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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

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Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#381

Post by MomoXenosaga »

dmitriid wrote: post #362
n0mad01 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very limited and short-sighted view on the emergence and development of new technologies. From the first petrol engine (1879) to the Ford Model T (1908), the Arpanet (1969) to the Internet (1990), as also software development (Cyberpunk 2077 was developed over 8 years), these things have one thing in common: they need time. When one day your every breath (and its payment) is recorded on a blockchain then yo…

For some reason bitcoin apologists always use cars, and the internet, and other actual disruptive technologies and inventions. Even though with each passing day it looks more like radioactive health products [1] [1] https://interestingengineering.com/9-interesting-failed-inve...

Debet cards took less than 20 years to become common which I think is a better comparison.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#382

Post by Kbelicius »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #295
kaladin_1 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You can't say the same when you deposit money into, say, Robinhood How do you know what the major exchanges are doing as well? By the way, how did the exchanges wind up becoming so powerful and rich. Becoming almost a parallel Wall Street, just a smaller one, in a system that was supposed to ultimately democratise power. Some people with resources managed to emerge at the top in decision making...

Centralized exchanges are a necessary evil for now. DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is where code is law. Services like Uniswap, Curve, Aave etc are all just code that you interact with on Ethereum. Once you've onboarded into the decentralized world you can use them at will and eventually you'll be able to live your life without having to use centralized services again.

> Centralized exchanges are a necessary evil for now. DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is where code is law. Services like Uniswap, Curve, Aave etc are all just code that you interact with on Ethereum.

Code is not law and I doubt it can ever be. IIRC ethereum even had that saying on their web page until that stance threatened to lose a lot of money to people with power within ethereum.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#383

Post by bhaak »

Dzugaru wrote: post #340
tsimionescu wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All block chains in practice require trusting central authorities (trust the code, trust the protocol, trust the math behind it, trust the hardware, trust people to honor their off-chain transactions, trust authorities to help when they don't etc.) so this whole fantasy about 'trustless systems' is meaningless anyway. You can't create trustless electronic systems for humans. There is simply too much complexity in eve…

This is blatantly false. Bitcoin doesn't require anything at all besides the idea of a most work chain humanity produced. You just pick it and that's it. You cant pick wrong, there is no chain bigger. All other cryptos are a fantasy and cannot provide any comparable guarantees.

How do you ensure that you got the correct code? Without the correct consensus rules that are encoded in the software, you can't be sure if the blockchain you are following is the right one.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#384

Post by dmitriid »

n0mad01 wrote: post #373
dmitriid wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason bitcoin apologists always use cars, and the internet, and other actual disruptive technologies and inventions. Even though with each passing day it looks more like radioactive health products [1] [1] https://interestingengineering.com/9-interesting-failed-inve...

it is noticeably peculiar to compare one of the most significant technical inventions of our century with a half-baked hair dryer. such innovations only appear now and then, one should have the intuition to recognize them as such, otherwise he will miss the opportunities of such developments.

> one should have the intuition to recognize them as such, otherwise he will miss the opportunities of such developments.

That's the narrative of scam artists since before time.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#385

Post by dmitriid »

puranjay wrote: post #192
akarma wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wei…

> Like on-chain insurance

Doesn't need blockchain

> tranches to compartmentalize risk

Doesn't need blockchain

> creating entirely synthetic assets on-chain

What does it even mean? Also: doesn't require blockchain.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#386

Post by k__ »

wcoenen wrote: post #365
k__ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, it will probably take another decade. I think, BC could go to 5 million before it stablizes.

The dynamics of mining make this impossible. If Bitcoin were worth millions, then miners could spend millions on electricity to find each block and still make a profit. And because they're competing with hashrate, they would do exactly that. If you do the math, you'll find that basically all electricity would go to mining. Before we would get to that point, the electricity price would start going up of course. For ev…

I did some math and my idea was:

If the max amount of Bitcoin is 21mio and we assume that a huge chunk of the economy will be payable with these Bitcoin. Then on Bitcoin has to be worth (at least) 1/21mio of that economy chunk.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#387

Post by n0mad01 »

dmitriid wrote: post #384
n0mad01 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is noticeably peculiar to compare one of the most significant technical inventions of our century with a half-baked hair dryer. such innovations only appear now and then, one should have the intuition to recognize them as such, otherwise he will miss the opportunities of such developments.

> one should have the intuition to recognize them as such, otherwise he will miss the opportunities of such developments. That's the narrative of scam artists since before time.

its worth a dollar - its a scam.

its worth a hundred dollars, people use it to buy goods - its a scam.

its worth a thousand dollars, people start using it as a store of value and a hedge against inflation - its a scam.

its worth 65.000 dollars, theres also ethereum changing the face of banking forever - its a scam.

calling me a scam artist while disregarding all the givens of reality, at this point its really hard to convey how extraordinarily mind-bendingly narrow-minded this point of view is.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#388

Post by dugo »

Try running a full node for ETH on a beefy desktop and you quickly run into the limits. There is also the maximimum speed of light, which will make scaling interplanetary a bit difficult on high speed block times.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#389

Post by atweiden »

nootropicat wrote: post #280
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.

Defi is only about 2-3 years old. It's indeed fair to say that bitcoin has completely failed in getting any adoption beyond speculation. >Nobody is using crypto as an alternative to fiat. Ethereum is the best way to save in dollars outside of the developed world. High single digit or double digit yields (powered by speculators borrowing to speculate) vs ~0% in the banking system. Also much safer. Not compared to an A…

> Defi is only about 2-3 years old

The history of defi can be traced back to mid-2013 (mastercoin) or earlier (colored coins).

And what the cool kids are calling “defi” today was called “appcoins” and “utility coins” several years ago. It’s all just marketing spin.

> It's indeed fair to say that bitcoin has completely failed in getting any adoption beyond speculation.

Digital gold is a euphemism for speculative store of value. Gold itself is a speculative SoV. For Bitcoin, that’s a sign of success — which is reflected in its market price.

There is not one single cryptocurrency on the market today which isn’t a speculative store of value primarily by real world usage. Rather there is Bitcoin which is upfront about this, and then there are other coins whose skilled sophists promote it as being something other than a speculative store of value as a hollow front. Peak behind the curtain and you’ll find a speculative store of value in 100% of cases, absolutely without exception. If anything has failed here it’s the moral compass of altcoin promoters globally, and investors for being so easily misled by hype entrepreneurs.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#390

Post by ric2b »

dannyw wrote: post #348
seibelj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always preferred to require less resources. There must be a healthy balance. If Ethereum accomplishes what a lot of us hope, allowing home-hobbyists to run nodes and at least break-even in staking or profit a small amount will be crucial. Relying on goodwill from a small amount of technically-adept-yet-centralized operators is how we get to the Tor situation where everyone knows the government runs most of the…

Genuine question: can crypto economics provide incentives for a more decentralised Tor? I'm talking about being paid crypto for hosting a tor node, and charged crypto for using a tor node. Using privacy technologies like ring signatures of course.

Technologies like payment channels would allow for automatic pay-as-you-go schemes where your Tor client would pay sub-cent amounts for every MB used or whatever.

But privacy is indeed a big challenge since we're talking about Tor.

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