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Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

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Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#41

Post by RexetBlell »

candiodari wrote: post #40
RexetBlell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing this about this particular application is that an oracle is not required at all. So it's completely automatic and trustless. The contract (think of it as a class in Java) has a single function which looks something like this: function acquire_name() { if (msg.value > $200) {self.registrar.transfer_ownership(self.domain_name, msg.sender);}} registrar is a pointer to an instance of the domain registrar that…

And how would this help ? The economical problems people face in this day and age are not, at all, that contracts aren't enforced. Quite the contrary. The opposite is true: the problems people face is that the only contracts available to them, from rents to cell service, have onerous and unfair terms, favoring whichever side of the contract requires investment, and this unfairness goes up to a ridiculous extent. The…

I am not sure what you're asking when you say "how would this help?". Do you not see any usefulness at all in people being able to sell domain names to each other trustlessly without needing to involve a third party?

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#42

Post by candiodari »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
erikpukinskis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was the DAO abandoned? It seems like someone could just fix the bug, and run the sale again, expecting a lower valuation. The idea is still good, right? A bug shouldn't end the whole project.

The idea was that code-as-contract was clear, unambiguous to all participants, and obviated the need for human intervention to enforce correctly.

You forget to tell what happened after that.

Someone someone found contract terms (relating to starting a new sub-entity to the DAO) that favored them, started transferring the eth to themselves using this method (they "probably" gained the ability to dictate how the eth would be spent after an initial period, which plenty of people are desperate to point out isn't the same as owning it). And then ...

Humans intervened to have the terms enforced "correctly" (this was regarded as a hack). They even rolled back quite a few normal transactions that had nothing to do with the attack (because just like all other central banks, the ethereum company cannot risk/be bothered to figure out what transactions are about and come up with a solution that affected just the hack and nothing else)

I imagine this will happen again, and again, and again. This is very clear to anyone who's done the least bit of law : humans cannot be trusted (not even by themselves) to write rules and then uphold them "under any circumstances". We must have governments and a legal system to prevent disaster. The easy tricks I see work is that humans can loan eth from others, then have multiple accounts, only one of which is subject to confiscation. Double collateralizing (pledging the same asset for multiple loans, then disappearing with the loans, recently popular in China).

http://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists/

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#44

Post by RexetBlell »

candiodari wrote: post #42
dragonwriter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea was that code-as-contract was clear, unambiguous to all participants, and obviated the need for human intervention to enforce correctly.

You forget to tell what happened after that. Someone someone found contract terms (relating to starting a new sub-entity to the DAO) that favored them, started transferring the eth to themselves using this method (they "probably" gained the ability to dictate how the eth would be spent after an initial period, which plenty of people are desperate to point out isn't the same as owning it). And then ... Humans interven…

Just for the record, no transactions were rolled back. A special one time transaction was generated that moved all the ether from the Dao contact to a withdrawal contract, from which all investors could get their ether back. Majority of the users upgraded their clients to be on the chain with this special transaction. The rest of the people (~15%) remained on the original chain without the special transaction, that chain is now called "Ethereum Classic".

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#45

Post by candiodari »

RexetBlell wrote: post #41
candiodari wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would this help ? The economical problems people face in this day and age are not, at all, that contracts aren't enforced. Quite the contrary. The opposite is true: the problems people face is that the only contracts available to them, from rents to cell service, have onerous and unfair terms, favoring whichever side of the contract requires investment, and this unfairness goes up to a ridiculous extent. The…

I am not sure what you're asking when you say "how would this help?". Do you not see any usefulness at all in people being able to sell domain names to each other trustlessly without needing to involve a third party?

I do see the usefulness of that approach, but I also see an amount of risk. A disaster waiting to happen.

Let's say, for instance childpornhere.eth goes live, someone pays and receives mail with pictures of a kidnapped child. Havethisguykilled.eth. Sponsorkillingblacks.eth. tipISISnottoattackyourkids.eth. And so on and so forth.

The bitcoin "hostage" situations that we see now. Famously the encryption viruses, but the same is happening with cloud credentials (e.g. gmail or hotmail accounts used for businesses. Passwords get changed, last mail is "if you want them back pay $1k to ")

Second, securities fraud. If anything was learned from bitcoin in finance, it's that we cannot live without exchange laws, which bitcoin exchanges did not have. Tradehill, Mt. Gox, Bitcoin central, Bitstake, BitSpark, all and many have gone bankrupt, stealing large investments in the process through outright fraud (TradeHill, incidentally the guy who committed that fraud has a new bitcoin exchange), or through incompetence and getting hacked (which of course could always be just straight up fraud, I mean does anyone buy the Mt. Gox story, for instance ?)

Second, addendum: outright general securities fraud. E.g. sudden changes in liquidity that I'm sure in most cases are mere accidents (well, 2 years ago in most cases, today, I'm not so sure), but cause short-term very quick value changes that even in the accidental cases most people find themselves victims to. More generally, the sale and trade of bitcoin derivatives and the practice of the issuers of said products to invest heavily for short term price changes. Or, causing an artificial and massive drop in liquidity through ddossing an exchange (hell, I've worked for actual financial exchanges and seen people pull this one off, but in bitcoin it's commonplace and unpunished)

Thirdly, tax evasion. People use bitcoin, and eth, to avoid paying 0.2% or so commission to banks. We are to trust that these same (very rich) people have no issues paying 30% or so in tax. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Do you really want to allow that ? This is (mostly) what is enabled here.

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#46

Post by RexetBlell »

sanderjd wrote: post #19
bluebluetimes wrote: post #9

Trust less Decentralized exchange Open alternative to Uber, lyft and Airbnb

Isn't the trust in those services more at the physical world level than the technical level?

I think a big problem with these services is that your rating belongs to Uber instead of the user. It would be nice to put your reputation from all the services you use (Uber, Airbnb, reddit karma, eBay, credit rating, etc) in one central place that is not controlled by a single corporation.

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#47

Post by RexetBlell »

RexetBlell wrote: post #46
sanderjd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the trust in those services more at the physical world level than the technical level?

I think a big problem with these services is that your rating belongs to Uber instead of the user. It would be nice to put your reputation from all the services you use (Uber, Airbnb, reddit karma, eBay, credit rating, etc) in one central place that is not controlled by a single corporation.

The dream it's to then be able to share a portion of your information with another party without revealing everything. For example, you can share "my credit rating is above 750 and I'm 32 years old" and nothing else. This can be accomplished with zero knowledge proofs which are going to be possible on Ethereum later this year.

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#48

Post by skewart »

candiodari wrote: post #45
RexetBlell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what you're asking when you say "how would this help?". Do you not see any usefulness at all in people being able to sell domain names to each other trustlessly without needing to involve a third party?

I do see the usefulness of that approach, but I also see an amount of risk. A disaster waiting to happen. Let's say, for instance childpornhere.eth goes live, someone pays and receives mail with pictures of a kidnapped child. Havethisguykilled.eth. Sponsorkillingblacks.eth. tipISISnottoattackyourkids.eth. And so on and so forth. The bitcoin "hostage" situations that we see now. Famously the encryption viruses, but th…

In many (most) parts of the world the legal system for enforcing contracts isn't all that reliable and trustworthy.

An Etheruem-based contract is a big improvement over a traditional contract enforceable only by a slow, corrupt court.

Pretty much all technology increases the surface area for fraud. However, the benefits usually outweigh that increase. Blockchains are no different. But the benefit is likely to accrue more to people in less developed countries.

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#49

Post by ThomPete »

One of the things about blockchain is that it has a history, that history makes it to some extent atomic.

This means it can be used to turn digital assets which are normally considered infinite in that it can be copied and pasted, into scarce resources.

One example could be a 2nd hand ebook market where books could actually increase in value because it's been owned by this and this person.

Re: Ask HN: What are new applications that can be built on blockchains?

#50

Post by sanderjd »

RexetBlell wrote: post #47
RexetBlell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big problem with these services is that your rating belongs to Uber instead of the user. It would be nice to put your reputation from all the services you use (Uber, Airbnb, reddit karma, eBay, credit rating, etc) in one central place that is not controlled by a single corporation.

The dream it's to then be able to share a portion of your information with another party without revealing everything. For example, you can share "my credit rating is above 750 and I'm 32 years old" and nothing else. This can be accomplished with zero knowledge proofs which are going to be possible on Ethereum later this year.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

Edit: There does seem to be a bootstrapping issue though. Right now the centralized entity is basically vouching for new people until their individual reputation builds.

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