Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#91

Post by specialist » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #41

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #14

The problem that proof-of-work blockchain solves is widely misunderstood. It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique. Prior to the publication of Satoshi's paper we did not have a solution to this problem and for that reason it is a significant advance in technology. I wouldn't call it crappy, it's actually quite brilliant. For a detailed description see this: https:…

It’s very interesting as a matter of pure technology. I’m just not sure it’s that useful as a banking system.

IMHO, banking & finance are its least interesting potential use cases.

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Medical Records

Mid aughts, I was trying to figure out how to use tamper evident logs (rolling hashes) for our electronic medical records infrastructure. To answer questions like "what did you know and when did you know it?" and "where did this bad data come from?"

Coupled with the notions for Translucent Databases (all data at rest is encrypted) to protect privacy.

We hadn't even gotten to the consensus and trust issues.

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Authenticity

I'm now most interested in verification of sources.

Where did this cotton or wheat or cobalt come from? Are these pills authentic?

Is the data cited by this paper legit?

Verify copyrights, perhaps even a realization of Ted Nelson Xanadu's notions of transcopyrights. (Disney's DragonChain and others have floated those use cases.)

Is this news report real or agitprop? Is this quote actually legit?

Did someone(s) silently update some published information?

Etc, etc.

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Tursted Rules & Constraints Satisfaction

Since seeing a presentation on using ethereum style smart contracts for medical claims processing, I've been reading up.

I can barely wrap my head around this stuff. Computability, Turing complete, N vs NP, etc. But the domain experts I heard told a great narrative, so now I'm interested too.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#92

Post by RIMR » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

>In fact, I would assert that there is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast.

I would say that every person running a darkweb drug market would disagree...

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#93

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

cowpig wrote: post #68

> Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. > Blockchain-based trustworthiness falls apart in practice... The particular brand of trustworthiness the author is arguing against is indeed a myth, but that doesn't mean blockchain is "crappy technology" or "a bad vision for the future" Blockchain adds a new thing to the world: digi…

> digital property that cannot be reproduced for free.

Sure, all through the magic of using a medium sized country's worth of electricity....

> Smart contracts add another new thing to the world: the ability to build immutable software that interacts directly with the financial system.

"Immutable" as in "immutable up until the folks at the top decide to alter history to benefit themselves financially". See also - Ethereum & The DAO.

> and almost all of the interesting blockchain projects are still in the R&D phase.

Bitcoin is more than 10 years old. It is a mature tech that is still in search of a problem.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#94

Post by xtracto » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

lev99 wrote: post #32

I read the bitcoin whitepaper about 7 years ago. I find it funny when people talk about blockchain like it's new technology, or like it's a vision for future. It's old tech that has been generally increasing in market value.

Exactly, Blockchain is now 10 year old technology, with a lot of implementations and technologies built over it.

TCP has its root in 1974 technology [1], and it was not until the early 90's that it started showing its potential.

The key to Blockchain technolgoy is the proposal of what it can solve (trusted transactions in a trustless environment). I like to see Blockchain as TCP/IP: It is going to be the foundation of bigger and more "user friendly" protocols and systems. (golem.network, storj, filecoin, eos). At some point we will get the "HTTP" of Blockchain, and over that, we will start having the "Google"s and "Amazon"s spawning as well. But if you think that, it took Amazon 20 years (1994) before TCP was "invented"... then the timing for Blockchain technology is going quite well.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160304150203/http://ece.ut.ac....

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#95

Post by localhost3000 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

zodiac wrote: post #85

localhost3000 wrote: post #34

"Instead of relying on trust or regulation, in the blockchain world, individuals are on-purpose responsible for their own security precautions. And if the software they use is malicious or buggy, they should have read the software more carefully." This is also one of the aspects of "the blockchain" that I struggle with. I don't think normal people want this or should be expected to do this effectively. And once you o…

> And once you outsource the security you're no longer in a "trustless" state. The "trustless" pipe-dream (in the consumer use case) all sort of unravels from there for me. I think the conclusion doesn't follow. An analogous solution is that traditional public-key cryptography (e.g. as implemented in TLS) is supposed to be trustless, but I haven't personally audited or even read any of the relevant code (e.g. TLS), s…

My comment wasn't suggesting that blockchain is "useless" (that obviously isn't true), just that the "trustless" argument doesn't hold up for me, and that is a primary argument for why blockchain is awesome at pretty much every event/talk I go to on the topic.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#96

Post by mpfundstein » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #93

cowpig wrote: post #68

> Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. > Blockchain-based trustworthiness falls apart in practice... The particular brand of trustworthiness the author is arguing against is indeed a myth, but that doesn't mean blockchain is "crappy technology" or "a bad vision for the future" Blockchain adds a new thing to the world: digi…

> digital property that cannot be reproduced for free. Sure, all through the magic of using a medium sized country's worth of electricity.... > Smart contracts add another new thing to the world: the ability to build immutable software that interacts directly with the financial system. "Immutable" as in "immutable up until the folks at the top decide to alter history to benefit themselves financially". See also - Eth…

Bitcoin solves a problem. Ever used a dark web market. Good luck with Paypal

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#97

Post by phasnox » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

fhood wrote: post #87

phasnox wrote: post #59

Gotta love how he begins saying he was bashing the tech in December(when the market was on the rise) just so that no one can tell him "everyone bashes bitcoin when it's going down". Venmo is centralized. I cannot use it as I live in a third world county with no access to it. Paypal sucks. It takes 5% from the seller and it has power over your money, they can(AND HAVE IN THE PAST) seize it whenever they want. I had my…

You know, paypal may well suck. I have never used it as a developer or a seller, but I really, really, like to have it as an option when I am purchasing something from some rinky dink website that doesn't look like it has been updated int 10 years.

Yeahp it sucks for the seller mostly.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#98

Post by nickpsecurity » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

phasnox wrote: post #59

Gotta love how he begins saying he was bashing the tech in December(when the market was on the rise) just so that no one can tell him "everyone bashes bitcoin when it's going down". Venmo is centralized. I cannot use it as I live in a third world county with no access to it. Paypal sucks. It takes 5% from the seller and it has power over your money, they can(AND HAVE IN THE PAST) seize it whenever they want. I had my…

His point was these technologies solve people's problems very well. People doing blockchains could just work on improved versions of proven tech that have fewer problems. For Venmo, you might make changes to facilitate more access. He mentioned credit unions to point out different types of institutions can be more fair. A non-profit version of Paypal with chartered protections against high rates or unfair seizures might solve that problem. Another precaution at individual level is spread your assets a bit so you're not overreliant on a bank. I do that with a reserve of cash, a checking account, and several credit cards I pay off quick.

I've never had a problem with a bank that couldn't be fixed with a better policy or implementation of the existing model. Same with a payment service. What remains are the tricks hackers and scammers come up with that we'll always be facing. Traditional methods already have a lot of risk reduction for those with well-understood problems and solutions. The cryptocurrencies will have to go through a lot of loss before they get to where traditional system is now. So, fixing problems of traditional system will also lead to fewer losses.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#99

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #91

monochromatic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very interesting as a matter of pure technology. I’m just not sure it’s that useful as a banking system.

IMHO, banking & finance are its least interesting potential use cases. --- Medical Records Mid aughts, I was trying to figure out how to use tamper evident logs (rolling hashes) for our electronic medical records infrastructure. To answer questions like "what did you know and when did you know it?" and "where did this bad data come from?" Coupled with the notions for Translucent Databases (all data at rest is encrypt…

All of this is hype. Blockchain is only useful when you bolt a speculative asset on top because otherwise, who the heck will pay for the miners to make it work? If your answer is "the people using it will", that means there is already enough trust in the system to just use a Real Database....

And even if you manage to solve that problem, the blockchain still doesn't help with medical records, authenticity or anything else. You still have to trust the people entering those records. you still have to trust that the person who said "those pills are authentic" on the blockchain.

Smart contracts are also the biggest pile of hype. You can't have "code is law" because other wise you wind up with The DAO.... All code has bugs. All code has corner cases where assumptions fall apart. You can't code law.

Blockchain is pure, 100% hype. Almost every single use case falls apart under even a small amount of scrutiny. The only use the blockchain serves is as a platform for fraud. If you are a scammer, there is no better place to be than in crypto.

Re: Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

#100

Post by tCfD » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

cowpig wrote: post #68

> Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. > Blockchain-based trustworthiness falls apart in practice... The particular brand of trustworthiness the author is arguing against is indeed a myth, but that doesn't mean blockchain is "crappy technology" or "a bad vision for the future" Blockchain adds a new thing to the world: digi…

> cannot be reproduced for free

Only if you opt into the particular set of constraints that define what that property is (as set forth in the base of protocol code most commonly used to define it).

If you don't, as innumerable forks of Bitcoin have demonstrated, you certainly can reproduce it for free. I suspect there is a hypothesis of "property" at work here that is being subject to some very privileged and Protean interpretations.