Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#161

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

Stevvo wrote: post #42

16012022 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. You know what’s re…

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html Amongst the complicated math and crypto posts that nobody can understand, Vitalik has covered several use cases on his blog.

In that article he conflates theoretical trustworthiness (software verifiability) with practical trustworthiness (system comprehensibility to a supermajority of voters). Blockchains might be made to work in a verifiable way, but they won't work for enough of the voting base to trust that they do in fact operate correctly.

The entire point of voting is to provide a way to pick something that virtually everyone can agree was fair. Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things. They require trust in the programmers and cryptographers, *and most people don't have that trust*. And with good reason, programmers are notorious for making buggy, unreliable, confusing software.

Vitalik entirely ignores this argument against blockchains for voting, and pretends that the most important objections are the technical ones.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#162

Post by teekert » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:01 PM UTC

rocgf wrote: post #108

teekert wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be real, the anti-cryptocurrency arguments are something like this: It eats to much energy so we should ban it (just like gaming! Oh wait...) Meanwhile we suffer from a hugely incompetent global payment network that is horrible to deal with and makes some creators actually opt out of receiving donations because of the sheer annoyance and complexity of the system. Yeah, we all want it to use less energy and perh…

You're strawmanning heavily. The energy argument is a big one, but it's not THE argument against crypto.

It’s not? To me that sounds like the only one on which basis I’d agree with limiting our freedom to do what ever we want.. because it actually may hurt others. That is, if we assume that to be true.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#163

Post by kybernetikos » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #145

kybernetikos wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably agree with a chunk of this, but there is a level at which blockchains, specifically smart contract platforms help enormously with interoperability - they force those using them to provide standard, transactionally interoperable APIs to their services. If someone provides a financial service on ethereum for example, then it will have an api that can be used by other services on ethereum. This is a shocking…

> If someone provides a financial service on ethereum for example, then it will have an api that can be used by other services on ethereum. Not necessarily. You can have a smart contract that's completely controlled by one address, such that you need manual interaction with an external system to interact with the smart contract. You can even avoid transparency by storing information elsewhere, via an oracle. Nothing…

> IMHO the real reasons for the absence of such APIs are regulations and incentives

Sure, but smart contracts have totally different incentives and costs for creating interoperable services than e.g. mobile apps. I would say that Ethereum does help here.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#164

Post by tmaly » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #81

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Crypto is essentially the modern equivalent of the pre-Federal Reserve era of US banking, commonly known as the "Free Banking" era or "Wildcat banking". Back then, states chartered their own banks, there was little cooperation between banking outfits and banks could issue their own currency. Financial crime targeting consumers was everywhere and currency stability was a major problem, two major issues that crypto fac…

I think the one feature of Bitcoin that makes it interesting is its inherent scarcity. It mirrors gold in this sense, but it is a lot more flexible in that you do not have to deal with physical material.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#165

Post by mjdesa » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #117

mjdesa wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has interoperability failed in the past? Why don’t we have it today?

Why would we get it thanks to blockchains?

Because they’re open ledgers.

I think of blockchain like I do JavaScript / JSON.

Are the perfect? No. But there’s a lot of time and energy being put into them and sometimes that’s all you really need to get things going.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#166

Post by aww_dang » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #150

aww_dang wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet this era was also known as the "Gilded Age". Literally covered in gold. I'm not detecting nuance in this take. The Fed has created boom bust cycles and is hardly a bastion of price stability. The great depression and the continued interventions which prolonged it come to mind.

> Yet this era was also known as the "Gilded Age". Literally covered in gold. Let's be real here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age > which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gilded_Age:_A_Tale_of_Toda... "The book is remarkable for two reasons—it is the only novel Twain wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synony…

It was an era of unprecedented wealth creation and upward mobility. There were also robber barons, who preyed upon government largess.

The irony here is that the Fed was created at the behest of one of the greatest robber barons of them all, John Pierpont Morgan. To this day the institution still protects the interests of Wall Street at the expense of holders of USD.

Corruption is still with us. If we are to be real as you say, we should also acknowledge that history is largely written by the victors. Not mentioned are the other two central banks the US fought to extricate itself from. It shouldn't be surprising at all that a two second glimpse of into the subject results in a superficial reading of history. I think the above poster mentioned something about nuance.

If the Federal Reserve Notes issued by the central bank were sufficient to meet our monetary needs, there would be no interest in cryptocurrencies.

Clearly, "Something is rotten in Denmark", or NW DC more accurately.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#167

Post by cesarb » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #71

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Let's be real, the anti-cryptocurrency arguments are something like this: It eats to much energy so we should ban it (just like gaming! Oh wait...) Meanwhile we suffer from a hugely incompetent global payment network that is horrible to deal with and makes some creators actually opt out of receiving donations because of the sheer annoyance and complexity of the system. Yeah, we all want it to use less energy and perh…

> Let's be real, the anti-cryptocurrency arguments are something like this: It eats to much energy so we should ban it (just like gaming! Oh wait...)

The real argument is a bit more subtle: with gaming (and most other uses of power), the incentive is to lower the power usage for a given level of functionality. With cryptocurrency, the incentives are to increase the power usage. The idea behind PoW is to make it too costly (and a large part of the cost is power usage) to find an alternative longer chain. And for an individual miner, the incentive is to use more power than the competition, so that a larger fraction of the fixed amount of reward goes to that miner.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#168

Post by meheleventyone » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

goesnowhere wrote: post #157

meheleventyone wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's what I was saying I fully agree other tech has had way more impact on the unbanked. :)

Well then I appreciate you and respect you. Much love.

High five!

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#169

Post by rocgf » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #162

rocgf wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're strawmanning heavily. The energy argument is a big one, but it's not THE argument against crypto.

It’s not? To me that sounds like the only one on which basis I’d agree with limiting our freedom to do what ever we want.. because it actually may hurt others. That is, if we assume that to be true.

Is it? This is an article stating that the blockchain (and by extension crypto) is a crappy technology by some random dude. It's not Biden who wrote it, it's some random dude.

So who exactly is limiting your freedom? If a random dude can limit your freedom with a mediocre Medium article, then I'm afraid you don't really have much freedom to start with.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#170

Post by Stevvo » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #161

Stevvo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html Amongst the complicated math and crypto posts that nobody can understand, Vitalik has covered several use cases on his blog.

In that article he conflates theoretical trustworthiness (software verifiability) with practical trustworthiness (system comprehensibility to a supermajority of voters). Blockchains might be made to work in a verifiable way, but they won't work for enough of the voting base to trust that they do in fact operate correctly. The entire point of voting is to provide a way to pick something that virtually everyone can agr…

"Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things"

Almost nobody understands any of the complex systems in their life (e.g. banking, software) but it doesn't stop people trusting them. People have trust in these systems because they reliably produce the desired output not because they understand how they work.