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Yea, it’s useful for when you don’t trust someone to not edit history. These days I’ve seen it as a vaccination record.
I can achieve “don’t edit history” with a Merkel Tree; It’s what powers Git. Git also doesn’t consume the power requirements of a large developing nation.
I don’t claim to have any insight whatsoever, but I can’t help but think about all those decades old (now hilarious) articles about how the internet is a buzz word and hasn’t really lived up to its hype.
I am looking for that "internet vs fax" article from the 90's, and cannot put my finger on it ...
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It’s not that simple, however, since the inherent inefficiency means you have higher transaction costs to operate the network and since there’s no fraud protection you still need trusted third parties to broker any exchange where fraud is a possibility. As an expensive way to transfer money to your drinking buddy it works but if you’re buying or selling with strangers those third parties are necessary and still need…
> since there’s no fraud protection you still need trusted third parties to broker any exchange where fraud is a possibility. The whole point of DEXes is that you dont need that. >Similarly, you aren’t getting rid of trust: power recentralizes in a handful of users who control the most mining power and the developers Maybe in ETH's case but highly decentralized non-mining networks already exist. Cardano for example i…
Okay, so if I sell you a new laptop and you receive a box with an old one, how do you get your money back? Do you have the option of reporting fraud and getting your money back even though I gave the promised good?
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Yea, it’s useful for when you don’t trust someone to not edit history. These days I’ve seen it as a vaccination record.
I can achieve “don’t edit history” with a Merkel Tree; It’s what powers Git. Git also doesn’t consume the power requirements of a large developing nation.
I really don't think blockchains are a panacea and in many cases they're a solution looking for a problem, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily useless.
EDIT: Also as a sibling parent said, it's just proof of work what gets the bad rap about power consumption, and there's nothing inherently costly in blockchains themselves.
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> The same could be said of the Internet when it was first invented. It was far from mature and took two decades, but it revolutionised the delivery of information. This is a standard talking point but it's not an accurate comparison because it ignores the barriers to adoption related to computing in general. Internet adoption in the very early years was constrained by the need to use expensive computers and network…
> Maybe we could write that off as an early failure except that nobody has come up with a successor It’s possible that this is actually because Bitcoin. The effect it has had of making early owners rich despite not solving other problems , has made this the goal of most new crypto schemes.
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> since there’s no fraud protection you still need trusted third parties to broker any exchange where fraud is a possibility. The whole point of DEXes is that you dont need that. >Similarly, you aren’t getting rid of trust: power recentralizes in a handful of users who control the most mining power and the developers Maybe in ETH's case but highly decentralized non-mining networks already exist. Cardano for example i…
> The whole point of DEXes is that you dont need that. Okay, so if I sell you a new laptop and you receive a box with an old one, how do you get your money back? Do you have the option of reporting fraud and getting your money back even though I gave the promised good?
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> The whole point of DEXes is that you dont need that. Okay, so if I sell you a new laptop and you receive a box with an old one, how do you get your money back? Do you have the option of reporting fraud and getting your money back even though I gave the promised good?
DEXs solve those problems in a Forex-type environment, not all environments.
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I can achieve “don’t edit history” with a Merkel Tree; It’s what powers Git. Git also doesn’t consume the power requirements of a large developing nation.
Git also allows you to push --force if so you wish, something that would require a 51% attack if you were to do it in a blockchain-based ledger. I really don't think blockchains are a panacea and in many cases they're a solution looking for a problem, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily useless. EDIT: Also as a sibling parent said, it's just proof of work what gets the bad rap about power consumption, and there…
I grumble at the time limit on edits for HN comments sometimes, even if I do understand why it's there.
Here's plenty of prior discussion:
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I think paying an artist is not so straight forward. The artist must set up a bank account. Now they must sign somewhere to accept credit cards. Now they must have art that is friendly to said card processor, or else you get deplatformed. Seems we found one use case.
You still need a bank account to get actual cash out of cryptocurrency. From the perspective of an artist, cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp, Transferwise, Zelle, Google Pay, or any of the other readily available ways to send money. Unless you're literally selling art by emailing photos of the art and accepting payments to your bitcoin wallet directly, you're still using a platform, and…