Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 225 posts

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#191

Post by viraptor »

mikekchar wrote: post #144
jacques_chester wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs in financial software can typically be unwound by the parties involved, or by courts, or both. This is less true for a scheme designed to be irreversible in itself.

Traditional finance isn't any easier to unwind than bitcoin. If I give you $5 I can't magically "erase" that transaction. The $5 bill doesn't materialise back in my pocket. Instead, I get the police to force you to give the money back. As an accountant, if you erase a transaction (even if it was a mistake), you can go to jail. What you do it make a balancing transaction to correct the mistake. Nothing is stopping you…

> Traditional finance isn't any easier to unwind than bitcoin.

This is one of those cases where the theory and practice don't match. The are two cases: the destination account exists or doesn't. If it doesn't, your bank returns your money minus some handling fees. Your Bitcoin in the same situation is gone to an unused wallet which nobody can access.

If the account is valid: With Bitcoin it's on you to track down who owns your funds now and figure out how to recover it. In case of a bank though you raise an issue with them and start the process - either internal or across banks. It allows the person receiving the money to approve a quick reveal, or allows you to start legal action to recover your funds.

At some high, abstract level, these are similar. But in practice, banks make it pretty easy to recover your funds in case of simple mistakes.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#192

Post by viraptor »

mikekchar wrote: post #144
jacques_chester wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs in financial software can typically be unwound by the parties involved, or by courts, or both. This is less true for a scheme designed to be irreversible in itself.

Traditional finance isn't any easier to unwind than bitcoin. If I give you $5 I can't magically "erase" that transaction. The $5 bill doesn't materialise back in my pocket. Instead, I get the police to force you to give the money back. As an accountant, if you erase a transaction (even if it was a mistake), you can go to jail. What you do it make a balancing transaction to correct the mistake. Nothing is stopping you…

> With Bitcoin, it is easy to secure a large amount of value and ensure that only you can access it. Bizarrely, a large number of people totally ignore this advantage...

We had examples of a number of entities, which tried to apply the best practices and were aware of the risks, completely failing at the task. Multiple exchanges, smart contract operators, and other companies failed to protect their coins. The real world shows us that this is not that easy given clever adversaries.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#193

Post by mannykannot »

xwvvvvwx wrote: post #187
mannykannot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what your position here is: that you can do whatever you want, or at least a lot of useful things, in ~100 lines of code? That if your software is broken down into functions no bigger that ~100 lines of code, and they have each been individually verified, then their composition has also been verified? Or something else? There is also the matter of verifying the platform itself.

> There is also the matter of verifying the platform itself The Ethereum virtual machine has been formally verified. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/97207

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. If I am following along correctly, it does not so much verify the deployed EVM as it provides a formal and executable semantics for an EVM that satisfies the test suite, and the authors demonstrate its use in finding some real-world problems, which is exactly the sort of thing that we want:

"These properties make KEVM an ideal formal reference implementation against which other implementations can be evaluated. We proceed to argue for a semantics-first formal verification approach for EVM contracts, and demonstrate its practicality by using KEVM to verify practically important properties over the arithmetic operation of an example smart contract and the correct operation of a token transfer function in a second contract."

From the paper, it seems that the latter example could have found a bug that caused problems in a deployed Ethereum contract.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#194

Post by JimmyAustin »

_betty_ wrote: post #164
cozicoolmail wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you prove identity on a blockchain? You'd be worse equipped than Facebook. Are you suggesting some entity verify folks who sign up for this distributed social network? Make an Ehtereum contract to do it? Either way, this sounds dubious at best.

I think the idea is: * Website gives person a unique code to broadcast on the blockchain to prove they have control over that identity * 'Approved' services claim things publically about identities (eg age, allowed to drive) which others can use to verify claims What I don't get is: * how you know which 'approved' services to trust in the first place * why you'd want all of that information public * how it'd fix the…

You can treat the 'approved' services list using a whitelist, like a CA.

The other issue is that none of this is necessary. If I want to prove to Person X that Gov Y says that I have property Z, why can't I just present a cryptographically signed certificate saying I have property X. You could even have a similar revocation list as CA.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#195

Post by api »

acdha wrote: post #134
api wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't immutable. They can be fixed.

Doesn't that require the active cooperation of all parties involved?

Or the implicit third party of the state, more specifically the legislative and judicial branches.

I think the bottom line is that contract law is an AI-hard problem-- meaning it takes a "real intelligence" to negotiate and enforce contracts. Simple logical rule sets implemented in code are too dumb.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#196

Post by acdha »

api wrote: post #195
acdha wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that require the active cooperation of all parties involved?

Or the implicit third party of the state, more specifically the legislative and judicial branches. I think the bottom line is that contract law is an AI-hard problem-- meaning it takes a "real intelligence" to negotiate and enforce contracts. Simple logical rule sets implemented in code are too dumb.

Agreed — I find it really odd how many people are willing to assume that another complex field must be easy just because they've never thought about it in depth.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#197

Post by cornholio »

joe_the_user wrote: post #142
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> smart contracts and distributed algorithms enable control mechanism and hard guarantees that have no old world equivalent, they can eliminate counterparty risks, guarantee solvency and fair arbitration etc. The required nexus between the blockchain and the tangible and legal worlds means every limitation that exists today will exist for a "smart contract". It's the same plumbing with a paint job.

The required nexus between the blockchain and the tangible and legal worlds means every limitation that exists today will exist for a "smart contract". It's the same plumbing with a paint job. It's that plus a whole new crop of perverse incentives which arise with any "smart contract". Especially, no smart control can reach out to the "real world" and get data, more less facts. A smart control would essentially be li…

Something equivalent to LIBOR rates could in principle be made to run on distributed markets with a great deal of transparency and little possibility for manipulation. They are a standard feature of many contracts. Whole central banks could be automated. Something like "next year's tomato quality" will obviously need a physical world mediator, but that's hardly surprising.

When the great recession started, it was not caused by an external shock, rather by the viral mistrust that the underwriters of the bad loans were solvent. A financial fragility problem that the blockchain can work to address.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#198

Post by davidgerard »

legionof7 wrote: post #128
asfgjadfgionoin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are many uses for blockchain other than as a cryptocurrency. Name one.

Governance (DAO's, Ardent United, Aragon, etc.)

That's "interesting" as opposed to "useful", because The DAO is most famous for being hacked.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#199

Post by TheCoelacanth »

fruitzome wrote: post #51
cglace wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is bitcoin really important? I think most people have no practical use for it.

2B+ people do not have access to banking or trade. They are poor because we do not trade with them. I couldn't pay someone in South Africa rural area for something worth $2 without bitcoin. Many other people are censored. Billions more have their wealth devalued via inflation. Bitcoin is a way for people to be free without any state taking their money (see Greece)

Right, people buying something for $2 in rural Africa can afford to pay a $30 fee to make that transaction happen. They definitely don't use something like M-Pesa instead.

Re: Why “blockchain” is BS in 4 slides

#200

Post by TheCoelacanth »

thriftwy wrote: post #182
HappyKasper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bit of a fallacy - you can legitimately point out the shortcomings of something without needing to name an alternative (e.g. criticizing Ponzi schemes). In this case, though, you could actually have an alternative of simply not using blockchain. The world was just fine for a long time without it.

For Ponzi scheme, alternative is banks and stock exchanges, not "nothing".

For cryptocurrencies, the alternatives are the dozens of alternate ways of transferring funds.
Post reply on HN