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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#601

Post by GauntletWizard »

everfree wrote: post #584
GauntletWizard wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, much cheaper and easier solutions to that already exist, in the form of "Every postal tracking app"

> the company can retroactively create a conflicting chain of backdated signatures and purport it to be the canonical one

Again, that can be incredibly easily solved with signatures stored in a separate system of record - Effectively, publishing a git sha somewhere else on a regular basis. This is not a blockchain, this is a merkle tree, which is a good idea and is currently unimplemented.

The immense fraud and criminal behavior associated with the "Blockchain" ecosystem is the biggest inhibitor to actually good crypto being used for system-of-record. It sucks all the air out of the room and that's a bad thing.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#602

Post by gilbetron »

culi wrote: post #404

Blockchain needs a good "winter" imo. Stuff like hashgraph and some other non-proof of work protocols have a lot of potential but there's way too much hype in the industry and way too much investment ensuring BTC's dominance for them to ever really emerge

Bundle up because winter seems to be here ;)

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#603

Post by marcell »

qeternity wrote: post #236
marcell wrote: post #132

Blockchain skeptics are all defending the tech of the current financial system, and implicitly arguing it can’t be improved. They are wrong. The tech underlying the current system is really bad. For example: (1) How can I perform an atomic transaction across two stock exchanges? (2) How can I take stock held on one exchange, and use it as collateral on an unaffiliated lending platform? (3) How can I launch a new fina…

> (1) How can I perform an atomic transaction across two stock exchanges? I'm not sure why you're mandating across two stock exchanges? If you want to swap two assets in a single transaction, there is a very mature market for this. This has more to do with CPAMM vs. CLOB than it does anything else. > (2) How can I take stock held on one exchange, and use it as collateral on an unaffiliated lending platform? Well, ass…

> I'm not sure why you're mandating across two stock exchanges? If you want to swap two assets in a single transaction, there is a very mature market for this. This has more to do with CPAMM vs. CLOB than it does anything else.

If you want to do arbitrage across two exchanges, it is helpful to have an atomic transaction that's all or nothing across them.

> This has more to do with ETrade than anything else. It's like saying how can I launch a startup and get my product in every Walmart store...well you need their cooperation.

In web3/defi, I can do this without even talking to the defi equivalent of ETrade. It makes it a lot easier to start a startup.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#604

Post by pjkundert »

dmitriid wrote: post #595
pjkundert wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decid…

> 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 You've just show at least one way how it would be stopped. Who exactly is going to pay for static assets delivered to 1B users via Cloudflare? > but the App itself would scale. Of course it wouldn't. None of the blockchains have the required throughput. Yes,…

Hmm, okay. For others that come later in search of information, I'll address some of these.

> ... one way it can be stopped.

Yes, this newbie developer made some decisions that couldn't scale to 1B users. Alternatively, each node can serve static assets, thus scaling linearly w/o CDNs. This isn't required for most apps, as they aren't targets for state-level actors seeking to deplatform them from CDNs. But, if a totally free client self-hosted app is desired, this is possible.

> ... None of the blockchains have the required throughput.

Obviously. That's why "this is new." Blockchains enforcing global consensus on a "total order" of unrelated events cannot: the laws of physics forbid it, besides it being wasteful and unnecessary. Holochain does not enforce such unnecessary "total order" consensus; it is not necessary, as it turns out, for maintaining state consistency in distributed systems. That is the breakthrough. This is a low-research "Bro" comment.

> ... can't even link to ... it because "someone needs to pay for hosting"

Ya, I was just being considerate. It's a newbie's app, hosted by a few people.

The point is, there is something new going on here; something that some hackers on HN might be interested in. I know the 2018 "Me" would have been interested!

If you're not, that's fine - carry on! However, no more low-research "Bro" comments, okay? ... Ah, I see that you are rabidly anti-Crypto, and that's fine: fill your boots! But, for those visitors who are interested in amazing things, don't be discouraged! There are indeed new things happening here that are worth investigating.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#605

Post by everfree »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #601
everfree wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company can retroactively create a conflicting chain of backdated signatures and purport it to be the canonical one

Again, that can be incredibly easily solved with signatures stored in a separate system of record - Effectively, publishing a git sha somewhere else on a regular basis. This is not a blockchain, this is a merkle tree, which is a good idea and is currently unimplemented. The immense fraud and criminal behavior associated with the "Blockchain" ecosystem is the biggest inhibitor to actually good crypto being used for sy…

Git does not guarantee the validity of timestamps stored within it, nor does it explicitly provide a single canonical tip. Those two guarantees are what prevent history from being forged.

> The immense fraud and criminal behavior associated with the "Blockchain" ecosystem is the biggest inhibitor to actually good crypto being used for system-of-record.

You could say the same thing about internet scams in the 90s. Eventually, everyone got over themselves and picked out the good parts.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#606

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

halpmeh wrote: post #571
worik wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No, the output is guaranteed to be correct. Correct, as in what you specified in the contract, which may not be what you had intended, but that’s besides the point. Can you explain how the output would differ from the contract specification?

"The code does what it does" is not a useful statement; insisting that a smart contract is an executable specification is not helpful unless there's a really very small semantic step from how the user intentions are formed - which again is not the case here.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#607

Post by piva00 »

splix wrote: post #577
notamy wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the original commenter, but here's my stab at it: > In the morning I bought stuff on Amazon, but it also doesn't solve any real problem. Sure it does. It solves the problem of "I need something, I have money, and I don't have the time/ability/car/... to go to a physical location to buy it." > Not sure AWS is solving anything since we can rent servers directly. AWS gives you you - The ability to spin up MANY class…

I would disagree with all the reasons. I understand that it's some real problems the mentioned services solve for you, but I can easily point to a person who has none of those problems. Like my grandma. She doesn't see any point in any of the mentioned products. Even the coffee maker. So we must agree that it depends on the person and is not an objective criterion. Same for blockchan/defi/evm/etc. Some people argue t…

> I would disagree with all the reasons. I understand that it's some real problems the mentioned services solve for you, but I can easily point to a person who has none of those problems. Like my grandma. She doesn't see any point in any of the mentioned products.

This doesn't make any sense, there's nothing in the world except food, water and shelter that's actually needed for every living human being.

You're grossly mischaracterising or misinterpreting the meaning of "solving a real problem".

What exactly is all this crypto-technobabble solving that isn't just feeding the system to make it work? Where is the end where a person is going to use all this bumbling infrastructure of finance primitives to actually solve a problem they face? Again, not a problem created or caused by the other mumbo-jumbo lying around, piling solutions on top of solutions still looking for a problem is ultimately not solving any problem. If the fundamental piece of technology you are working on doesn't have any applicable uses in the end, all the other pieces supporting this fundamental are not solving anything of value.

I really, really don't follow your line of argumentation, I keep looking for the base argument and there's none except for "if some people believe this has value, then it has value". No, like Matt Levine said to SBF, the fundamental economical value of this thing is zero.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#608

Post by la64710 »

avereveard wrote: post #479
la64710 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem has been solved in numerous prior computer architecture most notably in the algorithms around leader selection in clusters or very wide distributed systems. The implementation varies from one use case to another but the point is the problem or solution is not new at all and blockchain is certainly not the earliest and most elegant solution for this.

Out of curiosity which solution operate in a zero trust environment?

All the solutions start with the premise of a zero trust environment where trust is established by a key exchange based on some sort of key management infrastructure.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#609

Post by RestlessMind »

sangnoir wrote: post #541
pjkundert wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TradFi - Anyone can do it without permissions and lie, except regulations force accounting practices, revealing malfeasance. DeFi - Anyone can do it without permissions, and everyone can see they didn't lie. Crap-coin FTX Crypto Bros - Let's lie, do "TradFi" and call it "DeFi", comply with no regulations or accounting practices, and steal the Crypto. What could go wrong? HN low-research "Eternal September" Bros: Told…

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…

> You're No-true-Scottsman'ing DeFi by excluding FTX after the fact.

You are trying to fit the square peg of scam otherwise known as FTX into the round hole of DeFi. It was apparent since the day of its founding that FTX is not DeFi nor trustless.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#610

Post by RestlessMind »

habinero wrote: post #565
pjkundert wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people.

you are living in a bubble to assume that governments are always good and anyone bucking their government is a bad actor. Try to learn more about Venezuela, Iran, Russia, North Korea or Syria. Or even truckers in Canada whose accounts were frozen because of peaceful protests.

At this point, the best thing for crypto would be for someone like Trump to freeze all the finances for some people like BLM protestors. Then perhaps people will get out of "ye subvert yer gubmint? ye traitor..." mindset.

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