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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#511

Post by pjkundert »

niklasd wrote: post #501
pjkundert wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/pjkundert/status/1590009435619217413 The clutter.social App is a decentralized Twitter-like app implemented on Holochain. This one is hosted on https://holo.host (only in public Beta, so it doesn't scale automatically), but illustrates a full-complexity app that is deployed. You can compose this (eg. re-skin it, or build it into another app as a commenting back-end), without having to copy the imp…

It is somehow telling that you link to a Twitter post instead to a post on clutter.social.

Yup. This is a web app (so, hosting is required), and it was built in a few days by a newbie and is hosted on a few machines by some randos.

But, isn't that ... interesting? That something like this could be built and deployed and -- theoretically scale globally?

Just think of what could be done with a bit of planning and a (tiny) revenue model?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#512

Post by function_seven »

Drakim wrote: post #245
function_seven wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we design an append-only database that also allows for deletions if you replace those deletions with a direct reference to the hash that was once computed at that point in the chain? Yes, I know this isn’t strictly “append only”, but it still gives the ability to prevent silent updates and silent deletes. Any record that’s deleted must be replaced with something that indicates that it was deleted.

If the database is distributed you have no way of enforcing that the other peers don't keep shadow copies of the data that is supposed to be deleted. If you know you can trust all your peers to act in good faith, then you might as well just use a regular database as none of your peers will edit old records due to being good actors.

Yeah, what I'm describing is more like a journaled database, not bLoCkChaIn tEcHnOloGy.

There's a chain for sure, but nothing that allows it to be decentralized, or 100% immutable, etc.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#513

Post by splix »

noelsusman wrote: post #378
TimJRobinson wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This just reinforces my view that the only value crypto provides is evading government financial regulations. Is it actually good that anybody can spin up a new financial firm in a few months with little oversight or regulation? >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. Every bank offers this service, unless y…

On regulations: FTX and SBF were the main proponents of regulations. Not because it solves anything, but because it eliminates a competition and for them it gave more freedom to do a fraud. So I'm not sure it's always a good thing.

On loans: Give me a bank that can loan me $100M without even asking for an ID? Without a collateral, of course. Like Aave Flashloan provides on blockchain.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#514

Post by ProblemFactory »

inkyoto wrote: post #417
jillesvangurp wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were arguing it's not a proper merkle tree and it is. You are not a little bit wrong there but flat out barking up the wrong tree. It's a merkle tree with full immutability and append only behavior. This is not an accidental/conceptual similarity. It's the single most important design decision that Git is based on. Force push only allows you to wipe out repositories that you control. The whole point of git is tha…

I am not arguing the case of git having or not having Merkle trees (git has a «weak» implementation of the Merkle trees, for in a ledger database every block's cryptographic signature derives from the contents of the preceding block – a property that git does not possess as it does not support the concept of blocks and operates of commit trees instead that are allowed to be moved around). I am arguing two points, spe…

Git provides all of those things, as long as everyone agrees on what the current HEAD commit id (hash) is. You could publish that hash in a printed newspaper or with a government regulator. After publishing it is impossible to rewrite commit history without evidence of tampering.

Rewriting history and amending commits forces the recalculation of all commit hashes that follow it, and you end up with a completely different final hash.

AWS QLDB does the same thing with Amazon holding the final hash.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#515

Post by _9omd »

jcbrand wrote: post #347
seu wrote: post #220

> Dear Reader: I think that at some point, in a civilization, there has to be trust. I think that’s maybe the main reason we have civilizations. Call me crazy. Dead on

Disclaimer: speaking only of Bitcoin, the utility of the larger crypto space is somewhat questionable. Yes, there will always be a need for trust, and Bitcoin doesn't change that. What it does is actually facilitate more, rather than less, trust. By having a rock-solid form of money with a well-known, immutable monetary policy and issuance rate, that doesn't rely on any single entity and is very difficult to corrupt,…

Spot on. I think part of the problem is in the common framing of cryptocurrencies as trustless. At the end of the day there is trust in every human made system, blockchain or not. With Bitcoin, you're still trusting that all of the developers, miners, and users won't decided to increase the block reward at any point in the future.

So what's the point of Bitcoin (and other cryptos) from a risk management perspective if it's not actually trustless. It gives you exposure to a significantly different risk profile, and one that can be better reasoned about. You're no longer at the whim of governments and corporations, but instead a loosely "organized" set of developers, miners, and users. And we can reason about what those actors will do, based on human psychology and the fact that people tend to act in their financial best interest. And Bitcoin is setup in such a way that the system operates correctly when the participants behave this way.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#516

Post by foobiekr »

TrackerFF wrote: post #425
masklinn wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm no expert on that, but we had a bunch of senior researchers (NGO) advocate blockchain for that exact task. I'm not going to argue against people with combined decades and decades of research and development experience in the food logistics community.

Such people latch onto trends to look smart.

Then they scrub history, as most investors are doing wrt blockchain, when trends change.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#517

Post by timmytokyo »

markdestouches wrote: post #445
TimJRobinson wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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. Making a copy of an existing technology while repeating every historical mistake on the way is not innovation but rather poor learning ability. It's been 13 years since the advent of blockchain and we are yet to see anything actually useful. Yet all we see…

It's almost as if the "anyone can do it without permission" argument is one of the reasons traditional finance evolved into the regulated system it is today.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#518

Post by timmytokyo »

cactus2093 wrote: post #490
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 is a neat property but lines like this trip me up: "it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it". The crypto/dapp/defi/etc spaces have supposedly been "moving incredibly fast" and "all the smartest people are working on it" for ~5 years now. That's a long time to be moving really fast without really getting anywhere. Where's the payoff? To me this space feels like a solution without a real prob…

And these arguments are being made just as the crypto industry is imploding all around us. Gives new meaning to the motto "move fast and break things".

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#519

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> if you need a loan you don't have to sell, this isn't a service any bank offers

I mean, the bank will make sure you aren’t North Korea first. Which crypto will not. So that’s a plus, if you’re North Korea. (Collateralised lending is incredibly commonplace in finance, including against crypto.)

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#520

Post by notamy »

splix wrote: post #509
this_user wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EVM specifically gives you a Turing complete financial system and, hence, probably a complete expression of operations on financial structures. Which is nice, but doesn't solve any problems that actually exist. That is the running theme with all of these crypto/blockchain/"defi" projects, because they are created by tech people who don't understand the domain. They just start building all of these things that s…

Can you clarify what is "solving a problem that actually exist" means? I just looked around and I'm not sure I have anything that solves an actual problem. Like the HN right now, it doesn't solve anything, right. In the morning I bought stuff on Amazon, but it also doesn't solve any real problem. Not sure AWS is solving anything since we can rent servers directly. I used Zoom for a call, but it solves nothing, I gues…

Not the original commenter, but here's my stab at it:

> In the morning I bought stuff on Amazon, but it also doesn't solve any real problem.

Sure it does. It solves the problem of "I need something, I have money, and I don't have the time/ability/car/... to go to a physical location to buy it."

> Not sure AWS is solving anything since we can rent servers directly.

AWS gives you you

- The ability to spin up MANY classes of servers instantly, whereas traditional server renting is more limited ime.

- A host of extra services on top of it that all integrate fairly well with each other

- Paid support if you want/need

- ...

> I used Zoom for a call, but it solves nothing, I guess.

People like to see each other, phone calls can have quality issues and dead zones, ...

---

Now, when I read the parent comments, I see:

> The EVM specifically gives you a Turing complete financial system and, hence, probably a complete expression of operations on financial structures.

And while that *sounds* interesting, I have absolutely no IDEA what the utility of this is. With AWS, Zoom, Amazon, ... I can point to things that very very directly benefit both technical and non-technical users day-to-day. That's not to say that there ISN'T use to the EVM -- I'm sure there probably is! -- just that imo it's less-obvious.

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