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Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

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Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#91

Post by fourstar »

malikNF wrote: post #84
godelski wrote: post #61

Looking at all the comments here I have a single response to most of them: I'll call it a solution when it is implemented. You can talk all you want about solutions to some of the (minor) problems addressed here (ignoring the rest of the problems) but unless it is in use then the article's commentary still stands. Unless it has a ton of users, the article's commentary still stands. If you really do believe in block c…

Take a look at cardano. They have implemented a blockchain that is backed by peer reviewed [1] research, the article here talks about how the blockchain takes a huge amount of resources to run. The people at the cardano project has managed to enable people to even run a full block producing node on something as small as a pi[2][3]. So far from all the blockchain projects I am interested in, this is my favorite one so…

Why is being peer-reviewed what Cardano fans always lede with? That doesn’t automatically make something “better”, IMO. Also, what even uses Cardano? Project has been “in progress” for years and all I’ve seen are photos of Hoskinson with his mouth open taking selfies in various parts of the world. Algorand is probably the best project right now in crypto aside from ZCash that’s an actual contender against ETH (disclaimer: I hold none of either).

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#92

Post by capnorange »

arkis22 wrote: post #71
capnorange wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blockchains are immutable for all practical purposes using social consensus/governance rules.

sure. it's immutable. they'll just fork the data and force you to choose. a lot of people enjoy not playing by the rules. https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-f...

agreed. Here "they'll" is not Vitalik/co, it's in control of the node validators, ofcourse you are affected by this if are in disagreement of the majority. The reason why it will be difficult to pull off a hard fork today[1].

See UASF for the success in community governance. This is good proof that the users are always in control, not miners or Vitalik.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/binance-may-consider-bitcoin-rollba...

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#93

Post by gonehome »

Skunkleton wrote: post #70
jjordan wrote: post #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 pro…

> But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc. Noble goals. Still, blockchains are inherently limited to the digital world. No amount of digital freedom or security stops you from being oppressed by an unjust government, or robbed at gunpoint. Taking Bitcoin as an example, there have been many cases of bitcoins being seized or st…

I'm somewhat of a cautiously optimistic skeptic that finds the blockchain stuff really interesting and potentially important (I've been playing with it since 2010), but not super useful at the moment.

I think these are some of things people think about it:

- Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income into bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela).

- Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact with corrupt guards that steal anything of value you try and get out. Putting your wealth into a bitcoin wallet can allow you to escape with it intact if you memorize your seed words (there was a story about someone in Ukraine that did this crossing the border patrolled by Russian guards).

- Bitcoin is deflationary, the coins are limited and scarce, but the currency is divisible. This means they should hold value over time. Fiat currencies are vulnerable to monetary policy of governments, bitcoin is less so. Bitcoin may increase in value in part because other currencies are decreasing in value.

- Ability to move money more easily than other deflationary assets like gold (which have other problems). Universal currency across different governments that can be converted into local currency.

All of this is primarily just BTC. I think there are other potential interesting things with ability to have an audit log of immutable transactions of a block chain generally. I think some of the other things are cool (urbit is using ethereum for IDs), but a lot of the other things don't seem to have much purpose beyond being cool. Faster transaction times? The strategy Dai uses to stay pegged to 1 USD is neat.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#94

Post by Skunkleton »

tehranifar wrote: post #65

It's been a good solution for authentic digital arts! Check out https://knownorigin.io/ https://superrare.co/ There are also virtual worlds to see the art in https://www.cryptovoxels.com/

What is authentic digital art? Does that mean that I own it, and no one else can claim to own it? How is that different from a bill of sale?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#95

Post by FuckButtons »

jamil7 wrote: post #15
ikt wrote: 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?

No, it does not, visa for example uses about 500,000 times less energy per transaction.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#97

Post by Rotten194 »

tehranifar wrote: post #65

It's been a good solution for authentic digital arts! Check out https://knownorigin.io/ https://superrare.co/ There are also virtual worlds to see the art in https://www.cryptovoxels.com/

Yay, we can reproduce the worst part of physical art on the internet now... art is interesting because it's art, not because rich people can speculate on it. In an ideal world everyone could have a Monet on their wall. With digital art, that's possible. Why the heck do we want to change that?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#98

Post by dehrmann »

godelski wrote: post #61

Looking at all the comments here I have a single response to most of them: I'll call it a solution when it is implemented. You can talk all you want about solutions to some of the (minor) problems addressed here (ignoring the rest of the problems) but unless it is in use then the article's commentary still stands. Unless it has a ton of users, the article's commentary still stands. If you really do believe in block c…

Blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#99

Post by Temasik »

Animats wrote: post #25

Bitcoin has lots of uses: - Getting money out of China. Buy into a mining consortium with yuan, get a fraction of the bitcoins, sell outside China for dollars or euros. You're manufacturing and exporting, which the government of China likes. - Extortion. The ransomware extortion business depends on Bitcoin. - Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.

hodl so we can dump on you

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#100

Post by seibelj »

bjo590 wrote: post #51
jamil7 wrote: 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?

I'd like to point you to this Vice article titled "One Bitcoin Transaction Consumes As Much Energy As Your House Uses in a Week". Meanwhile swiping a credit card uses slightly more electricity than a google query. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-ele...

Does it not seem strange to you that if a BTC transaction costs $1 to $5 in fees, yet supposedly uses $50 or more in “actual” electricity costs, there must be a disconnect there?

There is energy in certain places (underground, hydro) that cannot be transported to wherever journalists are writing their papers as they spitball electricity calculations.

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