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Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

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Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#11

Post by nexthash »

I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient, untrustworthy due to decentralization, a huge resource hog, and morbidly complex to implement.

The only good use cases that come to mind is if there is some particular reason for you to evade the conventional and easier systems of communication and storage. The lesson is: you should evaluate technology on its merits, not its politics. Three classic sources on the blockchain question immediately come to mind:

http://doyouneedablockchain.com/

https://imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed

My personal favorite:

https://twitter.com/vgcerf/status/1019987651301081089

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#12

Post by waheoo »

aylmao wrote: post #5

To the scalability issues section I'd add the environmental aspect. It has already been reported that by some estimates Bitcoin today consumes more energy than Argentina, and that's with an estimated 1 million active wallets per day. Argentina is home to about 50 million people. This means that in order to have Bitcoin serve as the daily currency for all of Argentina's 50 million people would at least 50-tuple its en…

This is like saying we shouldn't build or invest in computers anymore because they cost so much and take up whole rooms full of space.

Bitcoin is version 0.1 of a new way to record and share a common ledger. The cost and energy requirements are simple tradeoffs that are completely configurable to the applications needs.

Go look at all the alt coins out there, blockchain tech does not require the same levels of decentralization as Bitcoin, many work off more centrally controlled systems, not all require huge amounts of energy to mine blocks, and many are extremely aware of the need to be an environmentally friendly solution.

Like I get it's a very valid criticism to make about Bitcoin.

But it's such a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian thing to say and completely ignores ten years of alt coin and defi evolution.

Feel free to keep bag holding those "federal" reserve notes, they'll pay off one day I'm sure.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#13

Post by gjulianm »

rorykoehler wrote: post #9
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #6

The "lack of intuitive private key management" is worth expanding on. Would it not be nice if you could, maybe for a small fee, have some trusted entity store your private key for you? One could perhaps imagine storing a printout of the private key in some kind of physical "safe deposit" box, to be maintained by such an entity? But maybe that is to cumbersome and we can do so entirely digitally? In that case I guess…

You just recreated consumer banking.

I think that's their point. There's a lot of discussion that 'banks will become obsolete with crypto' that forgets that banks are not the currency, they just manage it. If crypto becomes widespread banks will keep on existing, they'll just move to manage cryptocurrencies.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#14

Post by bawolff »

aylmao wrote: post #5

To the scalability issues section I'd add the environmental aspect. It has already been reported that by some estimates Bitcoin today consumes more energy than Argentina, and that's with an estimated 1 million active wallets per day. Argentina is home to about 50 million people. This means that in order to have Bitcoin serve as the daily currency for all of Argentina's 50 million people would at least 50-tuple its en…

Well i agree that the energy cost is immense, it doesn't scale with number of users but mining power.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#15

Post by lima »

aylmao wrote: post #5

To the scalability issues section I'd add the environmental aspect. It has already been reported that by some estimates Bitcoin today consumes more energy than Argentina, and that's with an estimated 1 million active wallets per day. Argentina is home to about 50 million people. This means that in order to have Bitcoin serve as the daily currency for all of Argentina's 50 million people would at least 50-tuple its en…

Everyone (except Bitcoin) agree that Proof of Stake is the way to move forward. Even Ethereum is migrating to pure PoS consensus.

This solves the environmental aspect, thankfully.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#16

Post by bawolff »

waheoo wrote: post #12
aylmao wrote: post #5

To the scalability issues section I'd add the environmental aspect. It has already been reported that by some estimates Bitcoin today consumes more energy than Argentina, and that's with an estimated 1 million active wallets per day. Argentina is home to about 50 million people. This means that in order to have Bitcoin serve as the daily currency for all of Argentina's 50 million people would at least 50-tuple its en…

This is like saying we shouldn't build or invest in computers anymore because they cost so much and take up whole rooms full of space. Bitcoin is version 0.1 of a new way to record and share a common ledger. The cost and energy requirements are simple tradeoffs that are completely configurable to the applications needs. Go look at all the alt coins out there, blockchain tech does not require the same levels of decent…

Not really, most of the centralized ones could just be replaced with a mysql server and have the same properties. Notable exception being some of the proof-of-stake schemes, but its not like that's a scaling tradeoff but a totally different approach.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#17

Post by rorykoehler »

gjulianm wrote: post #13
rorykoehler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just recreated consumer banking.

I think that's their point. There's a lot of discussion that 'banks will become obsolete with crypto' that forgets that banks are not the currency, they just manage it. If crypto becomes widespread banks will keep on existing, they'll just move to manage cryptocurrencies.

Banks are not just managing money. They are distributors of newly minted money via loans. They are not distributors of crypto and the Fed are not involved (or at least necessary) for the creation of new crypto.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#18

Post by andreaorru »

aylmao wrote: post #5

To the scalability issues section I'd add the environmental aspect. It has already been reported that by some estimates Bitcoin today consumes more energy than Argentina, and that's with an estimated 1 million active wallets per day. Argentina is home to about 50 million people. This means that in order to have Bitcoin serve as the daily currency for all of Argentina's 50 million people would at least 50-tuple its en…

The energy argument has been debunked over and over again.

I recommend you read this thread by Yassine Elmanjdra (analyst at ARK Invest): https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587?s=...

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#19

Post by bawolff »

cesaref wrote: post #3
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

4. Consensus Algorithms Are Wack The popular blockchains only don’t offer transaction finality i.e you will never be 100% sure that you have gotten funds. You can only be probabilistically to a high degree (but with zero guarantee) that you have received your funds. This is because in major consensus algorithm called Nakamoto Consensus, the miners elect the chain with the most computational work that are with in the…

> Nature is probabilistic, and seems to work. I think what you mean is that the currently most successful model of the physical world is probabilistic, but this doesn't mean that nature is.

Have the right cosmic ray hit the right set of memory chips, and you will be super rich. That can happen in an entirely deterministic world.

I think its important to distinguish between realistic probabilities and unrealistic probabilities. If the chance is 2^-100 %, nobody cares. Bitcoin is a lot less secure than that, but its still not something i realistically would worry about.

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