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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#101

Post by iammisc »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #97

History replays itself every new invention or enlightment humans have. Over the past centuries many have been persecuted for studying chemistry, astronomy, physics and even biology. Think of Galileo who was persecuted for advaing the theory that the Earth was round. Crypto embodies a new paradigm whereby rules can be programmed and enforced by computers. Instead of relying on centralized human authorities to measure,…

> We are living a unique human experiment with Crypto. I really wish people would stop bashing the industry and instead join in the experiment.

This is the sort of pseudo-religious statement that makes people bristle when they hear about crypto.

You frame it as an experiment, and then follow it up by your wish for everyone to join the experiment. Normal experiments have control groups. The only groups that have no control group and demand universal obedience are religions. This is why people view crypto-promoters as the modern day equivalent of televangelists.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#102

Post by boringg »

delaaxe wrote: post #88
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” ar…

The projects reshaping the economy are named. The good ones are Ethereum and L2s. Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy. There's such an abundance of VC money that funding isn't scarce. Developer talent is however.

Doesn't the thought of "something that is supposedly/hypothetically going to change the fundamental economic system of the planet" built on back of VC money (I realize not all of crypto started from VC funding) seem to likely have some fundamental flaws? That and quality developer talent is rare that the final products shipped are going to be poor?

I really don't see how this thing shakes out well for humanity (not even including carbon costs)

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#103

Post by cslarson »

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing.

This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change to the status quo, or they choose not to educate themselves (try it) - neither is really valid response if you want to write coherently about something.

> We have systems like BitTorrent and Tor which are decentralized networks and whose responsibility is to blindly distribute data according to a set of prescribed rules and algorithms.

This is a great line because they clearly appreciate some decentralized tech. It is not such a cognitive leap to see that blockchain based smart contracts (Ethereum) are vehicles to build more legitimate decentralized protocols. Perhaps it's just too much. Because the landscape is now too large it is too difficult for the writer to point out specific valuable aspects, they get confused, and out of laziness paint a broad brush of "woo" all over it all.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#104

Post by disruptalot »

VHRanger wrote: post #72
serverholic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I support crypto. I view it as a laboratory where we can experiment with ideas around finance and governance. Many of the currently accepted ideas around these topics came from a pre-internet world. However, myself and others think that certain technologies have changed the game. Maybe we need government or maybe we don't. Maybe we need a centralized currency, maybe we don't. The thing is we won't really…

Your laboratory has run for 12 years and is currently consuming 0.5% of the world energy output and 20% of new GPUs. All of that without a popular usecase yet. Except for financial speculation, finance-of-last-resort, and crime. I would say that laboratory is not using the research grants well.

You could say "finance of last resort" or you could call it a new paradigm of finance. You are simply dismissing something that you have no personal connection to.

When you can't open a bank account, are discriminated against by institutions, live in highly authoritarian environments etc. This type of finance is not a "last resort" it's your first resort.

The reason it's not "popular" however you want to define it is simply a matter of time and not function.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#105

Post by klntsky »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #44
21eleven wrote: post #37

I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. Achieving these goals…

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” ar…

> but we're supposed to ignore the fact that a well-capitalized player could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO

Is it a problem, though? Not according to the protocol.

Asserting that it is a problem is a political statement.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#106

Post by danvoell »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #44
21eleven wrote: post #37

I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. Achieving these goals…

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” ar…

"what’s stopping a centralized player from duplicating the benefits of that superior solution at a lower cost in a centralized platform?" - This has been my strategy as of late. There are some real cool concepts being built. But once you factor in gas/technology costs and the idea that they don't rely on anonymous p2p transactions, a centralized concept makes sense.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#107

Post by [deleted] »

woodruffw wrote: post #31
capableweb wrote: post #10

Maybe the title should be updated. It doesn't have anything to do with decentralization per se, but about cryptocurrencies, which is just a technology that happens to use decentralization as a technology. I actually thought the article was gonna be about decentralization (as in P2P technology, like BitTorrent), but instead it's about the authors distaste for cryptocurrencies. Edit: Maybe it's just me, but the article…

Normally when we use the phrase "conflict of interest," we use it to imply a conflict between parties. One of the parties in your account is the blog author and/or their company; who is the other? The cryptocurrency community ? They aren't a party in the traditional sense, and the concept weakens further when we consider the press campaign among cryptocurrency fans to rebrand their schemes as transaction substrates.…

[deleted]

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#108

Post by history_ghost »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #97

History replays itself every new invention or enlightment humans have. Over the past centuries many have been persecuted for studying chemistry, astronomy, physics and even biology. Think of Galileo who was persecuted for advaing the theory that the Earth was round. Crypto embodies a new paradigm whereby rules can be programmed and enforced by computers. Instead of relying on centralized human authorities to measure,…

You guys started by comparing yourselves to the great people of history, before you'd done anything.

You guys have been saying the same thing for a decade. This kind of mindset and argument sounds remarkably ignorant about how power works (you'll never, never divorce the monetary system from outside, get real), and is ignorant about the value of law being something that changes over time.

This is the problem with building the world with 20 year old men. You don't know what you don't know.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#109

Post by DonHopkins »

krisrm wrote: post #7

Mirrors my feelings on the crypto-craze. As "decentralized" as some may want crypto currency to be, there are some inherently "central" activities (exchanges being one of them) that tend to be skirted around by proponents. Also, Decentralized Woo Hoo sounds like a great band name. Or something naughty from The Sims.

I have no idea what you're talking about -- Woo Hoo in The Sims is good clean centralized fun!

"Yep, this house is gonna be Woohoo Central."

http://jenba.net/sims2/?p=185

"I tried to woohoo everyone in The Sims 4"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oibAXV3vlo

"Missing Information: This article is missing information about How to initiate WooHoo. You can help The Sims Wiki by adding it."

"Sims usually desire to do a public WooHoo. Doing a public WooHoo will grant a special memory for the engaging Sims or a special moodlet and stride."

https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/WooHoo

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#110

Post by burnished »

capableweb wrote: post #22
WJW wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can withdraw at any point, until suddenly you can't anymore. That is the very core of investing: being rewarded for taking the risk of not receiving your money back at all. In particular, the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull. This is clearly a risk that most investors deem quite likely, because if it was a very low risk then the interest r…

> the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull Wouldn't this mean that most DeFi would be hacked or rug-pulled by now? Seems the opposite is true, as only a small percentage of DeFi sees hacks and/or rug-pulls. Could you make the same argument you generally make towards banks as well? Seems like you could, and in that case you're just making an argume…

No, more like an argument that you'll see the exact same problems that got regulated with the banking industry. Like. You could make this argument.. in a history book. This has already happened.
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