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Ethereum Has Issues

blog.dshr.org

191–200 of 377 posts

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#191

Without regulation, the marketplace --- any marketplace --- becomes a platform for scams and extortion. Show me a marketplace without regulation and I will show you a marketplace best avoided if possible.

Show me a regulated marketplace and I'll show you regulations put in place by big players to weed out the competition.

Ok, lets take the obvious example ---- traditional banking. Lots of small players doing quite well in a highly regulated market.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Ethereum PoS yet? Simple Yes or No. That's what people are complaining about they are years behind on what they promised.

What’s New in Eth2 is a biweekly newsletter that's a good resource for tracking progress toward PoS: https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/eth2_news From the current edition: Go/no-go decision on doing the Merge or postponing the difficulty bomb to be discussed on the 29th of April [2022] ACD call. If it’s "go" then start merging the existing testnets at 2 week intervals with a view to doing the real thing in July [2022]. A…

> Is Ethereum PoS yet? Simple Yes or No.

It seems you've given a long answer which can be simplified to "No"

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#193

Without regulation, the marketplace --- any marketplace --- becomes a platform for scams and extortion. Show me a marketplace without regulation and I will show you a marketplace best avoided if possible.

Darknet markets? Amazing quality, safety and customer support with literally 0 regulations. Sorry but thats a failed argument

Safety? Customer support? Really?

What do you do if you're scammed on the darknet? Let me guess --- nothing because you can't identify who you're dealing with or where they are located.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#194

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>it comes down to consensus in a world where information can only move as fast as the speed of light. Yes and now you're circling back around to the usual problems with algorithmic high-frequency trading talked about in Flash Boys, which has nothing to do with blockchains or cryptocurrency. Unless you can cite some "insane advancement" in consensus algorithms that solves these problems everywhere then I doubt there i…

There are actually some insane advancements coming out in the form of zero-knowledge order books, Dusk Network being the most well known. It essentially removes frontrunning as a possibility because buyers and sellers are matched using ZK proofs, but are not able to see any orders before they are matched.

The real question here is not whether one can design a market that prevents bad behavior, but whether any of the major players will ever bother using it. If the “little guy” is always on the losing end of market shenanigans, then market makers will never have an incentive to move their liquidity to the “fair” market.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are scams on DNMs. But there are also high quality vendors. And there are also scams that are part of regulated markets. So yeah still failed argument.

Sure but the feedback system works well enough to weed them out quite fast. When people get burned they learn, big papa gov regulations prevents learning. Darknet markets are the best example of self regulating markets. Its truly amazing and it doesn't get enough credit Of course most are run or acquired by intelligence agencies eventually....

Pure bovine excrement. Scammers can change their identity at will on the darknet.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#196

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In DeFi to take out a loan of $100 you need to have collateral worth $200 or more. If the value of the collateral ever goes below $200 then it is immediately autosold. Moreover the collateral has to be on the blockchain as well, so concrete assets like houses cannot be used for this purpose. The main issue with insurance is actually assessment. All smart contracts do is replace execution, which was never a hassle to…

For sure, DeFi loans aren't practical at the moment (for anything but speculation), and may never be practical for something like a mortgage or even a credit card. I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money. For insurance I don't agree. Something basic like weather insurance (widely used in agriculture) is already possible. The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a…

I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money.

Go to Amazon, put some items in your cart, and click the (almost always present) banner about opening an Amazon credit card. Enter your relevant information, wait about 3 seconds, and BOOM! An algorithm just loaned you money.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#197

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I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

>The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. No it isn't. I've been hearing this for years and I still haven't seen any reason anyone would actually want this, beyond the novelty factor. It's strictly worse than any other equivalent insurance or loan for a number of reasons, the worst one being that there's no human you can talk to when somet…

A number years ago I was unemployed for an extended period of time while working on open source projects, and I ran out of money, so I took out a loan to cover my expenses. I lived off this money for several months until I found a suitable job, and after some time I repaid this loan. This type of personal credit financing would cost a fortune in regular finance (try going to a bank and taking out a loan because you're broke and unemployed), but because I had digital assets to pawn I had access to a line of credit at a reasonable rate.

Without this option, I would have to either finance myself at a criminal rate, or accept a job I wasn't ready for. I feel I'm much better off personally from having this option available.

Outside the personal anecdote, I don't understand how it's difficult to see the utility in having digital goods of value. It allows all sorts of use cases, and using them as collateral for loans is just one. I have a harder time accepting that goods of value simply cannot be digital. If I look at the past 30 years of history, literally everything is turning digital; our consumption of entertainment, our work, our communication, social connections. What is the argument for having all things of value be either be a physical thing, or something controlled by some central authority? It seems like a "because that's how things have always been" sort of position.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

> The fact that you can take out a loan Why would any rational actor provide a loan denominated upon an insanely volatile "currency" like bitcoin or ethereum? The lender could loan 100 ethereum bux only to lose big time because the price of ethereum went up 10x in a week making the amount repaid worthless. Or it could go down, in which case the borrower would wind up defaulting because who would want to pay back 10x…

Have you looked into any of the lending platforms? These are pretty well controlled for. Crypto loans are typically collateralized, so that below a certain loan-to-value ratio, the collateral belongs to the loan provider and the borrower can keep what was borrowed. The exact rules vary place to place. It's a calculated risk that is competitive with other investments.

People borrow to avoid triggering capital gains, or to gain leverage or to short.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#199

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Credit is loaning you money and providing an interest rate. Usually something insane like 15%. DeFi is unlocking the value of an asset, making it liquid and allowing me to participate in other investment opportunities without an APR. One example is on Kaurura. I have KSM, Stake that KSM for a 19% APR Rate. Throw that LKSM into a vault and mint AUSD as long as i have 160% collatoral ratio. I can then use that aUSD i p…

this is a margin loan it’s not a new concept

It's a fascinating throwback to the dotcom boom where everything was "It's $X, but on the internet!"

Now it's "$X but with crypto!". Only with crypto there's a constantly evolving set of jargon that obfuscates the fact that yeah, traditional finance does it already To be fair, the dotcom era had it's fair share of obfuscating jargon too. Maybe crypto just seems worse because the dotcom boom was so far back in my memory.

I think there might be some actual valuable use cases for crypto. I just wish all the people reinventing the wheel and thinking it's new would get out of the way. Then at least we can find out if crypto actually has something interesting it can do.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually some insane advancements coming out in the form of zero-knowledge order books, Dusk Network being the most well known. It essentially removes frontrunning as a possibility because buyers and sellers are matched using ZK proofs, but are not able to see any orders before they are matched.

The real question here is not whether one can design a market that prevents bad behavior, but whether any of the major players will ever bother using it. If the “little guy” is always on the losing end of market shenanigans, then market makers will never have an incentive to move their liquidity to the “fair” market.

The "little guy" is always at a disadvantage in capitalism (or small business, or mom & pop shop)

I suspect there's a disconnect between people talking about democratization of access, and people pointing out crypto doesn't actually make things fair.

Crypto doesn't make things fair for the little guy.

It does add additional transparency to financial markets though, as well as things like open, verifiable, non-custodial, programmable financial contracts (as long as all the inputs can be verified reliably on-chain)

This gives people equal access (with some limitations on what that means)

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