Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

vitalik.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 465 posts

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#191

Post by atweiden »

vehementi wrote: post #130
BeefWellington wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain This seems an odd claim to make. Currently there's hundreds of Cryptocurrencies using blockchains as a foundation, and more than half a trillion dollars tied up in them. Right now it seems like they're at least speculative investments. If this does not count as a use-case then we'd better break the news to essentially all of finance. Year…

You can take any obscenely inefficient technology and apply it to anything and say "look, it's useful", but that doesn't make it a good idea or viable or really even not pointless. I heard it best put as: blockchain provides trustlessness at very high operational cost -- do we have a business case where trustlessness is a competitive advantage? If not, just use a database or equivalent So like yes, you can implement…

> So like yes, you can implement insurance and messaging and contracts with blockchain. Is there a need to do that? Does it make sense? Would that business work? (Zero percent of such businesses have worked)

The tricky part of this, of course, is in the Bitcoin space “validity” hinges upon valuation. Unfortunately cryptocurrency valuation is based on narrative entirely, and narratives continue driving trading volumes even in the face of undeniable technological shortcomings, see e.g. the saga of continual unstable “stablecoin” implosions, or Ripple.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#192

Post by puranjay »

akarma wrote: post #186
puranjay wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad UX in early technology is kind of expected, isn't it? I'm sure lots of first-world, college-educated people were equally bewildered by email in 1995.

Agreed and it's expected, but the question posed was whether there's actual current instances of crypto helping people in the third-world, or whether it's just a bunch of hypothetical future promises of value.

Speaking as someone from the third world, absolutely.

I just implore anyone here to approach this with an open mind. There's lots of fraud, but that's also leading people to come up with newer, more exciting solutions. Like on-chain insurance (https://nexusmutual.io/) or tranches to compartmentalize risk (https://saffron.finance/) or creating entirely synthetic assets on-chain (https://synthetix.io/)

It's a weird space where finance and tech and design and culture are coming together, and frankly, it's the most fun I've had in tech in years.

Even though I feel that current valuations are grossly overheated, the stuff coming out on a daily basis is just a ton of fun.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#193

Post by atweiden »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #78
narush wrote: post #38

One thing blockchain scalability conversations often miss is the concept of induced demand [1]. City streets and computer hardware and blockchain throughput. We dream that 'make bigger, make faster' will alleviate congestion in all of these places, and make our commute and compute as fast and cheap as we want it to be. But in practice, commuters are programmers are blockchain users. For commuters, if more lanes get a…

And that is why scaling solutions like Polygon have a future if Ethereum has a future.

That’s just a narrative, though. The practical reality is cryptocurrency valuation is driven by these narratives 100%. The other practical reality is the people pretending as if this reality doesn’t exist are increasingly perceived to be engaged in biased sophistry.

Granted, low information people are still falling for it, but high information people increasingly aren’t, as evidenced by Ethereum failing to get even 3/4s of the way to its previous bitcoin-denominated valuation high over the most recent market cycle, despite ludicrous levels of hype.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#194

Post by mbesto »

puranjay wrote: post #140
jeremycarter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a hater. I am just applying some critical thinking and design thinking to try to figure out where the value is in all of this to the customer. I am happy to say I'm wrong, and happy to backflip.

Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 some links to complement the comment: https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens…

> https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange.

I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#195

Post by puranjay »

lottin wrote: post #185
puranjay wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally gave a real world example: Curve.fi that's used to swap between stablecoins. You can literally go right now to swap between tokenized USD and EURO. Or you can go to the bank and pay their exchange rate. Maybe they'll ask you for your ID too. Another example of the second kind: www.Ape.tax, where anyone can deploy an investment strategy and beta users can try them out, and if they are successful, they can…

What do you mean is happening right now? For example, you mention foreign currency exchanges. According to Wikipedia, trading in foreign exchange markets averaged $6.6 trillion per day (April 2019). [1] Is there any indication that foreign exchange markets are moving towards adopting this trading of tokenized currencies that apparently is so much better than the system they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/…

You're being disingenuous if you're trying to compare the mature foreign exchange market with a technology that's barely half a decade old and still obscure by most standards. Curve.fi, the example I shared, was launched in Jan 2020 and peaked at a daily volume of $1B.

Personally, I can't buy USD without going to the bank and filling out paperwork, submitting ID documents and clarifying why I need the USD and adhering to prescribed limits.

I have no such restrictions with their tokenized variants.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#196

Post by comex »

dehrmann wrote: post #166
rapsey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is manipulated by hedge funds and/or whales to fleece unsophisticated investors. Wyckoff pattern has described BTC this tear to a t.

> The price is manipulated Clearly. Watch the price after Musk's announcements. > fleece unsophisticated investors Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade.

> Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade.

And yet some people dump their life savings into it.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#197

Post by scabarott »

dehrmann wrote: post #143
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.

> nothing my mother can use In developed countries, I can tap with my phone or card to pay instantly, there's Venmo, and fees are low-ish. Currently, no cryptocurrency has competitive advantages to traditional payments...unless it's illegal, but even then, certain cryptocurrences are a really bad choice. Supposedly phone apps are used for payments in developing countries, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm a huge proponent of crypto and the many things it's going to make possible that were not previously possible. But the developing country angle is oversold usually by people just parroting it without really knowing what things are like in developing countries: 1. In many developing countries increasingly you can also use phone or card almost as conveniently as you can in the west. In fact some developing countries are more advanced as far as mobile payments go (out of necessity because of less developed banking systems) e.g Mpesa in Kenya. Generally visa/bank cards and payment apps are not as alien as you might think they are in many parts of Africa or India or South America 2. Using Bitcoins for transactions/moving money around with the current state of the art is a lot more difficult and less accessible than using western union and other financial services that are ubiquitous in these places. Since at present you can't really use Bitcoin for much you still have to convert it fiat which means using an exchange. Most exchanges have even more onerous kyc/id requirements than banks and many financial institutions in developing countries won't even touch bitcoin at all. And not even to talk of the relative technical sophistication required to use crypto services let alone maintain a wallet. As far as developing countries go crypto-currency at present is mostly a curiosity among the well-heeled and well-connected in the largest cities. It's going to be a long long time before the promise of crypto bringing salvation to the un-banked comes anywhere close to reality.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#198

Post by puranjay »

mbesto wrote: post #194
puranjay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 some links to complement the comment: https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens…

> https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?

1. Transfer to your bank account via an exchange (KYC applies)

2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC )

3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card)

4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card)

5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (projects like AMP - https://amptoken.org/ - US only for now)

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#199

Post by CryptoPunk »

idlewords wrote: post #152
Sleepytime wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was around a lot longer than a decade before aol showed up and started pressing CDs.

Imagine if after TCP/IP was invented, people hoarded IP addresses and they became worth millions of dollars, but no one used the internet. If you pointed this out, they got mad at you for being a luddite or a noiper. That's the situation we're in with crypto.

People use Ethereum..

https://etherscan.io/chart/gasused

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#200

Post by puranjay »

rapsey wrote: post #8
laurent92 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to summarize, for an employee who got caught in “Elon Musk shouldn’t have manipulated the BTC” (!) (obviously the employee lost 25% of his savings), I was trying to summarize the list of dangers of having savings in BTC. - Laws of any big country could change and trigger the sale for a lot of sellers of a country, - Especially given BTC is used by Iran to bypass petrol restrictions, used by ransomware an…

The price is manipulated by hedge funds and/or whales to fleece unsophisticated investors. Wyckoff pattern has described BTC this tear to a t.

The price isn't manipulated - the price was overheated and we're closer to bear than most realize.

Which is good because crypto is a lot more fun in bear markets.

Post reply on HN