Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#101

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

theoh wrote: post #94

claudiulodro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> digital art certification Interesting. So you have an original piece of digital art and the owner of the art is verified on the blockchain? How would that work? Can't I just take a screenshot or something of the art and have a copy? What's the advantage of having one "true" piece of digital art and is it feasable? Genuinely curious how this would work. It's a very intriguing idea.

Not certification of digital art, digital certification of art. Some people are excited about this. It is just a DRM thing, transfer of rights, records of provenance etc. Makes sense if you think of art as an asset, which is kind of a philistine thing to do...

You are right it can also be used for digital certification of art but I actually did mean digital certification of digital art.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#102

Post by etr-strike » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:44 PM UTC

Cyberdog wrote: post #66

etr-strike wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blockchain is a decentralized trustless ledger. If the operators are trusted, you can just use a database. It’s much more efficient. It’s pretty clear from the comment that you don’t understand Bitcoin or why, when people say “we like blockchain but not bitcoin”, that they’re talking nonsense.

> If the operators are trusted, you can just use a database. It’s much more efficient. This is true! But databases don't have that magic "blockchain" tech. David Gerard's book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain touches on the ridiculousness of this idea, actually. And, yes, it's ridiculousness, but it's what some people are trying to sell. So should I take it that you're one of the people who thinks blockchains have li…

No, I think blockchains provide many useful functions. However, providing a token with value is a necessary feature. I’m very excited about things like Rootstock which add smart contract functionality to the bitcoin blockchain.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#103

Post by tom_mellior » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:45 PM UTC

dozzie wrote: post #96

tom_mellior wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt. Do you have a source for this? I can't imagine how it might work.

Why not? Blockchain is a document timestamping system, which means its whole purpose is to tell which of the two connected documents was issued earlier. As such, it doesn't care if the document was subtracting a number from one account and adding the same number to another account or if it was some text telling who gets the ownership of a described plot. In fact, this particular use is one of the few that blockchain…

This is a particular use for a public database. The public database must be writable (only) by the corrupt authorities. What exactly does a blockchain do to make the authorities non-corrupt here?

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#104

Post by adamnemecek » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:47 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #62

adamnemecek wrote: post #3

This article reminds me of Clifford Stolls 1995 article http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva... In which he says how the promises of the internet have been inflated. Progress is generally on the exponential (or sigmoid) curve, so it’s slow at first, but explosive later.

"Blockchain tech" is not the Internet, though. It's like a different kind of Internet, one that is slower, more expensive and has less capacity, which was invented after the real thing has already been created. And then people would ask why you would need this if the real Internet can already do almost all of what this worse version does.

You listed only the cons but none of the pros.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#105

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:48 PM UTC

The blockchain is not just a support for currency, it is a decentralized ledger. A bit like git, but more secure.

A use case that doesn't involve currency is product tracking.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#106

Post by DenisM » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:52 PM UTC

Cyberdog wrote: post #50

jackfoxy wrote: post #31

The folks at https://sweetbridge.com/ make a case for supply chain being a natural fit. Some of the low hanging fruit here is international trade between less developed countries, where settlement has to be done in dollars, and independent truckers. The thesis is that huge amounts of capital is tied up in invoice settlement all along the supply chain. (And supply chain refers to every thing from the dirt -- grown or…

What about a blockchain/distributed ledger improves supply chains in ways that a standard centralized database could not? Explain like I'm five.

I don't necessarily believe this myself, but here goes:

A database under control of any one entity is prone to undue influence by hacking or bribing or other leverage. An append-only database that is controlled by consensus of all club members is safe from malfeasance on the part of a minority. There is value in that. Of course this has nothing to do with mining coins and stuff.

Now you can argue the society already solved these problems with rigorous administrative processes around existing databases. I would reply that blockchain-based process may end up being cheaper and/or faster to settle and reconcile. In the same way the computing previously done by humans was turned over to machines. It may have looked like the problem is under control and there is nothing to solve here, but it turned out there was a lot to be gained from dramatically increased computational power.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#107

Post by Agebor » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:52 PM UTC

Talking about distributed ledgers, blockchains is kind of misleading.

Fundamentally, this technology implements distributed trust. You can put some information there and it will remain, forever. Everyone can see that this data (and hence, some event in the world) is there, was created at particular time by a particular person. You can tell someone: "Hey, I did X and you can see it here".

Sure, it's slow as hell now, but look forward 10 years.

What if people in year e.g. 1000CE suddenly got telepathy (internet) and ability to persist each other's thoughts? How would that change their society?

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#108

Post by TheDong » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:53 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #24

Some big banks are gearing up to use a blockchain to track interbank settlements.[1] But this isn't a coin, nor is there mining. It's simply a shared ledger that can't be altered without cooperation between a majority of the parties. All alterations are clearly visible to all parties, which is good for auditing. Only big banks who have signed up for this have active nodes, and they are not anonymous. This is an alter…

I disagree that something with those properties is a blockchain. It's simply a distributed append-only ledger.

The exact same functionality could be accomplished with a git repository they each pull/rebase/push between themselves... or with any of a number of append-only databases with WALs and synchronous replication, where each of them runs a replica.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#109

Post by Vendan » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:57 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #98

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Digital Pokemon cards, 2nd hand ebooks market, 2nd hand digital assets market Are you kidding ? So the big use of the blockchain is to take things that have zero marginal cost of production, and enforce a completely artificial cost of production, to make non-scarce goods scarce?

Those are just some of the examples and yes it has quite a lot of value. Many things in the physical world is also built on these simple principles.

That's a downside of physical, not an advantage.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#110

Post by ezoe » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:57 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #24

Some big banks are gearing up to use a blockchain to track interbank settlements.[1] But this isn't a coin, nor is there mining. It's simply a shared ledger that can't be altered without cooperation between a majority of the parties. All alterations are clearly visible to all parties, which is good for auditing. Only big banks who have signed up for this have active nodes, and they are not anonymous. This is an alter…

Since only the trustworthy bodies can join the party, they can do the job more efficiently by not using any of the trendy blockchain which may technically prevent the fraud but otherwise inefficient.

And since there are only banks can join the network, I doubt it can technically prevent the fraud among banks because unlike public cryptocurrencies, it does not give incentives to the banks to spend a lot of computational power to the network. So any banks allowed to join can put enough computation power than other banks combined and succeed the attack.