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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

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Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#111

Post by mayank »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41
mayank wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A CRM built in this way might enable multiple "thin clients" to build and an ecosystem to develop around it. Let's parse this. CRM = customer relationship management, usually in the context of sales. The sales relationship is often hard won and closely guarded, because it makes people money. You're proposing putting information about this relationship on a public blockchain (because a "private blockchain" here is j…

I did not say public. Private blockchains are a thing. And it's not just an internal database. They are forkable and potentially run by the customer themselves or in their own AWS private cloud or wherever. But by following the protocol, they could easily switch providers, or integrate several clients that provide different features around the same data. The customer can truly own their data and the side chain can in…

> But by following the protocol, they could easily switch providers, or integrate several clients that provide different features around the same data.

What you're suggesting is solvable by an open data standard and export/import features on software. A blockchain provides none of those by virtue of being a blockchain.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#112

Post by endlessvoid94 »

slg wrote: post #89
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally fair point. It's especially great for the investment world -- especially VC, which only needs one billion-dollar exit to make a return. So this makes sense!

Which basically sums up my problem with it. It is sad that the primary angle anyone looks at this from is as an investor or even a VC. That results in lots of wasted time, money, and specifically for most blockchain businesses wasted carbon ouput.

If the only problem is that we've wasted a lot of time, and in the end one company builds one product that changes the world, then maybe it's worth it.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#113

Post by dperfect »

Felz wrote: post #85
dperfect wrote: post #71

Trust isn't really a feature of blockchains, nor is it a byproduct (or "software primitive") of blockchains. Bitcoin was designed to avoid a need for trust, so it really just steps around the issue of trust in a distributed ledger. This is a critical misunderstanding that a lot of people are still preaching and perpetuating. You can't really build systems that rely on trust on top of a blockchain, and those who have…

Trust is inescapable. You've simply shifted yours from reputational trust to trust in the decentralization of the computing frontier of a specific hashing problem. But while reputational trust is cheap and a well-solved problem, the trust you're using _requires_ large amounts of computing value to be burned continuously, in the hopes that electricity and computation are decentralized enough in the real world that mul…

I agree mostly with the point you're making, but there's an important distinction between "reputational trust" and an assumption that game theory and market forces will continue to provide the necessary levels of decentralization for Bitcoin to operate as intended. I'm not sure it's fair to put those two ideas on equal ground as if all forms of trust should be embraced because it's "inescapable".

Reputational trust (as you call it) often isn't even based on reputation so much as military force (sovereign governments). A lot of people - myself included - would much rather have their finances in the hands of algorithms and theoretically-sound incentives (even without a 100% guarantee of decentralization) than in the hands of central banks controlled by the whims of politicians.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#115

Post by endlessvoid94 »

caust1c wrote: post #64
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I pointed to the solution instead of the problem. I'm still an engineer at heart, it seems! What should I have said instead? Centralization of data? Unreliability of single-points-of-failure?

It provides distributed trust for the class of problems wherein you have multiple competitive parties trying to achieve consensus on a sequence of transactions (or contracts, if you will). I believe a massive number of social and societal problems are solved by distributed trust models in the same ways free market economies generally lead to more equality and democracy leads to more freedoms.

Can you give me an example?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#116

Post by bredren »

root_axis wrote: post #48

More breathless fawning rhetoric and nebulous jargon, but I guess the target audience is blockchain enthusiasts so that makes sense. At the end of the day it's their money, so what I do I care? I find it frustrating when I hear comparisons of the blockchain to internet and cellphone communication platforms. The potential use cases for the internet and cellphones were immediately obvious (instant remote communication)…

>The potential uses cases for the internet and cellphones were immediately obvious (instant remote communication) and available on day one, compared with blockchains which has given us bitcoin and nothing else of unique value.

Bitcoin has unquestionably provided folks looking to work outside traditional financial systems (and governance) value. You can see it in the black market use and its use in ransoming everything from Game of Thrones to hospital records. It was used this way almost from day one.

Also, the use of smartphones as this "instant remote communication" doesn't begin to describe where the technology led, which was to the smartphone which is some type of multimedia device capable of far more than its initial concept.

It doesn't hurt to be skeptical of rhetoric, but you don't make a stronger point by downplaying the difference in value between when cellphone launched and what cell phone technology offers today.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#117

Post by w4 »

elyobo wrote: post #96
madeofpalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what problems are being solved? Real estate, oil and gas exploration/drilling/royalties are all things that have existed without problem for many decades. Saying "real estate, but with blockchain" doesn't actually say what problem you're solving.

I think I'd have to argue that real estate has existed for much, much longer than a few decades :D I'm a pretty big sceptic on all of this crypto BS, but the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The syst…

> the ownership of real estate assets seems like a pretty archaic system of not easily inspected pieces of paper. Having a public, provable system for recording this information (and possibly other related info, e.g. liens) seems like it would be of some use. The system we have works, but it could work better.

This already exists in many states. It's a political problem (whether or not to use of tax money to pay for the digitization of old records), not a technical one: https://www.uslandrecords.com/uslr/UslrApp/index.jsp

Related information, like liens, is available via those public records as well.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#118

Post by TimTheTinker »

rlucas wrote: post #103
TimTheTinker wrote: post #47

> Trust is a new software primitive from which other components can be constructed. This kind of talk is extremely misleading. At the end of the day, we're still people buying and selling goods and services from other people. The most blockchain can do is remove some types of middle-men (financial or otherwise), but the endpoints will always be human. Trust between humans will always be a requirement to buy and sell…

It is not strictly true that endpoints and the locus of trust always have humans in the loop. (Where they do, of course, I agree that blockchain has much more limited "fit" as a solution.) However, in what I call "network-native resource transactions," namely, where the provision of the thing of value is computational and can be verified on the network (think: storage, compute, bandwidth, namespace resources like DNS…

When would this be any more useful than having a credit card on file with whoever is providing the resource?

...or am I completely misunderstanding what you mean by “payment/settlement”?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#119

Post by endlessvoid94 »

dsco wrote: post #110
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #29

The skepticism of blockchain technology is borne out of a lack of specific problems it solves. Which happens to also be the bedrock of the conventional startup wisdom -- value derived from solving a problem or exploiting an opportunity. So much of the blockchain hype is focused purely on the technology and the valuation of the tokens / coins. Not the problem it solves. It's distributed trust. That's the problem it so…

I think you're doing blockchain and human ingenuity a disservice by framing the question that way. Many corporations haven't revolved around "solving a problem", but instead making existing solutions more efficient. There were people letting out apartments before AirBnb, and there were taxi cars before Uber - yet we feel that these companies are making our lives easier. Also your question is very much centered around…

Sure. Bitcoin in Venezuela is solving the problem of their existing currency imploding.

Anything that performs a function inefficiently can be a problem waiting to be solved.

What I’m asking for is a concrete example of a societal problem (something inefficient, costly, painful, or impossible) that blockchain addresses.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#120

Post by paulie_a »

pavlov wrote: post #30
chrisco255 wrote: post #14

I totally agree with A16Z here. Blockchain skepticism is not hard to find on HN and beyond. First, the ecosystem is vast and evolving quickly. If you've "tuned out" by dismissing blockchain, then don't be surprised when your industry gets disrupted in 5-10 years. I think we'll begin to see business logic open-sourced on the blockchain. For example, existing SaaS model incentivizes closed-source, centrally managed rep…

Have you heard of GDPR? Customer data must be deletable and only shared with third parties based on user consent. A blockchain is an immutable data structure that unknown third parties can copy. It's literally the exact opposite of what you should be using for customer data. How does this CRM-focused blockchain make any sense at all?

I think the crm concept is terrible, but I don't give a crap about GDPR...I don't follow it now and never will.
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