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When people propose blockchain solutions, I always think: How would it work with just a regular database? How would a blockchain make it better? What coalition

by tlb 9y ago

When people propose blockchain solutions, I always think: How would it work with just a regular database? How would a blockchain make it better? What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whoever would run the database? There are good answers to these for some applications, but I don't see what they are here.

Alex3917 9y ago
> What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whomever would run the database? No person or company is allowed to own more than 24.9% of a banking charter, and preferably not more than 10%. The reason is that having multiple entities each pursuing their own agenda makes it less likely that everyone will collude and run off with the money. It doesn't especially matter who those entities are, as long as they're not closely affiliated with one another. Similarly, for whatever problems democracies have, they tend to function at least marginally better than corporate-owned countries like Rhodesia, Batavia, etc. And economically, there is a reason why currencies tend to be a better store of value over time than in-app credits or company scrip. Personally I think creating government privacy legislation would be a much better use of time than trying to build a social network on blockchain, but I understand the thought process.
- Yoric 9y ago
  > No person or company is allowed to own more than 24.9% of a banking charter, and preferably not more than 10%. I'm curious, is that a law? From which country?
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    It's a U.S. law, not sure about other countries. I believe it's the Bank Holding Company Act: https://www.federalreserve.gov/bcreg20080922b1.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/bcreg20080922b1.pdf
gurrone 9y ago
I would like to add: Do they understand that it's impossible to delete anything that got commited to the block chain once a block is accepted? I mean at least if they think about a blockchain in the sense of the Bitcoin blockchain. Implementing a deletion of prior blocks is an interesting problem.
- kromem 9y ago
  You can absolutely delete. You just append data that represents a delete, and the client doesn't show that item or shows it as deleted. Yes, it doesn't remove that data from the chain and a client could easily end up undoing deletes, but if you think that server based deletes actually remove the data, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise depending on the servers in question.
  - vlunkr 9y ago
    In the case of social media, this isnt enough. Certainly someone will create a client that shows you everything that’s been deleted. Can you imagine if you had used social media since you were a pre-teen and every bit of it was public record? I’m sure no one would use that service.
    - km3k 9y ago
      But that's how it works. You should assume everything you've ever posted to another server could someday become public record. Especially with social media since it's being posted specifically to be viewed by others who may copy and redistribute that data at any time. People redistribute snaps all the time even though they're supposed to "go away", yet people still use it.
    - laythea 9y ago
      To the parents: the solution is to not allow pre-teen social media. In my opinion.
- Moru 9y ago
  I expect that is exactly the point, no more "censoring overlords" :-)
sweeds 9y ago
The one main advantage that I'm aware of is that a distributed, decentralized database for a social network would mean that there is no one private company that gatekeeps, owns, and sells the personal data within. For all intents and purposes, Facebook's database is closed source. The community doesn't know exactly what this private company does with this data. We have to trust them with it. A blockchain database is trustless.
- tlb 9y ago
  It's not actually trustless, though. It's just less clear whom you're trusting. With Bitcoin, the people you're trusting are miners, and they are highly incentivized to preserve the correct functioning of the system because they get paid in bitcoin and they want it to stay valuable. With a federated social network blockchain, there'd have to be an incentive to preserve privacy greater than the incentive to do any other bad thing like manipulating elections.
- dralley 9y ago
  That's a complete bastardization of the concept of "trust" as applies to distributed systems. You're not 'trusting' a single entity in that case because you're making literally all the information public for anyone to see, use, resell, etc. That's like saying we shouldn't have to trust Equifax, let's just make everyone's name, address, SSN, and credit history public on the internet to begin with.
  - Yoric 9y ago
    There are plenty of distributed file systems that securely store confidential data on untrusted nodes by having well-design encryption. Is there a reason for which it would be worse with blockchains?
    - dralley 9y ago
      The whole point of social media is making that information available to people, though.
marknadal 9y ago
The algorithm needed for Multi-Master (decentralized) data is a CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type). Specifically, this solves the problem of data consistency across different node/peers without needing a central (ie, Facebook's servers) master. The way it works, is like so: http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html However, a blockchain is still actually useful for a P2P Facebook. A blockchain that uses a consensus algorithm (PoW, PoS, etc.) is not scalable enough, though. But that is okay, as we do not need to solve the Double Spending problem for tweets/photos (see the previous link as to why). So what does a "blockchain" mean then? A blockchain is a cryptographically signed linked list, often a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). But these graphs would more likely be social networking data, which is naturally a graph - and they would be signed with user's public/private key pair. Solving for that is pretty easy, we already have it working: http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wit... And our goal is to build a social network that has distinctly different properties than Facebook, one that is based on psychological research and emotional intelligence: https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotional-intelligence-e45dcddb1bdb https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotiona... Finally, the hardest factor is to remove the complexity of cryptography. There turns out to be a good security standard that lets user emulate username/password combos (see the middle link for more details), in summary: You use PBKDF2 to extend a user's password with a salt, this creates a Proof of Work which is used as an AES symmetric cypher key to decrypt their private key. Fully P2P, but with a traditional UI that users understand, yet PBKDF2 makes it impractical for a cracker to guess (or even a dictionary attack) against the user's account.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  Whew, finally a comment with some actual details on how this might all work and be useful. How do I delete data in this scheme? Maybe by signing each data "node" with a separate key, which can then be shredded if I want? Where would those keys be stored?
- omnimus 9y ago
  Hi Mark. I really like GunDB but i see your comments on hacker news so often that i almost started to think that you are a bot. I mean it is great to market your database but GUNDB can't be answer to everything. I would understand if you were pushing some alternative social network like Scuttlebutt/Patchwork but pushing database on every hacker news post with social media theme is strange. Do you propose to replace facebook with gundb app that is possible to make in two minute tutorial: https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... since you share it everywhere? Don't get me wrong. I think GunDB is wonderful project that i actually want to use for things but maybe this is not best way to get new users. If i didn't know about GunDB and saw your frequent similar comments on Hacker news i would be pretty suspicious.
chris_wot 9y ago
I’m actually wondering why every decentralised solution MUST use the blockchain.
- koonsolo 9y ago
  They don't. Even the new cryptocurrencies such as IOTA and Nano don't use blockchain anymore.
whataretensors 9y ago
> How would it work with just a regular database? You'd set up another centralized honey pot that these psychopaths actively look for. > How would a blockchain make it better? Besides censorship protection, the platform could reward users to make itself better. Lots of things become possible when you have control over the reward system and don't just extract the value to the top. > What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whomever would run the database? This is the decentralized aspect. Whoever starts the project isn't necessarily more trustworthy. They might build that trust over time(or not). Either way the project doesn't live and die by them if successful.
- arcticfox 9y ago
  > Besides censorship protection I personally don't think that goes under "features" to be honest. Every uncensored social network is basically a cesspool.
- avip 9y ago
  "Any sufficiently uncensored user-content platform is indistinguishable from a porn site"
  - whataretensors 9y ago
    A user can run a custom curator. Alternatively sites could be developed that give access to the network and do their own filtering. There are other choices besides authoritarian censorship, despite the popularity these days.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Alternatively sites could be developed that give access to the network and do their own filtering. ...and add their own content, which is only viewable from that site and not elsewhere on the network. And the most popular one of those will eventually just displace the decentralized network.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by tlb 9y ago

Alex3917 9y ago

> What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whomever would run the database? No person or company is allowed to own more than 24.9% of a banking charter, and preferably not more than 10%. The reason is that having multiple entities each pursuing their own agenda makes it less likely that everyone will collude and run off with the money. It doesn't especially matter who those entities are, as long as they're not closely affiliated with one another. Similarly, for whatever problems democracies have, they tend to function at least marginally better than corporate-owned countries like Rhodesia, Batavia, etc. And economically, there is a reason why currencies tend to be a better store of value over time than in-app credits or company scrip. Personally I think creating government privacy legislation would be a much better use of time than trying to build a social network on blockchain, but I understand the thought process.

Yoric 9y ago
> No person or company is allowed to own more than 24.9% of a banking charter, and preferably not more than 10%. I'm curious, is that a law? From which country?
- Alex3917 9y ago
  It's a U.S. law, not sure about other countries. I believe it's the Bank Holding Company Act: https://www.federalreserve.gov/bcreg20080922b1.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/bcreg20080922b1.pdf

gurrone 9y ago

I would like to add: Do they understand that it's impossible to delete anything that got commited to the block chain once a block is accepted? I mean at least if they think about a blockchain in the sense of the Bitcoin blockchain. Implementing a deletion of prior blocks is an interesting problem.

kromem 9y ago
You can absolutely delete. You just append data that represents a delete, and the client doesn't show that item or shows it as deleted. Yes, it doesn't remove that data from the chain and a client could easily end up undoing deletes, but if you think that server based deletes actually remove the data, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise depending on the servers in question.
- vlunkr 9y ago
  In the case of social media, this isnt enough. Certainly someone will create a client that shows you everything that’s been deleted. Can you imagine if you had used social media since you were a pre-teen and every bit of it was public record? I’m sure no one would use that service.
  - km3k 9y ago
    But that's how it works. You should assume everything you've ever posted to another server could someday become public record. Especially with social media since it's being posted specifically to be viewed by others who may copy and redistribute that data at any time. People redistribute snaps all the time even though they're supposed to "go away", yet people still use it.
  - laythea 9y ago
    To the parents: the solution is to not allow pre-teen social media. In my opinion.
Moru 9y ago
I expect that is exactly the point, no more "censoring overlords" :-)

sweeds 9y ago

The one main advantage that I'm aware of is that a distributed, decentralized database for a social network would mean that there is no one private company that gatekeeps, owns, and sells the personal data within. For all intents and purposes, Facebook's database is closed source. The community doesn't know exactly what this private company does with this data. We have to trust them with it. A blockchain database is trustless.

tlb 9y ago
It's not actually trustless, though. It's just less clear whom you're trusting. With Bitcoin, the people you're trusting are miners, and they are highly incentivized to preserve the correct functioning of the system because they get paid in bitcoin and they want it to stay valuable. With a federated social network blockchain, there'd have to be an incentive to preserve privacy greater than the incentive to do any other bad thing like manipulating elections.
dralley 9y ago
That's a complete bastardization of the concept of "trust" as applies to distributed systems. You're not 'trusting' a single entity in that case because you're making literally all the information public for anyone to see, use, resell, etc. That's like saying we shouldn't have to trust Equifax, let's just make everyone's name, address, SSN, and credit history public on the internet to begin with.
- Yoric 9y ago
  There are plenty of distributed file systems that securely store confidential data on untrusted nodes by having well-design encryption. Is there a reason for which it would be worse with blockchains?
  - dralley 9y ago
    The whole point of social media is making that information available to people, though.

marknadal 9y ago

The algorithm needed for Multi-Master (decentralized) data is a CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type). Specifically, this solves the problem of data consistency across different node/peers without needing a central (ie, Facebook's servers) master. The way it works, is like so: http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html http://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html However, a blockchain is still actually useful for a P2P Facebook. A blockchain that uses a consensus algorithm (PoW, PoS, etc.) is not scalable enough, though. But that is okay, as we do not need to solve the Double Spending problem for tweets/photos (see the previous link as to why). So what does a "blockchain" mean then? A blockchain is a cryptographically signed linked list, often a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph). But these graphs would more likely be social networking data, which is naturally a graph - and they would be signed with user's public/private key pair. Solving for that is pretty easy, we already have it working: http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wit... And our goal is to build a social network that has distinctly different properties than Facebook, one that is based on psychological research and emotional intelligence: https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotional-intelligence-e45dcddb1bdb https://hackernoon.com/a-new-kind-of-social-network-emotiona... Finally, the hardest factor is to remove the complexity of cryptography. There turns out to be a good security standard that lets user emulate username/password combos (see the middle link for more details), in summary: You use PBKDF2 to extend a user's password with a salt, this creates a Proof of Work which is used as an AES symmetric cypher key to decrypt their private key. Fully P2P, but with a traditional UI that users understand, yet PBKDF2 makes it impractical for a cracker to guess (or even a dictionary attack) against the user's account.

sanderjd 9y ago
Whew, finally a comment with some actual details on how this might all work and be useful. How do I delete data in this scheme? Maybe by signing each data "node" with a separate key, which can then be shredded if I want? Where would those keys be stored?
omnimus 9y ago
Hi Mark. I really like GunDB but i see your comments on hacker news so often that i almost started to think that you are a bot. I mean it is great to market your database but GUNDB can't be answer to everything. I would understand if you were pushing some alternative social network like Scuttlebutt/Patchwork but pushing database on every hacker news post with social media theme is strange. Do you propose to replace facebook with gundb app that is possible to make in two minute tutorial: https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... since you share it everywhere? Don't get me wrong. I think GunDB is wonderful project that i actually want to use for things but maybe this is not best way to get new users. If i didn't know about GunDB and saw your frequent similar comments on Hacker news i would be pretty suspicious.

chris_wot 9y ago

I’m actually wondering why every decentralised solution MUST use the blockchain.

koonsolo 9y ago
They don't. Even the new cryptocurrencies such as IOTA and Nano don't use blockchain anymore.

whataretensors 9y ago

> How would it work with just a regular database? You'd set up another centralized honey pot that these psychopaths actively look for. > How would a blockchain make it better? Besides censorship protection, the platform could reward users to make itself better. Lots of things become possible when you have control over the reward system and don't just extract the value to the top. > What coalition of people will run the blockchain, and why would they be more trustworthy than whomever would run the database? This is the decentralized aspect. Whoever starts the project isn't necessarily more trustworthy. They might build that trust over time(or not). Either way the project doesn't live and die by them if successful.

arcticfox 9y ago
> Besides censorship protection I personally don't think that goes under "features" to be honest. Every uncensored social network is basically a cesspool.
avip 9y ago
"Any sufficiently uncensored user-content platform is indistinguishable from a porn site"
- whataretensors 9y ago
  A user can run a custom curator. Alternatively sites could be developed that give access to the network and do their own filtering. There are other choices besides authoritarian censorship, despite the popularity these days.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Alternatively sites could be developed that give access to the network and do their own filtering. ...and add their own content, which is only viewable from that site and not elsewhere on the network. And the most popular one of those will eventually just displace the decentralized network.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]