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Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

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Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#281

Post by trinovantes »

mattdesl wrote: post #256
trinovantes wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you coordinate this so called decentralized transaction? Over the internet through SSL certs that are centrally signed? You're still putting blind trust in something.

Transactions are broadcast with RPC. Once accepted and written to the ledger (ie: after a number of confirmations), you can verify the state of the transaction via your own local node. It is impossible to completely remove the need for trust. We trust that our computers work as expected, that our modems and routers are not compromised, that RPC endpoints and software is running as expected, that the internet infrastr…

You trust the private companies/individuals making your hardware and protecting your communications but suddenly trusting a private escrow is heresy? Seems like a weird double standard.

> record and alter global state without placing it in the control of a single centralized intermediary

Paxos solved this in the 90s

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#282

Post by Grustaf »

pm90 wrote: post #203
Grustaf wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does it matter if people "give up the protections" or if they disappear? The result could still be that they flock to crypto, which is what we're discussing.

But it's not a binary question. Some people are already "giving up consumer protections" in some cases. And not just by buying crypto. Ordering stuff from Wish is also a gamble.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#283

Post by hiq »

hestefisk wrote: post #264
hiq wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, in trade finance where multiple parties in an environment with limited trust have to settle a complex transaction asynchronously, blockchain / DLT can really help. When does that happen?

Documentary trade finance - e.g cross-border trade where importers and exporters transact physical goods using letters of credit issued and endorsed by banks on both sides of the transaction. A good example is a container load of crude oil shipped from an upstream exporter in India to a refinery (importer) in the States. Banks act as facilitators of such as transaction on import / export side, often have to interact…

How come the trust regarding the physical goods themselves does not expand to the financial aspects of the transaction?

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#284

Post by cmoscoso »

Aunche wrote: post #139
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…

>This is a well-known, probably inevitable effect of what is probably the main point of using blockchains. Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying. If people really thought it were a price worth paying, everyone would be using Ethereum Classic instead of Ethereum.

No post body was provided.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#285

Post by dmitriid »

Grustaf wrote: post #270
dmitriid wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee is just an extreme example. The actual example I usually go for is selling/buying an apartment. I'm currently in Sweden, and I've gone through the process twice now. The contracts were several pages if clear text that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of Swedish could understand. Good luck checking that everything is correct with a "smart contract" version.

I've also bought property in Sweden, it's very simple. No need to involve a lawyer even. So where do smart contracts come in? Who would want to use a smart contract to buy an apartment? Unless possible the apartment deed was stored on the blockchain or something, but that is highly unlikely. Real estate is a very poor fit, since it's very heavily regulated in numerous ways. It's not just about ownership, and anonymou…

So, you keep coming up with "smart contracts are not a good fit for anything".

Which really doesn't invalidate my original point.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#286

Post by hiq »

mattdesl wrote: post #272
hiq wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point is peer to peer transfer of digital assets and digital state that is recorded on-chain. The goal is not “how to transfer a physical asset.” Yes I understood where you were going. Just pointing out that the scope of the problem you're solving is way smaller than that of a generic transaction, to the point that it has very little relevance for pretty much anything real. > The TLD/ICANN is irrelevant,…

The assets are “real” in the same way domain names are “real.” These are social constructs, maintained by social consensus. It is very easy to come to a shared consensus about what address “mattdesl.eth” points to, because the history is recorded on-chain, and can be verified locally. I’m sure the exact valuation of this domain will go up and down, but as long as the the chain and network continues to exist, the asse…

> These are social constructs, maintained by social consensus.

AKA trust, so we're not transacting only with "a bunch of people that you do not trust".

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#288

Post by RandomLensman »

mattdesl wrote: post #259
RandomLensman wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer could or could not look like that. In practice people have done this many times throughout history totally without blockchains (or computers) for that matter (e.g., money transfer systems, exchanges, etc.).

If this has been done many times in a way that solves my original question (decentralized escrow), there should be some concrete examples you can point to besides blockchain/crypto systems.

Obviously, non-digital assets, but does the Hawala system fit your analog version for decentralized escrow? Early stock exchanges were sometimes created to get around existing third parties ("auctioneers") and allow the brokers to directly transact p2p. What about a credit coop (it is central, but it is also owned by all the users)?

Edit: at it's most basic, reliable coinage was kind of way to create reliable p2p abilities without risk of "double spend". Once the coins were out there, central authority didn't matter so much, i.e., "good" coins were used fair and wide beyond the coining state (e.g., Athenian tetradrachma). Funny add. in some areas people actually allow temporary double spend (so that can be another solution)...

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#289

Post by tromp »

ooaa wrote: post #267
dijit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite. My friends and I were into bitcoin in mid-2009. We mined some coins on our 8800 GT. At the time, I read the papers and the wiki and understood that the technology will not scale so greatly, in a way it wasn’t even designed to; it felt like an interesting proof of concept, the ability to actually buy things with bitcoins felt largely like a novelty, I remember buying a coffee in Prague a few years later for…

> When alls said and done, the initial promise isn’t even kept, there’s very few “super miners” who if they worked together would be able to control the entire bitcoin economy, which is the situation with central banks. There is no way to actually proof that. > You can see exactly what I mean when you look at Monero. Objectively Monero solves the problems with bitcoin, but because it’s very difficult to trade with (d…

> mining 1000 Monero per second

They couldn't mine it, but if someone somehow learned the number h such that H = h * G (where G,H are the generators of Pedersen commitments), then they could undetectably mint arbitrary amounts of Monero.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#290

Post by mattdesl »

trinovantes wrote: post #281
mattdesl wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transactions are broadcast with RPC. Once accepted and written to the ledger (ie: after a number of confirmations), you can verify the state of the transaction via your own local node. It is impossible to completely remove the need for trust. We trust that our computers work as expected, that our modems and routers are not compromised, that RPC endpoints and software is running as expected, that the internet infrastr…

You trust the private companies/individuals making your hardware and protecting your communications but suddenly trusting a private escrow is heresy? Seems like a weird double standard. > record and alter global state without placing it in the control of a single centralized intermediary Paxos solved this in the 90s

A centralized escrow is not heresy; it involves a different set of trade-offs. In some cases the decentralized escrow might be more appealing. To go back to my original example of a domain transfer, the exchange can occur in a matter of seconds or minutes within a blockchain, rather than 1 to 20 business days with escrow.com.

Never heard of Paxos, if it could achieve the same problems I've outlined earlier, I'd be curious to see it implemented.

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