Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#151

Post by Animats » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:41 AM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #103

Animats wrote: post #9

That's bad. I thought someone would be using a blockchain for some kind of back-end settlement system somewhere, but apparently not. On the ICO front, the SEC is now cracking down effectively. First they went after the outright frauds, such as the coin backed by nonexistent land and diamonds. They won in court. Then they went after the ones that promised big returns and didn't deliver. The SEC won again. That settled…

>>Then they went after the ones that promised big returns and didn't deliver. The SEC won again. That settled the issue of whether an ICO is a security. It is if it passes the Howey Test.[1] As far as I know, they never won in court. Everything was settled out of court. A case recently went to court and they lost a key argument: https://twitter.com/msantoriesq/status/1068246911533092866?s... Former securities lawyer…

Actual court decision.[1]

This is just a rejection of a preliminary injunction. The ICO sale hadn't started yet. The court indicated that the line set by the Howey test had not yet been crossed. The ICO issuer agreed to cancel the ICO and not try again without notifying the SEC first. So the judge ruled that there wasn't an imminent threat justifying an injunction. This is not "ICOs are legal, go go go!", despite hype on crypto sites.

The big ICO case so far is [2]. This was a criminal prosecution. It didn't go to trial, the scammer pled guilty after the preliminary ruling that an ICO was a security.[3] Zaslavskiy gets sentenced soon.

We're way past that claim from July 2017.

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SODrcousHlAKdFRd8Gj32U7lQc-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/u-s-judge...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/first-fra...

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#152

Post by baby » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:43 AM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #82

tuxxy wrote: post #12

Not really surprising, to be honest. I'm really tired of the overused "blockchains are really slow databases" phrase. They're not, and if you're using one as that, you're doing it wrong almost 90% of the time. Here's a great question to ask yourself if you need a blockchain: Do I need game theoretical enforced security? There are many networks and protocols that can be improved with such security mechanisms. There ar…

The singular point of blockchain is to establish a paper trail. The singular point of Tor is not to have a paper trail. Those are literally opposites. Blockchain + Tor would be the sort of complete nonsense the article is talking about. Blockchain has nothing to do with security. It's not a security technology. It's a permanence technology. It ensures that something is never modified in the absence of a trusted autho…

Zcash.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#153

Post by spookthesunset » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:47 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #133

spookthesunset wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind telling the world what the hell “DLT” means? Dynamic link tracking? Database Local Transformation? And let’s be honest here, I’m gonna assume it is a clever buzzword designed to sell the failed blockchain technology to a new set of rubes, right?

Distributed ledger technology. This is the preferred industry term because there are many newer systems that offer or claim to offer the same guarantees as blockchains but that are implemented in different ways under the hood.

So in other words, databases?

Or some new revolutionary thing that I need to BUY NOW!!

It’s a scam dude. The whole space is a giant get rich quick scheme. Putting new labels on it won’t hide it.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#154

Post by yarrel » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:49 AM UTC

seandougall wrote: post #53

Elv13 wrote: post #21

I worked on a project called GNU Ring ( https://www.ring.cx ) and we used a blockchain for the distributed name service (match strings to crypto signatures). By default there is a name server, but if you really, really care about getting tiny more anonymity, you can spend some CPU cycles and run your own name service locally or on a server you own. It also share the cost of running a distributed database among those…

Does it share the cost, or does it duplicate the cost?

It shares it. Each person pays for one node, not all the nodes.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#155

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:53 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #151

CryptoPunk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Then they went after the ones that promised big returns and didn't deliver. The SEC won again. That settled the issue of whether an ICO is a security. It is if it passes the Howey Test.[1] As far as I know, they never won in court. Everything was settled out of court. A case recently went to court and they lost a key argument: https://twitter.com/msantoriesq/status/1068246911533092866?s... Former securities lawyer…

Actual court decision.[1] This is just a rejection of a preliminary injunction. The ICO sale hadn't started yet. The court indicated that the line set by the Howey test had not yet been crossed. The ICO issuer agreed to cancel the ICO and not try again without notifying the SEC first. So the judge ruled that there wasn't an imminent threat justifying an injunction. This is not "ICOs are legal, go go go!", despite hyp…

Yes, the Tweet storm I linked to said as much. The point is when tested by a court, one of the SEC's arguments was rejected. Yes the argument wasn't about the traditional token sale - it was the SEC trying to classify airdrops as a securities issuance - but it does show that the SEC's arguments are not law. Only courts decide what is law.

The big ICO case [2] involved blatant fraud, and looked nothing like the tokens being issued in most token sales, so doesn't set a precedent that affects most of the token sales.

Everything else has been settled out of court, with none of the SEC's claims accepted by a court. So your claim that "That settled the issue of whether an ICO is a security" is wrong. An out of court settlement does not settle the law.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#156

Post by sk221 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 3:59 AM UTC

drexlspivey wrote: post #55

Blockchains make no sense when the "asset" they are tracking have to be imported from the outside world because they lose the trustless property which is the whole point. For example supply line tracking blockchains. "Look this piece of beef was at place X on time Y with temperature Z, I have a hash and everything". Yes but how do I know that you didn't swap the barcodes or you didn't fiddle with the GPS or the therm…

I think blockchains can help minimize trust even if it's dealing with assets outside the blockchain.

Let's use your beef example. The beef might come from a farm. It's certified organic. It gets shipped off to a distributor. The distributor sells it to a store. You go to a store and buy it.

In the current system, if the store is a bad actor (e.g. selling beef it claims is organic, when it's actually not) then you don't really have a way of knowing.

However, if the beef was tracked on the blockchain and transferred to you on the blockchain at the point of purchase, then you are no longer relying on just the store telling you it's organic. The claim is verified by chain of custody on the blockchain. So now multiple parties (the farm, distributor, and store) would have to cooperate to dupe you. You can still get defrauded by the store if they completely swap the beef. But, they would STILL have to purchase legitimate beef and transfer it on the blockchain to you. It would be harder to get away with it vs. just changing the label.

That's just one example of where it can minimize trust. But once more assets are tracked on the blockchain, you can start to do REALLY COOL things with them.

For example, imagine using real estate to get decentralized collateral backed loans on MakerDAO.

I can go on and on about this stuff...but it's really cool and we're just getting our feet wet with the technology.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#157

Post by Alex3917 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:02 AM UTC

api wrote: post #148

Alex3917 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only been ten years and it takes on average around 40 years for a new technology to become useful. And this technology is much bigger and more complicated than the average new breakthrough technology, like the semiconductor or whatever.

I don't think you can compare Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency to semiconductors at all. Cryptocurrency is really not all that complex a technology. Once you grasp it it's pretty simple, especially if you understand cryptography and a little bit of game theory. I do still hold out some hope that the tech will evolve and eventually catch on, or that it will lead to something else, but the first big incarnation cycl…

> I do still hold out some hope that the tech will evolve and eventually catch on

I'd posit it's not possible for DLT to fail any more than it was possible for email to fail. Yeah adoption could have been slower if the first email clients were shittier or whatever, but at the end of the day one-to-one or one-to-many instant written communication solves a real problem and I just don't see any possible universe where the idea wouldn't have eventually worked.

The conceptual breakthrough of DLT is basically using an algorithm to mathematically guarantee that two numbers sum to zero rather than taking the word of a supposedly neutral (and very expensive) third-party. Once you make that discovery there just isn't any universe where that doesn't outcompete the status quo, any more than we have globally competitive societies who haven't adopted things like fire or the wheel.

The reason it's taking so long to get real products (let alone adoption) is that it requires basically reorganizing our entire society, which doesn't exactly move on a dime.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#158

Post by Alex3917 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:16 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #145

seibelj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppliers at every step of the chain enter data into a blockchain. Every organization runs a node. Therefore they can’t lie later and tamper with records when something goes wrong. Investigators can trace provenance easier. That’s it really. An append-only cryptographically secure database would do that same thing, but that’s just another name for a blockchain, which is a rebranding of a specific type of distributed…

Blockchain requires distribution for trustless implementation though, which is the duplicated expense (versus an append-only secure database).

> Blockchain requires distribution for trustless implementation though, which is the duplicated expense

Trust scales with something like Metcalfe's Law. E.g. a consortium of ten independent banks is probably 99% less likely to steal my money than just Wells Fargo. The idea that we need millions of independent entities to get substantially better security than the status quo is just propaganda that gets spread by Bitcoin maximalists.

There is a cost of duplication, but at the level of duplication you actually need the cost isn't that much compared to the benefit.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#159

Post by zaphar » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:24 AM UTC

mathnmusic wrote: post #138

jacobr1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so ... sort of like git?

Git is a DAG where each child of a hashed node is equally valid. For transactions and assets, what we need is a linked list (a chain) and therefore, some rule like "the longest chain is the TRUE chain".

Blockchains are also DAGs. This is the basis of the 51% attack. It is completely possible for a blockchains to fork. The consensus algorithm is how a particular branch is chosen as the winner. But the reason you need them is because blocks fire DAGs.

Re: Blockchain study finds zero success rate and vendors don't call back

#160

Post by Groxx » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:32 AM UTC

joshwa wrote: post #79

drexlspivey wrote: post #55

Blockchains make no sense when the "asset" they are tracking have to be imported from the outside world because they lose the trustless property which is the whole point. For example supply line tracking blockchains. "Look this piece of beef was at place X on time Y with temperature Z, I have a hash and everything". Yes but how do I know that you didn't swap the barcodes or you didn't fiddle with the GPS or the therm…

I always say "the moment you need to verify that a human did something outside the system, your blockchain is broken."

if you need accurate verification, or it boils down to a single person, agreed. (though that's not often possible, e.g. bribery)

if you need to know the final consensus (or lack thereof) about that verification, regardless of how consensus is determined, it's not a deal-breaker. multi-party signatures, basically, which is what ethereum is designed to do.

(for context tho: broadly I agree, blockchains make zero sense in very nearly all potential scenarios)