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Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

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Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#321

Post by timeon »

cc9one wrote: post #148
dns_snek wrote: post #135

Labeling the entire sector as dangerous and fraudulent is incredibly short-sighted, dismissive, and at the end of the day, a lie. I don't buy into the crypto craze of Web 3.0 and NFTs (in terms of digital art), but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many, and many that still remain to be discovered. I agree that we should inform people about the risks and scams that are currently co…

Well said. These POW/ energy waste arguments are getting really old. They act as if there aren't existing solutions. Take Algorand for an example, which is carbon negative and (Pure) Proof of Stake...

> These POW/ energy waste arguments are getting really old. They act as if there aren't existing solutions.

And solution for the Bitcoin is what?

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#322

Post by timeon »

dns_snek wrote: post #188
SCLeo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to bet in 5 years time, the largest crypto currency will still be BTC and it will still be POW.

Maybe, maybe not. If you're worried about the climate change impact, you can start now by charging additional taxes on all energy consumption. Why should cryptocurrency be singled out? Just because some people dislike it? We haven't done much about climate change and the big pollutants in decades, but as soon as cryptocurrencies come up, it's suddenly treated as an existential threat to human kind - I don't buy it.

> Maybe, maybe not.

If we are talking about climate change, time is quickly running out. So talking about wishful thinking while reality is actually other way around does not seems to be helpful.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#323

Post by riskneutral »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #222
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold

> As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto.

I sort of agree with this assessment. I think it depends on what you mean by useful. Unfortunately, the only real-world, practical use of Monero is money laundering. I wouldn't want to trade a currency or work on a technology whose best use case is helping violent drug cartels conduct their financial transactions.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#324

Post by prox »

api wrote: post #285
prox wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the democratic bus analogy. A bus with no driver and everyone with a steering wheel. All the input gets averaged out. Such a bus would get nowhere.

Has anyone ever tried this? Sounds like a fascinating experiment. Of course it's basically all game theory. If a critical mass of people cooperated it could work.

I read it in a really old science magazine at a family gathering, and I think it was an article on democracy by some science institute. That’s all I remember. It would be an interesting thing to research, but it should be in the literature already.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#325

Post by riskneutral »

unemphysbro wrote: post #19

why? i think it's the coolest thing ever. anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning. pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.

> i think it's the coolest thing ever ... anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning.

That's all fine, until the SEC come knocking. The only advantage in the crypto space is that you try to skirt financial regulations. Establishing a new broker-dealer, bank, etc, requires a substantial capital investment to meet the minimum regulatory requirements. That gives some crypto companies an advantage (for now), since they can skip all that, but you can see sure that established interests are not taking this lying down and new regulations are in the pipeline. Once the global regulation of cryptocurrency is completed, either crypto will be dead or it will have to play the same rules as the rest of the financial industry.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#326

Post by timeon »

tom-_- wrote: post #136

Blaming the technology for its misuses is always a dubious position to take. The promoters of said technology (and it's misuses) will always argue that you could say the same about which allows to do this and are you saying this means we should ban this ??! They would argue this and they would have a point. Also, in an open democratic/non-surveillance state, you can't really ban a technology like this. Instead you fo…

In proof of waste case: uses and misuses goes hand in hand.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#327

Post by Comevius »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #197
Comevius wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire crypto landscape is dirty tricks and frauds already. The blockchain is just an immutable data structure (a hash or vector commitment tree). It works like ink on a paper, but it's publicly verifiable. What happens on it, and how that's interpreted is a different question. A blockchain is like having an append-only log in someone's house. Everyone can look at it, nobody can erase from it, and everyone can bu…

Why be afraid of fraud on blockchain? In the case of DeFi the contracts are technically readable (though EVM is not a good platform for readability; if you can't name projects which have fixed this you don't have the right to make fun of "its early"), and those that cannot read contracts for whatever reason are fully aware of the risk they take - when more versed people agree in unison there are no inbuilt scams the…

You can audit everything yourself, and if everyone could and would there would be much less opportunities for bad behavior. But that's why trust was invented. Trustless means you have to do everything yourself.

In society there are incentives for example for a bakery to not poison you. The obvious one is the financial gain, reputation, but also the threat from not following laws, regulations. There are health inspections and so on. Even with that a lot of things a bakery sells is not healthy for you.

It doesn't matter how smart the tools are, if the only incentive is to defraud people, which is how the crypto economy works today. It's all lions and hyenas, and there is no algorithm to fix that, if anything decentralized consensus makes it easier for people to obfuscate and shrug responsibility.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#328

Post by disruptalot »

arcticbull wrote: post #201
disruptalot wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trustlessness can by definition only extend to what can be wholly represented on chain. Stablecoins cannot. Many algorithmic stablecoins like DAI can be fully audited on chain and have proved to be robust (so far, 4 years). They let you trustlessly borrow USD, top up your collateral and whatever else you would do with a loan but with no middlemen. I've been reading your comments for a while, and have been getting r…

> Many algorithmic stablecoins like DAI can be fully audited on chain and have proved to be robust (so far, 4 years). You can't make something from nothing. Alogrithmic stablecoins are just the financial equivalent of honey pots. If you can knock them off their peg you can win big and this has happened many times. Perpetual motion doesn't exist and neither do stable long-term fractionally reserved algorithmic stablec…

Everything in the universe is built on something else. Let's speak the facts, can you demonstrate how DAI has been knocked off the peg substantially and with serious effects? Even with a reach should we find a an hour in history where it did wander more than 2-3%%, that by no means discounts it from the service that it provides in the rest of it's history.

> Of course there are middlemen, it's the validators or miners and contract authors and liquidity providers. There's a ton of middle men.

It's absurd to equate these entities with middlemen in the same sense as central banks and retail/investment banks are middlemen to loans. Again, let's speak the facts, demonstrate in DAIs history:

Where did a validator or miner, deny or cheat a loan? Plenty of examples in traditional finance.

Where did the contract authors or liquidity provides exercise power over the protocol that substantively affected the users of the protocol where it was not transparent and went against the rules which the users signed up for? The same happens all the time with tradfi.

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