Quadratic voting might be useful
Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
251–260 of 296 posts
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#252Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means. Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks,…
I'm skeptical that blockchain cryptocurrencies can ever be politically acceptable if they were to provide real anonymity, but anonymity in online financial transactions is about the only problem they have a hope of solving.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#253Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means. Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks,…
> financial censorship. Or what civilized people call "preventing money laundering". What you are saying is that blockchain allows you to break the law.
Don't combine money laundering with denying services to people who do things that are distasteful certain other groups. Legally free speech, pornography and weed payments are also banned on platforms that go through the normal payment processing routes. The weed issue is because of federal laws but I don't know the full reason behind the other bans.
One quick example: Patreon vs Sargon or Patreon vs artists that produce works with nudity. In these cases, things users were banned for did not happen directly on their platform and weren't even mentioned on their platform. I list them because they're easy to google but there are others.
Do you consider those situations to be something other than censorship?
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zcash had this which wasn't great: https://bitcoinist.com/zcash-inflation-bug-infinite-tokens/ You also only get privacy with transactions between two z-addresses, and those require a fair amount of resources to generate (I think HW wallets can't sign those transactions due to computational limitations). Most zcash transactions are between t-addresses which don't have any benefits over BTC (they're public). https://b…
> You also only get privacy with transactions between two z-addresses, and those require a fair amount of resources to generate FWIW this is rapidly improving. The main thing we need to implement Zcash-style private payments is a Merkle proof in a zk-SNARK, so that we can prove ownership of an account in the Merkle tree without revealing the account. So the proving cost depends heavily on our choice of hash function.…
Interesting - thanks for the context and additional links.
I saw in your profile you work on Mir, are you also involved in Zcash?
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#255I just want to say I'm shocked a community who's supposed to be as technologically adept as HN still "doesn't get it". I have no intention or interest in changing anyone's mind...if you know, you know.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't get me wrong. Cash is great. But how do I quickly and securely do a long distance transaction in cash? Do you except people to wait for the postal service to deliver an envelope before they receive whatever they've payed for? >It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it, but it's still a very hard requirement In your example you are paying 4chan. You already have a computer wit…
> Do you except people to wait for the postal service to deliver an envelope before they receive whatever they've payed for? To be fair, it might be quicker to verify cash payment by mail than a crypto payment.
Definitely false. If you're using bitcoin and want to be uber-safe, then you should wait for six 10-minute confirmations. That's an extreme example though. In practice you can spend right after the first confirmation, which can be seconds to minutes for other cryptocurrencies.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#257Blockchain is based on Merkle trees and well, merkle trees definitely made their impact via git and other immutable log structures.
Blockchain is cool datastructure as an immutable log with proof work where integrity can be verified in a distributed manner by multiple parties.
It’s like quantum computers. Heavily hyped but only useful for a specialized set of problems.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You also only get privacy with transactions between two z-addresses, and those require a fair amount of resources to generate FWIW this is rapidly improving. The main thing we need to implement Zcash-style private payments is a Merkle proof in a zk-SNARK, so that we can prove ownership of an account in the Merkle tree without revealing the account. So the proving cost depends heavily on our choice of hash function.…
Interesting - thanks for the context and additional links. I saw in your profile you work on Mir, are you also involved in Zcash?
I'm not really involved, just a fan of their work :) I think Mir and Zcash have some similar long-term goals, like using SNARKs to scale without affecting security. We just felt that starting over with a new blockchain seemed like the most practical way to get there.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Keep track of which number is managed by which operator" reduces to "store a small amount of information for each phone number". In a traditional database setup, the "transactional method to update it" would be sending a request to a central server to update the database. The central server can be run by whatever regulatory body or industry association is responsible for number portability -- ideally, this would be…
What if other operators don't want to introduce an additional governing entity with a super power of taking their customers? Like if they don't want additional corruption, easy to misuse power, etc? I mean, I can imagine government wants this, so if such ideas comes from government you're going to have such regulatory body. But otherwise, if it comes from operators itself, they don't want to introduce such entity, an…
Blockchain backers seem to take it as a given that centralization is bad. But when pressed on why, the best answers I have seen are “because centralization is bad”. Well, I guess that’s not 100% true; the first answer is that we shouldn’t trust authority. Why? Because authority is bad. Why? Because authority is bad.
But as this article articulates so well, that’s a red herring. Like, you can come up with all sorts of wild scenarios where central authority can be bad. But ultimately, these are scenarios you’re unlikely to encounter in the real world, and if you do, there are much simpler solutions.
Blockchain technology always reminded me of that XKCD about cryptographer expectations vs. reality (https://xkcd.com/538/): it’s solving a problem that only really exists in fantasy for 99% of the population.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#260Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means. Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks,…
> Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. Cash is still better This argument comes up everytime blockchain are discussed, but I don't believe it is true I could theoretically pay 4chan using crypto money,but I argue this is not a solution First of all, it's not the straightforward, very few people on average can do that on their own It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous…
This comment reminds me so much of the 90s video that was posted some time ago about how the internet was useless and online commerce was not going to work. Including the stupid idea of selling books.
If you were in tech before ethernet and TCp/ip (ipx/spx, netware, ring networks, etc) you wouldnt believe hos far we will get.
That's my view of blockchain. Naysayers are just people not knowing better or people with interests.
Blockchain as a current tech may suck (shit... bitcoin is so inefficient...) but there's people doing R&D on this TCP to improve its efficiency and effectiveness.