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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#461

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

halpmeh wrote: post #443
noelsusman wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just reinforces my view that the only value crypto provides is evading government financial regulations. Is it actually good that anybody can spin up a new financial firm in a few months with little oversight or regulation? >Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don't have to sell, this isn't a service any bank offers. Every bank offers this service, unless y…

Have you ever implemented a smart contract? If not, I highly recommend you do so before holding an opinion on blockchains. I've never owned crypto, and I've recommended others to stay away from investing in crypto. Yet, I think the computing platform has a lot of promise. Implementing a smart contract for fun helped me see why. The block-chain can be thought of as cryptographically secure state. That is, everyone agr…

In my experience, virtually all kinds of substantially useful smart contracts depend on observing or modifying the world outside of the blockchain, which means you have the oracle problem, or you have the side effect problem.

Not entirely coincidentally, aside from plain faulty implementations and operational security failings, these two problems represent the ways most successful attacks on smart contracts are accomplished.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#462

Post by markdestouches »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #420
candiddevmike wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the benefit of deploying something on a platform controlled by no one? Why not just run all of those things on a server you own?

One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises. I haven’t audited Uniswap’s smart contract code, but if I did I feel I could be pretty confident they won’t steal my money. Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted. disclosure: I work for a crypto company

> One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises.

We are yet to see a working example of that.

> Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted.

These two sentences contradict each other. And no, there was no government regulation that insured FTX deposits. There was so little regulation, they didn't even keep their transaction history.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#463

Post by scyclow »

daveguy wrote: post #377
pjkundert wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're dead on. It's staggering in its power -- permissionless composability, even if most of the data is not on-chain, and the programs are very limited in size/complexity due to the expense of running them. Now, imagine a system where all of the data is also on-chain, and the programs you can compose are full-complexity applications... All while maintaining every independent program's data invariant in a completely…

How is permissionless composability different from the MIT license? I'm confused what you're composing now that you couldn't before and the benefit of that permissionless composability. Ecosystems of programming libraries and compostable abstractions don't require a blockchain as far as I can tell.

The big difference is that a smart contract is a running, stateful, immutable piece of software. Alternatively, I can run software with an MIT license by myself, but I can always modify the data or API without any approval of the users.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#464

Post by hailwren »

chao- wrote: post #428
hailwren wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So basically, you guys are re-inventing what tradfi had years ago, just with worthless(?) tokens instead of debt backed assets. Crypto has debt backed primitives as well. You’ve linked one. AAVE is a lending protocol. If you don’t like AAVE, maybe you’re looking for DAI. > but no way to cash out to fiat. This is just a result of US KYC regulation. Like it or not, this isn’t a choice made by crypto. > What's the val…

I do not know much about sophisticated finance. Can you explain the meaning of this phrase, or sketch out an example, or provide links to assist my understanding? >A kid in a garage can build a financial primitive on top of a “blue chip” and the “blue chip” builder doesn’t have to worry (vis a vis bugs). I get that a "blue chip" is supposed to be a big brand (at least that's how I hear the term often used?) but what…

Right, so it turns out that there are a fair amount of operations you can perform on financial objects to change their properties. You can buy, sell, combine, or split their risk profiles in different manners to get properties that are useful in different scenarios.

Mortgage tranches played a big role in 2008, Black-Scholes helps us describe the behavior of options contracts, and maybe the most accessible for someone not familiar w/ finance is the Ray Dalio McNugget story - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/03/how-ray-dalio-helped-launch-...

The EVM specifically gives you a Turing complete financial system and, hence, probably a complete expression of operations on financial structures.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#465

Post by Nursie »

FabHK wrote: post #300
Nursie wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC there were some hacks on bitcoin ATMs using this sort of knowledge. The attacker would set up a withdrawal of (IIRC) CAD on the ATM, then transfer the bitcoin. The ATM would see the transaction, and dispense the cash. However the attacker would immediately, before the next block was generated, send the same BTC to another address which they controlled, with a higher fee. The miner would discard the first one and…

ATMs would dispense actual cash when a transaction enters the mempool without waiting for (say) 6 confirmations? That seems like a pretty egregious design choice even a decade ago. If that story is true, the ATM designers merited the loss.

https://thenextweb.com/news/double-spenders-scam-150000-bitc...

2018, and yes, it seems like the Bitcoin arms were dispensing cache as soon as a valid transaction but the mempool.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#466

Post by fishtoaster »

halpmeh wrote: post #443
noelsusman wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just reinforces my view that the only value crypto provides is evading government financial regulations. Is it actually good that anybody can spin up a new financial firm in a few months with little oversight or regulation? >Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don't have to sell, this isn't a service any bank offers. Every bank offers this service, unless y…

Have you ever implemented a smart contract? If not, I highly recommend you do so before holding an opinion on blockchains. I've never owned crypto, and I've recommended others to stay away from investing in crypto. Yet, I think the computing platform has a lot of promise. Implementing a smart contract for fun helped me see why. The block-chain can be thought of as cryptographically secure state. That is, everyone agr…

I feel like I've heard this argument a lot over the last decade or so: it's early days, the valuable stuff is yet to come.

I've gone through about three phases of opinions on crypto:

1. "Blockchain is an interesting primitive that you could probably build something neat (besides a cryptocurrency) out of! I can't think of anything good off the top of my head, but I look forward to seeing what valuable thing people come up with."

2. Smart Contracts are an interesting primitive that you could probably build something neat (besides rebuilding existing finance tools without regulation) out of! I can't think of anything good off the top of my head, but I look forward to seeing what valuable thing people come up with.

3. NFTs are an interesting primitive that you could probably build something neat (besides speculative digital assets) out of! I can't think of anything good off the top of my head, but I look forward to seeing what valuable thing people come up with.

In each case, the tech looks like a neat idea, but I continue to wait for the actually valuable use-case to emerge. At this point, I'm starting to just pattern-match all crypto to "unlikely to provide real value ever."

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#467

Post by miracle2k »

dmitriid wrote: post #422
delaaxe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not the underlying storage mechanism uses a database is not the point. The point is who can edit that database and under which rules (imagine that database holds a lot of your money and you live in an oppressive regime).

> imagine that database holds a lot of your money and you live in an oppressive regime That opressive regime holds: - your access to the internet (crypto requires continuous access to internet to function) - your access to exchange offices because crypto is useless if it cannot be converted to fiat So, what exactly have you solved?

> So, what exactly have you solved?

Ownership of your funds, which is the primary requirement from which all others stem. You will still have those when you regain access to the internet, or the ability to spend them.

The reality is that a government having the ability to confiscate the funds in your bank account, and attempting to restrict you and your neighbours peer to peer actions, personal mobility or internet access are totally different things. This sort black and white thinking provides lacks a valuable analysis of actual power structures. No one claims your crypto currency will protect you from a bullet.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#468

Post by pjkundert »

pjkundert wrote: post #458
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the use case for this? I’m not seeing it.

OK, I’ve always considered these types of questions as disingenuous. But, enough people seem to disagree. So, at risk of stating the obvious: - Avoid risk of accidental/malicious deplatforming - Personal control of all data, avoiding incompetence/malfeasance presenting faulty data - Deploying enhanced presentation of existing functionality and data cannot be restricted - Reuse of existing functionality in private env…

A specific application I'm working on right now involves using Crypto for direct payments between software Licensees (end users) and the App developer.

Presently, there is a high risk of loss of income (see: every small individual Russian or Iranian software developer. Their families are now suffering because their income has been shut off, even though this is a textbook example of "Group Punishment" under the Geneva Convention. If I had decided to send some of my company's income to the Canadian "Freedom Convoy", my family's income would also have also been summarily cut off, without trial or conviction in a court of law).

So, like it or not: there are innocent individual who, due to no fault of their own, cannot use "TradFi" -- "DeFi" is their only alternative to achieve an income to care for their families.

Using a trivial Ethereum Smart Contract, a single-use Ethereum wallet address is generated for a set of payees (eg. the software author(s) and any number of other license fee recipients) designated to receive a proportion of an Ethereum fee payment. When the payment is received at the designated address -- the software License is generated, and any one of the payees can trigger the "smart contract" executing distribution of the fees to each of the payees' accounts, without being able to change the proportional distribution.

None of this is possible under "TradFi". All of it (except for the automatic generation of the License) is possible under Ethereum "DeFi". The entire application (including automatic, atomic generation of the License and distribution of fees) is possible under Holochain.

In all honesty -- whenever I hear "Crypto is a solution in search of a problem", I really have trouble not rolling my eyes. Perhaps that's not nice. But seriously; if you're here on HN, I have higher expectations of you. If you're enraged by this; perhaps there may be other forums more appropriate for you?

:)

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#469

Post by Karunamon »

dmitriid wrote: post #422
delaaxe wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not the underlying storage mechanism uses a database is not the point. The point is who can edit that database and under which rules (imagine that database holds a lot of your money and you live in an oppressive regime).

> imagine that database holds a lot of your money and you live in an oppressive regime That opressive regime holds: - your access to the internet (crypto requires continuous access to internet to function) - your access to exchange offices because crypto is useless if it cannot be converted to fiat So, what exactly have you solved?

Point 2 is strictly false, crypto can be exchanged for goods or services on its own.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#470

Post by daveguy »

scyclow wrote: post #463
daveguy wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is permissionless composability different from the MIT license? I'm confused what you're composing now that you couldn't before and the benefit of that permissionless composability. Ecosystems of programming libraries and compostable abstractions don't require a blockchain as far as I can tell.

The big difference is that a smart contract is a running, stateful, immutable piece of software. Alternatively, I can run software with an MIT license by myself, but I can always modify the data or API without any approval of the users.

This is interesting. Essentially a reference piece of software where anyone on the network can run the exact same bits (assuming they have compatible hardware). But also the ability to extend or compose where the new system will also have a reference identity.

This may have use in defining standards. You could have a standards authority without any actual standards body. Free but standard.

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