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I cannot imagine someone looking at the problems listed and coming up with a blockchain as the ideal solution. I'm with Mr. Himmelstein from the article, this p

I cannot imagine someone looking at the problems listed and coming up with a blockchain as the ideal solution. I'm with Mr. Himmelstein from the article, this proposal should be avoided. The last line is actually explicit that the whole thing is about desperately trying to find a nail for the blockchain hammer: > Digital Science is offering a $30 000 catalyst grant for an existing blockchain technology or a new idea that can be applied to academic publishing.

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
Nothing wrong with a little technology push, we'll find out in due time if it's actually a good solution. What's 30k usd after all?
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  A technology push is better than nothing, but constraining a system to blockchains for no technical reason is like constraining it to be written in perl. You're just making the job harder then it needs to be.
  - IanCal 9y ago
    Disclaimer: work for, but don't speak for, Digital Science. Am not involved in the grants. I'll try and add that as a boilerplate disclaimer on each comment, but to be very clear I am not speaking for DS at all. While I like DS (otherwise I'd work elsewhere), I'm very sceptical of blockchain things. I think this would be more valid as a criticism if it was the only grant available. DS run, typically, two per year which have no requirements like this. $30k is not nothing but it's also not a huge funding round (nor is it intended to be), it's a kick to get some ideas off the ground To be honest, I'd be surprised if you went to them with "this is not a blockchain but it solves the exact same problems of distributed trustless consensus with x y z, but more efficiently" and got a bad response. Sure, there's a lot of hype, but there's also not really that much actually built using the tech. Sounds like a fairly reasonable thing to give a bit of money to people to actually build things.
    - arcticfox 9y ago
      I think the problem is in trying to force application of "distributed trustless consensus" to way more things than actually require them, not in that there are better distributed-trustless-consensus solutions.
      - IanCal 9y ago
        I agree, but I don't know if that applies here. Again, there are grants twice a year without any restrictions like this. If you've got a good solution to a problem in the relevant domain then you're not being excluded by another grant being made available.
IanCal 9y ago
Disclaimer: work for, but don't speak for, Digital Science. Am not involved in the grants. DS gives out catalyst grants typically twice a year. There's a lot of talk about problems that could be solved with this kind of tech and a grant like this is a bit of a boost to actually try them rather than just talking about them.
ahartmetz 9y ago
Well, blockchain has exactly the role that peer-to-peer has in Joel (on software)'s architecture astronautics essay. A technology that is fashionable due to one successful application. Charlatans and honest fools try to use it for applications where it makes no sense, the press reports straight-facedly because of dem clicks. It is painfully obvious. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago

Nothing wrong with a little technology push, we'll find out in due time if it's actually a good solution. What's 30k usd after all?

Dylan16807 9y ago
A technology push is better than nothing, but constraining a system to blockchains for no technical reason is like constraining it to be written in perl. You're just making the job harder then it needs to be.
- IanCal 9y ago
  Disclaimer: work for, but don't speak for, Digital Science. Am not involved in the grants. I'll try and add that as a boilerplate disclaimer on each comment, but to be very clear I am not speaking for DS at all. While I like DS (otherwise I'd work elsewhere), I'm very sceptical of blockchain things. I think this would be more valid as a criticism if it was the only grant available. DS run, typically, two per year which have no requirements like this. $30k is not nothing but it's also not a huge funding round (nor is it intended to be), it's a kick to get some ideas off the ground To be honest, I'd be surprised if you went to them with "this is not a blockchain but it solves the exact same problems of distributed trustless consensus with x y z, but more efficiently" and got a bad response. Sure, there's a lot of hype, but there's also not really that much actually built using the tech. Sounds like a fairly reasonable thing to give a bit of money to people to actually build things.
  - arcticfox 9y ago
    I think the problem is in trying to force application of "distributed trustless consensus" to way more things than actually require them, not in that there are better distributed-trustless-consensus solutions.
    - IanCal 9y ago
      I agree, but I don't know if that applies here. Again, there are grants twice a year without any restrictions like this. If you've got a good solution to a problem in the relevant domain then you're not being excluded by another grant being made available.

IanCal 9y ago

Disclaimer: work for, but don't speak for, Digital Science. Am not involved in the grants. DS gives out catalyst grants typically twice a year. There's a lot of talk about problems that could be solved with this kind of tech and a grant like this is a bit of a boost to actually try them rather than just talking about them.

ahartmetz 9y ago

Well, blockchain has exactly the role that peer-to-peer has in Joel (on software)'s architecture astronautics essay. A technology that is fashionable due to one successful application. Charlatans and honest fools try to use it for applications where it makes no sense, the press reports straight-facedly because of dem clicks. It is painfully obvious. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...