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People have been asking and answering these questions for almost ten years. Brief list off the top of my head: - Seamless global payments - Store of value -

People have been asking and answering these questions for almost ten years. Brief list off the top of my head: - Seamless global payments - Store of value - File storage - Decentralized exchanges - DNS lookup - Prediction markets - International contracts - Untraceable payments - e-Voting - Copyright or proof of ownership - Distributed computing It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with every non-believer.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Distributed ledgers are overengineering for most of these use cases.
- throwawaylolx 9y ago
  How so?
acdha 9y ago
Those are commonly copy-pasted claims but the reason why it keeps coming up is that the question of what makes it better is either unanswered or, in cases like voting or storage, known to be worse. Your language is inadvertently quite revealing: “non-believer” isn’t how you talk about technical issues with well understood tradeoffs. It’s how you talk about something which you’d like to be true but isn’t.
- throwawaylolx 9y ago
  >voting https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1043.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1043.pdf Also, https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf Section 4.4.2 >storage https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf https://storj.io/storj.pdf https://storj.io/storj.pdf ^ Detailed analyses that explain why blockchain is an appropriate solution But please do elaborate how they are "known to be worse." By whom and can you cite the analysis that proved so? Certainly not known by Google if they invested in a blockchain-based storage solution? >well understood tradeoffs That's definitely not the case if you take the time to read any blockchain-related thread on HN. But, please, feel free to tell me what are better solutions for the cases I mentioned.
  - acdha 9y ago
    Your second link discusses the problems with voting and correctly votes that they are unsolved, which was the entire point. Every solution proposed so far is a huge regression for privacy or coercion, so it’s dishonest to claim that as anything other than an area which could become not-worse if future fundamental breakthroughs occur. File storage is similar: lots of people want you to buy their pet project but if you want reliable, secure, and cost effective it’s all “maybe sometime in the future when we have something different”. Talk about it as an advantage when it’s competitive for most people.
    - throwawaylolx 9y ago
      >they are unsolved, which was the entire point. I thought the point was that "they are known to be worse." >Every solution proposed so far is a huge regression for privacy or coercion Can you please elaborate how is the solution proposed in the paper linked in the first URL a regression over non-blockchain solutions? >it’s dishonest to claim that I replied to the question of "what problem is this technology solving," and the paper you mentioned claims that "it seems reasonable that blockchain technology can help to achieve some of the desired properties." What exactly am I being dishonest with? I cited a paper where a protocol is proposed to help solving the eVoting problem. It directly answers the question I was aiming to answer--I never said my list was about already working, deployed, tested solutions. >File storage is similar: lots of people want you to buy their pet project but if you want reliable, secure, and cost effective it’s all “maybe sometime in the future when we have something different”. Talk about it as an advantage when it’s competitive for most people. Right... so your counter-argument is that "it's not yet ready" despite claiming that "they are known to be worse." No one said they're ready. They're using experimental technology and they're small teams. They already have beta implementations out if you want to test them. Yes, they're not polished and ready for consumers, is this your entire point?
      - acdha 9y ago
        > I thought the point was that "they are known to be worse." Yes, for example, here's the full quote about voting including the sentence immediately after the one you quoted: > Due to the requirements, it seems reasonable that blockchain technology can help to achieve some of the desired properties. However, to the best of our knowledge, so far no solution has been proposed that has been shown to be secure, verifiable, and private and there are still many open challenges. There's simply no proposed system which is not worse than the status quo, and that's ignoring the additional challenge that even in the event of a major academic advance you'd have the additional concerns of having to be cost-competitive and establishing public trustworthiness before you could call it better. That kind of work is measured in decades. The situation is less severe for file storage since you don't have as many attacks but, again, there just isn't something which is comparable on cost, performance, or reliability. I'm comfortable saying that's “known to be worse”.
spookthesunset 9y ago
> It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with every non-believer. And the true believers are the ones who will be lambo rich as long as they keep buying and holding, right? Just keep hyping up all these empty promises... some rube out there will buy into it.
- throwawaylolx 9y ago
  >empty promises Can you please support your position? Bitcoin promised a digital decentralized payment solution, and it delivered the first solution in history. Monero promised anonymized payments, and they delivered the most private solution for untraceable digital currency. Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives? Credit cards, p2p payments in various countries, and cash. All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments.
    - throwawaylolx 9y ago
      >Credit cards Not anonymous nor decentralized > p2p payments in various countries Such as? >cash Not digital. >All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments. Then please explain to me how do I make an anonymous payment online without a third party using existing financial instruments.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Explain to me where this is a valid use case. I think that’s where we disagree. I don’t see the need for anonymous electronic payments.
        9y ago

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Distributed ledgers are overengineering for most of these use cases.

throwawaylolx 9y ago
How so?

acdha 9y ago

Those are commonly copy-pasted claims but the reason why it keeps coming up is that the question of what makes it better is either unanswered or, in cases like voting or storage, known to be worse. Your language is inadvertently quite revealing: “non-believer” isn’t how you talk about technical issues with well understood tradeoffs. It’s how you talk about something which you’d like to be true but isn’t.

throwawaylolx 9y ago
>voting https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1043.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1043.pdf Also, https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf Section 4.4.2 >storage https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf https://storj.io/storj.pdf https://storj.io/storj.pdf ^ Detailed analyses that explain why blockchain is an appropriate solution But please do elaborate how they are "known to be worse." By whom and can you cite the analysis that proved so? Certainly not known by Google if they invested in a blockchain-based storage solution? >well understood tradeoffs That's definitely not the case if you take the time to read any blockchain-related thread on HN. But, please, feel free to tell me what are better solutions for the cases I mentioned.
- acdha 9y ago
  Your second link discusses the problems with voting and correctly votes that they are unsolved, which was the entire point. Every solution proposed so far is a huge regression for privacy or coercion, so it’s dishonest to claim that as anything other than an area which could become not-worse if future fundamental breakthroughs occur. File storage is similar: lots of people want you to buy their pet project but if you want reliable, secure, and cost effective it’s all “maybe sometime in the future when we have something different”. Talk about it as an advantage when it’s competitive for most people.
  - throwawaylolx 9y ago
    >they are unsolved, which was the entire point. I thought the point was that "they are known to be worse." >Every solution proposed so far is a huge regression for privacy or coercion Can you please elaborate how is the solution proposed in the paper linked in the first URL a regression over non-blockchain solutions? >it’s dishonest to claim that I replied to the question of "what problem is this technology solving," and the paper you mentioned claims that "it seems reasonable that blockchain technology can help to achieve some of the desired properties." What exactly am I being dishonest with? I cited a paper where a protocol is proposed to help solving the eVoting problem. It directly answers the question I was aiming to answer--I never said my list was about already working, deployed, tested solutions. >File storage is similar: lots of people want you to buy their pet project but if you want reliable, secure, and cost effective it’s all “maybe sometime in the future when we have something different”. Talk about it as an advantage when it’s competitive for most people. Right... so your counter-argument is that "it's not yet ready" despite claiming that "they are known to be worse." No one said they're ready. They're using experimental technology and they're small teams. They already have beta implementations out if you want to test them. Yes, they're not polished and ready for consumers, is this your entire point?
    - acdha 9y ago
      > I thought the point was that "they are known to be worse." Yes, for example, here's the full quote about voting including the sentence immediately after the one you quoted: > Due to the requirements, it seems reasonable that blockchain technology can help to achieve some of the desired properties. However, to the best of our knowledge, so far no solution has been proposed that has been shown to be secure, verifiable, and private and there are still many open challenges. There's simply no proposed system which is not worse than the status quo, and that's ignoring the additional challenge that even in the event of a major academic advance you'd have the additional concerns of having to be cost-competitive and establishing public trustworthiness before you could call it better. That kind of work is measured in decades. The situation is less severe for file storage since you don't have as many attacks but, again, there just isn't something which is comparable on cost, performance, or reliability. I'm comfortable saying that's “known to be worse”.

spookthesunset 9y ago

> It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with every non-believer. And the true believers are the ones who will be lambo rich as long as they keep buying and holding, right? Just keep hyping up all these empty promises... some rube out there will buy into it.

throwawaylolx 9y ago
>empty promises Can you please support your position? Bitcoin promised a digital decentralized payment solution, and it delivered the first solution in history. Monero promised anonymized payments, and they delivered the most private solution for untraceable digital currency. Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives? Credit cards, p2p payments in various countries, and cash. All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments.
  - throwawaylolx 9y ago
    >Credit cards Not anonymous nor decentralized > p2p payments in various countries Such as? >cash Not digital. >All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments. Then please explain to me how do I make an anonymous payment online without a third party using existing financial instruments.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Explain to me where this is a valid use case. I think that’s where we disagree. I don’t see the need for anonymous electronic payments.
      - 9y ago