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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#341

Post by nathias »

simiones wrote: post #302
nathias wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, but the problem contraints arent reducible to engineering, so in the example you're giving an established centralized authority can profit from selling credentials using only a key signature, but a new decentralized bottom-up credential system needs a blockchain and smart-contracts to do it ...

The problem is that most such schemes end up requiring both a blockchain and an established centralized authority, because the blockchain doesn't actually solve the problem its meant to solve (since the only problem it solves is distributed consensus on the order of events in the blockchain - no more, no less).

I think it does, because of its complexity, it's more of a set of technologies than just a software solution. Preventing double-spend is just the main use, however in order to do this a whole game-theoretical economic/technological system is required and that also solves and/or creates other problems. For cryptocurrencies, DAOs and similar systems economics is a security concern (wrong incentives will make it possible for an someone to game and/or break the system).

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#342

Post by acdha »

throwaway290 wrote: post #76
cypress66 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be dealt with by the justice system, not some corporations.

Payment processors saw the writing on the wall. The reason they did what they did and PH made a 180 and disposed of incriminating content all in one month is because justice system has teeth and they did not want to find themselves liable. And justice system has teeth because PH is a proper company participating in a financial system. Good luck stopping a criminal in another country profiting from crime by accepting…

> Good luck stopping a criminal in another country profiting from crime by accepting bitcoin

Interesting choice of examples: the FBI found bitcoin to be very helpful in exactly that context since it gave hard evidence linking criminals together.

https://www.wired.com/story/tracers-in-the-dark-welcome-to-v...

This idea that police agencies haven’t figured out how to talk with their colleagues in other countries is oddly anachronistic given that we have examples going back to before the turn of the previous century.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#343

Post by arethuza »

politician wrote: post #327
atypeoferror wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am a confused luddite, but it seems telling that this argument immediately launches into the solution space of a problem that is itself created by the presence of a blockchain. Double-spend has been solved by the financial sector quite some time ago. The distributed system part - I guess this is the problem that I think the article is claiming is yet to be found.

> Double-spend has been solved by the financial sector. Traditional finance offers “at-most-one spend”while blockchain protocols offer “one spend up to 1/3 malicious nodes”. The limit on the former is government, and Byzantine Fault Tolerance sets the limit on the latter. Government can unilaterally seize “your” funds in traditional banking, while a substantial computational attack is required to cause a loss of conf…

Can't governments force people to hand over control of their keys?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#344

Post by onetrickwolf »

constantcrying wrote: post #295
onetrickwolf wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reason I have been interested in blockchain is that it seems like a good way to make a decentralized application that could exist beyond the life of the company or person that creates it. I work in a hobby industry where a lot of community run ledgers are suddenly lost forever due to the death of someone in the fandom (or rarely intentional sabotage or hacking). Would this be a good use for blockchain or are there…

A blockchain requires significant, persistent and consistent community effort. If you can not have one guy taking up the mantle and doing the hosting, how can you get hundreds to do the same? >A reason I have been interested in blockchain is that it seems like a good way to make a decentralized application that could exist beyond the life of the company or person that creates it. Community run projects have existed f…

> If you can not have one guy taking up the mantle and doing the hosting, how can you get hundreds to do the same?

Well I mean if you were to use a public blockchain like Ethereum it's likely the Ethereum community wouldn't be going away. I am not thinking about rolling out our own chain.

> Community run projects have existed for decades on the internet. They never needed a blockchain to persist

Unfortunately my experience hasn't really been the same. Community data controlled by a single user can go away pretty easily. If you open up the data and let people host their own database then you don't have a single source of truth.

Our data is largely just a ledger of who owns what with minimal meta data.

> IPFS potentially

Thanks will look into it!

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#345

Post by pjkundert »

sebo2000 wrote: post #251

You guys have issues with elections and vote couting. I think Blockchain would solve this problem once and for all, but I'm afraid it is not a problem anyone wants to solve...

Just like CBDCs. The only problem they are designed to "solve" is the problem of you having liberty.

But that's a PR disaster, so the authorities proposing these things have to convince you that they're solving some more important problem -- like "all the baaad people" using money. Hopefully, you'll soon forget you used to have that liberty.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#346

Post by TrackerFF »

underdeserver wrote: post #303

> [Andy Jassey] said something like this: “All these leaders [CIOs and CTOs of huge enterprises] are asking me what our blockchain strategy is. They tell me that everyone’s saying it’s the future, the platform that’s going to obsolete everything else. I need to have a good answer for them. I’ll be honest, when they explain why it’s wonderful I just don’t get it. You guys got to go figure it out for us.” To me the tel…

I recently attended a trade show, which mostly revolved around emerging ML/AI and other "hot" tech products in the market.

So it actually seems that in the logistics line of things like manufacturing / production / etc. there is a place for blockchain, mainly due to the immutability and decentralized distribution properties. What could take a whole week to track down using older methods, takes seconds if all the data is recorded on the blockchain...for example, food production. You want to find out exactly which animal your food comes from, and all the things involved (use of antibiotics? which factory? how did the product travel before ending up at your grocery store? etc.).

Some researchers working on these products repeated that they often get approached by directors and CxO level people regarding this - wondering if blockchain can "solve problems". And every time, they have to reply: Using the blockchain can solve some specialized problems, but there's no magic fairy dust involved, and it's not some general structure which will solve all their problems.

Unfortunately, it's kind of like AI. High-level directors dream of General AI, but you need to explain to them that it's all ML models which aid (replace if you're lucky) workers, and automate some tasks.

I think any CTO worth their salt should know these things, and manage the expectations of the other C-suite executives.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#347

Post by jcbrand »

seu wrote: post #220

> Dear Reader: I think that at some point, in a civilization, there has to be trust. I think that’s maybe the main reason we have civilizations. Call me crazy. Dead on

Disclaimer: speaking only of Bitcoin, the utility of the larger crypto space is somewhat questionable.

Yes, there will always be a need for trust, and Bitcoin doesn't change that. What it does is actually facilitate more, rather than less, trust.

By having a rock-solid form of money with a well-known, immutable monetary policy and issuance rate, that doesn't rely on any single entity and is very difficult to corrupt, all kinds of trust-related issues (moral hazard, Cantillon effect, theft of purchasing power) are resolved.

In addition, commerce and exchange between strangers can more easily be facilitated based on such a system rather than one that relies on multiple intermediaries.

If I can have cryptographic proof of escrow in a multi-sig wallet (2 of 3, where there is a trusted (!) 3rd party), I might be willing to do a transaction with someone I might otherwise not (e.g. due to a lack of trust that they have the funds available).

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#349

Post by nosianu »

mhluongo wrote: post #297
nosianu wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it does not matter which one is included, only that it's only one of the choices that all agree on. Which one that is is not relevant, there is no part of the algorithm that determines one transaction to be "more valid" than another one. There is no ranking of transactions, one of them has to be picked but which one it is can be random, as long as there is agreement. Also see the response from and s…

There are certainly tx validity rules, though, and when presented with a set of equally valid txs, miners will likely choose the one that is best for them (called "MEV", miner extractable value).

Neither the OP or me said there are no rules and they have to use an RNG to make a decision, only that it does not matter. That they then go and use an algorithm that maximizes their profits is only to be expected and the rational outcome from the fact that there is no other constraint from the technical algorithm.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#350

Post by mike_hearn »

piaste wrote: post #296
mike_hearn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually know something about the finance industry, not sure this is the thread for you ;) You're absolutely right about the core problem. I worked for several years on an 'enterprise blockchain' system. We often called it distributed ledger technology because our platform didn't actually use chains of blocks or proof of work, and it didn't have a token or anything like that. It was essentially a type of database…

Haha, this beginning was eerie to read: > We often called it distributed ledger technology because our platform didn't actually use chains of blocks or proof of work, and it didn't have a token or anything like that. It was essentially a type of database but it had a lot of ideas from Bitcoin in it and was blockchainy enough that customers accepted it as such. because it was actually how I selected Corda as the infra…

By funny CLI admin panel you mean the banking jokes, right? ;)

Glad you liked the design, thanks for the kind words!

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