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The Decentralized Future

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: The Decentralized Future

#111

Post by intended »

As others have commented, this sounds like more power to central authorities, with higher levels of fidelity than ever before.

The first and second point are inherently at odds with each other.

The first point concludes that we need simpler gatekeepers/service providers to make it easier for normal people to use the Asset class

The second point concludes that bitcoin makes it easier to be decentralized.

But I think these sections are the light weight part of the article. I think the other points raised are more material and impactful.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#112

Post by zodiac »

Rhapso wrote: post #59
slovette wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an example of technical change aligning itself with real world human want. People will ALWAYS put convenience first. Even those that say they won’t, it’s typically an isolated action (like, email is harder when not using google apps, but it’s worth not being spied on. Walk in their house, Echos and smart devices everywhere). The hope for Blockchain is we can now, finally, begin building true decentralize…

Lightning networks to handle scaling limitations are the first step on the slow re-centralization of bitcoin. Eventually an overwhelming majority mining will be controlled by a centralized/federated oligopoly. Be prepared to rebel and re-re-decentralize in 20 years.

It's a different kind of centralization, if you can call it that at all, since you don't have to trust your counterparty in a lightning network style payment channel

Re: The Decentralized Future

#113

Post by zodiac »

tim333 wrote: post #104
jedberg wrote: post #27

> traditional banking that takes days and charges high fees Only in the USA. And that is hopefully changing in the next month or two with the upgrade in the ACH system.

I just checked transferwise for £1000 to about us$1400. The cost compared with google's estimate of the interbank rate was $6 and they said it would take one day. I've also recently done £ to Thai baht and most currencies are there. It's quite quick and cheap such that it would be hard for crypto transfers to compete for most stuff.

> It's quite quick

Really? I use it often and it always takes a few days end-to-end

Re: The Decentralized Future

#114

Post by zodiac »

freejulian wrote: post #101
CryptoPunk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Raiden is a poor and incomplete implementation of Lightning. Raiden is a comprehensive implementation that includes Lightning Networks for ERC20 tokens, something that Bitcoin doesn't even have. >>Proof of stake is a pipe dream. Your information is incorrect. Ethereum's proof of stake is close to complete conceptually and the first version, a hybrid PoW/PoS protocol called Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget, is cu…

> Raiden is a comprehensive implementation Is the lone implementation which is still on testnet and no ecosystem surrounding it. > ERC20 tokens, something that Bitcoin doesn't even have. Bitcoin has no interest in implementing an equivalent as a layer-1 feature. This should be a surprise to no one. Off-chain scaling is the official direction of the Bitcoin community. There's no interest in adding bloat to the layer 1…

> A full archive node currently requires a 400GB SSD! You're only option is to run a light node,

Uh, what about running a full archive node? The bitcoin txo set is also much larger the the utxo set

Re: The Decentralized Future

#115

Post by zodiac »

freejulian wrote: post #86
rrecuero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to mention that scalability is a moving target. As you mentioned Plasma, Raiden and sharding are different approaches to solve it

Raiden is a poor and incomplete implementation of Lightning. Bitcoin has 3 independent implementations and a developing ecosystem of software around it. Proof of stake is a pipe dream. Such a system can’t reliably achieve consensus due to the nothing-at-stake problem. Additionally, randomly selecting a winner in a distributed yet unpredictable way continues to be an unsolved problem. Sharding has the cost of weakenin…

> Raiden is a poor and incomplete implementation

How so?

> Sharding has the cost of weakening security.

Why?

Re: The Decentralized Future

#116

Post by erikb »

darawk wrote: post #25
erikb wrote: post #19

The nature of single things is decentralized. Therefore every new era starts with decentralization. The internet started off quite decentralized, for instance. But do we really have a new era here? I'm not sure if with 32 years of age I'm already too old to recognize the New and grog it. I don't feel it. I feel there's a lot of buzz around blockchain, sure. But it looks like it would be all. Bitcoin is just as centra…

> Bitcoin is just as centralized as banks are, for instance. That's a rather odd statement. Can you justify that?

I've put it in the second example. People can manage their bitcoins by themselves, but instead they let exchanges manage it for them. So all the problems of centralization (exploitation of users, market manipulation, big time theft, etc) can be found in the bitcoin ecosystem as well.

You see the same history repeating, just a lot quicker. Therefore I assume whatever you do with blockchains will become a centralized system as well.

PS: If you think about it, as technology cash is even more decentralized as bitcoin. Yet banks happened.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#117

Post by arisAlexis »

Buetol wrote: post #52

Or it's like all the other services we have, it evolves from decentralized to centralized: email, search, forums,...The case could be made even for governments. The only limit was technical, now you can control the cabs in all the cities from one place. The future is definitely more and more centralized, just look at the money distribution. My guess is that we're having our geeky dreams without thinking what's the re…

we can change the world. some people always don't see the vision or they don't believe in it. we should not count on them for society progression regardless if we fail or not. otherwise let's all make a big corp dystopia our dream and go sleep.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#118

Post by arisAlexis »

skywhopper wrote: post #62

I don’t see any actual practical use cases described here that make mainstream adoption of blockchain tech make any sense. Or any concrete arguments about how it improves current systems. And the weaknesses of blockchain are glossed over or ignored. And “it’s never been hacked” is the frankly pretty toothless argument in favor of its security. Basically this is a weak article for Y Combinator to be publishing. If thi…

you have a lot of hatred in you like others. did you stop to think why? the article is nice and describes use cases. "the best they can come up with"? sounds like they are trying to convince you. that's not happening. they are describing the endless possibilities offered by a new technology. it's you that needs to keep up.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#119

Post by mrep »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #109
mrep wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internet was a "solution in search of a problem" too. No, no it wasn't. Close to light speed communication provided about 10 orders of magnitude faster/cheaper communication than before. I cannot even fathom how someone would not immediately realize how that massive increase in communication would not be useful. Contrast this with blockchains which are practically 10 orders of magnitude more COSTLY since every node…

> I cannot even fathom how someone would not immediately realize how that massive increase in communication would not be useful. Just like you cannot fathom how Bitcoin can be useful in February of 2018, 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched. That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off.

> 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched.

The dotcom bubble was fueled by speculation in how useful the internet would be. Granted, it busted but many companies survived it and some are now the biggest companies in the world.

> That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off.

Internet growth has been incredibly fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

I can see some utility in blockchains. However, my main point is that the economics of them make them terrible for 99.99% of problems.

Internet: 10 orders of magnitude faster/cheaper communication than before.

blockchains: 10 orders of magnitude more COSTLY.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#120

Post by phlip9 »

Felz wrote: post #83

I feel like proof of work blockchains don't actually solve the problem of "who to trust". Nodes just automatically assign trust to whoever mined the best hash that they know of, which turns out to be whoever holds the most mining power. But not even that: If you're in China and the original blockchain is censored and all your node will ever see is the StateChain, you have misplaced your trust.

In a proof-of-work chain, the fundamental trust assumption is that no malicious mining collusion holds more than 50% of the hash power. If you can make this assumption, your security holds as long as you manage to obtain the most recent block with some frequency (usually at least every 6 blocks ~ 1 hour). Of course, if someone manages to MITM attack you, they can mine blocks and feed them to you in order to double spend on you, for example. One way to accomplish this would be to engineer an Eclipse attack [1].

However, as long as you have any source for the most recent block that the MITM does not control, they cannot trick you into following a shorter chain. In other words, as long as any side-channel (malicious or otherwise) posts blocks, you can always follow the longest chain. The Blockstream Satellite [2] was created for this reason -- so that nodes always have a reliable side-channel separate from the bitcoin protocol to verify blocks coming from the bitcoin network. Alternatively, some nodes check Tor mirrors, which should be difficult for adversaries to control.

[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf [2] https://blockstream.com/satellite/

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