AWS and Blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#361

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #346

underdeserver wrote: post #303

> [Andy Jassey] said something like this: “All these leaders [CIOs and CTOs of huge enterprises] are asking me what our blockchain strategy is. They tell me that everyone’s saying it’s the future, the platform that’s going to obsolete everything else. I need to have a good answer for them. I’ll be honest, when they explain why it’s wonderful I just don’t get it. You guys got to go figure it out for us.” To me the tel…

I recently attended a trade show, which mostly revolved around emerging ML/AI and other "hot" tech products in the market. So it actually seems that in the logistics line of things like manufacturing / production / etc. there is a place for blockchain, mainly due to the immutability and decentralized distribution properties. What could take a whole week to track down using older methods, takes seconds if all the data…

>So it actually seems that in the logistics line of things like manufacturing / production / etc. there is a place for blockchain, mainly due to the immutability and decentralized distribution properties. What could take a whole week to track down using older methods, takes seconds if all the data is recorded on the blockchain...for example, food production. You want to find out exactly which animal your food comes from, and all the things involved (use of antibiotics? which factory? how did the product travel before ending up at your grocery store? etc.).

The usual shitty dismissive HN response to this would be something like "but that doesn't require a block chain it could just be a database".

To those people I would ask who is running that database? What are their incentives?

Forget about the currency uses of block chains for a moment. The fact that you have this distributed network, controlled by nobody in particular but with their incentives aligned to keep it running and keep it secure, means that you have a platform you can build other stuff on top of.

An Ethereum smart contract is a type of append only database, the code of which is strongly open source and very battle tested (basically everyone is using openzeppelin), where you do not have to care about where or by who it is being hosted, with an uptime that puts every hosting provider in existence today to shame.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#362

Post by TimJRobinson » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

super256 wrote: post #316

TimJRobinson wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I've realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why enterprise block chains make little sense. Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing. We've never had this before, and it's incredible how fast the…

> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value . All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap,…

You're still missing the forest for the trees. All of this was created in the last 2-3 years and already it's replicated most of what's in traditional finance. It's the rate of innovation that is important, not the current y-intercept.

Furthermore this is a global system that anyone can contribute to. How hard do you think it is for I as an Australian to build a financial firm that interfaces with Bank of America or the NYSE? It's almost impossible. In DeFi I can spin up my own app in days.

Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don't have to sell, this isn't a service any bank offers. You can also just deposit your assets and earn interest on them.

In 2009 most of my colleagues similarly dismissed AWS "Oh it's just some easy storage with a way to spin up servers, big deal. Bare metal is cheaper and easier". It wasn't until most business components were automated that it became an obvious choice.

Now imagine you're starting a new financial firm and want to offer an exchange, options, perpetuals, savings accounts, loans etc. You could build all these pieces yourself for a few million dollars and a few years work. Or you could use DeFi protocols, build a nice easy to use front-end and be up and running in a few months.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#363

Post by acdha » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

everfree wrote: post #193

Nursie wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're already 14 years in. Where is the evidence it can make anything better? Why hasn't the amazon thing happened in the last ten years of blockchain?

To be fair, Amazon didn't hit their stride as a retailer until the 2000s, roughly 20 years after the internet's "big bang" date. And while we're 14 years into distributed ledger technology, we're only 7 years into turing-complete distributed ledger technology, which I would argue is the actual innovation.

Amazon’s book unit was profitable within a couple of years (say by the time Clinton was re-elected), and that pattern continued for each business line. They invested all of the profits in expansion so “analysts” would say they were doomed but anyone who looked at the numbers could see they could report a profit any time they wanted by halting expansion.

Comparisons to the internet timeframes are hard to make because there’s a key difference: computers were expensive and slow, and network connectivity was very limited. The Apple II was a major advance in accessibility and that brought the price down to roughly the equivalent of $6k today - and you still needed to buy a monitor and modem to get online! This is a huge contrast to the way blockchains have been basically globally available since day one.

It’s also worth noting that the internet and the web are not the same. While the latter’s popularity depended on things which weren’t available earlier like GUIs, better displays, etc. that doesn’t mean that there weren’t plenty of people paying for network access before then. There were clear uses of value to many people – people loved email, software downloads beat shipping floppies by mail and led to the shareware business model, services provided access to information like real-time stock quotes, etc. - and profitable businesses existed before the web came along. If memory serves, the first wedding from an online relationship happened in the late 70s, too, so it’s not like people were only paying for business reasons.

The contrast with cryptocurrencies is substantial: many people saw the value, it was just a question of whether they could afford it and as soon as prices dropped waves of people came online and never left. Blockchain apps have had enormous investment but there hasn’t been anything like that other than speculation on whether a number will go up. It’s been quite noticeable that none of the people who’ve asked me for tech advice for years have ever asked about a blockchain tech or mentioned using one except the guy who likes trading penny stocks instead of going to casinos.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#364

Post by BlueTemplar » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

gatewaynode wrote: post #301

dsco wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s been the majority of HNs take on the technology. But the Internet was made for text communication and here we are decades later with social media and streaming video. TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology wi…

This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone c…

Yeah. You can also argue that Git and IPFS aren't really blockchain, but at some point that's just splitting hairs...

The big question is of course how best to deal with all the scammers in specifically the cryptocurrency space ?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#365

Post by TimJRobinson » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

themihai wrote: post #339

super256 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value . All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap,…

I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. It's obvious that all those pegged currencies are prone to "bank run" scenarios. Not to mention the fiat conversion ruines the whole experience. With a real currency we could have at least real open and standards based p2p payments which would be great! Just like with cash offline we would no longer need visa, paypal or banks to tra…

There is already USDC, USDT, DAI that are all US dollars.

I use Argent wallet for payments between friends using them and it is a nice experience (especially because Venmo and Cash both aren't available outside the USA), the friction is sending them to and from a traditional bank account, you currently have to use an exchange - but this will change soon.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#366

Post by drdrek » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

Only thing annoying the the flood of negative articles only pop up after a crash. All that VC money made a lot of people afraid to look like fools by speaking up against the tech. Where was he (not personally, as a symbol of tech bloggers) at the height of the bubble?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#367

Post by arethuza » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #353

arethuza wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't governments force people to hand over control of their keys?

They can't guarantee that there is only one set of keys. They are just files after all.

Doesn't seem to stop organisations like the FBI from "seizing" Bitcoins?

e.g.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/07/feds-seize-3point36-billion-...

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#368

Post by RandomLensman » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

TimJRobinson wrote: post #362

super256 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value . All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap,…

You're still missing the forest for the trees. All of this was created in the last 2-3 years and already it's replicated most of what's in traditional finance. It's the rate of innovation that is important, not the current y-intercept. Furthermore this is a global system that anyone can contribute to. How hard do you think it is for I as an Australian to build a financial firm that interfaces with Bank of America or…

How do you see current regulations change to make this all fit, i.e., what's your roadmap there?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#369

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #367

Karunamon wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't guarantee that there is only one set of keys. They are just files after all.

Doesn't seem to stop organisations like the FBI from "seizing" Bitcoins? e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/07/feds-seize-3point36-billion-...

Yep, this is called poor opsec. Had this person had someone else with a copy of that wallet's keys, they could have been moved before this happened.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#370

Post by TimJRobinson » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #311

gatewaynode wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone c…

> Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyo…

You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it.

I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities.

Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.