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Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

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Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#21

Post by Dzugaru »

Iv wrote: post #10
TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

This is the whole misguided overenthusiasm we have seen with BTC as well. Blockchains do change something fundamental: the ability to provide for the aforementioned services in case: - You want to stay anonymous - You can't trust a third party I would argue that a functional society would not need any blockchain services as it would provide the necessary privacy defenses to do anonymous transactions and the means to…

> A lot of the blockchain enthusiasts are anarchists or libertarians. They assume society is already failing or on the verge of collapse.

You don't need to assume that to see obvious benefits of a blockchain. As long as there're stupid or evil people in society central authority systems like banks can fail, rob you or be hacked. Blockchain on the other hand is more reliable.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#22

Post by mbrock »

canoebuilder wrote: post #18
mbrock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multisignature funds are used by almost all blockchain project organizations and companies. That's a simple system that's extremely useful. So blockchains give you the ability to open a secure account of valuable digital assets and authorize spending via cryptographic signatures and business logic. You couldn't do that before blockchains, and it's not hard to imagine interesting variations on the theme: for example t…

Can you break down into the simplest language, what that actually means? How is it superior to existing systems? For what applications?

It's a checkings account for cryptocurrency with spending conditions of the type "4 out of 6 members agree and the weekly spending limit is not exceeded."

Since blockchains are open source and programmable, that also means it's a checkings account that you can script in any way you want.

It's superior in that it doesn't require a bank. It's also an extremely transparent system, since blockchain transactions are visible to and auditable by everyone, and it has some strong security properties because of decentralization.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#23

Post by ForHackernews »

Dzugaru wrote: post #21
Iv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole misguided overenthusiasm we have seen with BTC as well. Blockchains do change something fundamental: the ability to provide for the aforementioned services in case: - You want to stay anonymous - You can't trust a third party I would argue that a functional society would not need any blockchain services as it would provide the necessary privacy defenses to do anonymous transactions and the means to…

> A lot of the blockchain enthusiasts are anarchists or libertarians. They assume society is already failing or on the verge of collapse. You don't need to assume that to see obvious benefits of a blockchain. As long as there're stupid or evil people in society central authority systems like banks can fail, rob you or be hacked. Blockchain on the other hand is more reliable.

> central authority systems like banks can fail, rob you or be hacked. Blockchain on the other hand is more reliable.

The body of evidence to date suggests that you're much more likely to be robbed of your cryptocurrency through fraud or incompetence than you are to lose your traditional currency from a bank.

https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/

Furthermore, we've already seen examples of the "authorities" behind cryptocurrency executing a rollback to modify transactions they didn't like: https://www.coindesk.com/hard-fork-ethereum-dao/

I strongly dispute the notion that blockchain is more reliable. Maybe in some ideal universe where blockchain technology is not implemented and maintained by humans.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#24

Post by usrusr »

Naomarik wrote: post #8
TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

There is no reason to use blockchain to implement every single piece of software. Blockchain's primary utility is as a cryptocurrency. There's a lot of profit being made off people's ignorance and everyone I see pushing this agenda are people who have no idea how software works and are not qualified to speak on the matter. People have a problem: the software they have is not solving their problems very well. Before i…

> and now they're eyeing blockchain cause they don't know better.

Or because they can't be seen ignoring a hype that too many others believe in. When decisionmaking for a publicly traded company you have to at least pretend to participate in the hype even if the only reason is a sufficiently large fraction of investors thinking that a sufficiently large fraction of their peers are believing in the hype. It's almost like magic.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#25

Post by Ar-Curunir »

pja wrote: post #20
rando444 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think blockchains provide any anonymity. You can try to provide as little information as possible about yourself, but there is nothing in the blockchain that facilitates anonymity.

Indeed - there’s no anonymity in BitCoin itself as all transactions are trackable. What anonymity there is exist because of external services like mixers/tumblers and the difficulty level of directly tying a given wallet to an individual. Monero goes further and anonymises transactions between wallets.

Note that Montero provides a heuristic guarantee of anonymity, not a provable one.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#26

Post by Dzugaru »

ForHackernews wrote: post #23
Dzugaru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of the blockchain enthusiasts are anarchists or libertarians. They assume society is already failing or on the verge of collapse. You don't need to assume that to see obvious benefits of a blockchain. As long as there're stupid or evil people in society central authority systems like banks can fail, rob you or be hacked. Blockchain on the other hand is more reliable.

> central authority systems like banks can fail, rob you or be hacked. Blockchain on the other hand is more reliable. The body of evidence to date suggests that you're much more likely to be robbed of your cryptocurrency through fraud or incompetence than you are to lose your traditional currency from a bank. https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ Furthermore, we've already seen examples of the "authorities" b…

> The body of evidence to date suggests that you're much more likely to be robbed of your cryptocurrency through fraud or incompetence

Because the technology (right now? maybe we'll see cryptocurrencies built in hardware/os eventually) is for competent geeks, not that greedy people that store their bitcoins on exchange wallets (or use any central server). One has to ask oneself if the blockchain is more reliable for him, just as he does with other things like choosing doctors etc.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#27

Post by [deleted] »

Iv wrote: post #10
TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

This is the whole misguided overenthusiasm we have seen with BTC as well. Blockchains do change something fundamental: the ability to provide for the aforementioned services in case: - You want to stay anonymous - You can't trust a third party I would argue that a functional society would not need any blockchain services as it would provide the necessary privacy defenses to do anonymous transactions and the means to…

[deleted]

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#28

Post by chirau »

Iv wrote: post #10
TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

This is the whole misguided overenthusiasm we have seen with BTC as well. Blockchains do change something fundamental: the ability to provide for the aforementioned services in case: - You want to stay anonymous - You can't trust a third party I would argue that a functional society would not need any blockchain services as it would provide the necessary privacy defenses to do anonymous transactions and the means to…

We in Zimbabwe do not fully understand what you mean by "Zimbabwe moment"... please do explain. And also explain how this blockchain would change anything here.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#29

Post by Iv »

chirau wrote: post #28
Iv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole misguided overenthusiasm we have seen with BTC as well. Blockchains do change something fundamental: the ability to provide for the aforementioned services in case: - You want to stay anonymous - You can't trust a third party I would argue that a functional society would not need any blockchain services as it would provide the necessary privacy defenses to do anonymous transactions and the means to…

We in Zimbabwe do not fully understand what you mean by "Zimbabwe moment"... please do explain. And also explain how this blockchain would change anything here.

Sorry, I mean a runaway inflation that led to trillion dollars bills to buy bread, as well as the impossibility to anticipate costs of look g projects without resorting to foreign currency.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#30

Post by aqsheehy »

retox wrote: post #19

My understanding is that a blockchain is a distributed, immutable database. There must be some serious dollaroos floating around in consultancy fees for such a simple idea to be cropping up constantly and as a solution to almost every problem.

Buzz words are a hell of a drug
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