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In the least, it should be useful in some non-paradigm-shifting, more obvious applications like concert ticket sales (see TIX) and date-stamping of journalism a

by gt_ 9y ago

In the least, it should be useful in some non-paradigm-shifting, more obvious applications like concert ticket sales (see TIX) and date-stamping of journalism and public records (see PO.ET). I’m interested if anyone disagrees. If a blockchain is a basic immutable ledger, I guess I wonder why there isn’t more attention on already-useful ledgers which currently depend on less efficient infrastructure to enforce consistency. It seems possible this is what Vitalik is getting at.

OldFatCactus 9y ago
>> I wonder why there isn’t more attention on already-useful ledgers which currently depend on less efficient infrastructure to enforce consistency Honest question, what about current infrastructure makes it less efficient than blockchain for your examples?
- tmh88j 9y ago
  > what about current infrastructure makes it less efficient than blockchain for your examples? This is complete conjecture, mainly because I'm not sure if I fully understand his question, but would less human interaction increase efficiency of current financial networks/institutions? Sure, small transactions in mainstream financial institutions don't need oversight as fraud prevention is adequate and easy to interact with, but large wire transfers and escrow accounts probably mandate a set of human eyes for supervision (again, just conjecture). That's something smart contracts can eliminate.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Yeah good question. I didn’t elaborate very well on that. The inefficiencies come about in transactions by separate parties. I am no expert on how Ticketmaster works, but I will use an event ticket as an example. If customer(a) buys a ticket from a venue and wants to sell it to customer(b), there are 4 separate parties dependent on that transaction. The current solution is having Ticket unique Ticket stubs which are difficult enough to counterfeit that they protect the transactions enough but counterfeit tickets do get made and sold often. Those make cause for problems. And, selling the physical tickets requires a physical transaction. All of these things mark inefficiencies. These mirror the inefficiencies overcome by cryptocurrencies in that the solutions replace stringent centralized enforcement with decentralized access.
aryehof 9y ago
I would say that blockchain is more that just an immutable ledger. It is a distributed, decentralized immutable ledger. The former (just an immutable ledger) is either relatively trivial, i.e. a linked chain of hashed content, or not really required. After all the entire commercial world runs and is regulated successfully on the immutable ledger that is their accounting system. At issue is that a "distributed, decentralized" immutable ledger has little application. The problems it was design to solve (like preventing double spend) just don't apply to most systems, no matter how hard we would like them to.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Makes sense. But, I think it’s important to consider that if a ledger is not decentralized, it may be immutable, but it’s immutability is not verifiable by all parties.

by gt_ 9y ago

OldFatCactus 9y ago

>> I wonder why there isn’t more attention on already-useful ledgers which currently depend on less efficient infrastructure to enforce consistency Honest question, what about current infrastructure makes it less efficient than blockchain for your examples?

tmh88j 9y ago
> what about current infrastructure makes it less efficient than blockchain for your examples? This is complete conjecture, mainly because I'm not sure if I fully understand his question, but would less human interaction increase efficiency of current financial networks/institutions? Sure, small transactions in mainstream financial institutions don't need oversight as fraud prevention is adequate and easy to interact with, but large wire transfers and escrow accounts probably mandate a set of human eyes for supervision (again, just conjecture). That's something smart contracts can eliminate.
gt_ 9y ago
Yeah good question. I didn’t elaborate very well on that. The inefficiencies come about in transactions by separate parties. I am no expert on how Ticketmaster works, but I will use an event ticket as an example. If customer(a) buys a ticket from a venue and wants to sell it to customer(b), there are 4 separate parties dependent on that transaction. The current solution is having Ticket unique Ticket stubs which are difficult enough to counterfeit that they protect the transactions enough but counterfeit tickets do get made and sold often. Those make cause for problems. And, selling the physical tickets requires a physical transaction. All of these things mark inefficiencies. These mirror the inefficiencies overcome by cryptocurrencies in that the solutions replace stringent centralized enforcement with decentralized access.

aryehof 9y ago

I would say that blockchain is more that just an immutable ledger. It is a distributed, decentralized immutable ledger. The former (just an immutable ledger) is either relatively trivial, i.e. a linked chain of hashed content, or not really required. After all the entire commercial world runs and is regulated successfully on the immutable ledger that is their accounting system. At issue is that a "distributed, decentralized" immutable ledger has little application. The problems it was design to solve (like preventing double spend) just don't apply to most systems, no matter how hard we would like them to.

gt_ 9y ago
Makes sense. But, I think it’s important to consider that if a ledger is not decentralized, it may be immutable, but it’s immutability is not verifiable by all parties.