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

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

#831

Post by baobabKoodaa » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #658

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many different ways to construct an electronic voting system. What you are describing is a traditional, centralized electronic voting system. There are electronic voting systems out there that provide certain guarantees without the need to trust.

No, there aren’t. There are systems designed to solve the problem of the inventor not getting paid by election officials but voting is an extremely hard problem once you learn about it and safe electronic voting is unsolved. The big challenge is that it needs to be anonymous even in the case of attacks. Electronic systems offer many ways to cheat which you may have thought about in the context of making purchases but…

> No, there aren’t.

Yes there are, and I've documented several of them here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/thesis/

If you disagree, can you please be specific what exactly do you disagree about?

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

#832

Post by antifa » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

mahogany wrote: post #698

saalweachter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out personally, but this is itching my brain something fierce so I have to blurt it out, and hey, it's the internet. A little derailing never hurt anyone. It's amazing to me how universal the "I used to be a non-believer" line is in evangelism. From the classic "I used to be an atheist but I've been born again" to all the members of political party A claiming to have been a membe…

Alternatively, what if they simply learned something new which caused them to change their belief in something? It's better to focus on what caused their mind to be changed (it may or may not be bunk) versus focusing on the fact that their mind changed at all (which can certainly be a good thing).

> what if they simply learned something new which caused them to change their belief in something?

Then they would have shared that, instead what we got was indistinguishable from "some charismatic people dupped me and/or I'm in on the scamming now."

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

#833

Post by galaxyLogic » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

leppr wrote: post #298

galaxyLogic wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying real estate with bit-coin, isn't that close to money laundering?

That would be a stupid thing to do, as Bitcoin transaction chains are public and permanent, and the use of mixers[1] close to a deal will set off alarm bells. Cash is an infinitely better money laundering vehicle. [1]: tools that blur the transaction chain, masking the origin of one's coins.

Cash is not so easy to move internationally. It is not so easy to move around internationally at all with flight-delays and cancellations and what have you covidis

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

#834

Post by antifa » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

mattdesl wrote: post #565

saalweachter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out personally, but this is itching my brain something fierce so I have to blurt it out, and hey, it's the internet. A little derailing never hurt anyone. It's amazing to me how universal the "I used to be a non-believer" line is in evangelism. From the classic "I used to be an atheist but I've been born again" to all the members of political party A claiming to have been a membe…

it goes both ways – "I used to be religious, now I am an atheist" (I was also against crypto/blockchains when I first learned about them last year)

It really doesn't go both ways.

It's "I didn't find any evidence for God, so I stopped believing." vs "I believe God is real but I can't prove it".

When somebody is telling me they think God is real, they're trying to sell me something, or they think it's important to tell me.

When I tell people I'm an atheist, I probably didn't want to have to tell anyone, and I genuinely don't care what you believe unless you're using it to hurt others.

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

#835

Post by galaxyLogic » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #620

tsimionescu wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, trust in voting can only be achieved with paper voting, there is no technological solution to improve it that doesn't completely remove trust as well.

Removing trust completely is a pretty high bar... but there are different voting schemes out there and some of them do a pretty good job of removing a lot of the trust. Cryptography is typically involved, but blockchain is not needed. I wrote more about this here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/thesis/

That's a great page especially the graphic: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/static/5553d78133d27e12a9d1d3e6f1...

If we want more democracy I think we must get some help from technology. Liquid Democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy ) sounds like an approach that would be hard to do without computers.

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

#836

Post by antifa » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #748

doomrobo wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. The reason bank interest is lower is because the FDIC ensures that you get your money if the bank stops existing. If the company backing your stablecoin stops existing, what are you left with? Nothing, of course This not disruptive. This is just normal investing with all the risks attached

FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover everyone in case of some really bad event. And FDIC is useless when your currency is devalued / hyoerinflated.

What's an example of an event where the FDIC needs to cover everyone, but the blockchain isn't taken offline or worse?

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

#837

Post by dreamcompiler » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

I've started telling my tech-following friends and relatives: Whenever you hear somebody say "Web 3.0" you should think "YABS" (Yet Another Blockchain Scam).

History will not be kind to @pmarca for promoting this shite.

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

#838

Post by mattdesl » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

antifa wrote: post #834

mattdesl wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it goes both ways – "I used to be religious, now I am an atheist" (I was also against crypto/blockchains when I first learned about them last year)

It really doesn't go both ways. It's "I didn't find any evidence for God, so I stopped believing." vs "I believe God is real but I can't prove it". When somebody is telling me they think God is real, they're trying to sell me something, or they think it's important to tell me. When I tell people I'm an atheist, I probably didn't want to have to tell anyone, and I genuinely don't care what you believe unless you're us…

it’s all relative, depends on your vantage point.

just look at the OP thread that led to these discussions: the author is vocally decrying blockchains. if you view anti-crypto as the atheists in this analogy then they sure do make a lot of noise on HN (these kinds of posts routinely make the front page).

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

#839

Post by baby » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 11:06 PM UTC

eco wrote: post #166

baby wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say most of the coins today are proof of stake

Most of the "proof of stake" coins are some form of delegated proof of stake, usually with an opaque and shady set of highly compensated validators with hidden connections to the project. Effectively proof of authority masquerading as proof of stake. This lets them have big TPS bragging rights while maintaining the appearance that they are running a decentralized blockchain rather than a centralized database with ext…

No proof of stake has been working without issues for a while now. Maybe you’re still in 2015?

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

#840

Post by ptx » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #754

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…

You know, it's funny. I've worked in and around analytics for a long time now, and I've had the thought that blockchain enables the following. 1) A common "universal" transaction data source 2) A shared, readable format So the thought occurred to me that as soon as blockchain apps/currencies became popular, people would want analytics on them. There would thus be a startup opportunity for unprecedented analytics visi…

Making all their real-time sales data public, and thus available to their competitors, doesn't seem like something most companies would want.

If the blockchain does enable this, wouldn't that just lead either to 1) companies not adopting blockchain, or 2) some solution for hiding the data and defeating third-party analytics?