Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

eisfunke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 392 posts

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#201

Post by hudon »

tromp wrote: post #187
hudon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can be used for storing value It can only do this for as long as ownership of a certain private key is valuable. Some keys have shown to hold value for ~10 years (those tied to the BTC ticker symbol), but some keys have gone from valuable to worthless pretty quick. The fact that you have to bet on holding the right kind of private key I think makes it pretty clear that blockchains do not, in fact, reliably store…

Coordination in rollling out a bugfix is not a strong indication of bitcoin being centralized. There are certainly aspects where bitcoin is not as decentralized as one would hope, but overall and when compared against alternatives, it's pretty decentralized.

> Coordination in rollling out a bugfix is not a strong indication of bitcoin being centralized.

It depends on how many parties, relative to the whole, are coordinating. It is a very strong indication when 2 devs are coordinating a fundamental decision for thousands of people.

You have to realize also that "bugfix" is subjective to human judgement. It's often unclear whether a given behavior is truly contrary to intent or not, and it takes humans in authority to judge this for the rest to avoid perpetual conflict.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#202

Post by swalsh »

syrgian wrote: post #179
mattdesl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better Critics like Diehl repeat this often, but without ever referencing the solutions. What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer paym…

Wait, are you saying that scenario has been solved (or is solvable in the future) by blockchain? Where can I learn more? Is eth even a real TLD?

.eth is a TLD for crypto addresses (the system is called ENS). Instead of saying, send it to 0x827DCAB38F00624466A99211e9c5a48b9D6Ec14D or whatever I can say "send it to myname.eth". The ENS is an NFT, so all the NFT infrastructure can be used to manage it. NFT's are generic digital assets so any marketplace can do the swap. The major downside is that gas on eth is SUPER expensive, when I regestered my ENS name, it cost $5 for the name, and $200 for gas. On the other hand, ETH is an obsolete chain (there is a v2 coming, and L2's are starting to come on, but V1 is obsolete... lets be honest), and some new more modern chains solve the problem better. I have a .AVAX name (not fully deployed yet) which cost $15 for the name (which has a weird public notice period thing, kind of interesting) and $.15 for gas. Again, it's an NFT, so I can use any of the numerous marketplaces to buy and sell it.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#203

Post by pm90 »

Grustaf wrote: post #92
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument. In a sense, it admits that traditional banking has the advantage in that regard because it has things like traceability, reversibility, insurance, accountability, and legal guarantees. These have been put aside on purpose in the crypto market, and while I think I understand the whys and wheref…

For most people it isn't. Maybe at some point it will, if governments let the money printer brr even more, or if we see more of what Canada did. If that is amplified by say 10x, I think a lot of people would start to reconsider.

At no point will people deliberately give up consumer protections they have today. If an economy is undergoing extreme hyperinflation, the consumer protections would have likely already been gone at that point.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#204

Post by tiluha »

nottorp wrote: post #181
Grustaf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree at all. It is definitely a nice feature, but as with everything else, it's a trade-off. Most people, today, want these features, but it's definitely not true that a payment system "has to" have them. Cash largely doesn't. It's like saying that any messaging system needs to be traceable, so you can see who sent you something. That is convenient and useful, but we survived until email without it.

> Cash largely doesn't. If you get a contract/receipts you can use the legal system to attempt to recover your cash. With blockchain that's technically impossible? There recently was a piece of news about some blockchain believers who locked themselves out of 20 million in because they used a "smart contract" and their code was buggy. Both the payer and the payee would like the transaction to go through but neither c…

How would a cryptocurrency be different here? If the counterparty is known you can still go after them via the legal system. If they are unknown, there would be no way of recovering the cash either.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#206

Post by jedimind »

5h wrote: post #176
jedimind wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is the only known solution to the Byzantine Generals problem that doesn't involve a centralized authority" Did you skip that one on purpose? How do non-blockchain technologies solve the the Byzantine General's problem without relying on a (corrupt) central authority? Address this before you make more demands.

Good attempt at a deflection, I won't casually solve the very thing that is a great example of blockchain being a solution looking for a problem. But, given the 'real world' context I tried to stress, do you think blockchain is a good solution to the variations of that problem in real world contexts?

You think that you're onto something but your rhetoric and arguments honestly make me cringe.

People are increasingly aware that governments/authorities do not deserve the trust that they have been given + the opaque nature of the system only allows authorities to abuse their power. Thus the technology you love to hate so much does in fact serve "real world" problems and is more trusted, so much so that Ethereum for instance processes 4.5x more transactions than Visa [0].

There are many more arguments how this technology delivers real value to real people NOW, but I have no interest in entertaining more of this kind of bad faith discussions. The better technology will survive and eventually dominate, with or without you.

[0]: https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/ethereum-...

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#207

Post by mattdesl »

tkfu wrote: post #170
mattdesl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better Critics like Diehl repeat this often, but without ever referencing the solutions. What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer paym…

You're being willfully obtuse here. > What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Literally any trusted central authority or database. > Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer payments) with such strong public consensus? You haven't actually state…

As usual, “just trust Amazon or Google” which is centrally owned, and not peer-to-peer (distributed/decentralized), and not an answer to my question.

> You're mentioning a .eth domain name being bought with cryptocurrency as an example, which is entirely circular. "Hurr durr, betcha can't swap one blockchain thing (.eth domain) for another blockchain thing (cryptocurrency tokens) without using a blockchain" isn't as strong an argument as you think it is. If we were talking about a .com domain name, no blockchain in the world will help you with that transaction.

Your argument feels in bad faith, but I’ll bite: “.eth” and ENS is a valuable construct for those transacting in the network. These assets do have clear market value, even if you personally feel they shouldn’t.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#208

Post by coldtea »

Grustaf wrote: post #18

I'm very sceptical of blockchain (though I've been in crypto off and on since 2013) but most of the arguments in this article are non-sensical. For example: > But even if all code was without mistakes, blockchains can’t do anything against threats like scams, fraud, hacking of devices with keys for the blochain or just plain old typos in a coin transfer. I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds…

>I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

Doesn't matter if "it was a goal".

It should have been a goal, and it's necessary (doesn't have to be perfect, but absolutely has to exist) for anything wanting to be used as a means of exchange in a modern economy, outside of Mad Max situations and speculation.

>Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying.

People felt that for smoking too. Then they didn't. And tons of people are just misinformed with Amway-style proselitization, and when they lose money without recourse they are surprised...

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#209

Post by thomashabets2 »

mattdesl wrote: post #78
mightyRodri wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no baby. The technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better. The only thing bchains does is give ppl with a lot of money to become stakeholders, the possibility to comodify even more parts of the internet. Thats the only upside of the technology, scam ppl for their money. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/against-crypto.html https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

> technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better Critics like Diehl repeat this often, but without ever referencing the solutions. What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer paym…

> What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer payments) with such strong public consensus?

That question sounds like an XY problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#210

Post by alpaca128 »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #101
isodev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument. These features and capabilities are usually implied for financial systems. It's really just common sense.

to be clear about the semantics here: cash doesn't count as a "financial system", right? Blockchain currencies are basically counterfeit-proof, digital cash with an audit trail. comparing them to credit cards is an apples:oranges comparison.

With cash that limitation exists because there isn't really an alternative. That doesn't mean we should use it as example, being able to undo mistakes is a valuable feature. That's also one of the reasons most online accounts aren't E2E-encrypted, most people prefer having a way to reset their password/key over losing all access to data.
Post reply on HN