as an indictment of bitcoin, but rather blockchain as a platform. I'm very pro bitcoin, but I see it as really the only killer app for blockchain at this point. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more, just haven't yet.

That's totally fair. I see potential more than killer apps. But I think your attitude is fully defensible.

What I find peculiar is a flat out, almost arrogant, rejection of blockchain (and what I believe is a fundamental misunderstanding) from our technological elite.

It's almost as if they are focusing on the wrong thing which to me is the nearly comical surge in "value" of some crypto currencies and the literal view that they are and can only be a store of value.

There's plenty of scams and stupidity but there's also real potential I believe. I'm very possibly a naive fool too.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#287

Post by zilchers »

RexetBlell wrote: post #259
zilchers wrote: post #253

This article pretty well sums up my overarching opinion that, at this point, bitcoin is the only actual killer app for blockchain. I'm always looking for the next kill app, but haven't seen it yet. With bitcoin, the idea of no governance or centralization is very much a feature, not a bug. When you get to other blockchain solutions (like stocks or real estate), blockchain just becomes a code word for immutable, publi…

I think it makes a lot of sense to build a DNS system using contacts. Names can be auctioned off and given automatically to the highest bidder. It is also possible to set up a contract where you could trustlessly sell names. "Send $200 to an address and you will get the name". This solves the prisoners dilemma that is mentioned in the video at least for your dns addresses. There is an auction like this in progress al…

Ya, that's not a bad point, I guess really any completely virtual item that distributes on a first come, first serve basis could work. That's sort of a generalization of bitcoin itself (if you think of the proof of work is a first come claim on the new bitcoins).

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#288

Post by nemo44x »

gamblor956 wrote: post #255
nemo44x wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another idea: Etsy. Makers build things and post it to a Website and price it in some crypto currency. People buy it by sending money to a smart contract. A third party "oracle" is used to remit payment when the order is received. For instance the company that ships the product will signal delivery to the contract. The company that hosted the product takes a percent of the transaction payable after the final payment…

You literally just described Ebay/Paypal but with smart contracts. Worse, with the additional requirement that everyone has to use smart contracts for it to work at any level. Additionally, your example glosses over all of the real world problems, like seller/buyer fraud, that smart contracts and blockchains do nothing to address. Smart contracts won't take off for the simple reason that they don't offer anything tha…

I'm not saying mine is a great example, especially with the current state of the technology. If I had a fool proof example I'd be building it!

I think the thing they offer is the potential for great efficiency and thus lower cost and also a lower barrier to entry for systems that require trust.

What I'm most optimistic about is the next phase - how can we scale this and then what can we build on top to further practical use? That's a more interesting discussion than dismissing it all together.

Bitcoin introduced the blockchain and some good ideas about how it could be used. Ethereum ran with some of those ideas. There's even more ideas on how this can expanded we'll maybe see in a few years.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#289

Post by nullstyle »

contingencies wrote: post #272
nullstyle wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustless isn't the only option. https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd... The reason I believe in our model for consensus is that it more closely resembles trust in the real world. We're more explicit than meatspace, which could be a drawback, but I think it's a better model than trustless. Disclosure: I work for stellar.org

Didn't read the paper (got crypto burnout after 4 years at Kraken) but it occurs to me that the problem with explicit trust is that it is usually a one size fits all approach or someone has to tediously specify it in specific terms, neither of which work well at scale in the real world.

There's no reason that I can see why we can't automate the tedious bits. I can see someone creating some sort of a digital assistant program that applies trust policies to digital identities on behalf of a user. think for example something that applies a digital encoding of "I trust everyone whom I've paid to advertise their specials to me" or "I trust people who prove they live within 5 miles of my home address to send a neighborhood watch message to me", etc.

I'm not sure the specific formulation needed to be successful, but there is clearly value in something that helps people better manage digital trust. It's a shit show right now.

Re: The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy

#290

Post by Spooky23 »

rockmeamedee wrote: post #85

I agree with this article. Proponents of blockchain tech argue its revolutionary quality is its ability to act as a decentralized and trustless database. But I don't ever hear them sort through the issue of how to agree on the schema for this trustless database. For a group of people to use a decentralized DB, they have to agree as to what to store in it, and how to store it. They need to form consensus about how the…

We had decentralized ownership of the stock exchanges, but they went public to cash out and make more money with high frequency traders.
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