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Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

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31–40 of 296 posts

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#31
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum developers have been working extremely hard to move to proof of stake to remove this massive power requirement. It's too bad that wasn't mentioned in the article.

Slide side track but I never get the complaints about power usage. It’d be great if crypto used less energy obviously but doesn’t fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?

Fiat also uses crazy amount of energy in absolute terms. But per-transaction costs are much lower for fiat.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#32
post #20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slide side track but I never get the complaints about power usage. It’d be great if crypto used less energy obviously but doesn’t fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?

Can you explain why you think fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?

Transporting physical currency requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#33
post #19

This article is misinformed. The past two years have seen a Cambrian explosion of apps on ethereum. financial apps on ethereum - https://defipulse.com/ - https://uniswap.info/home - https://compound.finance/ - https://nexusmutual.io/ - https://bloom.co/ - https://baseline-protocol.org - https://augur2.eth.link/ non-financial apps on ethereum - https://audius.org/ - https://ens.domains/ - https://decentraland.org/ pop…

I looked through a few of those, and I struggle to see how those are superior to traditional solutions to the same problems. Care to enlighten me?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#34
post #17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's the only spot. Literally just an "and" next to Bitcoin when talking about electricity usage. No mention of what it does, what's currently being built, or the use cases people are using today. I guess that doesn't fit the author's narrative so they ignore it or maybe don't even know it exists. I don't know which is worse in this case.

Can you explain it then, because when I dig into it I don’t see much?

That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information.

Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't.

You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of.

DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets.

There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#36
post #19

This article is misinformed. The past two years have seen a Cambrian explosion of apps on ethereum. financial apps on ethereum - https://defipulse.com/ - https://uniswap.info/home - https://compound.finance/ - https://nexusmutual.io/ - https://bloom.co/ - https://baseline-protocol.org - https://augur2.eth.link/ non-financial apps on ethereum - https://audius.org/ - https://ens.domains/ - https://decentraland.org/ pop…

and they've done... what?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#37
post #28
post #8

An article about blockchain where the thesis is that it doesn't solve any problems and it doesn't even mention Ethereum? This article is extremely poorly researched (maybe on purpose) and reads like clickbait.

Could you elaborate on what problems Ethereum has solve? Genuinely curious, as I shared this article’s preconceptions.

I wrote this below but copying here as it's hard to write a huge comment twice.

That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/ Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information.

Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't.

You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of.

DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets.

There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#38
post #32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?

Transporting physical currency requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure.

The same physical infrastructure that is also used for transporting just about everything else? Anyway, most currency transfer these days is digital, so even that doesn't hold much water.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#39
post #19

This article is misinformed. The past two years have seen a Cambrian explosion of apps on ethereum. financial apps on ethereum - https://defipulse.com/ - https://uniswap.info/home - https://compound.finance/ - https://nexusmutual.io/ - https://bloom.co/ - https://baseline-protocol.org - https://augur2.eth.link/ non-financial apps on ethereum - https://audius.org/ - https://ens.domains/ - https://decentraland.org/ pop…

Yeah thanks to COVID there is a ton of new interest in defi as a form of unregulated gambling.

I don't know if you've seen the stock market lately... clearly the largest casino in the world is on Wall Street.

But anyways, DeFi has tons of use cases including automated crop insurance based on weather events, decentralized money markets for car loans, tokenized rental real estate, synthetic derivatives, standard savings and loans utilizing stablecoins, etc etc. The notion that blockchain hasn't found product market fit in 2020 is laughably outdated.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#40
Blockchain is easy to criticize. Hell, I've done it plenty and I worked in the space full time for a good year and a half. But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc. are hard ones to solve. Maybe it turns out that they are inherently unsolvable for the foreseeable future. I think the promise that a solution to some of these problems may exist is what drives curious developers to keep pushing the envelope, because, much like fusion power, if we eventually "get it", it'll change the world. Blockchain innovation is a lot like that. Keep pushing.
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