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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#561

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

Published transparency records work without blockchains. Certificate Transparency is an example of a project that does this without all the mess of blockchains. And that also works well because it operates on purely digital things - once you start having to unify a physical object with a digital record all the usual supply-chain-management problems re-emerge.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#562

Post by habinero »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #536
markdestouches wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> We are yet to see a working example of that. I referenced Uniswap, which seems like it works to me > 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. There's no public insurance for it, but if there were no regulations against doing what FTX did I'm not sure why their exec…

Because "there are no regulations" is not permission to defraud others.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#563

Post by nickstinemates »

I am always torn when it comes to blockchain.

(As an aside, I was an advisor to Storj.io, a web3 storage company. Largely because of my relationship with the CEO and less because of my enthusiasm with the space.)

The leveraged, financial engineering side of Crypto as a get rich scheme never really appealed to me. I see this like any other risky investment, blurring the lines between lawful and not. Borrowing a ton of money and staking it on crypto seemed like a path to glory to many, and I am saddened by all of the people that lost their shirt in the process.

There's another side of me, however, that sees web3 as an evolution of the traditional technology marketplace. A lot like early days of the internet, or of open source.. web3 seemed to be the continuation of the hacker spirit, where builders met to build cool stuff.

Some of the coolest websites and communities these days are related to NFT's and minting them. Some cool thinking about persistent storage, or cloud, or storage with blockchain/coins as an incentive structure for micropayments. How to directly monetize content on the web without having to prop up the ad industry. Interesting, worthy goals.

It's hard to reconcile this spectrum of thoughts and come up with a clear, personal, answer on the value of blockchain technology as a whole.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#564

Post by aniijbod »

pjkundert wrote: post #340
aniijbod wrote: post #336

Ironic that CBDC systems are being built on a technology exclusively aimed at eliminating the C in that acronym.

How so? Central Bank Digital Currencies are being implemented exclusively on systems that allow the "Central" authority to absolutely ensure that nobody except that central authority can control every transaction in those ledgers. And I don't think you meant the "C" in "Currency".

> Ironic that CBDC systems are being built on a technology exclusively aimed at eliminating the C in that acronym.

Thanks Pjkundert, you're correct I should have said 'first C".

What I meant was that it was ironic that CBDCs are being constructed using systems that use blockchain, i.e., centralised systems, designed to deliver centralised currencies, based upon technology exclusively designed to deliver decentralised currencies.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#565

Post by habinero »

pjkundert wrote: post #548
sangnoir wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're No-true-Scottsman'ing DeFi by excluding FTX after the fact. I posit there is no way to tell apart the "real" DeFi from the Crap-coins. If you can tell them apart, which tokens and/or exchanges will fail next, and when? There's a pervasive aura of "secret knowledge" in crypto, where the in-group think of themselves as superior operators who scoff as the noobs get fleeced[1]; yet these suave traders continually…

Pretty much everyone credible has been warning people to get off all exchanges, since well, forever. Because you can't (and shouldn't) "trust" someone. If you want to trust someone, go to a bank. This isn't really too much a matter of "secret knowledge", but historical fact. But, hope springs eternal. And, self-referential Crap Coins (like Luna) are just, well, insane at first glance. Trust-based "Staking" for return…

> Central/commercial banks, Treasuries, etc. cannot abide any fire-exit that is not chained shut

Ok, then call it what it actually is: tax evasion, fraud, and laundering money.

You're getting caught up in an anti-government agenda and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#566

Post by thwayunion »

nickstinemates wrote: post #563

I am always torn when it comes to blockchain. (As an aside, I was an advisor to Storj.io, a web3 storage company. Largely because of my relationship with the CEO and less because of my enthusiasm with the space.) The leveraged, financial engineering side of Crypto as a get rich scheme never really appealed to me. I see this like any other risky investment, blurring the lines between lawful and not. Borrowing a ton of…

> Some of the coolest websites and communities these days are related to NFT's and minting them.

Can you give a few examples? Everything I've seen in this space are transparent scams.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#567

Post by habinero »

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…

Smart contracts are useless and will always be useless for two reasons:

1. It is impossible to write code that always works exactly how you want, all of the time, forever.

2. Law exists. The legal system exists. The moment you have a problem with a smart contract, it's going to court.

You might as well save yourselves the time, expense, hassle and potential embarrassment by just going to a lawyer in the first place and having them draft a contract.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#568

Post by habinero »

worik wrote: post #553
halpmeh wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Have you ever implemented a smart contract? No > A smart contract can be thought of as a cryptographically secure program, i.e. it cannot be modified. So you have cryptographically secure inputs (the blockchain), and a cryptographically secure program (the smart contract), which means the output is also guaranteed to be cryptographically secure. The output is not guaranteed to be correct, what you intended, or even…

Agreed. I've never understood why people think this.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#569

Post by pjkundert »

kitified wrote: post #546
pjkundert wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. This is a web app (so, hosting is required), and it was built in a few days by a newbie and is hosted on a few machines by some randos. But, isn't that ... interesting? That something like this could be built and deployed and -- theoretically scale globally? Just think of what could be done with a bit of planning and a (tiny) revenue model?

> Yup. This is a web app (so, hosting is required), and it was built in a few days by a newbie and is hosted on a few machines by some randos. But, isn't that ... interesting? That something like this could be built and deployed and -- theoretically scale globally? Sure. It is interesting that someone can build a web app, host it on temporary machines, and then one day scale it into a major business model. That's not…

Because: this specific App (not "something like" it, but this one written in a few days by a newbie), could potentially scale to 1B users -- and nobody could stop it. Some static assets would need to be tuned in a real App, to be hosted by a CDN like Cloudflare (or, possibly provided by the App's hosting nodes themselves if no CDN is desired), but the App itself would scale.

If a certain fraction of those users decided to install it (instead of use it via the Web interface), this scaling would be "free" -- paid for by the eg. 10% who installed it.

I've been doing this professionally for 40 years, 30 of which I've spend searching for solutions to specific problems in this domain. I was there in '09 and downloaded Satoshi's reference implementation, and again in '15 for Ethereum; that's "blockchain"; what you call "being on chain". They didn't solve the problems I was trying to find solutions for (scalable consistency in occasionally connected systems).

This is new.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#570

Post by [deleted] »

worik wrote: post #553
halpmeh wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Have you ever implemented a smart contract? No > A smart contract can be thought of as a cryptographically secure program, i.e. it cannot be modified. So you have cryptographically secure inputs (the blockchain), and a cryptographically secure program (the smart contract), which means the output is also guaranteed to be cryptographically secure. The output is not guaranteed to be correct, what you intended, or even…

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