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Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#351

Post by mmcnl »

jph wrote: post #47

Blockchains are excellent for logging that uses trustable peer participation, distributed append, and tamper resistance. For example, each peer can add their own chain links, and also see all the chain links added by other peers, and also be sure that the log hasn't been corrupted by any of the peers. Some examples IMHO are logs of participation (e.g. voting), agreements (e.g. contracts), exchange (e.g. payments), an…

I understand what you are saying, but you cannot say they provide trust advantages as a factual claim. The trust model is _different_, not better. There's value in centralized trust as well.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#352

Post by mmcnl »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #118
ak_111 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blockchains are excellent for logging with peer participation, distributed append, and tamper resistance. For example, each peer can add their own chain links, and also see all the chain links added by other peers, and also be sure that the log hasn't been corrupted by any of the peers." This sounds very close to a git repository, which Linus wrote using only SHA libraries.

Except with git repositories there's no built-in consensus mechanism, and we have the potential for a double spend. Say we're assuming the git repo includes gpg signing and users can make commits attesting that they've sent some amount of their balance to another user. John makes a commit saying he sends his entire balance to Alice. John pushes that to a central repository, and Alice gives him her house in return. Jo…

Still the Git concept works using a different trust model (i.e. repository maintainer).

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#353

Post by mmcnl »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #245
svara wrote: post #217

This is not a debate that has to be had in the abstract anymore. It's been more than 10 years. Where's the cool stuff that those supposed technology breakthroughs enabled? I think we all know what the proponents would point to. Are we really impressed by any of that?

The stock answer to this question from Crypto proponents is that the internet also took decades to bring about societal changes. Initially the internet was bulletin boards and poor quality online versions of print shopping catalogues, news articles with no images or low-res images, etc. It took a while for internet-enabled capabilities to noticeably surpass things you could do by dialing an 800-number or mailing a ch…

The world wide web had caused a global economisch crash just right after its first decade. That's huge.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#354

Post by mmcnl »

dageshi wrote: post #75

You're missing the fact that it enabled purely online/digital money people will actually use. You could build an online currency with a database much more easily than blockchain but people won't use it because it relies on a central authority to maintain the database and not enough people will trust that central authority not to misuse their power. It was tried a bunch of times in the past and never worked. Fundament…

Money is just accounting. Making sure balances are in sync on sender and receiver's end. People don't have problems sending money from A to B. I fail to see the application here. I don't think money is going through a transformation at all.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#355

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

kybernetikos wrote: post #339
thfuran wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All that is needed is for the legal system to recognise blockchains as the canonical record of ownership of real assets. Then theft via smart contract can't be theft because it acted on the canonical record of ownership. This also causes tons of other problems. What happens if someone loses access to their wallet? Now there's a house that simply can't ever be sold?

> There is no external trusted documentation that says what the intention of the code is. No, if someone fraudulently updated a canonical record of ownership, then the legal system can provide remedies. If it were me, I'd write the smart contract to enable corrections in case of a legal decision but that's at the choice of whomever sets up the smart contract that provides the canonical record of ownership. Same situa…

OK, so ... which courts of which legal jurisdictions can correct which contracts? Are courts in Guinea-Bissau allowed to correct contracts between counterparties in the US?

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#356

Post by netsharc »

rzz3 wrote: post #87
yashg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.

Planet destroying is a bit extreme. The traditional finance system is no more energy efficient overall. It’s certainly not environmentally friendly, but that’s more a function of the dirty power we use for anything and everything. We just need to fix our methods of generating energy, not criticize everything that uses a lot of it.

What do you think needs more energy: several systems (2, with some intermediaries) that talk to each other, one decrementing a number in a bank account, and another incrementing a number in another bank account, vs. thousands of systems that compete with each other trying to find some hash the fastest by guessing?

Both need to talk to each other over the network, but in the second, it's thousands of systems needing to synchronize the information.

What a stupid lie you're telling yourself to justify that "this is fine!".

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#357

Post by [deleted] »

kybernetikos wrote: post #213
lmohseni wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance.

> code as law is terrible idea I don't know exactly what you mean by 'code as law', and I'm sure there are extremists that think smart contracts make law obsolete, but they are just wrong. Fraud via smart contract is still fraud. Theft via smart contract is still theft. There's nothing about having automatic processing of transactions that means you get to just ignore the legal system in your country. And that's fine…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#358

Post by derbOac »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #318
FabHK wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether one can postulate an impossibility theorem (call it SEV, similar to CAP) for public blockchains (at least using PoW, and whether one can overcome it with PoS or similar is an open question): You can't have a (PoW) public blockchain that is Secure, Efficient (=not planet destroyingly wasteful), and Valuable. Pick any two.

Secure and efficient. Money should be a medium of transfer, not a store of value. The fact remains that you can't really get "efficient" with proof of work, and claims about "secure" are dubious with proof of stake.

I think maybe "valuable" meant "scalable" or something? I can't speak for the OP though.

I think there's something to the idea of some proof of an efficiency-security tradeoff or lack thereof though. Seems like something that should be out there in the literature.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#360

Post by tasuki »

dmantis wrote: post #287
yashg wrote: post #43

Blockchain has no use other than to store tokens for speculative gambling. Take a look at this presentation - https://bit.ly/3OB5G18 Proof-of-work - the USP of blockchain makes it slow and expensive and planet destroying at scale. But it's not a bug, it's a feature. You take it out and the blockchain is neither public not permission-less. A private, trusted, permissioned blockchain is pointless. The whole blockchain,…

I moved the whole fortune out of Russia with that "speculative gambling tokens", while both Putin's regime and outside world tried to cut out russians of the possibility to move their money out of dictatorship control (almost any payment systems are now banned for russians). Maybe that's not that obvious from some first-world countries perspective, but money with enforced property right over any governments decisions…

Good for you.

Also, taking your money elsewhere is imo a valid way to hinder the Putin regime.

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