81–90 of 192 posts
This question may also have been baffling to most people when corporations had just been legalized.
The answer is; it solves problems for participants and creates problems for non-participants. That's why it will definitely succeed as an economic instrument.
- Garages log maintenace + mileage.
- Accidents are logged.
- Spare part replacements are logged.
- Government logs changes of owners (maybe privacy concern here?).
You sell or buy a second hand car? You verify the blockchain history if everything checks out.
This is a nice use case since multiple parties come into contact with a car, and so a central entity is hard to create.
And as an added bonus, the transaction of changing car ownership can be done with a smart contract to atomically transfer both money and ownership. Less shady things.
I'm an old man, so let me show you how to frame thinking about blockchain. I experienced the 90's, so let me tell you why email will never take off, since we have a trustworthy postal service: 1. Almost nobody you know has an email address, but everyone has a real address. 2. People want to have something they can touch, a personal, perfumed handwritten letter. Not a cold virtual thing with printed letters. 3. You ca…
Blockchain for reliable car history: - Garages log maintenace + mileage. - Accidents are logged. - Spare part replacements are logged. - Government logs changes of owners (maybe privacy concern here?). You sell or buy a second hand car? You verify the blockchain history if everything checks out. This is a nice use case since multiple parties come into contact with a car, and so a central entity is hard to create. And…
What use is your internet token now?
The problem with tokens which merely proxy ownership of something else is that this link can be undone by humans in the real world, and then the ledger does not map to reality. If you need the ledger to map to reality, you need somebody who has the authority to adjust the ledger without having every other user of the ledger sign off such modifications. Inevitably: the ledger ends up being controlled by a single authority - at which point you figure that the blockchain was actually a waste of time because the central authority could've done it cheaper with MySQL.
It only makes sense that the internet token represents ownership of the token itself. If it is a proxy for ownership of something else, it is no better than a penned signature on paper. It's not the paper that is valuable, but the car.
However, with Bitcoin, it is the bitcoin itself which is valuable. The bitcoin isn't a proxy for some other wealth, but the token encapsulates the wealth. Given that we have a token which can encapsulate wealth, what purpose are there for N other tokens which purport to do the same thing?
I'm an old man, so let me show you how to frame thinking about blockchain. I experienced the 90's, so let me tell you why email will never take off, since we have a trustworthy postal service: 1. Almost nobody you know has an email address, but everyone has a real address. 2. People want to have something they can touch, a personal, perfumed handwritten letter. Not a cold virtual thing with printed letters. 3. You ca…
As a counterexample, look at how sure people and companies were that AI would take off and solve most problems in the 80s. Historically, you can find plenty of examples for both over- and underhyped technologies. It's a complex world, and trying to project these historical events onto new technologies is useless. It's like saying, "well, look at what the stock market did 20 years ago, it has to go up today!" - You ma…
Maybe the main point I wanted to bring across is that blockchain will not live in the present, it will live in the future.
The polaroid picture in my email comparison it really nice in that sense. Nobody was taking digital photo's. For a long time it was even unclear if digital photography would ever surpass traditional. (and some companies made some painful decisions here).
Nothing important is in the blockchain yet, so what can you really accomplish with smart contracts now anyway?
But I agree with you that it is unclear if it will take of or not in the future. But you cannot dismiss a technology because it is not viable in the present.
Blockchain for reliable car history: - Garages log maintenace + mileage. - Accidents are logged. - Spare part replacements are logged. - Government logs changes of owners (maybe privacy concern here?). You sell or buy a second hand car? You verify the blockchain history if everything checks out. This is a nice use case since multiple parties come into contact with a car, and so a central entity is hard to create. And…
- You owe somebody money and a court declares that you pay up and uses a legal warrant to take your car as collateral. What use is your internet token now? The problem with tokens which merely proxy ownership of something else is that this link can be undone by humans in the real world, and then the ledger does not map to reality. If you need the ledger to map to reality, you need somebody who has the authority to ad…
Ownership is indeed trickier, but nothing says that you have to undo previous entries, you can add a new entry tagged with the "official authority" certificate.
Central authority will remain a big problem in the car industry, also because cars go over country borders all the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
- You owe somebody money and a court declares that you pay up and uses a legal warrant to take your car as collateral. What use is your internet token now? The problem with tokens which merely proxy ownership of something else is that this link can be undone by humans in the real world, and then the ledger does not map to reality. If you need the ledger to map to reality, you need somebody who has the authority to ad…
This is an argument for the ownership part, but doesn't dismiss the history part. Ownership is indeed trickier, but nothing says that you have to undo previous entries, you can add a new entry tagged with the "official authority" certificate. Central authority will remain a big problem in the car industry, also because cars go over country borders all the time.
No blockchain needed.
Of course, this can be sidestepped by having work done on the vehicle and not updating the log. How do you prevent that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP specifically asked to leave cryptocurrencies out of it and judging by the post does not consider finance to be a 'substantial' example. Are there any concrete examples where blockchains are both useful and necessary?
Yes I literally posted 5. The disentanglement of blockchain from cryptocurrency is senseless. The entire point of a blockchain is to serve as a distributed ledger. If it's truly decentralized, it has to be monetized somehow to incentivize the maintenance of the blockchain. Hyperledger is a blockchain that is mainly used for these private blockchains that are used in corporate settings. However, a public chain has 100…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an argument for the ownership part, but doesn't dismiss the history part. Ownership is indeed trickier, but nothing says that you have to undo previous entries, you can add a new entry tagged with the "official authority" certificate. Central authority will remain a big problem in the car industry, also because cars go over country borders all the time.
The history can be managed by having every log entry be hashed and each new entry refer to the previous hash. Each time the log is updated, the new hash is reported to the vehicle authority, which can prevent modifications to the history. No blockchain needed. Of course, this can be sidestepped by having work done on the vehicle and not updating the log. How do you prevent that?
You buy the second hand car with history, not the one without.