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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

#971

Post by CRConrad »

baby wrote: post #765
danaris wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to us when there are no major blockchains on a massively-energy-hungry technology, and then maybe we'll believe that your complaint is relevant. As it stands, the only blockchains that are relevant are just colossal energy sinks, and it's devastating.

I couldn’t care less :) if you want to pretend the rest of the ecosystem doesn’t exist it’s up to you. But it’s a bit like China looking at democracies in the west and only looking at the US and being “democracies don’t have universal healthcare, what’s the point lol”.

>> the only blockchains that are relevant are just colossal energy sinks

> I couldn’t care less :) if you want to pretend the rest of the ecosystem doesn’t exist it’s up to you.

Eh... You're the one defending a system that doesn't give a shit about the ecosystem. You know, the real actual ecosystem, the one POW[1] blockchain so immensely contributes to destroying. It's almost as if you guys are all pretending it doesn’t exist.

___

[1]: And what an apt acronym that is, in this context.

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

#972

Post by CRConrad »

meheleventyone wrote: post #354
ique wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using a very different meaning of centralisation and decentralisation than blockchain people do. That's neither here nor there though. The way you kill Facebook, Google and any Web2 company is to kill their business model. These are all 100% ad-funded businesses. Kill the advertising funded internet and these monopolies categorically die with it. The only _attempt_ I've ever seen at addressing the issue that…

The question is how does additional fund sources prevent people from also using advertising or collecting data? For example subscription services for newspapers often still show ads. Usually additional revenue streams are used to capture more revenue. If the answer to killing the ad funding business model was individuals pay directly it’s going to face a steep uphill battle because right now for most people the cost…

> For example subscription services for newspapers often still show ads.

And cable TV.

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

#973

Post by CRConrad »

ique wrote: post #389
meheleventyone wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is how does additional fund sources prevent people from also using advertising or collecting data? For example subscription services for newspapers often still show ads. Usually additional revenue streams are used to capture more revenue. If the answer to killing the ad funding business model was individuals pay directly it’s going to face a steep uphill battle because right now for most people the cost…

> If the answer to killing the ad funding business model was individuals pay directly it’s going to face a steep uphill Indeed, we tried that and it failed, so we need something else. Blockchain will probably fail because the narrative has been taken over by greed and NFTs. But Web3 will fail because the tech world seemingly (as evidenced by the comments here) have no interest in solving the problems of Web2, rampant…

> The answer to all these problems by HN is ”no one cares about privacy so it’s not worth solving”.

I think that's bullshit. It's just that most normal, sane, people think something like ”burning down the planet is no solution to the problem of privacy, and even if it were it would in itself be just as much of a problem, so it’s not worth attempting to solve it that way”.

It is frankly astounding that this isn't immediately obvious to anyone; verges on psychopathy in my book.

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

#974

Post by Thorrez »

CRConrad wrote: post #960
Thorrez wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the developer introduces a major change, it'll fork the chain. Everyone on the old version of the software will see one chain, everyone on the new version will see the new chain. If not many people switch, the old chain will be the valuable one. So it's kind of a voting system where the community as a whole votes. If the vote isn't decisive, both chains have value. As far as purchasing stuff, there's no central pu…

> If the developer introduces a major change, it'll fork the chain. Everyone on the old version of the software will see one chain, everyone on the new version will see the new chain. Why? Can't the system keep using the same chain, or is this just convention? If any software change required a fork, you couldn't do even the most trivial of bug fixes (say, fix a typo in the UI, or whatever). But I notice you said "maj…

It's not convention. If it's possible to create a transaction that one version thinks is valid, and the other doesn't, someone will create such a transaction, it will be included in the chain that accepts it if that side has the majority of the hash power, and the other one will reject it. Thus you will have 2 chains (not to be confused with 2 Chainz).

The definition of "major change" in this case is a change that changes the definition of a valid block or transaction.

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

#975

Post by cmews »

CRConrad wrote: post #964
cmews wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the internet of things devices are not running the blockchain but can (energy) efficiently transfer data to the helium network. The hotspots are also quite efficient if you look at the power usage (more similar to a light bulb instead of a proof of work miner)

So the devices probably go across the WiFi networks they're on and hack into the owners' PCs (or phones?) to mine Crypto-"currency"... At least that's the one way I can see for it to make financial sense for the manufacturer. /cynicism

The manufacturer earns money by selling the hotspots, so not sure what you mean tbh. I think wat you are describing is a anti virus scheme like Norton 360 and Avira are doing by install/hack into PCs with hidden PoW mining code which is unethical/horrible . Bit weird to claim this for a hotspot that hasn’t a connection to your PC and trying to slander something without investigating it properly. I get the blockchain hate (especially PoW), but unfair to accuse every project of unethical behavior if there is no proof whatsoever.

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

#976

Post by CRConrad »

plebianRube wrote: post #548
MoSattler wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Every technological revolution is held back as long as possible by those making the most money using the current system. London streets will be covered in 3 feet manure if industry progresses at this pace. You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse, there is no significant adoption. Electricity is dangerous, there is no significant adoption, gas lamps…

> Remove trollys since we can make more money selling tires, oil, and buses.

Trains and trolleys were the incumbent system before the motorcar, so this analogy is the opposite of what you're arguing.

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

#977

Post by CRConrad »

miracle2k wrote: post #581
usrbinbash wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is up to critics to provide evidence of PoS energy use being a concern So, is there evidence, as in peer-reviewed studies, that PoS blockchains can handle the volume of transactions of traditional financial systems while requiring LESS energy?

I don't know, but I don't see how that is an interesting question. As crypto critics rightly point out, the vast amounts of energy that the financial system consumes provides a huge amount of different services; from bank branches to regularity compliance. From a literal technical point of view, storing a ledger on 10k computers consumes more energy than than storing it one one. But maybe the backup and operational i…

> Meanwhile, a single branch of McDonalds consumes many multiples more energy than any PoS blockchain.

Oh yes? So all McDonald's branches together consume orders of magnitude more energy than the whole world produces?

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

#978

Post by CRConrad »

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…

> I just can't take the power and pollution argument seriously. There's just nothing salient about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26097332

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26335888

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351959

TL;DR: Bullshit.

> The answer is renewable energy.

You're talking as if the crowding out effect didn't exist: Even if we had a lot more renewable energy than we do, every kWh used for crypto-"currencies" is a kWh that can't be used for something else

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

#979

Post by CRConrad »

vorhemus wrote: post #249

To me, the most promising use cases for a blockchain would be activities that are today carried out by government agencies, states or lawyers. Anyone who has ever bought a property in central Europe knows how much money has to be spent on trustees and notaries. If such transactions can be carried out in a secure way between buyer and seller without an intermediary, that would be a huge win. However, the lobby of lawy…

> activities that are today carried out by government agencies, states or lawyers. Anyone who has ever bought a property in central Europe knows how much money has to be spent on trustees and notaries. If such transactions can be carried out in a secure way between buyer and seller without an intermediary

So if the system in those countries could be thoroughly reformed to work totally differently than it does today... Then why couldn't it just be thoroughly reformed to work more like it does in Western or Northern Europe today, where it works with a lot less hassle even without blockchain?

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

#980

Post by CryptoPunk »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #922
CryptoPunk wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>So aside from coins, what's another concrete example? What you wrote earlier is: >>Crypto coins are unique in that you can verify them mathematically. They have no connection to anything else out in the real world so they don't have that problem. Stablecoins cannot be verified entirely mathematically, as they have a connection to real world bank notes, so my example doesn't fit your exception. >>This sounds very mu…

The coin certainly can be verified, otherwise you couldn't move it. A stable coin where you trust whoever is providing the backing for that asset is no different from a crypto currency in that way, the trust model still requires that you trust someone to honor the coin or value it in some way. So it's a bad example. The interesting part about it that you can move coins between people who don't trust one another witho…

>>A stable coin where you trust whoever is providing the backing for that asset is no different from a crypto currency in that way, the trust model still requires that you trust someone to honor the coin or value it in some way.

I don't follow. With a cryptocurrency you don't have to trust any one. The cryptocurrency can't be redeemed for anything, and thus there's no one to trust for honoring the claim upon redemption.

>>The interesting part about it that you can move coins between people who don't trust one another without a 3rd party is entirely due to the remotely verifiable nature of the thing, like any other coin.

Yes true. And that applies to any digital property on the blockchain.

The challenge for digital property that is a claim on a real world asset is being able trust a third party to honor the claim upon redemption of the digital property. Some parties have solved that for claims on national currency, and thus we have a few stablecoins.

Whether this model can extend to real estate, automobiles, commodities and other assets/goods remains to be seen.

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