The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

Post by viraptor » Sun, May 23, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #124

jeremycarter wrote: post #16

Blockchain, Decentralization and Smart Contracts have had nearly a decade to prove their value and disrupt the marketplace. So far nothing but whitepapers, pipe dreams and exit scams - nothing my mother can use. What's the point? Nobody is using crypto as an alternative to fiat. Prove me wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong but I see this perspective so often on HN. And I can't help but feel that this is because so many people on HN are already privileged - living in the first world, making software salaries, and generally have a world of opportunities available to them, especially when it comes to their money. But coming from a third world country, the promise of a decentralized, permissionless market seems extremely pr…

Post by noxer » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #144

noxer wrote: post #85

This has some really questionable assumptions. Like the part about permanence. "An important property of a blockchain that users really value is permanence. A digital asset stored on a server will stop existing in 10 years when the company goes bankrupt or loses interest in maintaining that ecosystem. An NFT on Ethereum, on the other hand, is forever." This is wrong 2 times. First, there is no general requirement of…

I agree with this, a durable record of every transaction ever performed is in fact an anti-feature for a digital ledger. Mimblewimble[0] is one interesting solution to this. Unfortunately, the requirement in current implementations (such as Grin) that both wallets be online to complete a transaction, eliminates some valuable types of transaction, such as sending coin to a cold wallet. I do think for a 'world computer…

Post by puranjay » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #148

puranjay wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm wrong but I see this perspective so often on HN. And I can't help but feel that this is because so many people on HN are already privileged - living in the first world, making software salaries, and generally have a world of opportunities available to them, especially when it comes to their money. But coming from a third world country, the promise of a decentralized, permissionless market seems extremely pr…

The insoluble problem is that any system of the kind you describe where the final tokens are ultimately spendable will be swamped by criminal use. If you make an end run around the existing regulatory system through code, the people who are inhibited from transfering money by the current regulatory regime will all use your new system. And that traffic will be overwhelmingly criminal. The amount of illicit money needi…

Post by znpy » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:06 PM UTC

    For a blockchain to be decentralized, it's crucially important 
    for regular users to be able to run a node, and to have a 
    culture where running nodes is a common activity.

Post by idlewords » Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #165

idlewords wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insoluble problem is that any system of the kind you describe where the final tokens are ultimately spendable will be swamped by criminal use. If you make an end run around the existing regulatory system through code, the people who are inhibited from transfering money by the current regulatory regime will all use your new system. And that traffic will be overwhelmingly criminal. The amount of illicit money needi…

I think money transfer was Blockhain Era 1.0 use case. The use case has advanced - very rapidly - to money automation. This is all really new stuff, much of it barely a year old, and it has come so fast that even I've been surprised. A smart contract can currently take your tokenized USD (we'll use USDC since its backed by Coinbase), use that as collateral to borrow ETH on AAVE.com (a lending protocol), use 50% of th…