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Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

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Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#381

Post by hiq »

hestefisk wrote: post #378
hiq wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come the trust regarding the physical goods themselves does not expand to the financial aspects of the transaction?

Maybe read up on trade finance :)

Let me rephrase: you don't need a public permissionless blockchain to have an append-only ledger that allow you to audit transactions. If you're not using a public permissionless blockchain, then there's nothing new that hasn't been around for decades. See also the paragraph about private blockchains in https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#382

Post by hiq »

mattdesl wrote: post #373
hiq wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet nobody has an issue with Namecheap marketplace—a centralized ledger If nobody has an issue with it, why are you talking about an alternative to it? What's the benefit? Also note that Namecheap does sell domains that are then recognized by many other entities, it's not a "virtual property" that only leaves within Namecheap's system, it's something you end up owning in the legal world. The "not real" argument…

> If nobody has an issue with it, why are you talking about an alternative to it? this entire far-too-long discussion I’ve participated in stemmed from the notion that blockchain’s goals are already better solved by existing solutions. I asked for any that solves peer-to-peer decentralized escrow of a digital asset like a domain name; so far the primary response have been “you don’t need to do that since you can trus…

> so far the primary response have been “you don’t need to do that since you can trust [centralized company].”

It's more like: you can try, but current blockchain-based systems don't succeed at this, because you do end up trusting one or several entities (you wrote "Using a blockchain doesn't mean you no longer need trust."). So even blockchain-based solutions don't solve this problem, and if they don't, it's unclear what benefit they bring, even years after.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#383

Post by hiq »

mattdesl wrote: post #364
hiq wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namecheap: 10% commission, only works with Namecheap-registered domains, the exchange may take up to 96 hours, and then 5 days later you can withdraw these funds to PayPal (which will incur additional fees). > Compare this to, say, Tezos domains: exchange and transfer of funds settled in ~30 seconds, without any need for currency conversion, across any ".tez" domain in the network, 2.5% commission (or 0% via custom…

Sure, they are apples and oranges. Namecheap will likely never be able to match these settlement times, 0-2.5% fees, data privacy, interoperability etc. If they decide to one day sell crypto domains like ‘.eth’ and ‘.tez’, they will be entering an extremely competitive market; and compete against marketplaces that trade any valid NFT (including domains) like Objkt.com and OpenSea, with commissions around 2.5%, no nee…

Again, whatever technical advantage Tezos might have in terms of efficiency, nothing prevents Namecheap from using a database instead of a blockchain and reaching higher efficiency.

You're assuming that the fees you pay Namecheap are representative of their costs. You could also say that Apple will never be able to compete with mid-range Android phones because iPhones are so expensive,. The point of a business is to make money, and the margin represents a big share of the price, so you can't just forget about it. The price / fees don't necessarily reflect anything about the business costs, especially in tech.

Blockchain-based solutions are usually cheap because they're either subsidized (like Uber was very cheap because it was just not profitable), because they offer a strictly worse product (almost no company wants a .tez) or a combination of both.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#384

Post by nicbou »

Grustaf wrote: post #376
nicbou wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto currencies being volatile is not inherent in the technology How so? It has no control mechanism to prevent it. I get that the brakes (central banks) don't always work perfectly, but removing them entirely is an odd choice. > Having a currency that jumps up and down by a factor of 2 like bitcoin in the last year is still better than one that melts away To whom? When? > You can easily imagine [...], that's not…

We're discussing the technology of crypto currencies, not just the currencies that exist now. It wouldn't be hard to make a utility coin that gives you something real, but virtual, like megabytes of data on your phone plan, domain hosting, virtual goods in games to the value of 1 dollar etc. Such a coin would not be as volatile as one that is untethered from anything tangible, like Bitcoin. > To whom? When? To most p…

On one side you cherry pick the failures of a system in use, and on the other you tout the benefits of something that could be. Do you see why this is not a fair comparison?

Speaking of cherry picking, the hyperinflation events that you mention happened a few times over centuries, but they happen on a quarterly basis in cryptoland. And somehow that makes crypto better?

How does "everyone" benefit from a massively unstable currency? Who actually desires money that can double and halve in value overnight, and why?

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#385

Post by mnd999 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #317
dbrgn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I just wanted to point out that building merkle hash trees, or blockchains, or whatever you want to call it, isn't "all rubbish". There are some valid use cases.

My point was that people who talk about blockchain typically refer to something other than a Merkle hash tree - they refer to a hash tree plus some consensus mechanism for trustless addition. I don't know of a term other than "blockchain" that can be used to refer to this concept.

It doesn’t even have to be trustless, some of this crap is using RAFT (for speed), the assumption being that the participants are all trusted.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#386

Post by drdeca »

q3k wrote: post #140
drdeca wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a technical solution.

Growing up is also realizing that some problems require non-technical solutions :).

Sure, but it also makes it not an answer to the question which was asked.

And just because the technical solution to a technical problem might not be (/isn’t) a good/practical solution to the practical problem that the technical problem is inspired by, doesn’t make interest in the technical solution illegitimate.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#387

Post by Grustaf »

nicbou wrote: post #384
Grustaf wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're discussing the technology of crypto currencies, not just the currencies that exist now. It wouldn't be hard to make a utility coin that gives you something real, but virtual, like megabytes of data on your phone plan, domain hosting, virtual goods in games to the value of 1 dollar etc. Such a coin would not be as volatile as one that is untethered from anything tangible, like Bitcoin. > To whom? When? To most p…

On one side you cherry pick the failures of a system in use, and on the other you tout the benefits of something that could be. Do you see why this is not a fair comparison? Speaking of cherry picking, the hyperinflation events that you mention happened a few times over centuries, but they happen on a quarterly basis in cryptoland. And somehow that makes crypto better? How does "everyone" benefit from a massively uns…

I guess you're replying to the wrong person. I clearly said that for "most people" it's NOT worth it. And I haven't cherry picked any failures in the current system. I'm not a crypto proponent. I don't own any crypto, I'm definitely not saying we should replace dollars with crypto.

> Who actually desires money that can double and halve in value overnight, and why?

As I said twice above, if you live in Zimbabwe, or even Argentina, bitcoin is probably preferable to the state currency. That's really all I'm saying. Technical hyperinflation is not all that common perhaps, but even at 10-20% a month it gets hard.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#389

Post by igorkraw »

mattdesl wrote: post #380
igorkraw wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So again, what can you do with it? What's the usage except "I have it and you can't"? Because, if you use it to point to an IP, who's giving you that IP? An asset has value, just because you call it an asset doesn't make it one.

you point an ENS name to an address (a public key hash). in a system built on private/public keys, it can be useful as an alias. the “IP”, or address in this case, is my own , because it is directly generated from a 24 word seed phrase. this naming system has value for myself and the millions of other users interacting within the network.

But unless you have a completely independent physical layer, that network and alias is only reachable via an IP you rent or buy from the normal Systems. So what's the added value once you have that IP pointing somewhere? Like, if everything you can do with the ENS depends on an IP, which can do the same things as an IP, what's the use case? You are already dependent on the system, without an avenue out, what's the advantage of using an ENS vs something in the system?

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#390

Post by traveler01 »

smt88 wrote: post #105
traveler01 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the world we live in. Nobody can stay in the middle, people either hate it or love it, it's either black or white. Nobody can do pros/cons on everything, specially giving valid criticism to improve an idea.

> That's the world we live in. Nobody can stay in the middle, people either hate it or love it, it's either black or white. This is an illusion created by spending time online. The loudest people are polarized, but the majority of people are still in the middle somewhere, sometimes in a very ambivalent state. A great example of this is Elon Musk. Online (Twitter, reddit, etc.) people worship him or loathe him. But th…

Yeah that makes sense. We're listening too much to the extremes, they're louder after all. Sadly I don't see this changing in the near future...
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