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Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Building for the Blockchain

#231

Post by Zalastax »

eyezick wrote: post #164
joosters wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

How does the blockchain ensure that I can both verify that my vote was counted but can't sell my vote? https://youtu.be/BYRTvoZ3Rho describes one electronic voting system that's supposed to have those important properties, even though I don't fully all the details yet.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#232

Post by LrnByTeach »

amalag wrote: post #230
fragsworth wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like in most cases, the tokens are being used as a way for the developers to get funding to implement their project without the bureaucracy and costs of doing a real IPO. That would be fine on its own, but they're almost all pretending this is not the reason for it, and that the token is necessary. This is an obvious lie in nearly every case when you dig into the details. Nearly every dapp that has its own t…

Yes many tokens are being used as shares and trying to circumvent securities law.

not just "Many" , All of these 1400 coins listed on this site except couple of them are "being used as shares to circumvent securities law"

https://coinmarketcap.com/

>Yes many tokens are being used as shares and trying to circumvent securities law.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#233

Post by makomk »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #118
kang wrote: post #68

Naval does a much better job of explaining what the tech is about : https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/ However, OP nor Naval, really understand the protocol, or wouldn't be supporting non-blockchain things like ethereum (there is nothing that you can do with ethereum but not with git). >One of these developers, Vitalik Buterin, was frustrated by Bitcoin’s immobilism I am amazed at how HN is selling…

Bitcoin is slow as hell. So you can do an order of magnitude more with Ethereum than Bitcoin.

The catch is that the Ethereum nodes are, I think, if anything even more resource-hungry than Bitcoin for an equivalent transaction load. So while right now Ethereum is processing substantially more transactions per second than Bitcoin, this demands an awful lot of resources from every node - not just disk space and CPU time, but IOPS and bandwidth too.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#234

Post by smuemd »

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…

Not true. Domain knowledge trumps tech know-how. This is especially true for blockchain backed applications

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#235

Post by makomk »

Anyone thinking of building anything on Ethereum should probably read and comprehend this recent blog post from the folks at BitGo: https://medium.com/@lopp/the-challenges-of-building-ethereum... There are many nasty subtleties and hidden traps they learned the hard way that aren't obvious.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#236

Post by colecut »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #220
sova wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right, the tokens are just a stepping stone to getting the [distributed] app off the ground. It's a great model! If you believe in the utility of something you can fund it very early on and reap great rewards, or at least root great endeavors on.

How so? Can't you just do the same thing staking Ether instead of yet another ERC20 token?

Yes agreed, in several cases this summer I thought I was doing well with ICOs until I did the math and realized I would have done at least as well by just holding the ETH.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#237

Post by vasilipupkin »

I've wondered about the fat protocol concept. At the root of it, the token that allows the developers to monetize their fat protocol has to make sense as an investment. In other words, what are the investors getting when they buy this token? why should they expect a return? this, I don't understand very well.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#238

Post by CPLX »

ruiquelhas wrote: post #199
CPLX wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy said it seems interesting in theory but asked where the actual value was. You replied with some theoretical examples. Lots of things are interesting in theory. Bitcoin is about to end its first decade though. Asking where the actual value comes from seems on topic to me.

I don't know about so called blockchain projects like ethereum, but bitcoin has value because it has inelastic demand. There are a lot of underserved people out there that need bitcoin, regardless of its value, in their daily lives because they can't use fiat currency for things like buying quality drugs online, getting rid of ransomware, laundering money, etc. Hell, if these don't pass the ideological test, just ask…

I'll bite. Why does someone from Venezuela need Bitcoin?

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#239

Post by gjvc »

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…

"Technologies are supposed to be "thin", simple, efficient, and composable." -- good aphorism for evaluating protocol schemas and suchlike.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#240

Post by mrcn »

jhwang5 wrote: post #223
felipeccastro wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) they could use ETH, but if you launch your own token you get two advantages: - funding (ICO) - an economic incentive for attracting early users (give tokens for using your app in the promise that they will be worth more in the future) b) if a user earns tokens that value over time, that's a huge win: imagine if all the time you spend on apps today, generating valuable data to a few companies, would generate in tur…

a) Or... wait for it... they could ask for payment in crypto, fiat, whatever, rather than printing their own chuck-e-cheese tokens. Yes, we get it, ICO allows the DAPP to fund itself, and it's a great value prop for the founders, because they can raise capital on the strength of a 15 page paper, as opposed to having real users. b) "closed" means literally useless outside. Can you use your Cobinhood tokens at any othe…

did anyone mention "These tokens serve as scarce resources that can be regulated and governed to more closely align with the functionality of a dapp" ?
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