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

#211

Post by tim333 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

InfinityLoop wrote: post #194

Alex3917 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes but how do I know that you didn't swap the barcodes or you didn't fiddle with the GPS or the thermometer was working or a million other things? Game theory. Without DLT you make more money by doing these things. With DLT it just becomes the cream skimming problem, where you're just paying money to shuffle assets around but you're actually losing money because the total value of all the assets is still the same.…

What does DLT stand for?

Distributed ledger technology.

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

#212

Post by tim333 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #121

ghaff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a blockchain can’t always be guaranteed to always represent the ground truth about physical assets is certainly a limitation. But I agree with you. This isn’t about 100% guarantees. It’s about making fraud harder and more expensive, increasing visibility, and streamlining the whole process. I remain something of a skeptic but there’s certainly a lot of interest in and money for things like provenance an…

> Just reducing fraud and otherwise cutting costs could be a big win. I mean that alone is a several trillion dollar a year improvement that will continue on indefinitely, and that's only one of the many applications for blockchain. Consider that roughly 75% of American adults of working age are either unemployed or underemployed, and in most countries it's vastly worse than that. The reason most of them are unemploy…

I doubt distributed ledgers will do any of that. Maybe if you swapped AI for DLT it would be closer to the truth.

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

#213

Post by asynchrony » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #208

asynchrony wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not use a central database and allow all stakeholders to replicate and keep their own logs of edits. It would be far more efficient. It would lack a certain buzzword though.

A blockchain is a database optimized for that use case. Your desire to avoid the word blockchain is because you don’t like the connotations.

A blockchain isn't optimal for anything. If it was there should be some evidence of it improving something in the real world, no? Something other than a cult of buzzwords and speculation.

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

#214

Post by seibelj » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

asynchrony wrote: post #213

seibelj wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blockchain is a database optimized for that use case. Your desire to avoid the word blockchain is because you don’t like the connotations.

A blockchain isn't optimal for anything. If it was there should be some evidence of it improving something in the real world, no? Something other than a cult of buzzwords and speculation.

It is optimal for situations where you don’t want to trust a central institution. An asset worth $70bil from zero in a decade (Bitcoin) should be considered a successful experiment even if it disappeared tomorrow. Pure computer science, math, and game theory created it, and it’s quite impressive.

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

#215

Post by tim333 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #150

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…

Ah! I keep hearing people talking about blockchain and supply chain and it makes zero sense to me. So we agree that this is bullshit?

Part bullshit. I'd say the jury is still out.

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

#216

Post by tim333 » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #209

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the issue is that Git, which includes validation and history integrity, was invented in 2005 and predates the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper by 3 years. The point being that all the hype about "blockchain everywhere" came about because of bitcoin. If people are now starting to refer to just the "hash of blocks with previous blocks" (i.e. the "Timestamp Server" section of the original bitcoin whitepaper)…

Can someone correct me if I'm wrong? Proof of work is required for distributed consensus; without that you need a centralized repository like GitHub or Linus to bless the current state of the database?

Well proof of work is used to get consensus and prevent double spend in cryptocurrency though there are other mechanisms being tried like proof of stake.

With Git for code you don't really need consensus - I can have my fork and you can have yours.

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

#217

Post by Thiez » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #188

qyv wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace the word blockchain with database and describe how your example works any differently. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't. There is nothing in your example that requires the use of a blockchain. If that beef was tracked in a standard database they would still need to buy beef that was "legit" as far as the database is concerned if they wanted to make a legit claim. Tracking external assets requires trust, perio…

"I'll give you a hint: it doesn't" It surprises me how much anger and claims of authority people that don't like blockchain show. Just be modest and open to potential uses of a technology. Are you a coder? Have you ever used Javascript? If yes then it's creator is a big proponent of blockchains. Take a moment to think about this. Numerous other examples too.

Its creator also opposes same sex marriage. Perhaps creating a programming language doesn't mean you're right in all other contexts.

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

#218

Post by kllrnohj » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

tuxxy wrote: post #119

kllrnohj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You've completely missed the point. There are people who are using Onion routing with nodes who are economically incentivized to behave in a non-malicious fashion. If caught acting malicious, then your node can be penalized. It's not like you're actively putting all traffic on the blockchain. You're arguing a strawman here. I'm not going to speak for these projects directly because I know very little about them, but…

> You're arguing a strawman here.

You didn't really provide anything to actually talk about. You took two literally opposite techs and slapped them together and then acted like it was obvious what that meant.

Blockchain has no application to Onion routing nodes, either. That, again, would be the sort of thing you don't want a permanent record to track. Tor is specifically designed for the routing to not be stable and not be known. It is fundamentallly the polar opposite of blockchain.

Blockchain is a public list of immutable data, identical for everyone.

TOR nodes form a private list of ephemeral data, fleeting and ever changing. Unique to everyone.

> If caught acting malicious, then your node can be penalized.

Blockchain literally has nothing to do with this. It has no such capabilities of any kind. Hell, it was literally built so that you can't have penalties as that's governance.

> I can speak as to how you would incentivize non-malicious behavior.

Blockchain doesn't do this, at all. If anything malicious actors love blockchain because there's largely no capability to recover from a successful attack.

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

#219

Post by kllrnohj » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #190

joshwa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about the blockchain can tell you whether somebody switched the labels, or who did it. And the not-guilty parties probably have no way of verifying what they received, either. Having movements logged in a federated database has all the same properties.

What do you think is easier: making several companies run on their servers a federated databases or using a worldwide publicly available one?

What do you think is easier: convincing farms to send a cheap message to a federated database when they ship out products, or have them buy up insane quantities of computational power to compute crypto hashes, using insane amounts of power to do it?

Blockchain is crazy expensive to run. Why would anyone pay for that when there's dirt cheap alternatives that are every bit as effective at solving the problem?

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

#220

Post by ChrisLomont » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #172

ChrisLomont wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get your 40 year claim? Plenty of research claims otherwise, e.g., https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-s... Even your semiconductor example was immediately adopted and used. A decade into Blockchain and it's still all claim and no adoption, as this study found.

From the famous Carlotta Perez book. The reason tech adoption looks like it’s speeding up is that in that chart is just that they’re looking at more and more trivial examples. E.g. the cell phone might create huge changes in human behavior, but they’re not really a foundational technology. They’re more of an incrementally better version of a phone and a computer.

How is block chain not also a trivial example and an incrementally better version of previous technology? It addresses a tiny, tiny problem compared to items on that chart. If you're claiming that things on that chart are shorter because they're less important, then blockchain, being even less important no matter how you believe it, falls into the same argument.

That chart has for recent things gaining widespread adoption: internet, cellphone, computer, (left off web adoption), microwave. Do you think the blockchain is actually bigger than any of those?

Or is it more likely what it has shown so far - nearly zero benefit compared to the claims? It's not like it hasn't had ample time to blossom and get integrated into everywhere. It simply solves a problem almost no one needs solved.