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You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

blog.smartdec.net

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Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#381

Post by nradov »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #362
mjevans wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I see as the 'hard to solve' problem isn't the contract. That's difficult but ultimately resolves to logic and proofs of logic. The difficult to resolve problem is enforcing what the contract is trying to measure. It doesn't magically authenticate the state of the real world or objects within it. It can't do things like answer the question: "Did the occupant cause harm or ware beyond normal to a rented unit?" It…

A lot of this stuff is just bootstrapping though. Suppose you have someone designated to identify plumbers, call him Bob. Bob has a public key, and if a plumber, call her Alice, comes to him and proves in the usual meatspace ways that she's a licensed plumber, Bob signs the plumber's public key, along with their name and license number and the date, signature good for a year. Maybe Bob works for the government, maybe…

This is way more complex than what we have now and adds no practical benefits.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#382

Post by nradov »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #354
techslave wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you can have a perfectly legal contract, but the other party is in a corrupt foreign jurisdiction that would never find in your favor in the event of a breach. Then you can't contract with them because they have no incentive not to breach, without an alternative method of ensuring compliance that doesn't rely on their corrupt government. can you give a concrete example? this requires a smart contract d…

> can you give a concrete example? this requires a smart contract does it not? what is an example contract (specifically) where this is useful? Suppose you make a loan to someone in an untrustworthy jurisdiction. The contract says you provide X amount in Bitcoin today and get paid back with interest in five years. The borrower is a real estate developer who has a separate contract with a local buyer to purchase the p…

That's not how real estate development actually works in most of the world. Buyers almost never commit any cash 5 years in advance of property completion. If you want to convince anyone you're going to need a more realistic example.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#383

Post by nradov »

shrimpx wrote: post #349
jVinc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but who owns the database? And who enforces the contract? And who owns the actual data? > Blockchain provides satisfactory answers to all those problems. What problems? I mean your arguing like something like public transportation is an impossibility without blockchain backing because: "Who owns the stations, who enforces the schedules and who owns the actual busses?" Those are not problems. They are all just quest…

We are talking about ownership, which of course doesn't matter in your example because you don't own the buses or the stations. If you own a house, where's the record? The title is with an insurance company. Why? Because your ownership of this house can be questioned at any time since there's no equivocal record. It's recorded in a bunch of "databases", some of which you and your insurance company may not know exist.

In the US there's only one real estate database per county, maintained by the county government. Owners can purchase title insurance to protect against other claims or liens, but the insurance company doesn't hold the title. And title insurance is quite cheap because in practice the risk is miniscule.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#384

Post by ip26 »

PakG1 wrote: post #358
ip26 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah man, a dictatorship is capable of removing an unpopular leader from office more efficiently than any other form of government. Whether it's likely to or not is a different question!

You're talking about a coup or revolution. If you want to say that, I think the efficiency of a coup or revolution doesn't vary according to the government system that is getting attacked. The efficiency at which such attempts operate are a function of how organized they are.

No, I'm talking about an unpopular dictator simply resigning (because he is unpopular) and appointing his replacement! Highly efficient.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#385

Post by PakG1 »

ip26 wrote: post #384
PakG1 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a coup or revolution. If you want to say that, I think the efficiency of a coup or revolution doesn't vary according to the government system that is getting attacked. The efficiency at which such attempts operate are a function of how organized they are.

No, I'm talking about an unpopular dictator simply resigning (because he is unpopular) and appointing his replacement! Highly efficient.

I guess hence your qualifier "whether it's likely". I'd find that even less likely than a revolution, but I have no idea what the real actual statistics are. Would be interesting to see data on coups vs resignations vs stayed in power until death or retirement.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#386

Post by dragontamer »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #363
dragontamer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins rely on the trust of the company to float the value of the USD or whatever currency with the coin that is generated. USDT is owned and operated by a single, foreign company that hasn't had an audit yet and has no insurance protections what-so-ever. I'm not going to trust them with my money or business. This about the worst of all cases: they pretend to be a blockchain, but they're really just a standard o…

There is significant competition growing against Tether. The following three stablecoins have $500M+ in circulation all backed by US regulated companies: USDC, TUSD, and GUSD.

> all backed by US regulated companies

That means they aren't actually cryptocoins. That means those are banks, which are backed by the court system and the ability to sue those banks for your money if they mess up.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#387

Post by karmakaze »

This post is so bad. I generally agree that most attempted uses of blockchain are flawed. The problem is that the reasons given in this post are even more flawed.

Most of the examples given could be adapted to work with blockchain if it were to solve it's core scalability issue. The repetition of "blockchain is not IoT" is a parody of the post itself. Reminds me of "MongoDB is webscale".

We should instead be discussing how each case could work with blockchain given a few changes. For example the supply chain one would work if we put tamperproof temp sensors in with the produce rather than the truck. The desires of the produce supplier and receiver of it are aligned so trust shouldn't be put in the truck. Even a little thought sheds light on the other straw man examples.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#388

Post by omarchowdhury »

dragontamer wrote: post #386
omarchowdhury wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant competition growing against Tether. The following three stablecoins have $500M+ in circulation all backed by US regulated companies: USDC, TUSD, and GUSD.

> all backed by US regulated companies That means they aren't actually cryptocoins. That means those are banks, which are backed by the court system and the ability to sue those banks for your money if they mess up.

> That means they aren't actually cryptocoins.

That's not the argument here. I'm showing you that there are legitimate alternatives to USDT.

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#389

Post by dmitriid »

arisAlexis wrote: post #373
dmitriid wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mythical examples, of course. There’s no system built in Ethereum that provides what you cite as an example. And all of the world’s real edtate records would probably easily fit into a non-optimized MySQL database (I’m not even talking about more powerful databases). Because there are at most a few hundred million such records. Even if there’s a billion, it’s nothing for a modern database (and would cripple any block…

of course there is not. and there was no HN when the internet started. Scalability is not the issue, verifiable secure immutable records are where no admin from a third world participating country can alter records as an example. If you forget the bias for a bit you may start to love the possibilities.

> of course there is not

And yet you bring it up as an example of how well Ethereum might work. And claim “there are hundreds of other examples”.

So what you claimed is false, and there are no other examples. And the avility of Ethereum to provide what you claim is yet to be proven (it was nearly crippled by a friggin kitties game which could fit in its entirety on a low-powered laptop eas it not for Ethereum/blockchain).

> If you forget bias

There’s no bias in calling out a lie

Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work

#390

Post by matchagaucho »

PakG1 wrote: post #360
matchagaucho wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escrow services exist for this purpose.

In some ways escrow is safer because blockchain transactions aren't reversible, no? Yeah, the transaction is there for everyone to verify, so everyone can tell the guy cheated someone, but without law enforcement (not necessarily easy across borders), how do you get the guy to honor the contract when he has no honest intent?

Depends on the definition of "honor". In a financial transaction, escrow holds the funds and releases to counter-party upon contractual delivery.

Both parties just need to agree on the "Swiss Bank" 3rd party to escrow the funds (and of course, the contract terms).

Blockchain and smart contracts seemed well suited to this task, initially. But I'd agree with the OP that low value assets (LVA) with sensors are easily spoofed and the cost of electricity isn't worth the time to miners.

High value assets (HVA) are just better served with human escrow brokers.

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