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Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Building for the Blockchain

#161

Post by kang »

cturner wrote: post #140
kang wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, decentralized system will be always slower than centralized one. Its a good thing its slow. 1 hour blocks are even safer (and effectively we do convert blocktime to an hour by waiting for 6 confirmations). So no, you can't "do" more, only be more noisy.

> Technically, decentralized system will be > always slower than centralized one. This is not a reasonable response to the parent: bitcoin is significantly slower than other systems of its class. Ethereum is an equivalent system and faster. (Others are much faster still) There are application where speed matters. For example, to sort things out while all the lawyers are in a room.

I am not saying that speed doesn't matter; trade-off though is security. If there are lawyers to sort thing out, then you don't need crypto.

>bitcoin is significantly slower than other systems of its class

that class being decentralised proof-of-work, it is no slower than it is more secure than those class-members. (And among class members of equal 'speed' it is most secure)

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#162

Post by davesque »

A blockchain ensures that some sequence of agreements was made in a way that everyone can trust. If everyone keeps their secret keys secure and solely in their possession, then no activity can be forged on the network by any significant likelihood.

Anywhere this concept has value, a blockchain has value. That's all there is to it. The rest is fairy dust and noise.

I don't really follow a lot of the discussion in this article. As I see it, most of the buzz around blockchains is just wild speculation and fantasy. For example, why would be want a "fat" protocol? In any other context in technology, "fat" anything is considered bad. Technologies are supposed to be "thin", simple, efficient, and composable. So why would the opposite be praised in this case? Furthermore, the characterization of existing foundational internet protocols as "thin" and blockchain protocols as "fat" seems like an inversion of truths. By my understanding, it would take as long or much longer to become well versed in all the nitty-gritty details of TCP/IP, DNS, etc. than it would to gain a solid understanding of Ethereum. Also, where is the need for software ecosystem micro-economies?

None of this makes any logical sense to me. It seems people have gotten it in their heads that the simple technological innovations of hash trees and distributed consensus protocols are going to somehow make them rich. And they're finding weird ways of justifying this.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#163

Post by sushisource »

eximius wrote: post #139
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…

I don't disagree with anything you said. But, separately, if you asked me if I wanted to use something to store/transmit value that was only reliable 99.9999999% of the time, I would immediately say no. At Visa scale, that means 15 transactions a day are incorrect - not delayed, just straight up incorrect. Maybe that already happens and we just don't hear about it because they can fix it without any one noticing or i…

I believe the major players (Visa being one of them, and I know a Visa engineer) use formal verification for the actual money-handling code. Obviously, yeah, there could be mistakes with the verifier, etc, but the problems they experience are relegated to the "couldn't do this transaction" variety, rather than the "we did this transaction wrong" variety.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#164

Post by eyezick »

joosters wrote: post #145
eyezick wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your code doesn't reach out beyond the blockchain, then there's very little it can actually do. Asset issuance, voting, wills, identity/reputation systems, land registries. Fundamentally, a blockchain is just public, transparent immutable data history. Of the above sample cases, all it takes is for the powers to be to recognize the data as a reflection of the real world; which is a barrier outside of the technol…

Asset issuance, voting, wills, identity/reputation systems, land registries. All of which reach beyond the blockchain. No-one is going to care that a 'smart contract' says that Alice owns a plot of land when Bob holds the real-world deeds. The real world and the blockchain can only be linked when, as you say, 'the powers that be' decide to recognise the data. But then you've lost all of the advantages that the blockc…

> But then you've lost all of the advantages that the blockchain was claimed to possess.

That's a very wide brush stroke to paint. You just have to analyze each use case independently.

In the same example of land registry, just a transparent history is a huge value add when dealing with corrupt government officials. Here's a case study https://s3.amazonaws.com/ipri2016/casestudy_collindres.pdf . Voting transparency even with the government as the part of centralization is a huge value add imo.

Further, even allowing centralization in certain points, like a SpaceX IPO (which should def be centralized), allows whoever holds a share to make arbitrary, trustless mediums and rules of exchange.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#165

Post by evanvanness »

Lots of smart people in this space disagree with "fat protocols."

I'll immodestly list my own first: https://www.evanvanness.com/post/166666272011/theres-no-such...

See also CoinFund's Jake Brukhman: https://blog.coinfund.io/fat-protocols-are-not-an-investment...

And Zeppelin's Teemu Paivinen: https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/thin-protocols-cc872258379f

I hear that even Joel doesn't agree with how his piece has been interpreted.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#166

Post by flgb »

joosters wrote: post #145
eyezick wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your code doesn't reach out beyond the blockchain, then there's very little it can actually do. Asset issuance, voting, wills, identity/reputation systems, land registries. Fundamentally, a blockchain is just public, transparent immutable data history. Of the above sample cases, all it takes is for the powers to be to recognize the data as a reflection of the real world; which is a barrier outside of the technol…

Asset issuance, voting, wills, identity/reputation systems, land registries. All of which reach beyond the blockchain. No-one is going to care that a 'smart contract' says that Alice owns a plot of land when Bob holds the real-world deeds. The real world and the blockchain can only be linked when, as you say, 'the powers that be' decide to recognise the data. But then you've lost all of the advantages that the blockc…

In many jurisdictions "the real-world deeds" are already just a database record (albeit one in a central database managed by a Government agency).

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#167

Post by posterboy »

jhwang5 wrote: post #97
ptk921 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Api. Your questions are _spot_ on! Speculative investing + skyrocketing valuations does encourage highly motivated reasoning-- a unique kind of confirmation bias: "This technology MUST be the answer to all the problems of the future because I'm getting wealthier TODAY!" Irrational exuberance is rampant. That said -- the recent New Yorker article on Estonia's digital society [1] covered that country's usage of a bl…

Sure, but Lituania also didn't need to use the Blockchain for this use case.

> Lituania

You didn't even read properly - we were talking Estonia. At the scale of a local health care system the blockchain is perhaps really nothing more than a fancy database, if at that scale it will stay energy efficient for a long while.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#168

Post by meri_dian »

davesque wrote: post #162

A blockchain ensures that some sequence of agreements was made in a way that everyone can trust. If everyone keeps their secret keys secure and solely in their possession, then no activity can be forged on the network by any significant likelihood. Anywhere this concept has value, a blockchain has value. That's all there is to it. The rest is fairy dust and noise. I don't really follow a lot of the discussion in this…

Well said.

Wealth is built through control, while a distributed ledger rejects control by design. Now distributed ledgers have utility, but that does not necessarily mean they will create business value for entrepreneurs and investors.

It's almost like how regulation has value in society, but regulation is decidedly not profitable and businesses usually reject it.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#169

Post by matte_black »

jondubois wrote: post #146
C14L wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It solves some problems, especially when it comes to networks of shared information where no one actor trust any other single actor. But as usual, as soon as a lot of money is to be made, non-techies get dollar signs in their eyes and --without understanding the tool-- jump in and start using it for everything. It will be very amusing to watch, for sure.

What I like about Blockchain tech is that non technical people will never be as good or as quick at identifying opportunities as a technical people who can understand the whitepapers and look at the code themselves. For example, some of the coins that have been going up in price recently are complete garbage and it's a matter of time before their technical limitations become apparent to non-technical people. I think…

If this is true then name and shame a few of them (preferably some that we are likely to have heard about). Sick and tired of accusations being thrown out with no skin in the game.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#170

Post by keithwhor »

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.

Definitely not a pitch “for” tokens at all. Just my armchair assessment of nascent risk and the psychology of the space.
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