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Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

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Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#41

Post by matt_wulfeck »

aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

Even if the tech is "legit" it's encredibly inefficient. We're spewing off tons of CO2 just to verify the block chain, but we have plenty of technologies that can do the same with a minuscule amount of energy.

The problem is that they want a system that's trustless and that's simply not what most engineers care about. We want a system that's fast and efficient.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#42

Post by runeks »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9
random023987 wrote: post #4

Proof-of-work blockchains were developed to solve a problem that only exists in a small percentage of distributed engineering use-cases. Unless you need to build a "censorship-free" peer-to-peer ledger distributed among untrusted, anonymous participants, the complexity costs and latency and computation costs simply aren't worth it. It's the same reason that Ford doesn't build a tunnel under the US/Mexico border to fe…

Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. The stability of whole ecosystems is predicated upon those ecosystems being attractive to people who want to make money by competing to solve hard problems by brute force. That's a lot of energy going into a system that can commit a new block of transactions once every 10 minutes on average. It solves a problem in an in…

> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. The stability of whole ecosystems is predicated upon those ecosystems being attractive to people who want to make money by competing to solve hard problems by brute force.

What do you mean by this, exactly? Bitcoin miners look more than willing to earn money on brute forcing hard problems.

The point of proof-of-work is that it shouldn’t matter what anyone thinks about it. It’s basically impossible to ban (anyone can do a SHA256 calculation), and the difficulty automatically adjusts. In addition to this, the block reward — currently 12.5 BTC per block — halves every ~4 years, so less and less electricity will be consumed until only transaction fees provide capital for proof-of-work[1].

[1] http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/37...

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#43

Post by darawk »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #41
aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

Even if the tech is "legit" it's encredibly inefficient. We're spewing off tons of CO2 just to verify the block chain, but we have plenty of technologies that can do the same with a minuscule amount of energy. The problem is that they want a system that's trustless and that's simply not what most engineers care about. We want a system that's fast and efficient.

There are solutions to that though, like Proof of Stake. If distributed systems really cared about that, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on blockchains, to make them more efficient.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#44

Post by devrandomguy »

wyager wrote: post #31
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the core problem is if you want a global transaction system to become popular it needs to process and store ~TB / day of new transactions. Which means you quickly get into EB territory for the full database which is not something distributed systems can really handle without scaling issues. Now if you want a system used by 0.01% of the global population then that's a very different problem, but far less useful.

Look up "Lightning Network". This is a solved problem. You can build on top of bitcoin to scale basically as large as you want, trustlessly. The software is being developed as we speak.

I sense incoming downvotes, it would be great if we could get a link to an existing rebuttal, or something. Stomping on someone's dream just so you don't have to risk disappointment holds us all back. What are the limits of the Lightning network?

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#45

Post by Retric »

wyager wrote: post #31
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the core problem is if you want a global transaction system to become popular it needs to process and store ~TB / day of new transactions. Which means you quickly get into EB territory for the full database which is not something distributed systems can really handle without scaling issues. Now if you want a system used by 0.01% of the global population then that's a very different problem, but far less useful.

Look up "Lightning Network". This is a solved problem. You can build on top of bitcoin to scale basically as large as you want, trustlessly. The software is being developed as we speak.

Lighting network boosts the number of transactions between two people, but you need to have 'banks' to make it efficient. And even then a minimum of 2 transactions per month * 7 billion people is still a lot of data.

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-...

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#46

Post by sigstoat »

rafiki6 wrote: post #39

Here's one take DLT and Blockchain: https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-blockchain TL;DR, it's gonna take a real long time to make blockchain useful, if it even is. Further, I have yet to see a real production application of blockchain that isn't a crypto-currency. Everyone and their grandmothers has invested in it, or started a company or w/e. But has it actually been used to solve another problem? Blockchain wa…

> But has it actually been used to solve another problem?

Maersk is interested http://fortune.com/2017/03/05/maersk-tests-blockchain-based-...

Makes some sense freight shipments involve a lot of parties who don't completely trust one another, and they've got a lot of information to move back and forth between one another.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#47

Post by random023987 »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #40
random023987 wrote: post #4

Proof-of-work blockchains were developed to solve a problem that only exists in a small percentage of distributed engineering use-cases. Unless you need to build a "censorship-free" peer-to-peer ledger distributed among untrusted, anonymous participants, the complexity costs and latency and computation costs simply aren't worth it. It's the same reason that Ford doesn't build a tunnel under the US/Mexico border to fe…

Came here to say essentially the same thing. One possibility would be a government mandate that financial transactions are done with a blockchain in order to have transparency. I don't see that as likely though as the use case is pretty tenuous.

> One possibility would be a government mandate that financial transactions are done with a blockchain in order to have transparency.

How does that stop governments from engaging in Iran-Contra behavior?

How is that better than a government mandate requiring a list of expenditures PGP-signed by the government and their vendors?

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#48

Post by Rjevski »

Because I have yet to find an actual legitimate use-case for a blockchain. Every task in our modern business world actually requires a central trusted authority.

Edit: not to mention that mining is an incredible waste of time and energy that can instead be put to good use.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#50

Post by shepardrtc »

aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

That's not true for all companies. Take Ripple or Coinbase, for example. Both have worked from the beginning to be legit. Ripple's various technologies (including their currency) are being adopted by banks across the world. And Coinbase has worked with the Feds from the beginning to make sure they were complying with regulations. Granted there are a lot of bad actors in crypto, but there are good ones, too.
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