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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

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Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#101

Post by rlucas »

Jonovono wrote: post #90
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain (encrypted). The problem we have now is if a new social network comes along if you create an account you lose all of your previous data (which may or may not be what you want). This would let you easily bring in an…

What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"??

It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy.

So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't actually do any storage (for which you'd still need technology and a business model to support it).

I'm only a little bit being snarky here: is there a deeper / more robust meaning to the shorthand of "we can store [some kind of rich, lots-of-bits] data 'on the blockchain'" that isn't clear to the dilettante?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#102

Post by alehul »

douglaswlance wrote: post #75

Would it be possible to build a consensus algorithm for factual information? Sort of a decentralized fact-checker system

That seems like it would be very trivial to game, and additionally while facts are hard to confirm, a consensus of users who are biased and relatively uneducated on the topic would do a particularly bad job anyway.

The best similar use case I can imagine is building a system is to evaluate how much of the media is in agreement on a given topic, and use that to combat fake news. If a similar headline isn't found elsewhere, give it a low truth rating.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#103

Post by rlucas »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #47

> Trust is a new software primitive from which other components can be constructed. This kind of talk is extremely misleading. At the end of the day, we're still people buying and selling goods and services from other people. The most blockchain can do is remove some types of middle-men (financial or otherwise), but the endpoints will always be human. Trust between humans will always be a requirement to buy and sell…

It is not strictly true that endpoints and the locus of trust always have humans in the loop. (Where they do, of course, I agree that blockchain has much more limited "fit" as a solution.)

However, in what I call "network-native resource transactions," namely, where the provision of the thing of value is computational and can be verified on the network (think: storage, compute, bandwidth, namespace resources like DNS), there are a large number of transactions where the performance of the counterparty can be shown with math.

In those cases, of network-native resource transactions, the transaction itself can be the locus of trust, and the payment / settlement becomes the weak link. For this (admittedly somewhat narrow) set of uses, then, blockchain is really really useful because the payment / settlement trust problem can be done away with deterministically provided the resource transaction is verified.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#104

Post by angryasian »

elyobo wrote: post #96
madeofpalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what problems are being solved? Real estate, oil and gas exploration/drilling/royalties are all things that have existed without problem for many decades. Saying "real estate, but with blockchain" doesn't actually say what problem you're solving.

I think I'd have to argue that real estate has existed for much, much longer than a few decades :D I'm a pretty big sceptic on all of this crypto BS, but the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The syst…

I thought real estate was already in the public domain.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#105

Post by [deleted] »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #80
pjc50 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one I've seen that might go somewhere is filecoin. However, I think people are underestimating how the market for ""enterprise private blockchain"" will play out. The same organisations that spent money on X509 PKI non-solutions will pay millions for blockchain. At this level, nobody likes talking about the problem solved. It's solutions all the way, especially enterprise solutions.

Great. Let’s all get rich writing a bunch of do-nothing software that will get thrown out in 5 years.

[deleted]

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#106

Post by cornholio »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #70

Speaking as a longtime skeptic, A16Z has actually produced the single clearest answer I've seen to that question: blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Pure utility tokens can be like call options on the eventual value of the network if it gets off the ground. It's a novel way of solvi…

Except the early adopters don't need to actually participate in the network, just acquire and hoard tokens. There's almost no connection between the profits and the actual advocacy, resources and risks required for the network to succed.

So the incentive structure is quite different from, say, the stock market or even a kickstarter. It's more like a tradeable Ponzi with strong incentives to overpromise and overhype in the early phase, and to get out when the valuation approaches the claims without actually delivering anything more than yet another speculative asset.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#107

Post by projectramo »

The problem with the blockchain is that it is distributed, so it can be inefficient and difficult to gather all of it in one place.

Imagine all the data already stored in one place. This base is private, entirely yours and it can be encrypted. Only authorized users have access.

This base of data -- I wish there was a better word -- is going to be the next big thing.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#108

Post by Jonovono »

rlucas wrote: post #101
Jonovono wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain (encrypted). The problem we have now is if a new social network comes along if you create an account you lose all of your previous data (which may or may not be what you want). This would let you easily bring in an…

What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy. So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't a…

Totally fair point. I don't intend to mean that blockchain works right now for storing all of this efficiently, but I know people are working on solutions to this. Steemit uses https://ipfs.io/ which I am not super familiar with. http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html is another.

Another possible solution is something like Torrent, not everyone needs to have a replication of every single file - it's spread out but decentralised enough.

And then a non blockchain solution to this is: https://tent.io/ which from what I understand is more similar to an email protocol for social networks.

I didn't go into too much depth in any of the points. I am not super invested in this space, nor up to date completely. It's just been an interest of mine since 2012 and i've been also trying to come up with real life use cases that blockchain could solve well.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#109

Post by Jonovono »

HenryTheHorse wrote: post #99
Jonovono wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain (encrypted). The problem we have now is if a new social network comes along if you create an account you lose all of your previous data (which may or may not be what you want). This would let you easily bring in an…

> 2. Instead of going through a lawyer, paying money, I make this a smart contract. What is a "smart contract" and how would this contract be aware of legal requirements?

Sure, I suppose it couldn't replace every payment like this from needing to go through a lawyer. I suppose if you wanted to send 10 billion over seas to someone in 20 years, you might want to seek some legal input. But say for the simplest case I just wanna set something up that sends some money to my child on his 18th birthday I could use a smart contract like: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ww0sr/need_a_con....

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#110

Post by dsco »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

I think you're doing blockchain and human ingenuity a disservice by framing the question that way. Many corporations haven't revolved around "solving a problem", but instead making existing solutions more efficient.

There were people letting out apartments before AirBnb, and there were taxi cars before Uber - yet we feel that these companies are making our lives easier.

Also your question is very much centered around your own world view. What about the Venezuelans who are mining bitcoin becauause theyir own currency is at an all time high inflation rate? Isn't that example enough to at least partially answer your question about how blockchain addresses societal problems?

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/04/03/...

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