Building for the Blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#151

Post by sodafountan » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

indigochill wrote: post #133

keithwhor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re seeing everything just fine. Imagine you’ve spent your whole life investing millions of dollars in entrepreneurs. Building models and testing hypotheses with no real agency: you can’t control what the CEO does or the product the engineering team builds or the way they market the product. Your job is to provide returns for your LPs. That’s it. Now imagine, instead of spending thousands of hours interacting with…

Thanks. This is probably the most coherent pitch I've seen for tokens (and also helps me understand a little better why certain people are so attracted to them). I was of the opinion they were a pure ponzi scheme, but this gives me a somewhat better balanced understanding of what actual expectations underpin the speculation.

A really interesting project to check out if you haven't heard of it is the Brave project. It's got a really interesting concept and they actually have a functioning product that can be downloaded and used right now, not to mention the founder of the company is Brenden Eich who not only created javascript but co-founded Mozilla. It's definitely worth checking out, they do a really great job of explaining what a crypto-currency can be: https://basicattentiontoken.org/

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#152

Post by joosters » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

felipeccastro wrote: post #92

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…

For example, steemit.com: a social network where you get paid (in tokens) for producing/curating content. As the network grows, the token gets more valuable, so there's a strong incentive for early users to join it. I'm not sure yet steemit will end up being a winner in this field, but I find this a very smart approach for challenging the network effect of big competitors.

There's nothing there that is impossible without a blockchain. The steemit website might as well issue its tokens using a simple database. Running it on a blockchain adds nothing except a 'shiny new technology' feel.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#153

Post by tenaciousDaniel » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

goldenkey wrote: post #130

Jasper_ wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading up on ChainLink: > Several data providers respond to this service agreement with a bid in the form of a data reply — when enough data providers have responded, the majority response is taken (or average depending on the request), outliers are removed, and data is fed into the contract. What's to stop me from setting up 10,000 different data providers that initially provide good data to get a good reputation s…

Bingo. Most cryptocurrencies/contracts/anything in the field/realm -- they don't attack the problem of "person" vs address/wallet/account. ChainLink might think they are clever but like you said..when accounts in your network are free, then don't expect any kind of consensus to work. Accounts or rather, more abstractly, entry into your network -- needs to cost something that can't be easily done to gain majority. Ano…

Accounts are free, but interaction is not. There's a stake to be lost in these transactions.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#154

Post by joosters » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

goodroot wrote: post #9

api wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm really looking for (and I've been asking this question in a lot of places recently) is some concrete examples of real world cases where this tech is being... you know... used as something other than just novelty or tinkering. Block chain centric use cases don't count since those just reinforce my worst case hypothesis-- that cryptocurrency is a financial MMORPG and a pure value-free bubble. What's an actual…

You might like this example, it puts decentralized smart-contracts in a digestible context: https://germanylandofinnovation.com/2016/10/19/german-compan... -- Under the prototype, users interact with the charging station by agreeing to a smart contract that is programmed on top of the Ethereum network. Prior to charging, the user makes a deposit on the network, which is later released after the transaction is complet…

Once again, the blockchain part of this adds nothing to the process, apart from complexity.

Is the charging process now trustless? Nope, because I still need to trust that once I make my deposit the real-world charging station will honour that payment. Is it decentralized? Of course not, I'm standing in front of a single charging station, not a zillion different ones. Is it immune to double-spends? As a user, I don't care.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#155

Post by hyperion2010 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

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…

Verifiable oracles are extremely hard to create. In fact I think that the creation of verifiable oracles is the single biggest challenge facing science and engineering. Full disclosure, I am quite biased about this since part of my PhD work is to create a language to specify measurement processes.

How do you know whether the numbers you are getting reflect something about the real world? How do you know that your data hasn't been tampered with intentionally or unintentionally?

Data provenance is extremely difficult, and that is only half the problem. The other half of the problem is determining whether you have actually measured what you think you have measured. (Note: there may be some additional halves lurking around as well.)

To give some concrete examples. You find a picture of a CEO groping someone, how do you know whether it is real? Does it matter if you want to short the stock of the company, given that you know that other people will not verify it? What if the photographer's camera automatically pushed a stream of hashes of sensor contents and GPS locations to a source with a verifiable timestamp?

How about the equivalent for a microscope sensor to ensure that the raw data from the sensor was verifiable, and that all transformations of that data needed to be published in a form that would allow anyone to verify that the raw data could be transformed to the final data?

How about a contract that specifies that if a freezer temperature rises above X degrees C for more than 3 minutes then the freezer owner must pay Y dollars to the owners of the contents of the freezer. What does it take to build sensors that the owner of the freezer would trust enough to enter into such a contract?

tl;dr Verifiability of data from oracles is extremely difficult, and much a bigger challenge than building a blockchain that could make use of it. GIGO will be a big stumbling block.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#156

Post by natural219 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

> Alternatively, the distribution of value in the blockchain paradigm can be described with fat protocols and a thin application layer. This paradigm shift is possible due to the innovation of cryptographic tokens.

As a long-time decentralization activist, this sentiment makes me want to tear my eyeballs out. Why are cryptographic tokens necessary to implement fat protocols? Why does "standardizing communication across applications" now also have to mean "implementing a global, secure financial market" in the process?!? This is maddening to me and nobody has explained to me why blockchains are a requirement to do this.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#157

Post by joosters » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

goodroot wrote: post #60

amarkov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it worse to phone home and synchronize with a central authority than to phone home and synchronize with a blockchain?

When authority is centralized, it's akin to full control. Decentralization fragments control across many, many different parties, who in consensus have authority. If the transaction is on an immutable public record, the authority couldn't say: "Well, no you didn't pay us. Pay us again, or we'll steal your dog." If you live somewhere where Government/Corporation are out of control, this sort of safe guard has major be…

There's no safeguard here. The smart contract is a red herring. Smart contracts cannot see or alter the real world, they have to trust that someone does that for them. In the example of the charging station, there's no safeguard that proves that the charging station will charge my car once I have deposited cash. You can analyse all the lines of the smart contract and the workings of the blockchain, but it is wasted effort: I have no way to know whether or not the charging station will ignore the blockchain's state.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#158

Post by joosters » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #7

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…

its only a matter of time before bank settlement and cross border payments are all done on blockchain. I would think that asset tracking and real esate deeds are a great application. Asking why these things aren't on the blockchain yet is like asking why businesses aren't using the internet in the 1970s.

Why? Putting blockchain in there just adds more FX transfers. USDGBP now becomes USDBTCGBP, so why would you expect that to reduce costs and improve efficiency?

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#159

Post by joosters » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

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…

Ripple is not trustless, so the blockchain part of it is moot. Since you have to trust Ripple (because they have full control), you might as well let them store the blockchain data on their own centrally controlled database.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#160

Post by s73ver_ » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

goodroot wrote: post #60

amarkov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it worse to phone home and synchronize with a central authority than to phone home and synchronize with a blockchain?

When authority is centralized, it's akin to full control. Decentralization fragments control across many, many different parties, who in consensus have authority. If the transaction is on an immutable public record, the authority couldn't say: "Well, no you didn't pay us. Pay us again, or we'll steal your dog." If you live somewhere where Government/Corporation are out of control, this sort of safe guard has major be…

I feel this is grasping at straws. If I'm running a series of charging stations, then I absolutely do want full control. And if I'm the customer, I can simply call Visa or MasterCard if the owner tries that shit.