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Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

reuters.com

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Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#101

Post by dilyevsky »

hudon wrote: post #79
mirekrusin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW is just one of available consensus algorithms. Blockchain doesn’t imply decentralised consensus, you can run it on paxos, raft, authority round or something else, especially for internal, private or semi-private networks. What you get is trail log with proofs that’s immutable and strongly protected against temper.

If your definition of "blockchain" is any distributed database with signed rows and a public read-only API, it's miles away from what Satoshi was talking about... Why don't you just call it a "distributed database with signed entries" or something.

or simply "git"

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#102

Post by bpicolo »

kerkeslager wrote: post #85
collyw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats to stop a new bank springing up and allowing transfers a lot faster and cheaper using traditional methods?

What's stopping them is a simple question: who are you transferring the money to? A lot of banks allow customers to do instant transfers between customers of that bank, but for this to be a killer feature, you have to have enough customers that this is significant. In NYC, Chase is almost there--they have enough of a share of NYC that it's worth asking if the person you're transferring to has Chase so you can use the…

> But the vast majority of transactions are still between customers of different banks, and there's not much reason for a bank to process a competitor's payment quickly

But they're doing exactly this now with Zelle.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#104

Post by pishpash »

Joeboy wrote: post #90
darawk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is a shit database concept. It's use as a currency is one of its best uses. This idea that blockchains are a good database is an absurd myth. Blockchains are useful specifically for doing distributed consensus, and almost nothing else. Currencies are one of the best applications of distributed adversarial consensus. There are others, but currency is pretty near the top of the list.

But irrespective of its conceptual quality, why should anybody care, outside of compsci? Why doesn't the doubly linked list get to be a household name or a hotly tipped investment buzzword?

Because money. B-school types saw green everywhere and concluded they should stick their hands in and hype the heck out of it.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#105

Post by throwawaylolx »

sebringj wrote: post #92

Isn't the core still being worked on? Meaning things like the lightening network and proof of stake? There has been tremendous buzz about this tech even in its limited state so imagine when it becomes very friendly/usable/stable/focused/possibly efficient... in use case and where things like Mt. Gox don't happen anymore. I think its a work in progress and we are at the whim of the impatient and non-technical media.

It is. These speculation cycles come and go regularly. HN general knowledge of blockchain is similar to HN general knowledge of AI: slightly above average. There are many smart engineers laying down the foundations of the Bitcoin protocol as we speak, and the hype cycle will come back.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#106

Post by darawk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94
darawk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is a shit database concept. It's use as a currency is one of its best uses. This idea that blockchains are a good database is an absurd myth. Blockchains are useful specifically for doing distributed consensus, and almost nothing else. Currencies are one of the best applications of distributed adversarial consensus. There are others, but currency is pretty near the top of the list.

I think this paper [1] made a decent case for permissioned blockchains ( i.e. "where the participants are limited to a predefined set") in cases where one must store state, accommodate multiple writers who do not trust each other and does not have access to an always-online trusted third party. The number of cases where the final condition applies is small, but positive. [1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf

> cases where one must store state, accommodate multiple writers who do not trust each other and does not have access to an always-online trusted third party

Ya, that's distributed adversarial consensus. Decentralized currencies are an excellent instance of such conditions. They really are a useful and interesting application. That doesn't mean they deserve all this hype in the form of investment from the average person, but if they weren't so hyped, they'd have a serious use-case as a world reserve currency and they'd make a very nice international settlement layer. Because all of the countries in the world would know that the currency was politically neutral. I think that's a pretty sweet/useful property to have.

There are definitely a few other cases where adversarial consensus problems exist too. I think decentralized prediction markets are a pretty great application of smart contracts, for instance. But yes, a lot of these things are way way over-hyped and being pushed for things way beyond their useful scope.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#107

Post by rsynnott »

onion-soup wrote: post #9
rambossa wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My major questions have always been: where is the business value in blockchain applications? what can a blockchain app do that can't be done by non-blockchain (beyond decentralization - bc I don't think this produces much business value)?

Sending money without fees and delay? Have you ever tried a normal bank transfer? How long did it take? Have you ever tried, say, nano? It literally takes seconds and 0 fees. Here is some value.

SEPA Instant Pay allows transactions of up to 15k in 10 seconds (bigger transactions fall back to the 1 day SEPA rule, I think), and some banks provide it for free. This is only relevant within the EU and associated regions, obviously.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#108

Post by simias »

asimpletune wrote: post #83
darawk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is a shit database concept. It's use as a currency is one of its best uses. This idea that blockchains are a good database is an absurd myth. Blockchains are useful specifically for doing distributed consensus, and almost nothing else. Currencies are one of the best applications of distributed adversarial consensus. There are others, but currency is pretty near the top of the list.

Can you elaborate why you think it’s a terrible DB?

Why is it not? It's slow, expensive and wasteful. You could host a regular MySQL on commodity hardware that could handle ten times the rate of transactions of the bitcoin blockchain. You could publish signed dumps publicly for people to replicate and monitor as they see fit.

The only interesting feature of bitcoin is the trustless consensus but it's not as useful or revolutionary as the hype would have you believe. In particular it's only working as intended as long as you remain withing the digital world, as soon as meatspace is involved you need trusted third parties and arbiters. "Blochain technology" whatever that is, is a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#109

Post by jcoffland »

hudon wrote: post #45
nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

I think the fundamental assumption is that "Satoshi invented a useful solution to decentralized consensus". What people don't realize is that Satoshi's solution only works if two assumptions hold true: 1. Mining is decentralized: If mining is centralized than relying on proof-of-work for consensus is waste since the centralized entity controls the blockchain anyway. 2. Consensus rules don't change: If you see the thr…

> If you change the consensus ruleset...then you need an oracle to tell you which chain to choose.

What are you talking about? The rule to choose the correct chain is well defined and simple. The longest chain, i.e. the one with the most work done, is the correct chain.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#110

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hudon wrote: post #45
nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

I think the fundamental assumption is that "Satoshi invented a useful solution to decentralized consensus". What people don't realize is that Satoshi's solution only works if two assumptions hold true: 1. Mining is decentralized: If mining is centralized than relying on proof-of-work for consensus is waste since the centralized entity controls the blockchain anyway. 2. Consensus rules don't change: If you see the thr…

> Mining is decentralized

Cryptocurrency mining is as close as one can get to a theoretical free market in the real world. Free markets have known modes of failure [1]. One of these is where first-mover advantage and economies of scale combine to produce a barrier to entry; the result is oligopoly or monopoly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

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