Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#111

Post by spookthesunset » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #104

acdha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this is your blind spot? You assume it has to be legal to be useful. I'm looking at what it takes to go mainstream — if it's predominately used for illegal activity, that'll deter normal people and legitimate businesses from adopting it and increases the likelihood of government regulation. As a simple example, how many people would use a tumbler if that started being seen as probable cause for a money launde…

>>As a simple example, how many people would use a tumbler if that started being seen as probable cause for a money laundering investigation? Filesharing is arguably in this category and maybe shows that it's possible that something not generally used for legal purposes and not in the mainstream can nonetheless become widely used. But yes there is certainly a risk. >Some people value that but it seems unlikely that i…

> Right now cryptocurrency is in its infancy.

Bitcoin is, what, ten years old. It predates the iPhone. I’d hardly call it still in its “infancy”

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#112

Post by brulez » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

teknico wrote: post #68

simias wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent is a luddite for questioning very emphatic and rather baseless claims. The strawman you build is unwarranted IMO. Household computers were a thing in science fiction long before they were possible and I don't recall anybody doubting you could eventually transmit movies over the internet in a reasonable amount of time. Then you continue with the usual hand waving when people point out weakness…

> Has any serious blockchain successfully implemented PoS at this point? Decred has, in production for months: " rel="nofollow">https://docs.decred.org/mining/proof-of-stake/> . True, it's a hybrid Pow/PoS system, not a pure PoS one, which is indeed probably not workable: " rel="nofollow">https://docs.decred.org/research/hybrid-design/> .

It's not really clear to me how PoS is providing any security in Decred above that provided by the PoW.

If a single entity is able to get 51% of the hashrate why can't they effectively control which PoS tickets are selected?

Since the overall reward & transaction fees are distributed between both PoS & PoW, it seems to follow that at there will be fewer PoW miners resulting in less overall security vs. a pure PoW protocol.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#113

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #111

CryptoPunk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>As a simple example, how many people would use a tumbler if that started being seen as probable cause for a money laundering investigation? Filesharing is arguably in this category and maybe shows that it's possible that something not generally used for legal purposes and not in the mainstream can nonetheless become widely used. But yes there is certainly a risk. >Some people value that but it seems unlikely that i…

> Right now cryptocurrency is in its infancy. Bitcoin is, what, ten years old. It predates the iPhone. I’d hardly call it still in its “infancy”

Distributed consensus through proof of work was new in many more ways than the iPhone was in 2007.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#114

Post by root_axis » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

lazerpants wrote: post #105

acdha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this is your blind spot? You assume it has to be legal to be useful. I'm looking at what it takes to go mainstream — if it's predominately used for illegal activity, that'll deter normal people and legitimate businesses from adopting it and increases the likelihood of government regulation. As a simple example, how many people would use a tumbler if that started being seen as probable cause for a money launde…

You're overlooking the millions (perhaps billions) of people on the planet who do not currently have access to Western banking infrastructure.

Those people often don't have access to reliable internet or electricity, bitcoin does not solve any of their problems. Further, bitcoin is not spendable money for 95% of human needs, especially in the aforementioned regions. Exchanging bitcoin for spendable money in person is risky, inconvenient and expensive. Bitcoin is a terrible option for this population.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#115

Post by sangfroid » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

Hi. I'm the author of the article. Thanks for your interest. I'm glad the piece is sparking a deeper discussion of the technical trade offs of the technology.

I just want to clarify that this article is one of many included in a full Spectrum issue dedicated to blockchain technology, which I had a hand in organizing. From the outset I was adamant that we acknowledge the costs and limitations of blockchains. Part of that treatment can be found in the last half of the overview.

But we also try to hit those notes in a separate piece, which you can find here.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/do-you-need-a-b...

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#116

Post by acdha » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 11:23 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #113

spookthesunset wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now cryptocurrency is in its infancy. Bitcoin is, what, ten years old. It predates the iPhone. I’d hardly call it still in its “infancy”

Distributed consensus through proof of work was new in many more ways than the iPhone was in 2007.

These things are always hard to judge but there's certainly plenty of prior art: there's a ton of CS history for distributed consensus, distributed attestation, etc. prior to 2007 and the proof of work concept goes back to at least the 90s – see e.g. http://www.hashcash.org or http://www.hashcash.org/papers/bread-pudding.pdf.

Anyone who spent time on cypherpunks-l in the 90s would also be familiar with the discussions of e-currencies like David Chaum's 1989 digicash (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash) which did not use proof-of-work but did cover a lot of the same ground for anonymity, etc.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#117

Post by Iv » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 12:14 AM UTC

0x006A wrote: post #31

Iv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I mean a runaway inflation that led to trillion dollars bills to buy bread, as well as the impossibility to anticipate costs of look g projects without resorting to foreign currency.

what would a blockchain solve that any foreign currency would not do in that case? whats the benefit of a blockchain based system compared to dollar or euro cash in such a situation?

Counterfeiting and limited supply.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#118

Post by CryptoPunk » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #116

CryptoPunk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributed consensus through proof of work was new in many more ways than the iPhone was in 2007.

These things are always hard to judge but there's certainly plenty of prior art: there's a ton of CS history for distributed consensus, distributed attestation, etc. prior to 2007 and the proof of work concept goes back to at least the 90s – see e.g. http://www.hashcash.org or http://www.hashcash.org/papers/bread-pudding.pdf . Anyone who spent time on cypherpunks-l in the 90s would also be familiar with the discussio…

Of course Bitcoin built on previous ideas, but the ideas were more theoretical, in the realm of academia and obscure cypherpunk mailing lists.

The components of an iPhone (e.g. the touchscreen, microprocessor, RAM, SSD drive) OTOH were already mass-produced and widely adopted in consumer electronic.

I don't want to understate the iPhone's impact. It spurred the development of better LCDs, touch interfaces and especially SSDs, but it was undoubtedly still working off a more established base than Bitcoin.

The consensus algorithms predating Bitcoin required some percentage of participants to be trusted identities, so were quite different than what Bitcoin pioneered.

Hashcash was a very limited experiment that had no consensus system. Utilizing the proof of work idea of Hashcash to create an identity-less consensus system was more conceptually groundbreaking than iPhone's marriage of touch screen mobility and personal computing.

While the iPhone added a personal computer to a mobile phone, in a user friendly touchscreen package, the blockchain created something that was totally new: distributed consensus without known and trusted parties.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#119

Post by mrhektor » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 2:16 AM UTC

relyio wrote: post #56

It's an easy pitch. Not for all industries or markets, but broadly speaking, removing the need for trusted third-parties is a major leap forward. And that's how those (trustless) decentralized ledgers should market themselves. It only needs to come down to that one simple thing: they increase the surface on which supply and demand can interact. The resulting friction generates wealth. Lots of markets remained untappe…

This is an excellent articulation of the business case of blockchain. Too many people are getting on the hype train without being able to clearly define concrete and robust usecases.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#120

Post by prostoalex » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 4:02 AM UTC

lazerpants wrote: post #105

acdha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this is your blind spot? You assume it has to be legal to be useful. I'm looking at what it takes to go mainstream — if it's predominately used for illegal activity, that'll deter normal people and legitimate businesses from adopting it and increases the likelihood of government regulation. As a simple example, how many people would use a tumbler if that started being seen as probable cause for a money launde…

You're overlooking the millions (perhaps billions) of people on the planet who do not currently have access to Western banking infrastructure.

Those millions also need to be well-versed with modern security protocols to keep their cryptosavings from being stolen, and accept the fact that not only the transactions are irreversible (which I guess is okay, considering that neither are Western Union's or Moneygram's), but sending to non-existing null addresses does not return an error, so any typo, a garbled message or a man-in-the-middle attack is also irreversible.