Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#31

Post by dcposch » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

roenxi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the top comment - that blockchains resist financial censorship - is still extremely insightful. Blockchains are truthful in a way like no other ledger (all of which are ultimately mutable at an individual entities whim). Bank transfers mean 2 transactors, 2 banks and at least one government think the transaction is appropriate. Blockchain cuts most of that out. This is clearly transformative. Governments are one…

> This is clearly transformative It clearly is not, as evidenced by the lack of transformation of the banking sector since Bitcoin first came out in January 2009.

This recalls Paul Krugman's famous clownspeak, in 1998, comparing the impact of the internet to that of the fax machine.

By 1998, the internet had failed to transform a lot of industries despite a lot of hype and grifters ( WebVan, WorldCom, etc etc etc).

Regardless, it was progressing fast. People with enough technical understanding understood its tremendous underlying promise--not the promise of a quick buck, but the opportunity to make things that were previously impossible, and the inevitability of eventual transformative change across a whole range of industries.

Remind you of anything?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#32

Post by marcan_42 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:47 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #24

exdsq wrote: post #16

I was and still am what I’d call a blockchain skeptic, even though I work in the field. However, I am seeing more and more use cases where I’d struggle to think of a non-blockchain design, such as a decentralised computer where you can guarantee the code executed is what you’d expect and the owners of nodes get reimbursed for their work, or decentralised over-collateralised loans. On a side note the work involved wit…

I am not a blockchain skeptic and I have worked in the field for years (currently @ poloniex). When I interview people and explain to them in detail what we do, they become extremely excited. I think most people don’t really understand this technology and instead base their opinions on journalist-schlock like the linked article. It just misses the point!

Blockchain technology has legitimate uses, but there is an order of magnitude more nonsense trying to be built on it that has no business doing so.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#33

Post by exdsq » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

marcan_42 wrote: post #32

seibelj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a blockchain skeptic and I have worked in the field for years (currently @ poloniex). When I interview people and explain to them in detail what we do, they become extremely excited. I think most people don’t really understand this technology and instead base their opinions on journalist-schlock like the linked article. It just misses the point!

Blockchain technology has legitimate uses, but there is an order of magnitude more nonsense trying to be built on it that has no business doing so.

Agreed - for example music streaming.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#34

Post by nurettin » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #31

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is clearly transformative It clearly is not, as evidenced by the lack of transformation of the banking sector since Bitcoin first came out in January 2009.

This recalls Paul Krugman's famous clownspeak, in 1998, comparing the impact of the internet to that of the fax machine. By 1998, the internet had failed to transform a lot of industries despite a lot of hype and grifters ( WebVan, WorldCom, etc etc etc). Regardless, it was progressing fast. People with enough technical understanding understood its tremendous underlying promise--not the promise of a quick buck, but t…

Reminds me of solarpunk.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #31

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is clearly transformative It clearly is not, as evidenced by the lack of transformation of the banking sector since Bitcoin first came out in January 2009.

This recalls Paul Krugman's famous clownspeak, in 1998, comparing the impact of the internet to that of the fax machine. By 1998, the internet had failed to transform a lot of industries despite a lot of hype and grifters ( WebVan, WorldCom, etc etc etc). Regardless, it was progressing fast. People with enough technical understanding understood its tremendous underlying promise--not the promise of a quick buck, but t…

[deleted]

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#36

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

exdsq wrote: post #20

takeda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't sound very skeptic.

I am - I happily call out things that don’t require a blockchain, and call bs on projects that shouldn’t use it, but having spent significant time looking into it I’m becoming less so about particular use cases. Edit: If someone can show me a non-blockchain design for decentralised over-collateralised loans then I’ll concede and go back to full skeptic :)

> If someone can show me a non-blockchain design for decentralised over-collateralised loans

Since “decentralized finance” is typically defined in terms of blockchain use, there are, by the standard definitions, no non-blockchain decentralized finance solutions of any kind.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#37

Post by darawk » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

There is something else that blockchain does that I don't often see people talking about, or they do talk about it, but they don't seem to quite understand it fully.

Blockchain solves the platform problem. Finance needs a platform. Right now, there are a myriad of broken, old, difficult to upgrade systems that prevent basically any significant innovation from taking place in the payment transfer landscape. This has been commented on a lot. But I think it's important to step back a bit and understand why that is.

Finance is dominated by extremely large, extremely risk averse institutions, that all compete with one another. Any one of them certainly has the resources to develop "the app store" for finance, but the problem is that all the other ones are incentivized not to adopt it. JPMorgan doesn't want BofA to own the app store for finance, and so they will never integrate with it.

This is, fundamentally, a tragedy of the commons. All these big institutions, and all of us customers would benefit from some unified, universal financial platform. But nobody can build it, because every actor in a position to doesn't want to accept anyone else owning such an important choke point.

So what happens? Well, we get standards imposed by the only actor in the space powerful enough to create something like this: governments. Governments are, in general, not great at this sort of thing, and they certainly aren't very fast moving, or responsive to consumer demand.

This, is the problem that blockchain solves. We all know that anything you can do on Ethereum you can do in a relational database 1000x more efficiently and better. Better in every way except one: Ownership. Any traditional relational database is going to be owned by someone. Public blockchains are owned by no-one. JPMorgan can build applications on top of Ethereum or Bitcoin, not because they need its technical capabilities, but because Bank of America doesn't own it.

This is the critical insight to understanding why this stuff is important and valuable. It solves the coordination problem imposed by platforms. Platforms have tremendous value to users and efficiency, but they confer far too much power upon their owner for any financial institution to use a platform owned by another. The ability to make a 'financial commons' that is not owned by any one institution, government, or entity is what makes this technology powerful and useful.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#38

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

takeda wrote: post #27

exdsq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am - I happily call out things that don’t require a blockchain, and call bs on projects that shouldn’t use it, but having spent significant time looking into it I’m becoming less so about particular use cases. Edit: If someone can show me a non-blockchain design for decentralised over-collateralised loans then I’ll concede and go back to full skeptic :)

I don't know what over-collateralised loans are to suggest a solution, but I'm trusting you. I agree that there are cases where blockchain don't have alternatives. Those are where you want a decentralized ledger and you can't trust anyone. It can accomplish that, but is extremely inefficient doing it, so you really need to decide whether the cost is worth it.

> I don't know what over-collateralised loans are to suggest a solution,

A loan with a <100% loan-to-value ratio to the value of the supporting collateral, like traditional mortgages.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#39

Post by exdsq » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #36

exdsq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am - I happily call out things that don’t require a blockchain, and call bs on projects that shouldn’t use it, but having spent significant time looking into it I’m becoming less so about particular use cases. Edit: If someone can show me a non-blockchain design for decentralised over-collateralised loans then I’ll concede and go back to full skeptic :)

> If someone can show me a non-blockchain design for decentralised over-collateralised loans Since “decentralized finance” is typically defined in terms of blockchain use, there are, by the standard definitions, no non-blockchain decentralized finance solutions of any kind.

Sure, but the normal attack on blockchain is that you can do it without that tech - I think DeFi is genuinely useful and I don’t know how you could implement it with the same guarantees without a blockchain

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#40

Post by sneaksnacks » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

The author of this article obviously does not understand the value of bitcoin from a freedom/privacy standpoint. I sense a profound naïveté. Perhaps the author exists in a world of privilege, a perceptually managed zone created by authority figures he has not yet questioned. Thus he posts his arguments on a website that makes it to hackernews, in order to receive feedback that will shape his thinking. I see a conditioned mind that has produced this output. But for the sake of argument, some other possibilities.. It could be that his intellectual strategy is to put down other peoples work, in an attempt to elevate his status as a sort of lazy art critic. It could be that he has a better solution, a competitor to bitcoin (I doubt it). It could be that he’s a troll, and someone we shouldn’t feed. It could be..