It’s not still the early days of blockchain • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by xchaotic » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #138

yunruse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my very (admittedly very inexperienced) perspective, both views here are valid: it's foolish to scour the world for nails, but it doesn't hurt to make a hammer. Build the technology, think of how it could help, and if you can't find a niche in the world that it fits, don't force the issue. Move onto new things: perhaps re-use some old ideas, of course, but actively get a wider experience, so that you increase yo…

I have no idea what blockchain does or not. But just because its applications have turned out to be scammy, is it possible that it still has good uses in the future? May be and may be not. OP is saying more generally that we should stop looking at tech that has no uses. I am disagreeing with that stance and it is just silly to be so wound up about Blockchain zeitgeist to not see through the fog.

This is waste to keep throwing resources at something because maybe someday something good will come out of it. There’s many more areas like sequencing genomes and fighting cancer that these programmers could be spending their time on.

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

#532

Post by miracle2k » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #435

baby wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don’t. They’re pretty green.

"pretty green" is not a unit of measurement. How "green" something is, is determined by how much resources one unit of what it does uses, compared to how much resources doing the same unit of work on an alternative system uses. eg. a petroleum lantern produces light more efficiently than a campfire. However, neither of them is "pretty green" compared to a LED. Compare the amount of energy per transaction required wit…

> "pretty green" is not a unit of measurement.

PoS is just a bunch of computers largely idling. Whether it's 1k or 10k, it doesn't matter - there is no energy use to speak of, at least none that society has a legitimately interest in regulating.

The Tezos Foundation, who's interest is in advertising how green they are, claims in a year they consume as much electricity as 17 individuals (https://tezos.com/carbon/).

It is up to critics to provide evidence of PoS energy use being a concern; no one has done so, because the outcome is essentially is predetermined.

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

#533

Post by throwaway98700k » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

janandonly wrote: post #484

I never understand critiques like these. > "somehow no one appears to have managed to find a positive use for blockchains that wouldn’t be better served by blockchainless technologies" There is now a sovereign nation state that accepted Bitcoin as a currency, and, mark my words, no doubt more will follow this 2022. Replacing central banks, and by extension, their grasp on the limitless money printing, is the whole re…

By all accounts the adoption of that tech in El Salvador has been a disaster, the app is slow, buggy, not everyone has access and it’s easily exploitable for crime. Protests against it. Etc. I anticipate a reversal of this by the next government. Current governments cannot admit mistakes, so it’ll take a new term for it to be dismantled.

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

#534

Post by xchaotic » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

leppr wrote: post #317

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem with Blockchain is that it is strictly less efficient than centralized databases. therefore the only reason to use it is if you can't trust a centralized database. it's like torrents in the alternate universe where torrents were slower than a download from a server.

It's not a bad analogy. Torrents have more cumbersome UX and are less data efficients than direct downloads, yet they are widely used for some types of applications.

How is a torrent less efficient in data transfer? Do you mean protocol overhead?

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

#535

Post by pirate787 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #422

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…

Bitcoin had a problem to solve, it had a use case, from day dot... Satoshi set out to replace central banks that can inflate the money supply. It was supposed to be relatively boring tech solving a niche problem (from the guy on the streets point of view)

This is wrong. The original purpose was cashless payments between untrusted parties.

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

#536

Post by democracy » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:01 PM UTC

meotimdihia wrote: post #286

tjs8rj wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does blockchain tech prevent monopolies exactly? Any environment that respects property rights and has activities that can be done more efficiently with scale and concentration will have centralization. Cryptocurrencies themselves are centralized by almost every dimension because mining exhibits those characteristics. Nearly any interesting on chain technology is centralized in that a minority disproportionately…

how about https://github.com/oneclickdapp/ethereum-auth And decentralized storage coins for example. Bitcoin can solve USD monopoly. And a lot of other examples...

What's wrong with USD monopoly? I am genuinely clueless, it's good to have currencies that are accepted anywhere in the world, isn't it?

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

#537

Post by magpi3 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

The hype around the blockchain reminds me of the hype around XML around 2000. People were blown away by the potential... but no one could quite demonstrate it with a product. Now the blockchain can point to cryptocurrencies as a success story, and XML can kind of point to HTML, but it is a reminder that real change in tech happens when someone comes out with a product where the rubber meets the road. When everyone is talking potential potential potential, I am very skeptical.

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

#538

Post by bsenftner » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

As this series of blog posts detailing why the crypto/bitcoin/ntf/web3 ecosystem is bad and wrong, I am continually reminded of two quotes from people worth listening to:

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

― Mark Twain

"Don't believe the hype!"

-Flavor Flav

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

#539

Post by DaltonCoffee » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

MoSattler wrote: post #528

SanJacobs wrote: post #523

> How long can it possibly be “early days”? 70-ish years. I'd say we just recently came out of the early days of computing around the 1990s or 2010s. >How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word? Currency is inefficient? It's sure better th…

> Currency is inefficient? It's sure better than trading cows. > Smart contracts? Writing things using english and then every side involved hiring lawyers to be used as bad just-in-time compilers for what was written is way more inefficient. If crypto is doing these things really more efficiently than current solutions, then why neither use case has any significant adoption of blockchain solutions?

Some of our current financial systems are deeply embedded and difficult to replace.

We're in a situation where we need bankers to finance lawyers to work on issues that would negate some of the need for bankers and lawyers.

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

#540

Post by disruptalot » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #421

disruptalot wrote: post #403

It's truly incredible that people still confidently proclaim that there is "no use case" today. Because of the technical nature of the underlying tech, it's hard for the average individual to recognise how and why it's different. However, it's not possible to explain away the particular applications and their properties. Here are 2 use cases which are live and working today: -Taking a collaterised USD loan without pe…

Presumably you’re talking about a loan against an NFT or other crypto asset. But taking a loan against a financial asset is already really easy. Does loaning against a house, car or stock portfolio get any easier with crypto? I don’t see how. The digital object in your second example is just a hyperlink or a hash, because the digital object itself won’t fit on the blockchain. And there is no link between digital and…

This is the perfect example of a critic response and exactly the phenomenon I'm describing.

On 1, you're somehow conveniently ignoring the "without permission or interference from a third party.". I never mentioned against a car, stock, or house. Nonetheless the functionality still exists. Using ETH or other crypto assets. It gets so much easier. Have you tried it? No talking to advisors, no documents, no discriminatory requirements. Pretty much 1 click and 30 seconds. Fully expect the next question of validity "aha! Well that's against a useless asset!".

2nd example. Yes it can be a hyper link or a hash, is there something particularly wrong with that? The use case I described has still been achieved, it's a digital object. Are you really questioning that people exchange assets using a digital identity? I'm not sure how that invalidates the use case.

By the way you're incorrect that digital objects don't fit on the Blockchain. First it depends which Blockchain. Second, there are some objects that do fit. Look at ENS. A domain name, address mapping fits on the chain. That is an NFT. That exists today.