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Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Building for the Blockchain

#251

Post by kinggfx »

matte_black wrote: post #244
briatx wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Tezos is trading over 10x the ICO price on the futures/IOU market

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#252

Post by zaptheimpaler »

Shoothe wrote: post #179
jklepatch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early blockchains like bitcoins might have this thin/fat protocol aspect, but this is much less true of newer blockchains like ethereum. Granted, with programming languages like Solidity we are still quite limited but there are some interesting developments ongoing, like possibly integrating the webassembly tech with some blockchains, to allow more flexibility on the application layer (see ewasm for ethereum). But ge…

> But generally speaking, this protocol issue is of little interest for end users. > What is of interest to them is the fact that their data can become decentralized with the blockchain I'm not really interested in putting my emails in a blockchain, or did you mean some kind of... different data?

Bank data is one example. We don't even own our own transaction history/data - no bank provides free APIs to access this for consumers, the only option is to download manually/scrape through their websites. And as banks own this data, they could stop or handicap exports even further anytime they choose. I know if my bank gave me simple API access to my own data I would not have any use for apps like Quicken/Mint.

Credit agencies like Equifax also own our credit history data, and generously sell it back to us - 1 free report a year, rest you pay for. While also selling it to other companies without our permission. Which employers can get their hands on via background checks, again without our consent. Not to mention one of them recently got hacked and leaked everyone's SSNs. Their entire model is capturing our data and selling it to others. We should own this data, and choose if and when we would like to provide it to a bank to get a loan etc.

Ad tracking/browsing data is another. The current model is the people making the trackers own all your data. A model where WE own our web activity data and selectively choose what to expose to websites/advertisers would be much better for consumers.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#253

Post by tikwidd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #8
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…

> Whatever value has been delivered seems extremely minor compared to the vast sums of money being spent, making this perhaps the worst ROI I've ever seen. What's even worse, from my POV, is the humongous amount of electricity that is used to support the blockchain. And to what end? Personally, I won't start believing in the blockchain until a non-wasteful alternative to the present PoW scheme gets developed and actu…

The 'end' is the security of the bitcoin blockchain. Defence forces consume a massive amount of energy and human resources. They are still funded because countries don't all trust each other and they want security. An alternative to Proof of Work such as Proof of Stake would be like a country having a nuclear arsenal, allowing it to cut back on military spending. The problem seems to be that the incentives are on the miners to switch to another proof system, and the existing miners wouldn't want to do that because it's their edge in the market (low electricity costs).

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#254

Post by tramGG »

If you're interested in the intersection of blockchain and AI/ML check out the decentralized AI summit coming up on Feb 1st. https://decentralized-ai.com/ there are going to be a ton of good speakers and people into crypto/blockchain + IoT, Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, etc -- it's like the world's faire of the future.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#255

Post by CryptoPunk »

0wing wrote: post #241
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 Bi…

The initial windfall can only be spent once. The important difference between distributed finance and traditional finance is that the former has no gatekeepers that provide their controllers with recurring economic rent. Both mining and staking are competitive industries that require productive activity by their participants.

A central bank can extract 2-10% of the money supply's worth of economic rent every year in perpetuity, and the beneficiaries of regulatory barriers to entry can extract similarly enormous amounts of economic rent on a recurring basis (e.g. the Big Three auditing firms have profit margins of up to 50%, thanks in large part to regulatory barriers to competing with them) and public choice theory tells us that this economic rent will be disproportionately distributed to the political and professional elite who control government budgets, manage banks, navigate the regulatory process, and most importantly of all, know the right people to pull the right strings.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#256

Post by nerdponx »

0wing wrote: post #241
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 Bi…

People also seem to forget that the Bitcoin whitepaper is pretty clear that Bitcoin itself is an experimental idea. I have never understood the "fixed supply" fetishism.

Fortunately there are many other blockchain projects out there. Bitcoin will have its position in history as the first and most influential, not as the most useful.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#257

Post by siavosh »

Blockchains, in part, provide the following value proposition:

Provable [X] without a central authority.

[X] can be the following:

Ex.

Currency - Bitcoin

Computation - Ethereum

Anonymous currency - ZCash

Storage - Filecoin

etc.

Most of us would agree that central authority is too strong in many aspects of the economy and technology. The key question is for what values of [X] does the value proposition make sense? The core technology is less than 10 years old, anyone being too confidant in where this road goes should put it in a larger timeline. Besides not losing your money, as hackers we can only explore what may be possible.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#258

Post by Goladus »

siavosh wrote: post #257

Blockchains, in part, provide the following value proposition: Provable [X] without a central authority. [X] can be the following: Ex. Currency - Bitcoin Computation - Ethereum Anonymous currency - ZCash Storage - Filecoin etc. Most of us would agree that central authority is too strong in many aspects of the economy and technology. The key question is for what values of [X] does the value proposition make sense? The…

Provable [X] without a central authority.

Under a limited set of conditions, with some cost [Y] to keep the system running. The bitcoin network is extremely expensive, for example.

The key question is for what values of [X] does the value proposition make sense?

The key question is for what values of [X] - [Y] does the value proposition make sense. And, what contextual conditions must be maintained to preserve the decentralization advantages of [X]? In other words, the transactions could be decentralized and anonymous but if you have to sign up for a centralized exchange to participate, those benefits might be moot for you.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#259

Post by [deleted] »

tstactplsignore wrote: post #86
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.…

>Bitcoin's main purpose is and always was to have an alternative to the financial system, crippling regulations, government control and taxes. Does bitcoin really do any of those things? Right now, btc core is not an alternative to cash- a problem that maybe will be fixed in time, but currently only seems to be getting worse. If bitcoin really did take off as a global currency, the IRS would audit unreported bitcoin…

[deleted]

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#260

Post by deepGem »

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…

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.

I have to agree to this as I have written software to implement at least one networking protocol. On the contrary, I still haven't been able to wrap my head around Ethereum.

I'm sure most of us know that TCP/IP and all the other networking protocols are thin by design, for good reasons. Speed and reliability. It seems strange to write a connection-oriented protocol (TCP) that runs on a connection less protocol (IP) but this design is efficient and serves the purpose.

Calling the current bloating in blockchain protocols as a dramatic paradigm shift is an exaggeration. From what I see, the current blockchains protocols are bloated (as compared to TCP/IP) because they are encapsulating the application logic within themselves so as to achieve decentralization in a highly secure manner. (Based on my frugal understanding). It's a new way of doing things, perhaps not necessarily a paradigm shift. Note to self - Understand blockchain in depth, may be it is a paradigm shift.

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