Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Problem Blockchains Solve

solutionspace.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 144 posts

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#81

Post by arcticbull »

fastball wrote: post #12
m3nu wrote: post #7

> The very mechanical understanding of a contract means that we cannot tell the difference between a transaction that abides by the rules and one that exploits a bug in the system, respecting the letter of the law but not its spirit. This is really the key issue, which is difficult to change. I can't think of many important systems where we wouldn't expect human intervention if something goes wrong.

I'm not sure having humans in the pipeline ameliorates this issue as much as you think it does. Take the existing legal system in the US – laws are interpreted by courts/judges/etc, who AFAICT generally choose to interpret laws by their letter rather than their spirit. As an example, you can look at the recent Kyle Rittenhouse trial with regards to whether or not it was legal for Rittenhouse to be carrying his firear…

> Take the existing legal system in the US – laws are interpreted by courts/judges/etc, who AFAICT generally choose to interpret laws by their letter rather than their spirit.

The US legal system is based on English Common Law, where precedent and interpretation by a judge have force of law. This is in contrast with Civil Law where the law must be executed as written and judges have very little room for interpretation. Note that in North America, both Quebec and to an extent Louisiana continue to follow the Napoleonic code.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#82

Post by jayd16 »

ur-whale wrote: post #59
_xnmw wrote: post #51

What blockchains solve is the whole pesky problem of following the law and paying taxes, and being a normal member of society. No wonder that much of the early crypto literature was all about anarchy. To this day, the only useful thing that crypto has enabled (on a very small scale) international asset transfer that bypasses mainstream financial systems. As Diehl[1] wrote, decentralized trustless systems are only use…

The problem with statist thinking like this is that it never ever takes into account what happens when the state fails. This is a typical way of looking at the world from people who were lucky enough to grow up in a society that sort of works, unfortunately not the norm for a large fraction of the human race. I suspect that - had you lived under German occupation in 39-45 - you would have a very different take on thi…

>I suspect that - had you lived under German occupation in 39-45 - you would have a very different take on things.

What does this mean exactly? I don't think I would want to live through a Nazi regime that could inspect all transactions by scraping the block chain.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#83

Post by jagger27 »

pengwing wrote: post #72
jagger27 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to live in a society where some unknown shadowy figure(s) may or may not still hold the keys to the greatest fortune in human history.

You don't have to. Inventing BTC and being rewarded for it is very much based on merit. You are free to live in a society based on other values if you want to.

We live in the same society. Don't even pretend that it is possible to live outside it, especially as a technologist. The point I was trying to make is the unknown of it. At least today we have a pretty good idea of who is unfathomably rich. Merit has nothing to do it with those people too.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#84

Post by bee_rider »

dragontamer wrote: post #4
marcodiego wrote: post #2

Basically it allows demonstrability of ownership.

So if I made an NFT of the Constitution, does that make me the owner of the Constitution?

NFT's are pretty dumb IMO. But I think there is something interesting in this question.

What's the Constitution? It is a piece of paper with ink on it. The paper and ink aren't that valuable, actually I have many better pieces of paper and some better ink. So that isn't where the real value is.

I could also buy a modern copy of the Constitution which would be, practically, much better than the original (in the sense that it would be made of modern materials and more durable as a result), so the value must not be there either.

I guess it could be in the investment value of the Constitution. I mean, I bet if I had the Constitution and held onto it for a couple decades, I could sell it to some collector for more that I bought it for. But that's not really a satisfying answer -- clearly the investment value is derived from some other underlying belief that the thing is important.

Anyway, if I was really good at writing I could string you along indefinitely and keep cutting away aspects of the Constitution that clearly don't provide the value, but I'm just a programmer so let's get to the point: I think the value of the Constitution is actually completely divorced from the physical thing itself. It comes from the history that it represents -- which is actually an intangible idea.

So, if someone were to mint an NFT of the Constitution and we decided that it also represented that idea, I guess it would be just as valuable? Good luck convincing other people! But I don't really see why the physical piece of paper is fundamentally a better representation of the idea, other than that's just the way we've always done it. Maybe you can mint an NFT of the Constitution for yourself, and convince yourself it represents the idea better than the piece of paper did. I think this would be a pretty silly thing to do, but no more so than trying to own the paper representation.

These are all just ways of satisfying our irrational desire to own part of an idea, the problem comes from our belief that ideas are ownable, not the shape of the token.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#85

Post by [deleted] »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #71
jagger27 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the non-stop barrage of bullshit projects that don't solve actual problems besides "I wish I bought Bitcoin at $100 so here's my attempt to recreate that magic". TFA makes a solid argument about the limited problem space where blockchain tech is useful. > Or is it just because it's complex and takes a lot of effort to understand? Look, I see that you're deep into the ecosystem and you're excited about…

"It's the human factors surrounding all of it that make it so fucking tiresome thread after thread." But that is also what makes it so interesting. Nobody forces people to use and assign value to Bitcoin. It all happens only because people want it. No government mandates, nothing.

[deleted]

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#86

Post by hrhrhrhrhr »

sofixa wrote: post #64
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America and in the real world people are aghast at the unjust laws of the USSR while on the internet everyone is like "but the law". Fuck the law. Law != Justice. Use some critical thinking skills for once. You earned your wealth. It's not the government's.

I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but to put it bluntly, you can just apply logic applicable to the fucking Soviet Union for any country and law system. > You earned your wealth. It's not the government's A common misconception among libertarians and alike; that's outright false. Pretty much everyone in a regular developed/ing country, especially in a centrally planned economy like the USSR, has wealth becaus…

People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#87

Post by [deleted] »

seanhunter wrote: post #78
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the uses cases of blockchain that have been deployed outside of financial schemes, where the blockchain solves a problem in a unique way that could not have been addressed with non-blockchain? Sure there were probably blockchain projects that got traction and use blockchain, but the only reason it’s blockchain was that it’s easier to get funding for that. Genuinely curious.

You will probably consider these as "financial schemes", but having worked in finance for many years my impression is there are a number of problems in financial infrastructure that are extremely annoying and costly at the moment which could be much better addressed with blockchain based solutions. Blockchain is not the only way you could solve them, it just has the potential to be much better. One example: Trade rec…

[deleted]

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#88

Post by sofixa »

hrhrhrhrhr wrote: post #86
sofixa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but to put it bluntly, you can just apply logic applicable to the fucking Soviet Union for any country and law system. > You earned your wealth. It's not the government's A common misconception among libertarians and alike; that's outright false. Pretty much everyone in a regular developed/ing country, especially in a centrally planned economy like the USSR, has wealth becaus…

People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.

Forced labour is pushing it, at least for the general population. They were paid, had vacations and other "benefits", and could change jobs. If those are your criteria for forced labour, wait until you hear of countries with healthcare tied to the employer, and close to zero employee protections.

But yes, they were kept inside the country, which is a separate issue.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#89

Post by ur-whale »

jayd16 wrote: post #82
ur-whale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with statist thinking like this is that it never ever takes into account what happens when the state fails. This is a typical way of looking at the world from people who were lucky enough to grow up in a society that sort of works, unfortunately not the norm for a large fraction of the human race. I suspect that - had you lived under German occupation in 39-45 - you would have a very different take on thi…

>I suspect that - had you lived under German occupation in 39-45 - you would have a very different take on things. What does this mean exactly? I don't think I would want to live through a Nazi regime that could inspect all transactions by scraping the block chain.

Please take a look at: zcash, monero, grin, beam, etc ...

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#90

Post by arcticbull »

hrhrhrhrhr wrote: post #86
sofixa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but to put it bluntly, you can just apply logic applicable to the fucking Soviet Union for any country and law system. > You earned your wealth. It's not the government's A common misconception among libertarians and alike; that's outright false. Pretty much everyone in a regular developed/ing country, especially in a centrally planned economy like the USSR, has wealth becaus…

People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.

Money is representation of value within a society, but it only has value within that society - and to the extent it can be traded abroad. The value is protected by the legal system, by the army, facilitated by the roads, bridges and infrastructure. Just because you get a "dollar" or "ruble" in exchange for work doesn't intrinsically mean that you are owed anything. That obligation comes from the system in which you, your employer and your fellow countryfolk coexist and cooperate.

You cannot divorce one from the other.

[edit] (They earned units that they could exchange immediately or at some future time. Whether or not that amounted to wealth is based on what those units could or did turn into at the point of measure within the framework of the society in which they exist.)

Post reply on HN