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Building for the Blockchain

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Building for the Blockchain

#271

Post by sah2ed »

joosters wrote: post #135
ThomPete wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I see a lot of different areas where the blockchain will be extremely useful. The reason I think that is very simple. The blockchain allows us to create scarcity in an otherwise abundant medium. This means that potentially (and yes it will take time) we will see be able to mimic the physical space and create items that are to some extent unique (even though the can be copied. The art market is based on exa…

But all your examples are possible (and have been successfully implemented) without a blockchain. So what does the chain add? Besides which, when is turning abundance into scarcity a good thing?

> Besides which, when is turning abundance into scarcity a good thing?

To limit the illegal reproduction of information goods (movies, TV shows, ebooks) which have zero marginal costs. This is why DRM was invented -- to offer control to copyright holders by creating the illusion of scarcity of information goods which are costly to produce but can be reproduced by anyone at zero cost.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#272

Post by CryptoPunk »

EGreg wrote: post #181
joosters wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ripple is not trustless, so the blockchain part of it is moot. Since you have to trust Ripple (because they have full control), you might as well let them store the blockchain data on their own centrally controlled database.

What are you talking about? What exactly can Ripple do on its own network that you have to trust t not to do? And anyway it's open source software! Why don't you go download the XRP consensus protocol from their github repo and try it. Ripple's servers won't even be part of the network.

If you want to be part of the Ripple network you have to trust Ripple's set of trusted validators. MySQL is open source, but that doesn't make a given MySQL server decentralized. Ripple in this case is that MySQL server.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#273

Post by Semaphor »

tehlike wrote: post #246
amalag wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes many tokens are being used as shares and trying to circumvent securities law.

Tokens are actually mostly not shares. You dont own the company that issues the tokens. Everybody likes to think that it is, though.

There are a few, like Modum, that are really nothing but unregulated shares. Most of them are unregulated less-than-shares.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#274

Post by Semaphor »

platz wrote: post #186
meri_dian wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. Wealth is built through control, while a distributed ledger rejects control by design. Now distributed ledgers have utility, but that does not necessarily mean they will create business value for entrepreneurs and investors. It's almost like how regulation has value in society, but regulation is decidedly not profitable and businesses usually reject it.

> distributed ledger rejects control by design Assuming you convince 1) 100,000 miners your blockchain has value, such that 2) the distribution of control is spread out among those miners uniformly. Both of which is a pretty big assumptions.

More and more newer projects don't need those miners. It's still in question if they really offer the same security, but between masternode chains (security by having the "mining" done by people having to hold a large share of the coins so tanking its value would hit them hardest), dPoS (delegated Proof of Stake, every coin is a vote and you vote for a pool of "miners"), DAG where everyone has to do PoW for other txs to confirm their own, and other ideas, there are some interesting things. (I say "miner" but for those newer ones, the proof of work is often minimal to non-existent.)

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#275

Post by krrrh »

CamTin wrote: post #125
vec wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. "Bitcoin as anarcho-capitalist proof of concept" does seem to be the correct framework for understanding why it exists, why it works the way it does, and what one might find valuable about it. On that front it's been at least a partial success. I can't buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin, and I doubt I ever will, but the fact that it works at all is a lot more than I suspected we would see at this point. It's d…

Tracking ownership of some intangible set of rights is actually basically the one thing that BTC/ETH-esque tech is really useful for, so the Kodak thing is far from the craziest coin announced. A sane thing to do would be to piggyback on one the existing blockhains and their pre-existing hashing power. In this scenario, Kodak would create some kind colored-coin or side chain representing ownership of certain photogra…

Exactly. There have been a bunch of proof on concept websites that have been offering this service for 3-4 years now with very little pick up or interest from creators or consumers. In the end, there’s no reason it couldn’t be a simple open source drag and drop utility, or command line tool. They are offering a complicated solution to a problem that no one seems to think they have.

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#276

Post by krrrh »

sah2ed wrote: post #271
joosters wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all your examples are possible (and have been successfully implemented) without a blockchain. So what does the chain add? Besides which, when is turning abundance into scarcity a good thing?

> Besides which, when is turning abundance into scarcity a good thing? To limit the illegal reproduction of information goods (movies, TV shows, ebooks) which have zero marginal costs. This is why DRM was invented -- to offer control to copyright holders by creating the illusion of scarcity of information goods which are costly to produce but can be reproduced by anyone at zero cost.

How does a blockchain limit illegal reproduction? Having an record of ownership ain’t gonna shut down the torrents whether it’s in a database in Apple’s data center, or on a blockchain. How does this square with blockchain-related projects like IPFS which basically make it impossible to stop piracy?

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#277

Post by wibblewobble »

C14L wrote: post #124
rsp1984 wrote: post #78

Monegro believes that this paradigm shift affects the way that developers should think about their applications: “The combination of shared open data with an incentive system that prevents “winner-take-all” markets changes the game at the application layer and creates an entire new category of companies with fundamentally different business models at the protocol layer.” Ok, thin protocols + fat apps --> fat protocol…

It solves some problems, especially when it comes to networks of shared information where no one actor trust any other single actor. But as usual, as soon as a lot of money is to be made, non-techies get dollar signs in their eyes and --without understanding the tool-- jump in and start using it for everything. It will be very amusing to watch, for sure.

Techies are also seeing dollar signs, perhaps we need a word to describe these semi-technical people chasing pots of gold at the end of a fools rainbow!

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#278

Post by krrrh »

xorcist wrote: post #193
kang wrote: post #68

Naval does a much better job of explaining what the tech is about : https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/ However, OP nor Naval, really understand the protocol, or wouldn't be supporting non-blockchain things like ethereum (there is nothing that you can do with ethereum but not with git). >One of these developers, Vitalik Buterin, was frustrated by Bitcoin’s immobilism I am amazed at how HN is selling…

Reading old logs may also reveal something about the project Vitalik had before getting involved with Ethereum: Selling access to his quantum computer ... for mining Bitcoins. Strange how the PR puff pieces around Ethereum never seem to mention this project. Amazing also how the quantum computer seems to disappear as the pre-mined coins were sold off.

It was even weirder than that. He believed he could gain an edge on bitcoin mining by simulating a quantum computer with a conventional computer.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/buterins-quantum-quest/

Re: Building for the Blockchain

#279

Post by sah2ed »

krrrh wrote: post #276
sah2ed wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides which, when is turning abundance into scarcity a good thing? To limit the illegal reproduction of information goods (movies, TV shows, ebooks) which have zero marginal costs. This is why DRM was invented -- to offer control to copyright holders by creating the illusion of scarcity of information goods which are costly to produce but can be reproduced by anyone at zero cost.

How does a blockchain limit illegal reproduction? Having an record of ownership ain’t gonna shut down the torrents whether it’s in a database in Apple’s data center, or on a blockchain. How does this square with blockchain-related projects like IPFS which basically make it impossible to stop piracy?

Sorry if my reply implied that the blockchain is somehow comparable to DRM -- they are not.

I was merely talking about the effects of the blockchain. The outcome of using a blockchain is identical to the outcome of using DRM: they both can be used to engender the illusion of scarcity of something that is not naturally scarce.

Without (the illusion of) scarcity, the enforcement of property (or access) rights on the Internet would be impossible; blockchains and DRM enable their enforcement by maintaining records of "who has permission to what and for how long" which is why they are useful.

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