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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#351

Post by jasmer »

smt88 wrote: post #24

I had a real experience that perfectly reflects the research presented here (safer ledgers useful, blockchains are not). I accidentally got wrapped up in a project to automate some HR functions, and the product manager demanded that it must be blockchain because blockchains are the future. It turns out that append-only databases are well-suited for HR records, and (especially when dealing with things like background…

" it must be blockchain because blockchains are the future."

Wow, that's next level PM cringe.

I'm glad you were able to jujitsu your way around it.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#352

Post by simiones »

nathias wrote: post #341
simiones wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 possibl…

The point is that blockchains don't provide you with anything other than that "main use". For any other kind of feature you need to add something else - and if you're adding a centralized trusted authority (which is by far the easiest way to do anything), then you can get rid of the blockchain altogether.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#353

Post by Karunamon »

arethuza wrote: post #343
politician wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They can't guarantee that there is only one set of keys. They are just files after all.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#354

Post by jeremyjh »

wodenokoto wrote: post #186

With regards to the land markers. You could have a database at the government land authority. If markers in the field don't match up with records, the land authority will ask police to correct the issue. If neither police nor land authority can be trusted to keep records and uphold the law, who is going to help you when a marker in the field doesn't match up to some distributed database? Big land owner will say "I do…

Well suppose you nominally have the support of local government and police, but in practice they can bought cheaply, and suddenly the records match what the large landholder says instead of the markers you used to have. An immutable record would help solve this, but the point stands that it is not convincing that you need a blockchain or that it would solve the problem. How would you get local government to buy into it in the first place? If the national government is willing to force them, they could just manage a database with immutable records.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#355

Post by throwoutway »

themihai wrote: post #339
super256 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value . All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap,…

I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. It's obvious that all those pegged currencies are prone to "bank run" scenarios. Not to mention the fiat conversion ruines the whole experience. With a real currency we could have at least real open and standards based p2p payments which would be great! Just like with cash offline we would no longer need visa, paypal or banks to tra…

> I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain.

So making sure I understand, there’s no value today?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#356

Post by masklinn »

TrackerFF wrote: post #346
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…

> 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.).

Literally none of that should involve (let alone requires) a blockchain.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#357

Post by remram »

siftrics wrote: post #73
remram wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not even true. You can always get people's money and turn them into some tokens. You can run whatever code you want to manipulate those tokens, then at the end of each day you tell them their new balance of tokens. The whole proof-of-work, decentralization, ledger, ... are in no way necessary steps in this. As long as you go through creepy, deregulated, fallible exchanges to obtain/trade/redeem those token…

> The whole proof-of-work, decentralization, ledger, ... are in no way necessary steps in this. If you know of a ledger that's (1) permissionless and (2) avoids the double-spending problem and (3) _does not_ involve those things you mentioned ...then please, do tell me about it. I'd love to know your breakthrough solution.

What I'm saying is that you don't need a decentralized ledger to enable the "financial innovation" we've been seeing, and that it's not permissionless if every meaningful action (buy/sell/trade) happens on good ol' central exchanges.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#358

Post by throwoutway »

TrackerFF wrote: post #346
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…

they’ve been talking about that agtech solution for over 5 years and no one has built it? They could do the same with a database

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#359

Post by crypot »

nathias wrote: post #244
runeks wrote: post #167

Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant. The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the "double spend problem", ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipien…

the original purpose of an invention does not limit the scope of its application

The book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley changed my perspective on this. Originally I thought all innovation was like the dotcom era. Ridley attempts to show that there are times when it is not always clear what the final innovation will be.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#360

Post by BlueTemplar »

bnralt wrote: post #326
dsco wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s been the majority of HNs take on the technology. But the Internet was made for text communication and here we are decades later with social media and streaming video. TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology wi…

Are the comments different, though? "Permissionless composability" - basically blockchain jargon for financial transactions that have no oversight - are made possible by the things runeks mentions. It's like someone saying "this solves the double spending problem," and someone else going "no, this allows me to buy contraband." It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is…

It is a surprise, since all accounts and transactions are teansparent to all.

And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)

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