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There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

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Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#11

Post by EthanHeilman »

verdverm wrote: post #7
whttheuuu wrote: post #2

That's kind of the whole point of it - is that you don't need to trust it.

The point the author is making is that the "you don't need to trust it" is fundamentally misplaced. You do need to trust the institutions, and builders of, much in the same way you need to trust any business you choose to interact with them. The issue of public blockchain is that I now need to trust code and technology in a system where the events are no longer reversible. We know that code and technology is not perf…

Lots of technological systems have non-reversible consequences. For instance hard drives and airplanes for example. Schneier is essentially identifying an inherent trade-off between trusting the correctness of a technological device vs trusting in an institution. This is a trade-off happens all over the place:

1. Many people don't encrypt their email (trust technology) and instead trust gmail and associated intelligence agencies to act in their best interest.

2. Many people encrypt their HTTP connections rather than trusting ISPs and internet providers.

An important difference between encrypting HTTP connections and encrypting email is that one is far more convenient than the other. However encrypting your email does make sense in certain situations and so does Bitcoin.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#12

Post by feelingsonice »

"Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) ... Consensus protocols have been studied in distributed systems for more than 60 years. Append-only data structures have been similarly well covered."

I don't entire agree with this. Yes, distributed systems and various consensus protocols have been studied for many years, but the cryptocurrency boom boosted public interest and applicational development in a way that would not have happened without it.

Private blockchain can have many benefits compared to centralized models. It's not necessarily better and it's more of a trade-off, but it does present solutions that's not otherwise possible. For example, in a distributed system, we can use IoT devices as lightweight nodes for quick validations. This can give security to off-site locations with limited computation power and/or connectivity.

In addition, there's now many consensus protocols that tries to solve or amend the three elements the author mentioned. For example, Stellar-Lumen's implementation of Federated Byzantine Agreement creates the concept of reputation on top of trust. The ledger network is public, and is essentially a directed graph of trusts. Anyone can join but other nodes pre-existing on the network may not necessarily trust your validations, so this at least amends the first element the author mentioned.

In conclusion, blockchain technologies are over quoted for their finance applications. To quote a YouTube video I watched, look at blockchain technologies as the operating system, and cryptocurrency as one particular app on the operating system, like your browser. It surely is over hyped but shouldn't be hated upon solely due to the public's mistaking interest.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#13

Post by avivo »

Another classic in this genre, though more focused on world impact, is Charlie Stross's "Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire" (2013)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-wa...

I may not be quite as strident as either of these takes, but I agree that the proponents are significantly overselling on a variety of axes... (while also believing that distributed append-only systems with consensus mechanisms can sometimes have value)

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#14

Post by lmpostor »

verdverm wrote: post #7
whttheuuu wrote: post #2

That's kind of the whole point of it - is that you don't need to trust it.

The point the author is making is that the "you don't need to trust it" is fundamentally misplaced. You do need to trust the institutions, and builders of, much in the same way you need to trust any business you choose to interact with them. The issue of public blockchain is that I now need to trust code and technology in a system where the events are no longer reversible. We know that code and technology is not perf…

>What blockchain does is shift some of the trust in people and institutions to trust in technology. You need to trust the cryptography, the protocols, the software, the computers and the network. And you need to trust them absolutely, because they’re often single points of failure.

So it is still people and institutions except abstracted into pieces that are more transparent than pre-existing options.

Also it is always hilarious to see the rehashed arguments over and over. First being that necessity of a blockchain is a requirement for successful implementation, and second the complete negation of systems where it actually is a necessity.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#15

Post by verdverm »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #11
verdverm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the author is making is that the "you don't need to trust it" is fundamentally misplaced. You do need to trust the institutions, and builders of, much in the same way you need to trust any business you choose to interact with them. The issue of public blockchain is that I now need to trust code and technology in a system where the events are no longer reversible. We know that code and technology is not perf…

Lots of technological systems have non-reversible consequences. For instance hard drives and airplanes for example. Schneier is essentially identifying an inherent trade-off between trusting the correctness of a technological device vs trusting in an institution. This is a trade-off happens all over the place: 1. Many people don't encrypt their email (trust technology) and instead trust gmail and associated intellige…

Why public Bitcoin over a bank's own blockchain solution?

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#16

Post by neals »

I've stopped loving, hating, trusting or distrusting it: My client wants to auction thousands of cars with 7 competitors. He wants parts of it on blockchain. If that's the way he can create trust within this group of competitors, so be it. Is it marketing? Maybe. But we've built it and it actually works.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#17

Post by lmpostor »

>What blockchain does is shift some of the trust in people and institutions to trust in technology. You need to trust the cryptography, the protocols, the software, the computers and the network. And you need to trust them absolutely, because they’re often single points of failure.

So it is still people and institutions except abstracted into pieces that are more transparent than pre-existing options.

Also it is always hilarious to see the rehashed arguments over and over. First being that necessity of a blockchain is a requirement for successful implementation, and second the complete negation of systems where it actually is a necessity.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#18

Post by vbo »

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

Try focusing on the technology, its merits and its potential (or lack thereof, depending which side you lean). I find that works for me, although sifting through the rancor and the mindless shilling all so prevalent in the crypto communities is rather saddening.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#19

Post by verdverm »

feelingsonice wrote: post #12

"Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) ... Consensus protocols have been studied in distributed systems for more than 60 years. Append-only data structures have been similarly well covered." I don't entire agree with this. Yes, distributed systems and various consensus protocols have been studied for…

Private blockchains are interesting because it causes separate business to share code and data formats. There is a better interface for integrating. Plus you still get the rule of law.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#20

Post by jcranmer »

baby wrote: post #6

1. yes there is a trust flow when you join a network: * you need to trust the paper behind the consensus mechanism * you need to trust the people who have implemented the client, and trust them to maintain it * you need to trust the TLS connection you use when you download the client. Meaning the whole CA system * you need to trust your own machine, when running the client * you need to trust the first peers you conn…

One of the main points of the article is that the government and the legal system is an effective mechanism of trust. If you're worried someone will squelch on their end of the deal, you write up a contract and thereby get to sue them if they fail to do so.

This is usually where the bitcoin adherents start referring to corruption and the ilk to explain why government can't be trusted. But Schneier has the rebuttal: we know damned well from experience that you can't write bug-free, secure code. Bitcoin requires hidden trust in the programmers of the software, and in the community to move forward on decisions, and history has borne out that this trust is misplaced.

Blockchain isn't trustless, it just replaces trust in a system that is designed to efficiently enforce sanctions against those who violate trust with a system where every participant is responsible for policing trust individually.

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