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Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#121

Post by [deleted] »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #50
paulsutter wrote: post #19

The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)

Preventing double spending is possible even without trust. A centralised authority could publish the transactions in a signed append only log. Independent verifiers could pull the log with some frequency and verify that no one spent twice.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#122

Post by lui8906 »

Putting my bias at the front, I own crypto and am "pro" crypto if we can boil it down simply. I'm also deeply skeptical of a lot of projects in crypto, most OG's are because there is a lot of vaporware and scams and ponzis.

Nonetheless, the vision of having a shared consensus truth that the whole world can rely on for transacting I find very compelling.

I like the way Anatoly from Solana puts it:

"Global information symmetry"

Source: https://youtu.be/35_rr8Vf-4k?t=28939

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#123

Post by viraptor »

EverywhereTrip wrote: post #101

There is a blockchain based system for doing podcast updates called PodPing. It reduces the overhead of checking hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds, and cuts down the time it takes for notification of new episode of a show. It can currently update everyone in the system in under 40 seconds from hitting publish. You can watch new podcasts get published live at podping.watch.

A single message queue piping to Google notification service can do that for podcast apps with simpler setup / more efficiency. The sad state of podcast feeds doesn't make podping a particularly good system.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#124

Post by FabHK »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #84
Niksko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a single trusted party. You're trading trust for one entity for trust for many entities.

> Without a single trusted party. You're trading trust for one entity for trust for many entities. The notion of “single” entities in society is, I think, flawed. A bank is not a single entity, for instance—they are not just a single actor—they are governed by a board and bylaws and shareholders and government regulations and judges, etc. If something goes wrong, which is expected and built into the system process ,t…

> The main purpose of blockchain is to attempt to replace the messiness of human governance with the certainty of algorithmic governance.

Right, and as is shown inevitably in real life (The DAO, BTC 0.7/0.8 fork, censoring of scam or Russia related BTC addresses, ...), the messiness of reasonably well understood and regulated human governance (law, elections, ...) is replaced by governance of the algorithm plus a bunch of unelected, unaccountable, and largely even unknown humans.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#125

Post by tsimionescu »

dageshi wrote: post #75

You're missing the fact that it enabled purely online/digital money people will actually use. You could build an online currency with a database much more easily than blockchain but people won't use it because it relies on a central authority to maintain the database and not enough people will trust that central authority not to misuse their power. It was tried a bunch of times in the past and never worked. Fundament…

People were using money online just fine well before Bitcoin, and even today, actually using BTC for non-investment purposes is a tiny minority. What exactly makes a dollar or euro less "online/digital" than a bitcoin?

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#126

Post by ak_111 »

paulsutter wrote: post #19

The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)

This is sensible take, and arguably backed by the fact that apart from bitcoin there are no other examples of practical blockchain tech.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#127

Post by pcthrowaway »

mypastself wrote: post #110
paulsutter wrote: post #19

The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)

I’ve read several technical, non-fluff books on the topic, and I’ve developed smart contracts on Ethereum for decent hourly wage (paid out in fiat). And I’ve still come to roughly the same conclusion as you. Either my reading comprehension is poor, or there is little actual value in the vast majority of blockchain applications. Digital cash, as defined in the Bitcoin whitepaper, still seems like the only real use cas…

If you've developed smart contracts, I'm surprised you don't consider the capability of trustless financial instruments (peer-to-peer lending and pooled lending, for example) to be pretty useful as well

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#128

Post by mytherin »

paulsutter wrote: post #80
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing double spending is possible even without trust. A centralised authority could publish the transactions in a signed append only log. Independent verifiers could pull the log with some frequency and verify that no one spent twice.

Good point - blockchain also prevents transaction censorship (your proposal prevents double spend but allows the central authority to block transactions) Central authorities might do wild stuff like block Folks They Don’t Like (certain truck drivers, etc). Some people think that’s really good, others feel the opposite (edited for clarity)

If the miners don’t like you what stops them from not including your transactions in the chain?

It is my understanding that if a large enough pool of miners decides they don’t like you (>50%) they can completely prevent your ability to spend money.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#129

Post by alkonaut »

forum_ghost wrote: post #58
alkonaut wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone want or need “bulletproof” anything? The one feature of any transaction or contractual framework that I’d be most reluctant to give up is the one where they are fungible and reversible e.g in courts. Features luge secrecy, resistance to hacking, corruption, and so on seem to be second to this in nearly every case in the regular/legal economy of open democracy (I.e the part of the economy that matters).

do you want your laptop bulletproof from hacking by members of this forum? what about your bank account?

Neither I think? But I must admit I have no idea how blockchain tech would apply to the hacking of a computer. My bank account I want handled by humans and courts in the end.

There is nothing wrong with having public immutable ledgers making tampering visible. This is useful. But the question there is: what is the drawback of centralized ledgers, e.g like the ones for interbank transfers? Even git a git repo represents a kind of public ledger like that.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#130

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

paulsutter wrote: post #61
FabHK wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party. Yes, and avoiding the trusted party makes it more inefficient by a factor of around 100,000,000 (-ish), if you consider that BTC uses around 23 GW and can do no more (5 transactions a second) than a single trusted PC could do. What are use cases were you actually need this and the high cost is worth it?

The power is used to secure the system, not to perform transactions. The transaction rate has always been the same, the power use has gone up with the value of the contents (to resist a 51% attack) Some people feel strongly this security is worth it. Some feel strongly that it isn’t (but one suspects their objection is really to the lack of central control)

Climate change may be the problem that defines our generation.

In that light, and given the ludicrous power estimates that blockchains use, are we not morally obligated to kill all the blockchain projects if these estimates are in the right ballpark?

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