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I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

weh.wtf

301–310 of 359 posts

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#301
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first of all, on a decentralized blockchain you can not really censor a transaction This is not true. Even though blockchain is decentralized there could be a single chain/few chains of truth if you want to convert it to real money. And that chain could only be the one that would be approved by coinbase, bitfinex etc. If they want to censor an address they simply could stop accepting those transactions, and then mi…

Well, yes, technically you are right - if the majority of the miners agreed to "censor" a specific transaction, then it would be censored. But that's not what the article claimed - Chainalysis, or any company like that, certainly wouldn't have power to command the majority of miners to do that. If there's a reasonable valid reason - such as a bug in the software - then you'd expect the majority of miners to accept th…

You need to follow through your logic...

> if there's a reasonable valid reason

Who says it's a valid reason? Who says the reason is what they say it is? Who decides the best fix would be to censor a transaction?

What if FakeBlockchainCorp decides to target you, then says there was a bug with these transactions, everyone agrees... Where's your bitcoin?

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep money in the bank. You don't own it, the bank does. You need permission to access it and are limited on what you are allowed to use it for. If you keep cash or gold in a safe place. You are only allowed to keep a certain amount. It can be seized at will. Your will that declares what assets go to your children. The deed to your home. The lease for your car. Certificates. Art. Tickets. Contracts. Money. We…

> Trustlessly With cryptocurrencies, you need to trust: * The exchanges (and other ramps for getting useful money into the system and out of the system) * The developers of the chain * The developers of the smart contracts * The developers of wallets * The miners * The internet providers * The hardware manufacturers * The government (yes, they could punish usage of cryptocurrencies hard if they wanted to) > Your will…

> With cryptocurrencies, you need to trust: * The exchanges (and other ramps for getting useful money into the system and out of the system)

Decentralized Finance, Protocols and Apps do not require trust.

The frontend and backend of every protocol you are expected to use is open source. Things can only go wrong, without the fault of your own if you use something closed-source or custodial.

Cryptocurrency allows you to take responsibility.

> Which can all be lost or stolen easily without a central authority and a judicial system. Do not underestimate the power of phishing, especially if it is directed towards specific people.

Blockchain gives the world the ability to not rely on the local central authority. Your data will not be edited, removed, lost, stolen or damaged either.

You can write up a contract, leasing me your land for 99 years, on paper, with a witness and kept a copy with the local central authority. This can go well, until it goes wrong.

In 99 years, my estate may refuse to give the land back to you without proof of the paper it was written on. We could claim the paper is a fake. The local central authority can be bias, corrupt or dissolved. Which many authorities are.

If you used blockchain instead of paper. The contract remains unchanged, and ready to read at any time, until the very last computer on this planet is turned off.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#303

I keep saying this, but: Bitcoin is well over 10 years old by now. In 10 years, the internet was already clearly adding a ton of value all over the place. Bitcoin is not really a 'young technology' anymore, and the only thing it has enabled so far is risky, unregulated investment strategies, and an staggering amount of crime.

Given the post ends with:

> And The Winner Is…

> Chainalysis helps the government track down tax evasion,darknet markets and CSAM providers & consumers.

This article agrees with you. It supports your argument. Because all of these dead projects have a vast amount of losers. People who invested in the cryptocurrency (as far as it ever was a currency), and who now own a useless pile of bits. The cherry on top is the main project which does make sense is one involving all the negative sides of cryptocurrencies in general, aiding law enforcement in their goal to combat crime involving cryptocurrencies.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things requires us to trust somebody, which is a glaring single point of failure in the system. Things can go wrong. When any of these deeds, titles or certificates are lost, burnt or stolen. You have to rely on an outside body to keep a backup safe for you. Blockchain allows us to be super efficient too. Which is a perk. Rather than the need of waiting for someone to certify, deliver, inspect, notify, r…

The problem with blockchain implementation is that most of them still rely on us to trust someone. It is not implemented in the distributed self hosted way people think. The top hacker news submission about Web 3 (blockchain) points out that NFTs and other blockchain technologies are centralized and reliant on trusting someone in practice [1][2]. [1] https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html [2] https:…

This is true. Many NFTs (not all) rely on trusting some random server. People are doing it, but it doesn't make it right. It's a bad business practice.

There are enough reliable methods to not rely on trusting some random server, but some money hungry developers cannot be asked to implement them.

Similar to how some websites do silly things, like storing plain-text passwords in their databases. People do it, but it doesn't make it right.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get out of your bubble. Countries with hyper inflation do not allow you to exchange for another currency obviously.

There's something I've been curious about for a long time. If your country's currency is in a state of hyperinflation and you want to buy crypto to shield yourself from it, who's your counterparty? Who is willing to sell you that crypto and expose themselves to that inflation, and how are they able to do so profitably?

If you want to buy food or a house or anything you need the local currency. There is always some demand

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have time to listen to this podcast (I'll read a transcript if you have it) but just to respond to your comment: I've never seen the question of what happens after a society becomes "bottom-up crypto centric" get addressed. You have a country where the central bank is suddenly not doing anything, tax fraud is rampant, and the local currency is now further on the brink of collapse. All the citizens' money is e…

I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil. Politicians have been able to steal from common people via inflation for a century while the rich are easily protected. This is a long topic but to summarize I am quite hopeful that the ability for governments to extract wealth is limited greatly by the rise of crypto. If the government wa…

> I am a libertarian and I fundamentally believe the current central banking model is not only hopelessly corrupt but morally evil.

The problem is that your alternative has proven to be worse.

But also, lets assume that everyone in Argentinia is going to convert all of their currency into cryptocurrency.

What kind of repercussions is this going to have?

Well, for one, the currency in which people get paid is still the Argentinian one, not a cryptocurrency. Keep that one in mind, because its going to be affected by the rest.

What is going to happen next is massive tax fraud. People are not going to pay taxes over their belongings (you might agree with that as 'libertarian' but its going to hurt the government income for sure). This is going to result in a weaker government, and a weaker coin.

With a weaker government and a weaker coin, people get less value out of their currency. Remember that the people were paid in the national currency? Its worth less now. And also, what is going to happen when the government runs weaker? More crime, less public health, outsourcing to private entities, and defacto you will get something akin to some libertarian paradise where the top on the pyramid can actually survive and have opportunities, while the rest ends up on the bottom of cannon fodder.

With cryptocurrency, there's no such thing as accountability or paying your taxes. Such libertarian dreams are going to have the effect that the government becomes weakened and eventually you get that survival of the fittest in an unhealthy way. Without accountability and without taxes you'll get more corruption, not less. If you want an example of that, just look at Russia.

Meanwhile, all of these people are heavily dependent on? On what you think? Exchanges. Which, as proven by Mt. Gox, are not always going to be pure in their effort. So spare me the independence bullshit.

Centralized banking works, as long as there's accountability. You reach accountability by rule of law, by regulations. Cryptocurrencies try to avoid these, but neglects the reasons these were enacted in the first place. They're a massive step backwards in that regard.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trustlessly With cryptocurrencies, you need to trust: * The exchanges (and other ramps for getting useful money into the system and out of the system) * The developers of the chain * The developers of the smart contracts * The developers of wallets * The miners * The internet providers * The hardware manufacturers * The government (yes, they could punish usage of cryptocurrencies hard if they wanted to) > Your will…

> With cryptocurrencies, you need to trust: * The exchanges (and other ramps for getting useful money into the system and out of the system) Decentralized Finance, Protocols and Apps do not require trust. The frontend and backend of every protocol you are expected to use is open source. Things can only go wrong, without the fault of your own if you use something closed-source or custodial. Cryptocurrency allows you t…

> Decentralized Finance, Protocols and Apps do not require trust.

> The frontend and backend of every protocol you are expected to use is open source. Things can only go wrong, without the fault of your own if you use something closed-source or custodial.

Are you seriously claiming that something cannot have bugs because it's open source? That nobody will use an oracle or otherwise have outside dependencies?

In reality, these systems do require trust. Most people do not have the skills to audit everything they use — even if, as we've seen so many times in the cryptocurrency world, they incorrectly believe they do — and the people who do have those skills wouldn't have time to audit everything they touch if these systems ever see widespread adoption. Everyone using them is trusting other parties at multiple levels, and there's no way to avoid that for most transactions.

> Cryptocurrency allows you to take responsibility.

Less misleadingly, cryptocurrency requires you to take responsibility for everything. This is not a feature for the vast majority of people because it's a large amount of highly-skilled work which you're required to do constantly as things update and the failure mode is that you're now penniless.

> Blockchain gives the world the ability to not rely on the local central authority. Your data will not be edited, removed, lost, stolen or damaged either.

This is pure naivety. If the blockchain says I own a house and the men with guns say you do, guess who wins? If your government is corrupt, the blockchain won’t help. If your government is not corrupt, the extra cost and risk from using a blockchain aren’t buying you anything.

At most, this problem needs PKI to register claims but the current system works well and all of the failure modes are things which blockchains either don't help with or make worse (“Someone hacked grandpa's phone. Now they own his house and a bunch of nerds on the internet said it's his fault and there's nothing he can do.”).

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#308
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't provide any value for society. Maybe a bit of entertainment, along with destroying some people's lives (problem gamblers). It basically just syphons away money from individuals to corporations while not providing much in return.

It provides return to people who like it. It does not have to provide value to the "whole society" (which really mean, it does not provide a value to "me") to justify its existence.

Casinos as-is don't need to be abolished, maybe their regulations need minor adjustment. I personally would abolish them, but it's low priority and not a hill I would die on.

But as far as the blockchain and gambling goes, that's not some silly vacation vice the guys go out to vegas for a few times a year/decade.

This stuff is advertised hard by influencers, misrepresented as investments, advertised at children, using foreign jurisdictions to be unaccountable.

It's not "it's bad because gambling bad".

It's bad because gambling is being forced shamelessly into the rest of the economy, often under false pretenses.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#309
post #197

I think Helium is a pretty well known, real-world blockchain project. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptoc...

Excellent decision to cite the company that today was caught lying that Lime and Salesforce were their “real world” customers: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=helium-caught-lying-that-li...

Wow. I remember reading the Lime line in the The NY Times article. NY Times didn’t check that source.

That was audacious of Helium.

Thanks for replying.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#310

I think Helium is a pretty well known, real-world blockchain project. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/technology/helium-cryptoc...

Oh yeah Helium...that blockchain with a whopping $78k in annual revenue and a $2.1-billion valuation. [1] They're just paying venture money to hotspot owners at this point. There is no functioning business model. [1] - https://twitter.com/liron/status/1551738599254773765

Thanks for posting this. I had a totally different opinion after reading the NYT article.

6.5k monthly - I wonder how much longer they have?

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