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Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Building for the Blockchain

#241

Post by 0wing »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #195
meri_dian wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Wealth is built through control" Centralised wealth is built through centralized control. Distributed wealth is built through distributed control.

Distributed how?

Produced how? by work?

Bitcoin distributed the vast majority of its wealth to aprox less than ~1000 individuals.

  Best estimates are that there are about one million 
  holders of Bitcoin;  47 individuals hold about 30 percent, 
  another 900 hold a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 
  about 25% and another million about 20%, with 5% being 
  lost.  So 1/10th of one percent represent about half the 
  holdings of Bitcoin and 1 percent close to 80 percent 
  (http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-
  of-the-bitcoins-2013-12). The concentration of Litecoin 
  ownership is similar 
  (http://litecoin-rich-list.blogspot.com).  
  Most of the big wallets have been in place from early on, 
  so sitting back and watching your capital grow has been a 
  very successful strategy.


  The distribution of Bitcoin holdings  looks much like the 
  distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes the 
  China’s and even the US’ wealth distribution look like 
  that of a workers’ paradise
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possibl...

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1

More to the point, assuming a currency medium has a finite supply - once produced and distributed, all future generations are at a catastrophic disadvantage simply for arriving at the wrong time.

It should also be noted the term deflationary is often used to represent Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies when in fact the supply continually inflates every 10 minutes.

What many advocates conveniently omit from disclosing is the algorithm produced the supply very rapidly for very low effort to the early adopters. Not only does the production supply require more work for later adopters, but more users compete for the limited block rewards which decrease as time goes on.

It's not exactly Ponzi scheme, or a Pyramid scheme.

It's a Satoshi Scheme

... or a "Nakamoto Scheme" https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#242

Post by Spooky23 »

Terr_ wrote: post #187
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…

> A blockchain ensures that some sequence of agreements was made in a way that everyone can trust. [...] The rest is fairy dust and noise. Amen. "Blockchain" is today's fad just like the "nanotech" mania of yesteryear. That doesn't mean there aren't advances and opportunities, but it feels like 90% of the people promoting it can't even give a high-level explanation of why it's a good fit for their use-case. > For exa…

A friend of mine told a great story about how some Koop aid drinkers were pitching blockchain internally for internal chargeback for services.

So you’d use your corpcoin to rent cubes and get pens from the facilities folks, and trade coin to get servers, etc. the idea had traction until the accountants revolted.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#243

Post by bpicolo »

sova wrote: post #219
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…

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.

I somewhat fail to see how they could ever serve as a real payment utility. If they have some actual application utility, then you'd have to dynamically adjust costs based on the speculative cost of acquisition so your application costs aren't wild, and then it's still nothing but a speculation-driven currency. Isn't that just nuts? It's a built-in catch-22

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#244

Post by matte_black »

briatx wrote: post #200
matte_black wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Sick and tired of accusations being thrown out with no skin in the game. This is a weak attempt at deflection by those who want to discredit criticism. Anyone who understands this sector and thinks it is a bad investment, will not invest. This doesn't mean their view is somehow incorrect. As for finding an ICO that hasn't lived up to the hype, throw a dart at the dartboard. How about Tezos, for one. How about Tron…

How about XRP, or Litecoin? Or Bitcoin Cash?

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#245

Post by keithwhor »

tptacek wrote: post #213
vec wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...is a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek dismissal of the fundamental idea. That's about par for the course for intellectual debate around cryptocurrencies of late. To be clear, I don't have a dog in this fight. Tokens may be the Next Big Thing, I don't know. But it'd be really nice to have a full conversation on the topic that didn't either go off the rails or devolve into a political diatribe as soon as I ask a question…

It's sarcastic? Tongue-in-cheek?

(Don't worry, I'm confused too.)

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#246

Post by tehlike »

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.

Tokens are actually mostly not shares. You dont own the company that issues the tokens. Everybody likes to think that it is, though.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#247

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

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…

The "fat protocol" meme you're talking about has already come and gone.

It was only a valid hypothesis when there's only a single dominant chain. Not anymore. It's becoming more apparent that there will be multiple chains, which means these chains compete for usage, so naturally "all the value aggregate to fat protocols" is not valid anymore.

So you're right, the "fat protocol" should not be the norm. And it's really cool to see the landscape progress in this direction even though just last summer everyone took for granted that "fat protocol" will be the norm.

p.s.

There are so many "startup people" who are too lazy to delve deep into how the tech actually works, who just read some medium blog posts and watch some youtube videos and think they know everything. These people end up producing shallow content that's basically a parroting of what they read online.

To people who actually have touched the code and building on these technologies, these things are so obviously outdated.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#249

Post by jhwang5 »

ruiquelhas wrote: post #192
jhwang5 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about censorship-resistance. Bitcoin transactions can be traced back to some identity, especially if the payer's Bitcoins were originally funded with fiat currency that came from the banking system.

That does not say anything about censorship resistance, because it does not mean the transactions can be reversed (on the contrary). That's a problem of anonymity (or lack thereof).

Yes, but wouldn't the fact that it's not totally anonymous discourage people from saying whatever they want? Like, self-directed censorship.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#250

Post by cturner »

Jasper_ wrote: post #149
cturner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a blockchain operated by a consortium of five companies. There are also second-grade members in the pool. For the sake of example, imagine this is a market that is being used to trade fishing rights for a region off Iceland. Each of the five has a holding of Consortium Coin on this chain. This give them voting power in any decisions that have to be made of the chain. None of the second-grade members have any…

> These contracts say - essentially - that they will operate in good faith on the chain. (If they did not, they could be sued in the usual way). So what does the blockchain add? Why can't this be a database set up by the consortium?

(I'm explaining the dream here. If I knew what I was talking about, I would have done it.)

If the blockchain community gets the contract/language issues sorted out, a small dev team could knock out a first-stage system like the fisheries system in three months and in two layers of technology (contracts, oracles). It would be trivial to operate and resilient to server failure (less-so the oracles). Ten years later, it would still be just the same two layers of code.

In this world, contracts make custom APIs obsolete. There is a new career path for a developer who lives and breathes async contract code.

The way of implementing such a system now is db-centric. Business problems tend to be event-driven, but databases are not. So we need many more layers of technology: ERD, stored procedures, 'backend', partner API, hosting complexity, business continuity complexity, further layers to assist support and deployment and API onboarding.

The database company takes on a life of its own, it is expensive to fund and delivers a bad customer experience.

So the thing that blockchain adds: you will able to reliably build significant systems with two-person teams in domains where we currently struggle to do adequate work with firms of twenty or forty people. We will be able to engage with more complex domains than we can at the moment, and there will be network effects from this.

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