It’s not still the early days of blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#801

Post by koonsolo » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:05 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #119

The central problem in this entire debate is two groups talking past each other. The skeptics say "what is it for?" expecting a detailed answer, and the response from crypto enthusiasts is vague and high level; most of what I hear is heavy on words like "revolutionize" and "decentralize" but very, very short on specifics. Or I get argument by analogy to other technologies. If I heard a single use case where blockchai…

Of course there are awesome use-cases, but the real problem of the skeptics is that they can't let go of their fiat.

Take Nano for example: sub-second, 0-fee transactions, of any amount, to any (unbanked) person in the world. Of course, there is no way that any other (fiat) system can achieve this (due to operation costs, regulation, etc)

But the response of skeptics will always be "but I have to convert my fiat money". And at that point, it's not free and instant anymore.

But just because the new system loses its benefits because of backwards compatibility with the old system, doesn't mean that it is inferior. Maybe for some things, you don't need to pass through the old system anymore. One example is mining pool payouts, which can do payments through Nano to get the 0 fee transactions. (see https://2miners.com/blog/how-to-get-payouts-for-ethereum-min...).

You can argue that this mining is all a scam etc, but in the end real value is transferred using the most optimal network. More optimal than any central system that you can think of (remember 0-fee, instant trancations).

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#802

Post by bawolff » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

danschuller wrote: post #355

usrbinbash wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, but this actually works. Exchanging public keys worked for decades before blorkchains were even a word.

This depends what you mean "works", if it's meant on the technical conceptual level that yes, of course, I think no one would disagree. If it's taken to mean had widespread and growing usage at the social level, then I think that's hard to argue.

I would say web3 works to the same level

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#803

Post by floodyberry- » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:12 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #733

saalweachter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out personally, but this is itching my brain something fierce so I have to blurt it out, and hey, it's the internet. A little derailing never hurt anyone. It's amazing to me how universal the "I used to be a non-believer" line is in evangelism. From the classic "I used to be an atheist but I've been born again" to all the members of political party A claiming to have been a membe…

The parent's perspective does not come across as an evangelist's though. Quite the opposite. It's balanced, seeing the hype for hype, seeing the flaws, and yet seeing that there is still some truth and potential buried in there. The world is grey.

There was no substantial justification given for changing their opinion. IF it was an honest post, it was entirely unconvincing

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#804

Post by betwixthewires » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #799

betwixthewires wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the things I mentioned aren't technical minutiae, they're real technological advances with real applications, today. > ...not related to finance. Why place that arbitrary restriction? If all this stuff does is improve finance is that not enough? Again, I'm not a web3 evangelist, this stuff was originally created strictly to create financial tools. All I expect any of this stuff to do is change finance. But still,…

What new cryptography has been invented due to cryptocurrencies?

Several curves are being researched, non interactive ZKPs are getting heavy development and research due to their applicability here, interest in cryptographic accumulators is growing, people are finding novel ways to do old techniques, bulletproofs are an example, look at Mimblewimble, it's an interesting implementation of a blockchain using Schnorr signatures. That's just what I've got off the top of my head.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#805

Post by antifa » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:18 PM UTC

z3c0 wrote: post #727

mw888 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a nice little Kafka trap you’ve constructed to disregard the people who change their minds away from what you think. So every time someone changes their mind and uses their previous opinion as informative you are going to non-committally imply it’s “evangelism?”

Seems like a reworking of the "everybody has an agenda" retort you see so often these days. It's a slippery slope that only leads to dying a curmudgeon, as all chances for new perspectives were rebuked as agendas/evangelism/propagandist/etc.

Or, it's a slippery slope that only leads to keeping all your BTC/ETH and missing out on what getting scammed 20 times a year feels like.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#806

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #783

rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

It's funny how HN is negative towards crypto and web3 (see all upvoted articles on the topic, and related comments). Yet can't seem to stop talking about it. I get it, you don't like it. So I agree with your last point: let's all please move on.

I’m pretty much convinced that crypto stuff is a scam. Still, I want to question the mob. We only get better understanding, doesn’t take anything away.

I like hashing things out but whenever there is a huge bandwagon effect, I am increasingly getting more skeptical. Happy to be wrong but we need skeptics that question mob mentality.

There are several recent examples of this: 1) Inflation 2) COVID origins (Lab leak) 3) Zero-COVID policies and lockdowns.

I always question these things - what if we are wrong?

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#807

Post by grey-area » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #804

grey-area wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What new cryptography has been invented due to cryptocurrencies?

Several curves are being researched, non interactive ZKPs are getting heavy development and research due to their applicability here, interest in cryptographic accumulators is growing, people are finding novel ways to do old techniques, bulletproofs are an example, look at Mimblewimble, it's an interesting implementation of a blockchain using Schnorr signatures. That's just what I've got off the top of my head.

Thanks.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#808

Post by zwkrt » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #165

rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

When I was a young engineer in 2006, the marketing about Web 2.0 was in every tender for IT projects, so much that my boss created the “Web 4.3 dev community” in my city to point out the ridiculousness of it. Every versioning of that idea is marketing speech.

Web 2.0 and 3.0 are not directly comparable just because they have similar names, a fallacy of equivocation.

Web2.0 might have had a silly name, but the idea of the web as something that the average user and company could contribute back to and use to communicate with in real time provided explicit value and convenience over existing alternatives (letter writing, door-to-door sales, in-person self-promotion, calling a pizza parlor, renting a physical video, long distance phone calls, physical plane tickets mailed to your house…)

I don’t see that with web3.0.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#809

Post by p_l » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

bikingbismuth wrote: post #653

tomputer wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. I disagree. It's off-topic so I'm not going start an endless discussion about intrinsic value. > Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays…

> As long as humans submit the external data to the blockchain someone can cheat with the data. I am glad to see someone else who realizes this point. When people were all excited about supply chain blockchains (for example, a blockchain to verify a piece of fruit is picked in a certain place at a certain time, that the transportation truck maintains a certain temperature) I kept asking what stops someone from lying…

I think the only good case is with KSI, but that's not actually a blockchain even if they use the name in marketing.

In their case, they limit themselves to verifiable timestamped witness. Someone can still submit bad data, but now you have a log that at time T entity E submitted document D, and if it turns out to be fraudulent you can't backdate or put a different one for it (could be also used to detect tampering with sensors if you receive something that shouldn't pass a sensor that worked correctly yet you obviously have it)

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#810

Post by djdjfhsje33edh » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 8:40 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #756

georgeecollins wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right but let me explain why I think Bitcoin actually works well in this example for money laundering. You have cash and you buy bitcoin. US bitcoin exchanges probably do kyc (know your customer = laws / forms you file saying you know where the money comes from) but many offshore exchanges supposedly do not. You could take your bitcoin and sell it on an exchange as you suggest but there are two problems wi…

But to buy bitcoin on an exchange, even if it doesn't have KYC laws, you'd need to have the money in a bank account first to do the wire transfer to fund your crypto exchange account. The problem of money laundering is how do you get it into the bank account in the first place. What I'm saying is that you'd have to do actual cash transactions, meaning giving someone paper money and getting bitcoin into your wallet. T…

There are plenty of HNW individuals who want to buy or sell crytpo for cash no questions asked. Just last week a Swiss guy wanted to buy 1.5 million EUR of bitcoin from me for cash at a 10% premium. He'd supposedly have the cash delivered anywhere in Europe.

Too risky for me, but if you're a drug cartel, that's business as usual.