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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

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Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#151

Post by [deleted] »

madeofpalk wrote: post #77
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I pointed to the solution instead of the problem. I'm still an engineer at heart, it seems! What should I have said instead? Centralization of data? Unreliability of single-points-of-failure?

Solve an actual, real life problem. All I see are Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain Corp. and Walmat saying that they're using blockchain to help their supply chain (whatever that means). The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its p…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#152

Post by jancsika »

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'm not sure you've framed the problem and solution correctly, but here is one obvious societal problem solved by Bitcoin:

How does Scihub receive funding to support the service it provides?

If you tried to fund it using Paypal, Visa/Mastercard, etc., it's quite likely that those payment systems would have already blocked the payments from reaching the service providers.

Because it is substantially more difficult to prevent Bitcoin transactions from being added to the blockchain, you can move "payment system" further down the list of "things to attack." Now you've got DNS and some others at the bottom of the list.

Furthermore, Bitcoins can be used to pay directly for things like VPS and other tech. I see over 92 Btc received at the address that pops up on Scihub's website, so this is a pretty big deal. (over half a million $ at today's going rate.)

So whatever the downfall of Scihub will be, it is very unlikely to be due to an attack (even a coordinated one) against the Bitcoin payment system.

That is the most obvious extant application of blockchain technology that provides a benefit to society:

* mostly publicly funded research locked away in proprietary databases

* illicit public database digitally publishing that publicly funded research

* Bitcoin used to pay to run the service that makes the public research available to the public

I don't think that is at all worth all the hype, energy, and money being thrown at blockchain technology. Nevertheless it is a real answer to a real question.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#153

Post by dd36 »

CPLX wrote: post #148
madeofpalk wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is solvable without blockchain though. Supply chain tracking already happens at the moment without Blockchain.

Indeed. And more to the point blockchain doesn't do a damm thing to improve trust. If someone in step three tosses the carrots out the window and uses a different batch the blockchain isn't going to get that information. The blockchain in this example doesn't add or reduce trust at all it's just a time stamped database of stuff people said. We have those already.

Bingo. I still don’t follow how blockchain solves current problems. If the problem in your country is a lack of good record keeping, that’s not a technological problem. It’s a political problem. Cheap solutions have existed for centuries. The real question is why haven’t they been adopted? Why would those in power allow blockchain to be adopted but not existing technologies?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#154

Post by cbhl »

narrator wrote: post #127
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…

The best thing I've seen blockchains used for, besides currency, is as an integration platform for a non-centralized supply chain. There's really no money in it, since there aren't any gatekeepers, but that's sort of the point. The idea is that the farmer picks his carrots, puts them in a box and sends them off to the carrot juice guy. When he does this he puts a upc code on the side of the carrot box and then puts t…

What? For this system to be truely trustless, the blockchain needs to be owned and maintained by all the people who use it. That means farmer, carrot juice guy, distributor, and retailer need to all have beefy computers with large hard drives to hold the entire blockchain and keep mining it.

Sure, it's great that you don't have to trust Amazon or Wal-Mart to trace the links back, but you could do just as well way more cheaply with a well-maintained independent 3rd-party with an AJAX API on top of a Postgres database. (Well, except for the part where said 3rd-party gets bought out by Twitter...)

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#155

Post by dd36 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #124
madeofpalk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's distributed trust. That's the problem it solves. It's incredibly cool technology. That solves a specific problem. That's still not it. "Distributed Trust" isn't a problem, its a trait. What actual problem is solved by distributed trust?

If you can fix distributed trust you could probably reshape global trade however you see fit. Lack of systemic trust creates mountains of complexity to deal with -- look at how many parties have to be involved just to have a product manufactured in another country

Are you sure that’s a problem? Doesn’t seem to be. Moreover blockchain doesn’t solve it.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#156

Post by madeofpalk »

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…

> 1.

"Open APIs", backing and sharing data is all possible without Blockchain.

> 2.

The problem with contracts isn't contract itself, but the humans involved. Instead of having a lawyer write a contract, instead you'll have Smart Lawyers write Smart Contracts.

> 3.

Ok, sure. I would like to see what this is in practice though. The reason payment processors don't like dealing with adult industries is due to the higher rate of fraud and/or chargebacks, things like that. Either processors involved would be affected by the same things, or consumers would have to forgo things like fraud prevention and protection.

> 4.

Stackoverflow data is Creative Commons. If those sites go down we wouldn't loose the information. This is not a real problem.

> 5.

You detailed yourself why this isn't actually a problem solved.

> 6.

How? You can't just say "voting, but on the blockchain" and leave it at that. Wouldn't a voting-only blockchain would be susceptible to 51% attacks?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#157

Post by CobrastanJorji »

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 would love to know which societal problems can be reduced to a distributed trust problem.

Election fraud.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#158

Post by leppr »

Jonovono wrote: post #108
rlucas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Filecoin, Bluzelle, Sia, Genaro, Arweave, are projects that try to solve trustless decentralized storage. Most use blockchain as the incentive and accountability layer only, files aren't stored directly on the blockchain. (Of these projects, only Sia is currently live)

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#159

Post by deegles »

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…

Ok, well now the question becomes “what problems can only be solved with distributed trust?”

I think most people don’t trust most (other) people, so few practical applications will arise.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#160

Post by madeofpalk »

Jonovono wrote: post #109
HenryTheHorse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_…

Again, where is the problem? If you want to send money to your child on their birthday, just send it. Why do you need a contract, 'smart' or otherwise, for that?

Edit: What's funny about that thread is that it's someone asking for help to get a contract written (...like you do when you see a lawyer), and there's supposedly (or not, unsure about the sarcasm) a venerability in the contract itself.

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