Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 337 posts

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#71

Post by xchaotic »

EGreg wrote: post #5
api wrote: post #2

Yet so far I still see almost nothing on the block chain (beyond its core currency use case) that is useful outside the domain of block chain stuff. The only exception is things like Sia, and that's not cost or convenience competitive with Amazon S3 or Backblaze. Where is the value here? When I visited this I was expecting to see at least something about building something useful for... something... Building what for…

My favorite part about the blockchain is that it is a standard building block for decentralized byzantine consensus. Throw Ripple's XRP Consensus algorithm at 50-100 nodes and you know that 30% or more would have to be compromised to break the guarantees. That's really cool because I can code the rest of the interface (front end etc.) with sloppy security and then ACTUALLY BOLT ON a secure layer with guarantees at th…

It's nice in an utopian kind of way, but it's actually less efficient - i.e. more costly overall. So you're talking Facebook paying for their hosting by showing ads vs you trying to charge customers real money or slow down their computers. I have a guess which one is going to prevail.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#72

Post by qyv »

rrecuero wrote: post #52
spookthesunset wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a solved problem. All interested parties form an independent business entity and assign ownership to that. All problems related to inter-company collaboration are people and organizational problems not technical problems. Blockchain solves nothing in this space.

The main benefit of blockchain is that it is trustless and censorship-resistant. You don't need to trust any business entities. You can transact with someone in a zero trust environment on the other side of the world

Just because you use a blockchain doesn't make your implementation trustless, nor censorship resistant.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#73

Post by dsacco »

hiq wrote: post #32
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A distributed ledger doesn't necessarily mean a decentralized one. This is a handy reference to decide if you're building a cryptographic ledger or a blockchain: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/e49d2bdc9dfec4adc9da8a8434f...

I think the confusion stems from permissioned vs permissionless blockchain, and the comment you replied assumed you were talking about one instead of the other. I find the plain term "blockchain" rather vague in that regard. In addition to this github gist, I like http://doyouneedablockchain.com/ .

For precision, it’s good to distinguish between decentralization and permissionlessness as separate axes. Technically speaking the two are commonly positively correlated, but you can build centralized, permissionless systems and decentralized, permissioned systems.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#74

Post by ojr »

spookthesunset wrote: post #47
0x4f3759df wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use a blockchain instead of a database? Because multiple organizations are involved and each wants to control the database. If a thing moves across multiple organizations then you can make a case for a blockchain application, logistics is an obvious example, but there are others like asset (expensive paintings / vintage wine) provenance. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/ups-bets-on-blockchain-as-...

This is a solved problem. All interested parties form an independent business entity and assign ownership to that. All problems related to inter-company collaboration are people and organizational problems not technical problems. Blockchain solves nothing in this space.

it cost on average around $1 USD to perform an average blockchain transaction and millions of transaction are made a day, the demand is transparent and the data is available for everyone to see. If it was a solved problem I would expect the demand for decentralized ledgers to be a lot lower

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#75

Post by m1sta_ »

xchaotic wrote: post #67
snitko wrote: post #63

It's all the same thing every year on HN. People trying to find all sorts of excuses for Bitcoin existence - blockchains, smart contracts, ICOs - as long as they don't have to accept that Bitcoin's main purpose is and always was to have an alternative to the financial system, crippling regulations, government control and taxes. In other words, everything people hate about libertarians, they try to ignore in Bitcoin.…

it's a very noble approach, but the facts are not in your favour. The 'people' that keep bitcoin valuation high are: early adopters (including ones who lost access to their wallets), HODLers and speculators and perhaps a few casual drug buyers. As a mainstream currency, BTC is pretty useless at world scale.

You forgot a big one that’s not going away quickly: money launderers.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#76

Post by m1sta_ »

EricDeb wrote: post #56

So far the main benefit is democratizing investment, as has been stated here before. I love that I can get in on early stage projects without being a well-connected angel investor. Coins are like new, sexier penny stocks.

The only reason this wasn’t possible in the past was because too many people got ripped off.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#77

Post by epberry »

So this is exactly how I got started on a silly Ethereum side project over the holiday. Truffle, solidity docs, and reading the crypto kiddies code is all you need. I'm mostly interested in how Ethereum and other blockchain technologies work - there's no denying that building a dapp is just a fundamentally different experience from building a web app today and that in itself is exciting.

I'm mostly not interested in anything financial. Decentralization, immutability, and a built-in way to pay for usage are the main features of Ethereum (possibly combined with IPFS) that get me going.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#78

Post by rsp1984 »

Monegro believes that this paradigm shift affects the way that developers should think about their applications: “The combination of shared open data with an incentive system that prevents “winner-take-all” markets changes the game at the application layer and creates an entire new category of companies with fundamentally different business models at the protocol layer.”

Ok, thin protocols + fat apps --> fat protocols + thin apps. Neat theory. But this is putting the cart before the horse. Please can someone ELI5 to me:

* What problem does the fat-protocol, thin-app paradigm solve?

* Why would anyone be interested in developing a thin app for my fat protocol any more than anyone is interested today in developing a thin protocol that I can put my fat app on top of?

* Why is thin-protocol, fat-app considered to be in need of fixing in the first place? I consider the fact that apps capture more value than protocols to be a direct consequence of the free market. Apps capture business value because they solve actual user problems. Protocols define ways to build apps. But frankly I don't see a great demand for new protocols, and I consider that reason enough for the fact that protocols can't capture much value. To say that that would change with the blockchain is IMO equivalent to saying the market has it all wrong. What am I not seeing?

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#79

Post by JorgeGT »

Jasper_ wrote: post #42
goodroot wrote: post #3

> For one, Ethereum is unable to access real time data from outside the blockchain. Developers need to rely on trusted third party data providers, called oracles, to provide smart contracts with outside information like weather, random numbers, or currency values. I feel like this is more of a feature than a bug. If you're weaving applications into the blockchain, would it really be wise to have that chain communicat…

What I don't understand is how Ethereum can describe their dapps as "trustless" when all the trust is still centralized in an oracle. This can even happen accidentally, such as with the Mayweather/McGregor smart contract breakage. [0] But now imagine if BoxRec had intentionally reported false results from their website in order to make a lot of money on the bet. People would lose their money, and there would be no re…

Plus, it's not like bribing oracles is unheard of. Herodotus, who lived 2500 years ago, already reports instances of bribery affecting the predictions of the Oracle at Delphi: https://archive.org/stream/jstor-3287085/3287085_djvu.txt

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#80

Post by symlinkk »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #57
Jasper_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is how Ethereum can describe their dapps as "trustless" when all the trust is still centralized in an oracle. This can even happen accidentally, such as with the Mayweather/McGregor smart contract breakage. [0] But now imagine if BoxRec had intentionally reported false results from their website in order to make a lot of money on the bet. People would lose their money, and there would be no re…

You can solve this by using multiple oracles and a stake-based consensus algorithm to de-incentivize malicious reporting.

> stake-based consensus algorithm

What do you mean by this?

Post reply on HN