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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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

#251

Post by igorkraw »

smokey_circles wrote: post #164

I just can't take the power and pollution argument seriously. There's just nothing salient about it. I might have otherwise agreed with the author on their other points but if you can't see the issue with this argument it disqualifies your opinion (which js just my opinion). "Bitcoin requires lots of electricity". No, nowhere near the scale human activity sans blockchain does and to provide it we burn coal. Like we'v…

The difference is that from then perspective of the critics, cryptos burn the energy needs of multiple small country for Ponzi schemes.

Purely to represent the opinion of the critics now, aluminum smelting might be and, but at least aluminum out of it, so they don't criticize the base activity, just the energy type. From the perspective of the critics, we don't need to struggle and transition crypto to RE, we can just stop doing it.

I personally agree, but people with your perspective (presumably) don't and place Crypto in "expensive but inherently valuable activity" or at least in "entertainment" both of which also use a lot of coal power but aren't negotiable, hence people focus on the energy sources not so much the activity.

Hence talking past each other

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

#252

Post by cmews »

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…

Helium network is an example of a successful blockchain project/application in my opinion. They created the biggest decentralized lorawan network in the world that is used by more internet of things companies everyday. Also they are trying the same thing for creating a decentralized 5G network. It’s still early days for them because I think they started in the end of 2020 or the start of 2021, but they have grown to 490000 lorawan hotspots already. The network usage could be better, but is increasing (saw increased sensor data activity for my hotspot in 2021).

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

#254

Post by yashg »

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.

Is there any cool stuff that doesn't involve speculative trading in some "coin" or "token"?

I recently read about a steel maker in India executing a cross border order on blockchain. On further reading it turns out their bank used a third party company for digitizing letter of credit and that company claims to be using an enterprise blockchain R3 Corda. R3 itself is owned by a consortium of banks and on their website they don't use the word blockchain to describe Corda. They call it DLT.

My understanding is that a blockchain is supposed to be distributed, trustless, permissionless, immutable and open. At least that is what the core ideology behind it and is touted as the cornerstone features of blockchain. An enterprise blockchain is private, trustful, permissoned and everything that is a blockchain is not supposed to be. At that stage is it even a blockchain or just another propitiatory data store?

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

#255

Post by eterm »

neiman wrote: post #229
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand. You're saying that you wouldn't be able to perform online votes or surveys and remotely send money without a blockchain? Could you expand more on what functionality that the blockchain provides that the other solutions in this space (online surveys and remotely send money) don't?

Sure. "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do. I literally just struggled for a month with a transfer that included 3 countries, none of them is English speaking. It required letters from banks, accountants, plenty of forms of different countries, translations, stuff which is lost in translation (the bank was unhappy with the word selection of a non-English speaker accountant, for example), different format…

> "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do.

Technologically it is not.

Which is why anyone in the EU can instantly send money to anywhere else in the EU, for free, despite being a collection of 27 countries with dozens of different languages and legacy banking systems.

The hurdles are legal and regulatory, not technical.

Blockchain and new technology does not solve the underlying problem at all.

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

#256

Post by tinco »

clairity wrote: post #214
tinco wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

boston dynamics has never even been close to being on a trajectory to build useful products. they’re a grant-harvesting company first and foremost. they simply do not know how to build efficient and useful locomotors despite at least 3 decades of practice and millions of years of evolutionary precedents literally living right outside its doors. in that way, the analogy to blockchain is apt: technology focused efforts…

They literally have a product for sale now. You make it sound like they're somehow worse at making locomotors than other companies are. Do you have any competitors in mind that achieved more with less practice?

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

#257

Post by usrbinbash »

ique wrote: post #199
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…

The idea that blockchain tech is somehow invented out of nothing and then we search for a problem to match couldn't be further from the truth. Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem. I used to work in blockchain tech and the main problem I was focused on was "How do we prevent internet monopolies like Facebook and Google?". If you don't see those monopolies as a problem, then y…

And how does a distributed Ledger solve these problems?

Monopolies like Google and Facebook exist, in no small part, because the amount of computation and data they handle is vast, and they have the data centers to deal with that.

How much data gets has to be stored on the servers of such services? Per second? I'd assume its in the range of several GiB...again per second.

Okay, so how does the blockchain compare to that? Ethereum can store data, each byte requires about 600 of its "gas" computational equivalent. A block represents 30,000,000 gas, 1 block is generated every 15sec, so we can store a grand total of about 1MiB every 300 seconds...that is, if none of the gas is used for anything other than storing data, which means, no other computations running.

So how is "blockchain technology" going to solve the problems that come from such highly centralized services exactly?

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

#258

Post by TylerE »

Kinrany wrote: post #176
ryandamm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My wife recently suggested one: NFTs minted by your university as proof of your diploma. Or perhaps your academic transcript. No way to forge a fake diploma again. This is once again better served by a database. Diplomas are inherently centralized and issued by a trusted authority. Guess we gotta keep brainstorming for use cases -- that's how technology development works, right?

The university can shut down, suffer data loss or get hacked. Decentralized storage is an improvement. No sense in diplomas being transferable though.

Except NFT storage is actually highly centralized?

What happens if OpenSea shuts down?

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

#259

Post by neiman »

RandomLensman wrote: post #210
neiman wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you are looking for a product blockchain enables you, but there are activities the blockchain enables which are not products, and are very difficult up to impossible without. One example is sustainable (financially) open-source project is one I use now. Before that it was always impossible. You get a bunch of people all over the world, many of them are identified only by Internet handles. There's no investme…

How do you comply with compliance and reporting requirements? I would naively imagine that interacting with the financial system/fullfilling requirements for cross border payments etc. are still difficult when everyone is anonymous Not saying you are doing something wrong but rather that I see a lot of applications in the wild that have to do with people imagining also a different regulatory landscape - which actuall…

I transfer all my financial actions to my accountant who's reporting it while instructing me what I need to do further.

Compliance and reporting really differ from one country to another, and I'm not familiar with the US system (which I heard is one of the most strict). But as far as I checked (I'm not a lawyer, not an accountant and not an expert), where I live in the EU, compliance is something for legal entities (like, organizations, companies) and not for individuals like me.

[E: I take the last sentence back, it's a too general statement and I don't have the knowledge to make it. Thanks @hnhg for the comment]

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

#260

Post by tinco »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #154
gls2ro wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people are angry about blockchain (the technology) but about promises people make that with this technology will solve almost any society or world problem and then attracting people to invest and then if it does not work make the promise larger and atrract more money. To use your example: it is like Boston Dynamics and people around will start saying invest in our IRO (Initial Robot Offering) as we will…

Right. Maybe the big problem is not the lack of solutions, but the fact that we don't really understand the problems?

There's no big problem, science and technology are progressing at a great pace. The whole marketing of snake oil solutions is just a nuisance, they're not really affecting anything of value significantly.

People are annoyed by Blockchain the same way people were annoyed by Justin Bieber, it's a whole lot to do about a person who is just a kid, a cool kid maybe, and he did make some good songs when he got older, but he didn't change the world, and he probably isn't going to either.

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