Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides • Hacker News Board

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#201

Post by leroy_masochist » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #113

What am I missing about Cryptokitties? It was on the last side. A16Z/USV invested $16M [1]. They claim digital collectibles is a viable business. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/03/20/cryptokitties-andreessen-horow...

According to USV, the reason is that the underlying technology is really exciting and has lots of potential:

> The (original) internet brought us a world where any site could link to any other site, and they could all be accessed from anywhere in the world. This was the first interoperability revolution. The next one will be with data and digital assets. For a long time, data has been the property of platforms — with cryptonetworks and cryptoassets, data can live outside of anyone platform, under the control of users. This has the potential to open up a lot of innovation. [0]

Matt Levine as usual had a bit of fun with this:

> Look: They are right, and I was wrong, and I am sorry. I thought that CryptoKitties was just a game that allows you to buy cartoon cats on the blockchain, and I thought it was silly. But I completely missed the point. CryptoKitties is actually a game that allows you to buy cartoon cats on the blockchain, and put little hats on them. [1]

[0] https://www.nickgrossman.is/2018/zombies-eating-kitties/

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-22/when-marg...

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#202

Post by lojack » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #132

lojack wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t realize git was Turing complete

"Turing complete" wasn't part of GP's suggestion; my reply therefore still applies. On top of that, Ethereum's "turing complete" relies on an unsafe, unproven and likely broken programming language. And I didn't realise the secrets I gave to my notary were out in the open. Hint: they're not, and that's legally enforceable. The blockchain is nothing because data is [legally] [1] nothing. You might as well just use pub…

With the wonders of cryptography, you don't necessarily need to put secrets out in the open to notarize something on the blockchain. You can quite easily use a one way hash on the secret document, allowing you to verify the authenticity and the timestamp, but preventing someone from reversing the operation and seeing your secret information.

Turing completeness was sort of assumed with "Global computer". Neither myself nor the poster mentioned Ethereum at all. He just mentioned "global computer" as one application of blockchain that isn't a cryptocurrency. I could have just as easily been talking about NEO, which uses a number of languages, including C# and Java. Further, while Ethereum does frequently use a new language (Solidity), it doesn't rely on it. Ethereum is a virtual machine, and the first implementation of the virtual machine was Solidity. Others have been made as well, its turing complete after all.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#203

Post by Donzo » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

Donzo wrote: post #185

KirinDave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a utility then why ICO? Strictly as a fundraising method? To enable resale? None of that requires a centralized consensus chain even in a trustless world. No, you ICO a utility token because you hope it'll go superluminal by interacting with an ecosystem full of unregulated securities.

That may be why you would do it, but many motivations exist in this world. To reduce all these projects to greed-tunnels is to reduce these many motivations and over-simplify the world. You are approaching the ICO as though there were some Boolean value as to whether they are "good" or "bad," and have returned "bad" for you. In reality, to throw them all in the "bad" bin is lazy and the opposite of due diligence. Let…

Did down-voters take issue with my position? Please explain.

I'd love to learn more about your position. I seek the truth.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#204

Post by lamontcg » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #32

There is some truth in the slides but it's well mixed with falsehoods and misunderstandings. * Distributed consensus schemes are not useful only for monetary applications. When they are used as such, there exist mechanisms to commit to a certain fiat price and minimize market exposure to the point where transactions are almost free, in fiat terms. * The disbursement of tokens and the distributed consensus rewards do…

So far I've found that if anyone is making claims about "blockchain" which don't just boil down to "basically git", then what follows is entirely bullshit.

People that use the word "fiat" are also entirely ignorable.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#205

Post by kikimora » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #116

gweinberg wrote: post #56

Has anyone not heard all of this before? And the counterarguments also?

There aren't many compelling counterarguments. That's why people haven't heard them.

There is one such argument and I don't think you would need another one. If you trust your government to control your money good for you. But most of worldwide population does not trust their governments and for a good reason. If you live in Iraqi or Syria or Somalia would you prefer your central bank to control your money or do it yourself? Blockchain gives you that option.

Wealthy people in these countries use offshore locations to secure their money from their own corrupt governments. With blockchain everybody can have such option and thus motivate governments to create better environments for ordinary people. And it is not surprising to see that democratic countries embrace cryptocurrencies and try to regulate them but more authoritarian regimes just ban cryptos.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#206

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #162

CryptoPunk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your last point, the platform itself can be fixed if it has any malfunctions. The issue is only with an application built on top of the platform malfunctioning while the platform operates exactly as it's supposed to. In that case there is no redress as the platform is for all intents and purposes immutable when it's working correctly.

You are seriously underestimating what it would take to verify the platform. We are not talking about just a few hundreds of lines of code here.

What I meant is that an error in the platform is not catastrophic, because in those cases, the blockchain can be paused, fixed, and if need be, rolled back.

In other words, errors that occur due to malfunctions in the platform are reversible. Errors in applications built on top of it are not.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#207

Post by jayd16 » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

as300 wrote: post #175

jayd16 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called the Federal Reserve Bank and it is indeed separate from the tax and fraud portions of the federal government in the US. But the rest of your post is pretty silly. How does a secure digital exchange protect against fraud? It doesn't.

Fraud can occur when a party lies about assets it owns when entering into an agreement, which would be prevented if you had to present proof of ownership for any asset you claim to own? Most ponzi schemes would never happen.

You can own something, accept payment for it, and never actually relinquish ownership. Besides, the blockchain is only proof of ownership of things on the chain. Real world things are not covered at all.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#208

Post by CyberDildonics » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #24

CyberDildonics wrote: post #3

This is an exceptionally terrible 'presentation'. He says something about distributed trust and then puts 'THIS IS A LIE'. That's not evidence and it isn't an argument. He states that developers act as a central authority, which as it relates to the rules of creating new units and where they go to, is not true, since those rules are already established for the given chain. He says there is a fee auction death spiral,…

>He says there is a fee auction death spiral, which also is demonstrably false. Pretty sure its demonstrably true seeing as BT has gotten so bad the marketing changed from currency to store of value.

I'm not sure how bitcoin's artificial restriction of throughput (which still didn't kill it in any sense) means that all cryptocurrencies either suffer from a fee death spiral or spam. Neither has seemed to happen even in extreme circumstances.

Bitcoin's nonsense propaganda has nothing to do these assertions of inherent flaws with crypto-currencies.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#209

Post by jason_slack » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

EthanHeilman wrote: post #55

moocowtruck wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there a spec for block chain? i'm confused by what people mean by block chain and the only thing i can find is this loosely written white paper

There is no consensus definition of what a blockchain is. In fact the Satoshi whitepaper that introduced Bitcoin does not even use the word blockchain it talks about a hash chain of blocks a concept which predates Bitcoin by ~30 years. The real innovation of Bitcoin was to use PoW to both limit Sybil attacks and to make additions to the hash chain computationally expensive to revert. Often however when people talk ab…

If so many companies are doing things for the blockchain, are they storing in the same blockchain as bitcoin or are companies creating more blockchains and needing miners to help mine, etc,

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#210

Post by lojack » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 1:31 AM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #137

lojack wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a document timestamping protocol that we reach a consensus on in a distributed fashion. I'm not sure why a document timestamping protocol can't also be a distributed consensus protocol?

I do kind of find it annoying that we use the word distributed when its a clustered/consensus system. In my mind distributed should mean actors can work independently of each other but that's not really the case here. But this ship has sailed.

I'm not sure why a clustered system can't be distributed? One can always argue over taxonomy, but clustered systems are typically considered to be a type of a distributed system.

I'm also super curious why you think blockchain systems don't have actors that work independently of each other? I was always under the impression that was the entire point.