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The whole blockchain festival doesn't make sense to me. Every blockchain must have a coin attached to it, otherwise there's no incentive to people to watch the

The whole blockchain festival doesn't make sense to me. Every blockchain must have a coin attached to it, otherwise there's no incentive to people to watch the blockchain and invest resources in securing it. Bitcoin was about money, not "distributed consensus", that was just a way to achieve money. Now when people talk about blockchains as being the solution to the distributed consensus problem they forget about the money part of it. The most bizarre phenomenon I've seen was Tezos, a coin whose value proposition was that of solving governance through the same blockchain it would use to manage its coins. The creator of Tezos was talking about governance as a consensus problem that could be solved in the same way money was solved by Bitcoin ("everybody must agree, right?") without realizing there were two different concepts of "consensus" being used.

daxfohl 9y ago
Maybe ads. Perhaps a distributed ledger about who has see what ads. That's worth money, and I'm sure marketers would love traceability. So if ad-coin takes over that would be like injecting advertising code into the "CPU registers" of the internet. I can't wait.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  My god. Get that suggestion scrubbed from the interwebs. Imagine a coin that controlled all of the commerce of the world and whose sole allocation of wealth came for the production of advertisements. Ads for ads. No product. Just ads all the way down.
vertex-four 9y ago
Unfortunately, most people don't understand what a blockchain is, including many people working on altcoins. This causes them to make buzzwordy statements which are, to everyone else, nonsensical. "Code is law" being one of them. "Property on the blockchain" being another.
- simias 9y ago
  The lack of technical knowledge in the cryptocurrency community is staggering. It's obvious that a huge number of people are attracted by the "get rich quick" aspect of it all and they lack the basics to really understand the trade-offs and the subtleties of the various blockchain "flavors" and tweaks. So it turns into dumb cargo culting like "Proof of Stake is 100% proven not to work", "Proof of Stake is 100% proven to work", "Lightning Network is going to fix everything and bring world peace", "Lightning Network is going to ruin everything and bring WW3" etc... And you can't have any constructive discussion because if you try to argue for or against a certain technical proposal you'll immediately be called a "paid shill" or a "troll" regardless of your arguments. I've been lurking in the bitcoin subreddits lately and it's really one of the least helpful and constructive communities around. And it's a bit sad because on the technical side the blockchain is pretty damn interesting.
  - nicksdjohnson 9y ago
    In all seriousness, you should lurk in the Ethereum subreddit instead. We have our share of cheerleaders who take the black and white "this good, that bad" position without evidence, but they're not dominant, and we have a far larger proportion of developers who are interested in building cool technology and are able to look objectively at the problems involved.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      Ehh... I have quite similar issues with the Ethereum crowd. Nobody understands in which situations they need distributed consensus on some state, and what the other available solutions to various similar problems are. Blockchains solve a very niche (but previously difficult-to-solve!) problem, and given that they literally cost money to use, it's good to use other tools to solve problems when you can.
- nawitus 9y ago
  Why is property on the blockchain nonsensical?
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
This lack of understanding of the definition of consensus can be quite infuriating at times.
ericb 9y ago
Can you put a finer point on the two different concepts of consensus for me and maybe elaborate on how they can't be made the same?
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  I can disagree with you on everything from the validity of the Bible as a historical document to the demerits of public education, there's no protocol that will make us reach an agreement. The "consensus" implemented by blockchains is about stating in public and immutable terms what we have previously agreed, to unallow lies about the past: when we do a money transaction, we have both agreed on the terms of that transaction, that is stored. Later even if someone doesn't remember, or try to fake those terms agreed in the past, the blockchain is there to prove otherwise.
cultofmetatron 9y ago
there's plenty of non money uses for a distributed consensus based write only database. Think of property ownership, vehicle registration, stock markets.

daxfohl 9y ago

Maybe ads. Perhaps a distributed ledger about who has see what ads. That's worth money, and I'm sure marketers would love traceability. So if ad-coin takes over that would be like injecting advertising code into the "CPU registers" of the internet. I can't wait.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
My god. Get that suggestion scrubbed from the interwebs. Imagine a coin that controlled all of the commerce of the world and whose sole allocation of wealth came for the production of advertisements. Ads for ads. No product. Just ads all the way down.

vertex-four 9y ago

Unfortunately, most people don't understand what a blockchain is, including many people working on altcoins. This causes them to make buzzwordy statements which are, to everyone else, nonsensical. "Code is law" being one of them. "Property on the blockchain" being another.

simias 9y ago
The lack of technical knowledge in the cryptocurrency community is staggering. It's obvious that a huge number of people are attracted by the "get rich quick" aspect of it all and they lack the basics to really understand the trade-offs and the subtleties of the various blockchain "flavors" and tweaks. So it turns into dumb cargo culting like "Proof of Stake is 100% proven not to work", "Proof of Stake is 100% proven to work", "Lightning Network is going to fix everything and bring world peace", "Lightning Network is going to ruin everything and bring WW3" etc... And you can't have any constructive discussion because if you try to argue for or against a certain technical proposal you'll immediately be called a "paid shill" or a "troll" regardless of your arguments. I've been lurking in the bitcoin subreddits lately and it's really one of the least helpful and constructive communities around. And it's a bit sad because on the technical side the blockchain is pretty damn interesting.
- nicksdjohnson 9y ago
  In all seriousness, you should lurk in the Ethereum subreddit instead. We have our share of cheerleaders who take the black and white "this good, that bad" position without evidence, but they're not dominant, and we have a far larger proportion of developers who are interested in building cool technology and are able to look objectively at the problems involved.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    Ehh... I have quite similar issues with the Ethereum crowd. Nobody understands in which situations they need distributed consensus on some state, and what the other available solutions to various similar problems are. Blockchains solve a very niche (but previously difficult-to-solve!) problem, and given that they literally cost money to use, it's good to use other tools to solve problems when you can.
nawitus 9y ago
Why is property on the blockchain nonsensical?

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

This lack of understanding of the definition of consensus can be quite infuriating at times.

ericb 9y ago

Can you put a finer point on the two different concepts of consensus for me and maybe elaborate on how they can't be made the same?

fiatjaf 9y ago
I can disagree with you on everything from the validity of the Bible as a historical document to the demerits of public education, there's no protocol that will make us reach an agreement. The "consensus" implemented by blockchains is about stating in public and immutable terms what we have previously agreed, to unallow lies about the past: when we do a money transaction, we have both agreed on the terms of that transaction, that is stored. Later even if someone doesn't remember, or try to fake those terms agreed in the past, the blockchain is there to prove otherwise.

cultofmetatron 9y ago

there's plenty of non money uses for a distributed consensus based write only database. Think of property ownership, vehicle registration, stock markets.