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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

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Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#111

Post by obstacle1 »

somebodythere wrote: post #70
obstacle1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is Yet Another Liquidity Pool? $14B is not the kind of scale I mean. That is frankly trivial especially when transactions are large (or initial funding is high). What I mean is, if blockchain is going to be a revolutionary technology backing all finance, where is the evidence it can handle the kind of transaction volume that, say, major credit card networks generate?

Maybe check out DYDX L2.

Great pointer, thanks.

This is a protocol that rolls up ETH transactions and executes them in batch, in an attempt to alleviate scalability concerns. I can't really speak to the side/unintended effects of transaction rollups on a blockchain, but I'm interested in learning.

This excerpt from the FAQ

> It is worth noting that anyone can become a relayer so long as they have staked the required bond in the smart contract. This incentivises the relayer not to tamper with or withhold a rollup.

kind of bothers me. It does not seem like such a small step to go from 'decentralized' to 'cartel of relayers' to 'central bank and subordinate branches'. And the fact that this protocol is unavailable to US persons is interesting, though perhaps standard for the space right now.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#112

Post by ryandamm »

systemvoltage wrote: post #41
hubraumhugo wrote: post #33

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like stori…

This is literally how research in the Universities makes it to the world. Spin-offs like Boston Dynamics are essential to building things that may not have immediate use but payoff can potentially be huge. We need to do more of this. Don’t throw the baby with the bathwater. I really don’t think generalizations of certain jaded experience and then seeing the entire world with the same broken lens does any good. Probab…

The primary difference is that basic research is conducted with everyone's money -- mostly via grants, and a lot of it in the US underwritten by the federal government -- for everyone's benefit. Even the venture capital industry is largely averse to basic research; they want more Ubers, or companies that can bring University tech to market.

Blockchain? The money flowing in is substantially from retail investors. And that's the problem. This is why we have regulations.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#113

Post by benreesman »

poof131 wrote: post #98

A few months ago I agreed with her entirely. Tether is an unbacked fraud and NFTs are being front-run [1, 2]. The mid-level marketing Ponzi vibe is crazy. The latency of applications on the blockchain is atrocious. But more recently after learning from and interacting with people building in the space my assessment changed. There is an interesting intersection between tech, communities, and economics. There exists a…

I have wondered for awhile why the crypto mega-whales in my vicinity are trading USDT at par or better over the last year or two.

My conspiracy theory is that when insiders trade a distressed asset at par or better it’s often a bailout expectation that’s really being traded.

Who has unimaginable access to financing, a “stablecoin” going so/so, and a primary line of business critically dependent on Tether, like, I don’t know, a massive exchange with the highest volume pairs all sharing USDT as quote?

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#114

Post by magicjosh »

Dwolb wrote: post #103
magicjosh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good stuff, so you would suggest to the author that their examples are too narrow. Perhaps that smartphones, Uber, and Facebook all represented somewhat minor "time has come" type innovations, whereas you see Bitcoin as a development more like the internet itself, and that instead we are in the Arpanet days. (Disclosure I own Bitcoin and Ethereum)

Yeah narrow or just on a different layer/level of abstraction. Yup my mental model is we’re either in Arpanet days or multiple-competing-DOS days.

Are there any other examples of recent + long cycle developments? Solar? Electric vehicles?

Part of me has come to expect such fast development (Facebook, Uber, Yelp!), but other modern industries must have longer cycles I just am not paying attention.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#115

Post by exdsq »

ryandamm wrote: post #102
exdsq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you mean that they haven’t made useful ground, where useful is specific to you. Remember that blockchain technologies have become legal tender, have over a trillion in market cap, have become financial instruments traded by people around the globe, is taught at Universities and part of the CFA accounting exam, is in the news daily, has resulted in large investments in research, etc… It’s impact has hardly been…

When has "market cap" been a measure of a currency? This is indicative of the logical fallacy so common in these debates, conflating "store of value" with "useful mechanism for transactions." It's a Ponzi scheme. There's no inherent underlying value, its "market cap" is strictly a function of more dumb money flowing into the system. Occam's razor, this is the most likely explanation for everything in the crypto space…

Depends if you view them as stocks or currencies, no? If it’s stocks then market cap is normal. Anyhow, if it was a giant Ponzi scheme then what about the projects ran by JP Morgan/Visa/Deloitte/etc? I have no doubt some projects are scams, but there are also non-ponzi projects and I don’t agree with painting them all with the same brush.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#116

Post by qaq »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #93
qaq wrote: post #82

If there would be a legal framework in place that can tie a DAO to basically be legally binding bylaws of an actual org. and the smart contract lang. is expressive enough for this to work this would be extremely valuable. Outside of this most of web3 looks like hype.

so if we are depending on a centralized legal framework, why would we need the blockchain (decentralized store)? Wasn't Code supposed to be Law?

so we do not have to go through legal process to resolve anything

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#117

Post by tinco »

systemvoltage wrote: post #41
hubraumhugo wrote: post #33

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like stori…

This is literally how research in the Universities makes it to the world. Spin-offs like Boston Dynamics are essential to building things that may not have immediate use but payoff can potentially be huge. We need to do more of this. Don’t throw the baby with the bathwater. I really don’t think generalizations of certain jaded experience and then seeing the entire world with the same broken lens does any good. Probab…

Boston Dynamics is and always has been on a trajectory to build useful products based on technology that is promising. Whether they're going to be successful or not is dependent on financing and time and luck of technology.

Blockchain was awesome technology in 2008, and Ethereum brought very interesting developments. But in the end there's only one thing it can do, and that's be an irrefutable ledger, and for most purposes that are of interest to the common person that is an insignificant improvement on centrally governed ledgers.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#118

Post by obstacle1 »

Dwolb wrote: post #92
obstacle1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is Yet Another Liquidity Pool? $14B is not the kind of scale I mean. That is frankly trivial especially when transactions are large (or initial funding is high). What I mean is, if blockchain is going to be a revolutionary technology backing all finance, where is the evidence it can handle the kind of transaction volume that, say, major credit card networks generate?

We need more precision in the scale and performance targets you’re seeking prior to discussing blockchain analogs. It’s tough to respond when “serious financial application” or “revolutionary technology backing all finance” aren’t well-defined.

Sorry, thought my last paragraph covered that. Can any blockchain-backed tech handle the number of transactions per second that current major credit card/payment networks do?

One benchmark is 1,700 tps for VISA. https://phemex.com/blogs/what-is-transactions-per-second-tps

If not, why not? Especially after 10+ years of development and intense VC funding (as is the parent article's point).

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#119

Post by ryandamm »

The central problem in this entire debate is two groups talking past each other. The skeptics say "what is it for?" expecting a detailed answer, and the response from crypto enthusiasts is vague and high level; most of what I hear is heavy on words like "revolutionize" and "decentralize" but very, very short on specifics. Or I get argument by analogy to other technologies.

If I heard a single use case where blockchain technology actually created real value in the world, and was better than other alternatives, I'd listen. But it has to create real value, based on the real world and not some fantastical notion of what money is or governments are for.

I think we skeptics want a grounded narrative, and we're stuck hearing a thesis statement and nothing to back it up.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#120

Post by [deleted] »

baby wrote: post #74
hubraumhugo wrote: post #33

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like stori…

People are doing research and deploying cool stuff that others are actively using. You can criticize that as much as you want but it won’t do much.

[deleted]
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