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Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

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Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#271

Post by gregmac »

jamemuraca wrote: post #145
nexthash wrote: post #11

I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…

I think a great use case is for distributed storage and control of home automation products, with an open protocol on top of it. When I have lock in to one vendor and they go bankrupt, device has lost control but also my historical data. If this was all via a distributed model, I could grant access to a new app/company to take over control. Even if they don't close up, I could still give access to other integration p…

Buy home automation products with local control and no internet communications at all. Ideally with an open protocol, and open source control software.

Same protection against vendor death/depreciation/etc, and on top of that your data is more secure, the system survives internet outages, and you don't have to mess with the immense complexity blockchain adds.

Remote access, if you even need it, can be done through a thousand other methods (direct IP address, tunneling proxy, VPN, etc etc).

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#272

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

zeroxfe wrote: post #228
xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we, as engineers, have failed in explaining things. A blockchain is a linked list where each element of the list contains the hash of the previous element. It's basically a degenerate Merkle tree. That is all that it is. It isn't a metaphor. It isn't throwing off the shackles of an overreaching government, nor is it a takeover of our society by militant right-wing conspiracy theorists. It's a data structure.

A Merkle tree is just one component of a blockchain. It also requires: a byzantine consensus mechanism, a p2p network stack, public key crypto, and a set of economic incentives to keep it going. You can't build a public database on a Merckle tree without being able to agree on what goes into it.

That is a cryptocurrency. The work coming from the people at Hyperledger, who are also using blockchains, is an ordinary database complete with access controls. It uses the same data structure but without any of the political goals and with many different design decisions.

A blockchain is just a data structure. It isn't even a very interesting one.

In common parlance "blockchain" isn't well-defined: it just refers to something that's, like anarchy, dude, whoa....

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#273

Post by prof-dr-ir »

kgin wrote: post #144
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #6

The "lack of intuitive private key management" is worth expanding on. Would it not be nice if you could, maybe for a small fee, have some trusted entity store your private key for you? One could perhaps imagine storing a printout of the private key in some kind of physical "safe deposit" box, to be maintained by such an entity? But maybe that is to cumbersome and we can do so entirely digitally? In that case I guess…

Too many people are missing the dry humor in this post

Well the post does appear to hint at a more serious issue - but it might not be easy to make it precise.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#274

Post by jakupovic »

ashtonkem wrote: post #260
jakupovic wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Elon Musk bitcoin fan? How about Mass Mutual? BNYM? Pretty funny the language used, fans, seriously 6th most valued currency in the world is relegated to plush babies status. At least people have stopped with the tulips and that talk. Same talk and yet bitcoin acceptance keeps growing day by day, how do you explain that? Is everyone else wrong?

> Is Elon Musk a[sic] Bitcoin fan? Yes. He also is a Twitter shitposter who got in trouble with the SEC for promising to take Tesla private at $420 a share, a number he picked because it was funny, and was also involved in the GME nonsense a few weeks back. If you’re pointing to men like him as serious figures pushing for bitcoin’s adoption, then it’s time to stop and rethink a lot of things. > yet Bitcoin acceptance…

>As always, gimme a call when I can buy a latte and groceries with it.

Same problem as when you're in let's say Uzbekistan and only have Rubles, an exchange has to happen in order to spend your Rubles in local currency.

Not going to try and disuade your from your position but bitcoin is not going anywhere and might as well accept it.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#275

Post by smartties »

selestify wrote: post #264
smartties wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market cap means nothing. I can create 10^32 coins out of thin air, sell one coin at 1$ to one customer. And the next thing I have is a coin with higher marketcap than bitcoin.

To get recognition as the coin with the highest market cap, you’d need to have it actually traded on an exchange. How many people on the open market are going to buy your coin for $1 on an exchange? There you go, your coin is worthless and has a market cap of roughly zero as determine by the open market exchange.

> How many people on the open market are going to buy your coin for $1 on an exchange?

Even if 1 client per year buy it (let's say my token purpose is to give to access to private content on my website), then my marketcap is still 10^32 $, because marketcap is just the number of supply x the last traded price of my coin.

And yes, we both agree, marketcap has 0 value. It was just to make a point that using the marketcap as argument makes no sense.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#276

Post by ashtonkem »

jakupovic wrote: post #274
ashtonkem wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Elon Musk a[sic] Bitcoin fan? Yes. He also is a Twitter shitposter who got in trouble with the SEC for promising to take Tesla private at $420 a share, a number he picked because it was funny, and was also involved in the GME nonsense a few weeks back. If you’re pointing to men like him as serious figures pushing for bitcoin’s adoption, then it’s time to stop and rethink a lot of things. > yet Bitcoin acceptance…

>As always, gimme a call when I can buy a latte and groceries with it. Same problem as when you're in let's say Uzbekistan and only have Rubles, an exchange has to happen in order to spend your Rubles in local currency. Not going to try and disuade your from your position but bitcoin is not going anywhere and might as well accept it.

Why do I have to "accept" a currency that nobody around me is willing to receive in exchange for the goods and services that I want? Heck, why do I need to "accept" anything about a currency at all? I didn't "accept" credit cards into my life or world view, I just got one when it was convenient for me.

It's supposed to be money, not a religion. I don't need to accept bitcoin into my heart, or something strange like that.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#277

Post by openfuture »

andreaorru wrote: post #57
bildung wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hardly doubt you'll find any enconomist working in those corporations fearing inflation. Inflation has been a non-issue since the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I...

And yet... https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

USD went off the gold standard in 1971.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#278

Post by unhingingdog »

canoebuilder wrote: post #219
gjvc wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code is law. What does this mean?

It was something “smart contract” proponents used to say, maybe still do. When I say code is law, I mean “law” in the physics sense. We can code, print “hello world”, and know exactly what the code will do. We can write code up to some threshold of complexity and know exactly what it will do in all cases. Like how given certain information about a physical system we can calculate trajectories or whatnot up to some th…

Civil law can't be fully ported to computer code, but enough of it probably can. Most contractual issues don't get anywhere near a court. They're resolved via negotiation and alternative dispute resolution (and there's normally a contractual obligation to go this route before resorting to the courts). Dispute resolution is incredibly expensive, especially when you're dealing with multiple jurisdictions. Lawyers and judges haven't managed to stop parties using mediation and arbitration services offered by people who aren't legally trained, such as economists or people with extensive domain experience.

But smart contracts would change the way contracts are written, as they're often intentionally ambiguous for a variety of reasons. There's also the problem of "oracles", but we already have a profession for translating real-world events into legal ones (notaries).

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#279

Post by jakupovic »

ashtonkem wrote: post #276
jakupovic wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As always, gimme a call when I can buy a latte and groceries with it. Same problem as when you're in let's say Uzbekistan and only have Rubles, an exchange has to happen in order to spend your Rubles in local currency. Not going to try and disuade your from your position but bitcoin is not going anywhere and might as well accept it.

Why do I have to "accept" a currency that nobody around me is willing to receive in exchange for the goods and services that I want? Heck, why do I need to "accept" anything about a currency at all? I didn't "accept" credit cards into my life or world view, I just got one when it was convenient for me. It's supposed to be money, not a religion. I don't need to accept bitcoin into my heart, or something strange like t…

> didn't "accept" credit cards into my life or world view, I just got one when it was convenient for me.

That's all I'm implying with accepting. You'll get bitcoin when it makes sense for you. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, but like I said bitcoin is here and your lack of acceptance doesn't hinder it.

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