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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

#231

Post by cgmg »

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…

> In technological terms, it is old.

Doubtful. In what sense is it 'old'?

In the words of Roy Amara: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#232

Post by spmurrayzzz »

simias wrote: post #224
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Except that so far it remains to be seen if that can work at scale. Bitcoin is moving towards the lightning network which changes things quite a bit, in particular potentially adding some centralization and giving some nodes advantages over others (well connected nodes with large open channels will have an advantage over a newcomer without connections for instance). Bitcoin cash is trying an other route with bigger b…

>Bitcoin is moving towards the lightning network which changes things quite a bit, in particular potentially adding some centralization and giving some nodes advantages over others (well connected nodes with large open channels will have an advantage over a newcomer without connections for instance).

The centralization narrative involving LN is somewhat mischaracterized IMHO. Given that source-routing puts control of payments into the the payer, you can choose to mitigate the custodial risk of a single hop holding up your funds in their payment channel a number of ways. For instance, there is no reason one payment from person A to person B needs to involve only one route.

Intelligent wallet software, on the order of tens of milliseconds, could break up one payment of $10 into 100 different routes across numerous payment channels. In addition to giving you custodial risk mitigation, its also beneficial for privacy as well.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#233

Post by drak0n1c »

icebraining wrote: post #119
bringtheaction wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a blockchain without miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake Now I agree that a lot of ideas for how blockchain will be used are just unnecessary and stupid, but there are some good ones as well. You mentioned file storage but actually I think blockchain could be useful for this. Allow me to elaborate. I don’t want to rely on Dropbox or Google or any other single company for the long-term st…

There are already open file storage protocols, and open source clients that supports many storage providers. I use git-annex, which supports about a dozen commercial services, plus any machine that supports SFTP, SMB, Webdav or rsync, among others. And of course, it encrypts everything locally before uploading. What's the point of the blockchain?

New non-blockchain distributed ledgers like Hedera Hashgraph can support 300,000 transactions per second. That's enough to decentralize servers, or host an open-source MMORPG. No more single point of failure.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#234

Post by dragonwriter »

hyprCoin wrote: post #197
nwah1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delays have little to do with technology, and a lot to do with regulations and bureaucracy. Largely put in place to combat money laundering, fraud, terrorist financing, etc etc. Yes, there's some small banks that have horrible APIs and shoddy servers, but for most transfers the delays come down to things that if cryptocurrency were ever mainstreamed would be tacked onto it. That is why it takes time to get approv…

There is literally no place to tack on a middleman with nano/btc. Yes it will take some rethinking of how we combat what society conceives as improper use of funds.

> There is literally no place to tack on a middleman with nano/btc.

BTC is just a widely distributed set of middlemen imposing delays and costs (both mining rewards and transaction fees are costs to everyone holding or using BTC that run from holders/users to miners.)

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#235

Post by s73v3r_ »

DSingularity wrote: post #220
simias wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anybody can enter and add entries to your blockchain, how do you ensure that they don't insert bogus data? If you're tracing a roll of paper what prevents somebody from adding an entry saying "the shipment got stolen" then immediately making a new entry for it with different attributes pretending it's something else? Or simply at the source pretending that something is of a higher quality than it is? The answer is…

Hehe. Thats actually a nice artifact, thanks bitcoin. Now individuals can consider the potential of ideas to pan out and participate in funding them. Sure, sounds good -- I'll throw in 1,000$. Suddenly 1,000 like-minded individuals can satisfy the need of projects. Of course thats not always so popular here ;-). I should just mind my own business and focus on the coding right? Anyhow. I do think you are right. The in…

" Now individuals can consider the potential of ideas to pan out and participate in funding them. Sure, sounds good -- I'll throw in 1,000$. Suddenly 1,000 like-minded individuals can satisfy the need of projects."

You mean Kickstarter, which has nothing to do with blockchain?

"Anyhow. I do think you are right. The integrity of the data has to be questioned. But I question why we have to assume that its useless just because it cannot be trusted? This paper trail is immutable. That is valuable. Future evidence can expose prior lies. Once you know that you have to maintain a lie for life, suddenly you are questioning if its really worth making."

Says who? Both Bitcoin and Etherium have gone through forks of their chains.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#236

Post by s73v3r_ »

donmatito wrote: post #210
asynchrony wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is generally my main source of skepticism relating to blockchain solutions. The ledger is 100% trustable as long as it describes digital assets that are entirely confined within the distributed ledger, but a digital token doesn't stop men with guns from taking your house. Just like a digital signature provides no guarantees that the associated information is true.

No but it certifies who has entered the info, right? That might be part of the solution here

And how do you know that's the actual person, or that such a person/entity exists?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#237

Post by s73v3r_ »

ballenf wrote: post #212
donmatito wrote: post #189

Coming from a logistics background, coordinating tracability data is painful within a company , even with help of ERP like SAP. But when you need tracability across an industry , it becomes almost impossible. I had professional experience in an industry where we had to go to the plants to ensure rolls of paper certified from suppliers using responsibly-managed forests were physically separated from the non-certified…

What you've described is provenance I believe. And that is the only, imho, use case for blockchain that makes any sense. It's the only one where the substantial additional overhead and complexity of blockchain is actually still less than the alternative, as your example clearly illustrates. To attempt to answer a question from sibling comments: these systems are private or closed blockchains, not public. You have a t…

So why use a blockchain instead of a regular database?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#238

Post by cgmg »

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…

> (and also enabling things like money laundering, drug trafficking, etc.).

If you're trying to take a dig at blockchain technology for its decentralized nature and ability to circumvent government controls, you should be aware that this is considered a good thing. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702684, for instance. The recent SESTA/FOSTA debacle is one example of why such decentralized networks are needed.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#239

Post by s73v3r_ »

donmatito wrote: post #217
prostoalex wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usable by any actor of the chain Do you really want an immutable ledger for that? Fat fingers and data entry errors can happen.

I don't know. What about Git ? Errors happen, then you correct them, but you can see the error and its correction, and it's considered quite healthy, right?

I can go back and rewrite history pretty easily in Git.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#240

Post by xapata »

lisper wrote: post #165
xapata wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And availability of cheap inputs, like cheap electricity.

Actually, it's the exact opposite. The security of a blockchain is fundamentally dependent on mining being expensive. That is the only defense against a 51% attack. Cheap energy just drives up consumption to the point where mining is expensive enough to deter attacks. This is ultimately what I think will sink blockchain as a medium of exchange (not necessarily as a store of value). By its very nature it cannot be che…

I meant that the variation in electricity costs harms the reputation of the blockchain. Work needs to be approximately the same difficulty for everyone.
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