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

#121

Post by specialist » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #99

specialist wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FFS.

It's turtles all the way down, right?

None of my proposed use cases rely on PoW, bitcoin.

Perhaps I should have said it more clearly: I'm not interested in currency et al, because best as I can tell, bitcoin is just a better escrow, or worse a collectable (like baseball cards). And those things don't interest me.

--

Have you done accounting, bookkeeping, auditing? Another way to think about blockchains is an interoperable ledger. If your data doesn't leave your org, you can just using tamper evident logs (rolling hashes), no consensus stuff required.

I worked on election integrity issues for a decade. I'm the biggest technoskeptic. I pretty much oppose all things new until they're battle proven.

The biggest challenge for election administration is verifying and publishing the physical chain of custody of all the gear and materials. And no matter how hard you try, there's always some yahoos (flat earther types) that will demand ever greater proof.

Whaddya gonna do?

Well, based on my experience, applying some blockchain technologies to document and publish chain of custody would simplify A LOT of the public accountability and transparency issues.

At the end of the day, it's just double ledger accounting. Debits match credits. The parts of blockchain that interest me make it easier to "show your work".

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

#122

Post by floatboth » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

AlexCoventry wrote: post #88

> 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. He hasn't been paying attention to the space long enough: Many traders in contraband meet that description, and used to talk about it at length in r/darknetmarkets, before it was banned. (BTW, d…

Contraband markets, ransomware authors, and scammers. The world is wasting power on hashing to support that.

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

#123

Post by mido22 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

aalleavitch wrote: post #110

In many ways, blockchain tech is the stupidest thing that has ever existed. It is a colossal monument to the inefficiency of human behavior. You are literally throwing energy and immensely valuable computation time out of a window simply because people can't trust each other. It is a massive sink for the destructively self-interested behavior of mankind. The problems that blockchains are trying to solve are not inher…

FYI: when you talk about GPU/mining/energy, you are talking about Proof of Work (pow) and not blockchain. You can look up about Proof of Stake among other ways for consensus

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

#124

Post by mido22 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

mido22 wrote: post #123

aalleavitch wrote: post #110

In many ways, blockchain tech is the stupidest thing that has ever existed. It is a colossal monument to the inefficiency of human behavior. You are literally throwing energy and immensely valuable computation time out of a window simply because people can't trust each other. It is a massive sink for the destructively self-interested behavior of mankind. The problems that blockchains are trying to solve are not inher…

FYI: when you talk about GPU/mining/energy, you are talking about Proof of Work (pow) and not blockchain. You can look up about Proof of Stake among other ways for consensus

While you are at it, you can also read up about "triple ledger accounting"

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

#125

Post by specialist » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #106

specialist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. My prescriptions are the real deal. As a better escrow for exchanging goods, services. I can verify if the trog on Fox News is just making shit up. (Verified sources, citations are baked into all content.)

> I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. > My prescriptions are the real deal. How does the blockchain solve any of this? You still need a human to say "this Gucci handbag is not counterfeit". A human still needs to type in "yup, this prescription is real".

How are anti-counterfeiting efforts done today?

Accounting.

For this use case, think of blockchains as a shared ledger.

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

#126

Post by otakucode » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

aalleavitch wrote: post #110

In many ways, blockchain tech is the stupidest thing that has ever existed. It is a colossal monument to the inefficiency of human behavior. You are literally throwing energy and immensely valuable computation time out of a window simply because people can't trust each other. It is a massive sink for the destructively self-interested behavior of mankind. The problems that blockchains are trying to solve are not inher…

I am perplexed. If I wanted to, say, record licenses for a piece of software and enable people to transfer the licenses to others, why wouldn't a blockchain ledger be the perfect solution? Sure I could require them to physically buy a disc and then have them physically give the disc to a person they want to transfer it to, and it's just overcoming our human limitation of being meat-based creatures that exist in physical space that is particularly difficult to move through... but what's wrong with that? Every technology exists to overcome human limitations.

Technology serves human beings, human beings do not serve technology. Human beings are messy and unreliable. Making them non-messy and reliable would make them not human.

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

#127

Post by mr_spothawk » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #111

gshulegaard wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 3% fee for processing credit cards * Platform play where the first stage is to amass users and then use that audience to sell to businesses ( https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/venmo-m... ) And I always assumed that the short delay for transferring money out of Venmo allowed them to eek a small margin against the time value of money somewhat similar to Robinhood ( https://www.investopedia.com/arti…

It is a lot easier to avoid paying a fee on Venmo than it is to use a cryptocurrency to send money to someone: just don't use a credit card.

this is absolutely untrue.

Venmo requires a bank account, and presumably some proof of citizenship, to have been setup far ahead of the point at which "money" goes into or comes out of Venmo.

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

#128

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

mpfundstein wrote: post #96

spookthesunset wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

If the problem it solves is "I need a way to buy illegal drugs, weapons, and fake IDs while evading the police," I think you can see obvious problems to mass-market adoption. I also wonder whether a system with a permanent, publicly accessible ledger is truly ideal for this application.

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

#129

Post by Barrin92 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

ruduhudi wrote: post #46

I think he is absolutely right about his dystopian view on smart contracts managing stuff but forgets about that one trusted party we're trying to avoid the most here, that costs us the most money and that we need the least in real life: Banks. That's what we neet the blockchain for.

I never understood that sentiment. What exactly is bad about banks? Banks are a trusted middle-man that controls, insures and manages my transactions, and in contrast to arcane technological blockchain solutions is actually a legally liable entity.

I also don't understand how banks cost me more money than bitcoin. A bank transaction costs me very little to no money, a crypto-currency transaction is extremely expensive.

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

#130

Post by aalleavitch » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

mido22 wrote: post #123

aalleavitch wrote: post #110

In many ways, blockchain tech is the stupidest thing that has ever existed. It is a colossal monument to the inefficiency of human behavior. You are literally throwing energy and immensely valuable computation time out of a window simply because people can't trust each other. It is a massive sink for the destructively self-interested behavior of mankind. The problems that blockchains are trying to solve are not inher…

FYI: when you talk about GPU/mining/energy, you are talking about Proof of Work (pow) and not blockchain. You can look up about Proof of Stake among other ways for consensus

Even just the concept of the blockchain itself is based on a massively inefficient use of resources to have a public ledger that can't be tampered with. This wouldn't be an issue at all if people just didn't have incentives to tamper with it!