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

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

#181

Post by dorgo »

wallacoloo wrote: post #54
provost wrote: post #2

Hopefully this thread will be different than all the others. Someone is likely to appear here with a counterargument, which I'm looking forward to reading. However, in addition to any counterarguments, please describe why standard tech and/or a 3rd_party is insufficient for your proposed use-cases. This is HackerNews after all, and we desire the deeply technical discussion and context, not propaganda.

It's hard to write a good counterargument to this. The article goes in so many directions that it could never cover all his points. Any counterargument I can construct boils down to a difference of opinion & values. The author trusts his bank and his government to (a) handle his money in the way that he thinks is responsible and (b) handle disputes in a way that benefits him . On the other hand, I trust myself to han…

The ability of the government to freeze your bank account is based (to some degree) on a consensus (or at least tolerance) of the people in the country that the government should have these powers.

Same is true for crypte-currencies. If some hacker manages to steal a big amount of money then (almost) everybody agrees to make a hardfork and the hacker looses his money. It is more decentralized and the hacker could keep some part of the money if there is a side chain.

Hacker scenario already happend. But there is no need for a crime to happen to cause a tokens redistribution. If 80% of all token holders (miners for bitcoin?) are poor what stops them from redistributing the tokens of the rich token holders?

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

#182

Post by thisisit »

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…

For one, the use of the word blockchain itself is posing a problem. If I remember correctly there was a case made to use the word - distributed ledger instead to avoid confusion.

And I have never understood one part of it. How are contentious settlements are resolved? Today for any disputes people can approach BIS or DTC and once issue is resolved everything can be rolled back. Who acts as the "watcher" in this case? Surely, going by what majority says is not a solution.

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

#183

Post by teamonkey »

etr-strike wrote: post #102
Cyberdog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of tokens is to provide an incentive for running the ledger client and processing transactions: mining for uptake and transaction fees to maintain scale long-term. You need as many people to run the client as possible.

If you can find some other reason for processing transactions and can guarantee that the population is big enough then the coin becomes unnecessary.

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

#184

Post by allodoxia_bleak »

ThomPete wrote: post #85
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.

I went to Ars Electronica in Linz years back (highly recommended) one of the big discussions that year was digital art and how it could be sold (and things like do you pay for a software upgrade) The "problem" with digital art is that if you get a hold of the source code you could just reproduce it and "double spend" and thus it has diminishing value. If you use the blockchain to verify you have the original you make…

https://www.verisart.com/about

"Verisart is the world's leading platform to certify and verify artworks and collectibles using the Bitcoin blockchain. Since its launch in 2015, Verisart has provided contemporary artists including Shepard Fairey with a free and easy way to generate permanent certificates of authenticity and reduce the scope for fraudulent activity. Verisart combines museum certification standards, distributed ledger technology and image recognition to its provenance and registry services. The company is headed by Robert Norton, formerly CEO & co-founder of Saatchi Online & Sedition Art and its Board Advisers include Peter Todd, Bitcoin core developer and Dr. Ahmed Elgammal, Professor of the Art & Artificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers University."

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

#185

Post by kilotaras »

eksemplar wrote: post #69

Maersk is using blockchain to validate container ownership claims. Revolutionary tech in a world where crime meant the confirmation papers cost more than the container to ship. Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt. Banks have moved to cryptocurrencies for transfers. Sure it's not the unregulated ones, but it'…

> Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt.

Speaking as a citizen of such country[1]. The problem is not in ledger/registry. The problem is that you can get a fake shareholders notice, a court order from corrupt judge, etc. and change the ownership in the registry. I don't see how blockchain solves anything that a simple publication of all changes wouldn't.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/ukraine-t...

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

#186

Post by ThomPete »

allodoxia_bleak wrote: post #184
ThomPete wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Ars Electronica in Linz years back (highly recommended) one of the big discussions that year was digital art and how it could be sold (and things like do you pay for a software upgrade) The "problem" with digital art is that if you get a hold of the source code you could just reproduce it and "double spend" and thus it has diminishing value. If you use the blockchain to verify you have the original you make…

https://www.verisart.com/about "Verisart is the world's leading platform to certify and verify artworks and collectibles using the Bitcoin blockchain. Since its launch in 2015, Verisart has provided contemporary artists including Shepard Fairey with a free and easy way to generate permanent certificates of authenticity and reduce the scope for fraudulent activity. Verisart combines museum certification standards, dis…

Yup. Some very interesting things going on in that field. My wife is in the art auction business.

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

#187

Post by malux85 »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #70
malux85 wrote: post #39

I have a product built on blockchain, it has real, paying customers. It was not funded through an ICO and we do not have our own coin. Https://hydrachain.io/

a tl;dr on what it is might be helpful? I'm afraid I don't quite understand what your product is after looking at the web site.

I know it’s not very good explanation, the site was put up quickly before we pitched to a large government contract and it was aimed at them and not a casual reader.

New site coming soon with examples and a demo.

It’s a generic asset management platform - so one current use case is tracking the movement of goods through a supply chain, and also recording transactional history in an industry that is currently full of corruption and tax avoiders. Having an immutable transaction record that’s publicly visible is the correct usage of blockchain and it solves this problem very well. We are talking about amounts that are so large, this system will likely be regulated by the government.

Another current use case is tracking physical (and very valuable) assets - again the use case is an immutable pubic record.

The immutability is key - sure you could Store this data in a database, but the problems we are solving are the fact that when you have a single entity running a database then at a certain level of wealth you’re practically guaranteed corruption or unethical behaviour. This is the reason we use blockchain - blockchain has a good use case for avoiding the corruption that massive centralised systems are often plagued with

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

#188

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

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…

"simply a ledger" that for some reason didn't exist until Satoshi nakamoto created Bitcoin.

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

#189

Post by sebleon »

Wikileaks is possible because of the blockchain. No question that the world has been changed by this kind of organization.

I’m happy that the cartel of financial institutions can no longer shut folks out arbitrarily, looking forward to seeing what else is made possible by the blockchain.

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