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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

vitalik.ca

111–120 of 465 posts

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#111
post #26

Scam after scam, that's all blockchain is. Just another way to fleece the average consumer. There has not been a single valuable use, a single product, that actually improves anyone's day / process / life / anything. I am very open to changing my stance if someone presents evidence to the contrary.

Remittances are better/easier. That’s the only thing I’ve seen and the tech to do that is trivial now and Bitcoin is terrible for it specifically now.

How are remittances better/easier exactly? With BTC you need to exchange currencies at least 2 times, as opposed to one.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. In July 1886 the newspapers reported on the first public outing of the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car, model no. 1.

Do quote everything, while you're at it. > The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under license from Benz, in France by Emile Roger. There were numerous others, including tricycle builders Rudolf Egg, Edward Butler, and Léon Bollée. Bollée, using a 650 cc (40 cu in) engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average 45 kilometres per hour (28 mph) in the 1897 Paris-T…

> 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain

This seems an odd claim to make. Currently there's hundreds of Cryptocurrencies using blockchains as a foundation, and more than half a trillion dollars tied up in them. Right now it seems like they're at least speculative investments. If this does not count as a use-case then we'd better break the news to essentially all of finance.

Years ago before the values jumped you could do plenty of actual currency things with cryptocurrencies: there were ATMs, you could buy beers at a pub or pay for server hosting (something I did myself), etc. Because of all of the speculation cryptocurrencies have generally become too volatile for that. Nobody wants to find out at the pub there was a market crash and they can't cover their outing. At the time though, it all worked and had incredibly low transaction fees.

Then there's the applications for areas like logistics, supply chain, that are all under development. IMO it has absolutely established itself as a technology and like everything new people were quick to try to apply it to every problem and found it largely didn't fit most places. That doesn't mean it isn't useful.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#113
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we don’t change our minds because we haven’t seen a convincing counter-argument to the thesis that blockchains are fundamentally about getting rich quick through buying in early (or pre-mining) and then finding greater fools. The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms. I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These r…

Polymarket is a real use case.

Why do you need a blockchain for that? Gambling and Insurance existed both long before blockchains.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#114

Is there anything blockchains can do in less time complexity than traditional computations?

DTLs aren't "computers" its just that some build a computer into it to create a decentral computer.

In its raw form a DTL does not compute an output but ofc all participants compute signatures and such stuff to validate input and reach consensus.

This is not a competition to a single computer as load is no distributed its the exact opposite. Everyone checks the rules of the system. (not to be confused with mining that does nothing, its just a puzzle to decide who can write the next block)

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#115
The really obvious weakness in any blockchain setup is the software. Whoever controls the software upgrade channel will always have potential control of the blockchain, whether that's the official entity in charge, or some intermediary.

If you want really widespread distribution of full nodes, you need to make a consumer-friendly distribution of the node software, and package it and keep it updated in a way that regular users can run it and forget it. This same convenience introduces a centralization problem that obviates the whole point of running a distributed ledger.

This is a point so obvious I hesitate to make it, but I've learned that in blockchain territory there is no flaw too obvious to point out.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#116

Blockchain, Decentralization and Smart Contracts have had nearly a decade to prove their value and disrupt the marketplace. So far nothing but whitepapers, pipe dreams and exit scams - nothing my mother can use. What's the point? Nobody is using crypto as an alternative to fiat. Prove me wrong.

Decentralization is good, but it’s almost by definition not profitable. It’s in centralization that you get profit (pre-mining is a bit like centralization).

BitTorrent: good, somewhat decentralized. Not super profitable.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#117
post #22

Vitalik is consistently one of the most interesting people to follow in the blockchain space. Even his (5+ year) old writing is quite interesting, if nothing else to see how Ethereum's research thinking has evolved over time. A few questions re: why "Ethereum is not going further than quadratic [sharding]." The first reason given: there's a minimum number of nodes required for shard for safety guarantees. So, a coupl…

[deleted]

There is already a PoS chain. After the ice age in June/July, there will be another PoW chain as well. It will be up to individuals and exchanges to decide which one they want to do transactions on. And they might even choose "both", as in the case of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of stake is six months away and always will be.

Ethereum proof of stake beacon chain has been live for 6 months now: https://beaconcha.in/

That's running only a fraction of the network, though. The concerns are whether or not it can scale (or at least those have always been my concerns), and I'm of the opinion it won't work.

I hope I'm wrong.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#119

The really obvious weakness in any blockchain setup is the software. Whoever controls the software upgrade channel will always have potential control of the blockchain, whether that's the official entity in charge, or some intermediary. If you want really widespread distribution of full nodes, you need to make a consumer-friendly distribution of the node software, and package it and keep it updated in a way that regu…

That's why some blockchains have multiple implementations and don't use auto-updates. There's also some work on taking governance out of developer's hands (e.g. Tezos where users vote on new features).

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#120
post #11
post #6

You could also just not scale the blockchain, and instead use layer 2 solutions, which is the bitcoin approach.

BTC’s layer 2 method also doesn’t scale because (among other reasons) you still need on-chain transactions to handle opening connections and creating wallets, which the main chain does not have the throughput to do at scale. That’s also not to mention all the practical difficulties of using lightning (have to constantly monitor for fraudulent closing of connections, locks up liquidity, etc) and technical issues (rout…

It clearly offers much improved scalability since 2 on-chain transactions can support hundreds of off-chain ones. Certainly, there are still limits on the number of transactions it can support in practice, but those numbers are orders of magnitude larger.
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