Blockchain would be a good idea if computers ran without consuming electricity. Could there not be a way for a computer to be designed as a biological plant that integrates perfectly with our environment and would produce no harmful effects.
Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
241–250 of 260 posts
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're talking about different use-cases than the person you're replying to. A distributed immutable ledger has many uses other than recording voluntary transactions, or even recording things to do with specific people. For example, such a ledger can be used to create a tamper-proof security-camera footage log. Just hashes of exported video files, locked into a chain at time of export. You can redact the vide…
> For example, such a ledger can be used to create a tamper-proof security-camera footage log. What's the use-case here - who are the untrustworthy individuals that society needs to protect itself against? Societal trust is currently rooted in people - it will not be switched over to machines/distributed ledgers any time soon. This is why people can write affidavits/get sworn in to say "That video's legit" under pain…
That example is not about positive proof (i.e. proving that real evidence is real); it's about negative proof (i.e. proving that fake evidence is fake.) It's about having a way to figure out that the expert defending the evidence has been bribed, and is saying what the prosecution wants them to say.
You can't charge someone with perjury if you can't prove the faked evidence is faked—which is why so few people get charged with perjury. Any threat of perjury with no discriminatory proof mechanism to back it up, is toothless, and experts will treat such threats with exactly the respect they deserve. (Look at the Japanese court system if you don't believe me.)
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
This brings up a good question. How do you migrate a blockchain from Azure to somewhere else?
You rebuild it, same with any public cloud that isn't using an open standard. That is why people should only invest enough effort into a cloud to deploy an agnostic solution like Kubernetes.
Or use AWS where services aren't switched off, they just no longer get promoted, and then eventually you cannot start new things on them, but can still run your existing stuff for the next 10 years.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#244Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…
It's an extremely rare problem for now because it's a new technology that has barely been explored. Like all technologies once it goes more mainstream people come up with new ideas that were never thought of because they weren't possible before.
Blockchains solve the problem of needing a shared database among people that don't trust each other. Most of the best use cases are removing middle men.
Some examples that are being worked on right now:
Trading of any financial asset - why do we need Robinhood / Fidelity etc to trade shares? If shares in companies can be listed on a blockchain then people can trade them anywhere anytime directly with each other even when they don't trust each other.
Larger markets for digital goods: Many games have started putting their items on Etherum (or layer 2 solutions) so that players can easily trade them without the developers needing to run their own marketplace. This can then extend to being able to use items across multiple games, or trade items from one game with items from another.
Now there's ethereum tokens that allow the original creator to get a cut of all trades of that item. This opens an interesting funding model where a company could create an open source permissionless game where you download the client, connect to the public chain, play and acquire items, trade those items with others, and the game creators gain funds based on a cut of all trade happening around the game which allows them to further development. Then because it's open source people can create forks with their own art styles and mod the game easily and people can participate in the same world with many different clients.
There's so many cool things happening in the decentralized finance space and I think we're going to look back on this decade as the decade where software started to eat wall street. Many of these firms are merely middle men facilitating trades amongst untrusted parties, and blockchains can do that so much more efficiently than them.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably, by publishing the hash on a public blockchain they are creating a trusted record of when the hash was published, which can be verified after the fact and which cannot be modified or removed, with planet-scale proof-of-work level of cryptographic assurance. If they published the hashes on, say, their webpage or some third party's webpage, nothing would prevent them (or the third party) from redacting or re…
RFC 3161 does the same, without a blockchain (public or private).
And how would you use RFC 3161 as a company that wants that use case?
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#246Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…
>Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem.
Trust and fraud is extremely rare problem?! Read the Bitcoin's whitepaper again and you will be in the better understanding of Bitcoin's and Blockchain's purpose.
"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
"Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments."
Decentralizing trust means not depending on one entity or group of entities to handle financial transactions or transactions of any type.
"Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party." [0]
Establishing trust means eradicating fraud in a sense that blockchain is transparent and open database based on decentralized cryptographic proof which enables trust.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem It's not a rare problem. Fiat currencies don't work for the majority of people. The problem is ubiquitous. We need to separate money from state and blockchain provides a mechanism to do that. Just because fiat works for a handful of rich people, doesn't mean that it works for everyone. Everyone can see that the current system is unfair.
rofl you know someone is crypto-sick when they say fist currency only works for "a handful of rich people."
Freedom from corporate wage slavery and mind-numbing bureaucracy is of critical importance to me.
If you're corporate cattle and you like it, then good for you but don't tell a slave that they're sick for not wanting to be a slave.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#248Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…
> Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem.
sincere apologies for the pedantry, but "blockchain" is a concrete countable noun... if you can replace "blockchain" with "cell phone" in a sentence and it sounds wrong, you should change it, e.g. "blockchains are a brilliant solution" or "blockchain technology is a brilliant solution".
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#249Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#250Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…
>It's amazing how much bullshit has been pitched under the flag of "blockchain"
You can build a city based on it... https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2020/08/18/akon-is-rea...