14 ms·

How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain

206 points by edent 8y ago

sahoo 8y ago
> Blockchain is amazing technology - but it is a solution in search of a problem. True.
- SolarNet 8y ago
  Yea exactly, there is only one problem it really solves, and it's already found it. Currency (and sure some stuff that touches it like smart contracts) is the one use case where all the blockchain's properties are useful. Everything else, just use a public/distributed cryptographic ledger, save yourself a ton of money. Use technology that's worked for 30 years.
- drexlspivey 8y ago
  No it's not. Blockchain was created to solve a very specific problem, "how to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant" and it did so with great success. It is the thousands of startups that try to apply this solution without having this exact problem.
  - smnrchrds 8y ago
    Then "consensus on a distributed ledger" is a solution in search of a problem.
    - lmkg 8y ago
      One could be generous and call it a problem in search of an application.
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      No, it's not. The problem is clearly laid out in the Bitcoin whitepaper. The problem was known long before the solution. The root problem is how to make functional and secure trustless money which doesn't rely on third parties. Decentralizing the control is the best solution known to date to remove trust from the system. This introduces the problem of ordering distributed events in a trustless environment. The solution to that is the timestamp server proposed in the Bitcoin whitepaper. That timestamp server is what has been rebranded "blockchain". It's useless for 99% of things it's proposed to solve, but it's the only known solution the original problem.
      - vkou 8y ago
        Except that we don't want trustless money. We want reversible transactions, and funds that can be seized. Given how My.Gox and the DAO thefts went down, so do people actually using cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin does a great job of being trustless money, and a terrible job of being money. I don't need trustless money in my life.
        robotrout 8y ago
        You may not need it, but I am thankful that it now exists. You may be happy with centralized services such as banks and credit cards. But those institutions are vulnerable to intimidation and so proved unsuitable for pot growers in Colorado and for Wikileaks. In the cases of Wikileaks and Colorado pot farmers, they angered a government, even if many other governments (and the state of Colorado) supported them. So it's not about being some bad-ass who fights all forms of government. It's about pushing the boundaries enough that somebody powerful may choose to intimidate your financial provider. Given the number of powerful entities in the world with conflicting world-views, if you're doing anything interesting, you may run afoul of one of them. Even if you personally will never use trustless money, having it exist in the world is making you a little bit more free.
        vkou 8y ago
        It does make the world a little more free, and I have some sympathy for some of those causes. It also seems to come at a great price, in terms of pollution and energy waste. Your right to buy heroin, or child pornography, or organically grown cruelty-and-cartel free marijuana is great, but your externalities are horrific.
        robotrout 8y ago
        I really don't want to get into a global warming fapping session with you, on a thread that has nothing to do with that, but casually dropping the "horrific" bomb is difficult for me to ignore. I will just remind you that there is a thing called a carbon cycle. Carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere. Carbon is not a poison, but is instead, a fundamental component of all life on earth. It does not accumulate forever, but instead, is reabsorbed back out of the atmosphere at some often debated rate. Climate scientists know this, but people who drop the "horrific" bomb, generally do not. Please reserve the word "horrific" for things that actually are. I'm sure you'll find something that is legitimately horrific if you try.
    - drexlspivey 8y ago
      This video does a very good job explaining what exact problems you would face if you tried to create a decentralized payment system and how bitcoin solved these problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4&vl=en
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    > how to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant The problem is that that is just a solution in disguise as a problem. Why do we need to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant? It works, I think, for bitcoin because the ledger is an end unto itself and didn't have to interface with any existing system (no existing accounts/items/entries to assign to existing owners).
    - cwkoss 8y ago
      Credit card fraud and chargebacks online are brutal, and can sink many innocent and legitimate online small businesses. The 'cash-like' quality of Bitcoin, that the sender cannot take it back or contest the transaction after the fact, is a solution to a real problem.
      - rspeer 8y ago
        You think online small businesses are transacting directly with their customers using Bitcoin?
      - rtkwe 8y ago
        On the opposite side of the coin the same reversibility is also great for fighting fraud from scammy sellers. For consumers anything interacting with real world items really needs to be reversible or scammers will have a field day with it and damage the brand.
      - spiralx 8y ago
        > Credit card fraud and chargebacks online are brutal, and can sink many innocent and legitimate online small businesses. Unless you're talking adult businesses, gambling or one of the other industries with known issues with card fraud and/or excessive charge-backs, they aren't a significant problem for legitimate businesses at all. Even a 1% charge-back rate is unusual enough that card providers will flag the retailer for investigation.
        cwkoss 8y ago
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    It's ironic how the blockchain claims to let you do all these things without trusting any of the participants, yet it attracts some of the most untrustworthy participants the world has ever seen. #BrockPierce from @AnOpenSecret on #LastWeekTonight with John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAnAYa8gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAnAYa8gas Brock Pierce posing with his "Make Bitcoin Great Again" at Trump's inaugural lounge: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155736654012782&set=a.112810102781.118888.749357781&type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155736654012782&se... DEN Sources: A document-in-progress compiling firsthand reporting on DEN, Bitcoin, Brock Pierce and the Mike Egan / Bryan Singer lawsuit: https://medium.com/@cuttlefish_btc/den-sources-af289efd690b https://medium.com/@cuttlefish_btc/den-sources-af289efd690b
    - nickrivadeneira 8y ago
      That's not surprising at all. Untrustworthy people doing untrustworthy business are the people most in need of a platform that doesn't rely on trust.
      - DonHopkins 8y ago
        So you're saying the Bitcoin Foundation should let anyone like Brock Pierce be the director, because the Blockchain globally and completely eliminates the need to trust anyone, and EOS shouldn't have parted ways with Brock Pierce, and should hire even more untrustworthy people, because the Blockchain makes it perfectly safe and wise to work with untrustworthy people? Black is white! Good is bad! It's wonderful for scammers to be in charge! The Blockchain is the solution to everything! You can trust the Blockchain so much, that you don't need to trust people any more! Nothing could possibly go wrong! No snake oil! You're the snake oil! ;)
        nickrivadeneira 8y ago
        I didn't say any of those things even remotely. It kind of feels like you've imagined both sides of an argument in your head, and are projecting the other side on me. The only thing I'm saying is: If I'm a known con man, and I'm trying to do a deal with another known con man, I'd like to have a platform that supposedly doesn't require me to trust a con man. I never said anything about whether blockchain can or cannot do that, never said anything about globally eliminating the need for trust, nor that blockchain is a solution for anything, nor what is "safe and wise". I'm not even a proponent of blockchain...I can just see why some types of people are attracted to the advertised benefits.
- this_user 8y ago
  I disagree. Blockchain and crypto currencies that use PoW are a terrible invention. Bitcoin mining alone is now using more electricity than Ireland, and this figure is only increasing even more. In an age where the global effects of climate change are becoming more and more apparent while still too little is done to mitigate it, maybe we should not exacerbate the problem even further This applies especially to something like crypto currencies that, so far, provide very little in terms of tangible societal benefits. We could of course discuss PoS solutions, but those have their own drawbacks, and that still would not change the fundamental fact that crypto currencies and blockchains have yet, after roughly a decade, to find any kind of non-niche use case. Google needed far less than a decade to become the dominant search engine. Netflix did the same of video streaming. Modern smartphones exist for about as long as Bitcoin, and they have become globally ubiquitous. So how good can the blockchain really be?
  - quadrature 8y ago
    I think the two of you are violently agreeing with each other.
  - kang 8y ago
    sorry, but blockchain should be compared to internet, not google & yes packet-switching took a decade to become TCP/IP and took more than 2 decades, to become the internet. Bitcoin should be compared to google.
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Good thing there are no negative externalities from our current financial system! /s
- optimuspaul 8y ago
  I disagree, I don't think there is anything amazing about blockchains. But I do agree that it is a solution in search of a problem.
krrrh 8y ago
It’s worth noting that Verisart is very similar to https://www.ascribe.io https://www.ascribe.io which preceded it. Though ascribe has focused their marketing more towards digital art.
snissn 8y ago
now try to sell it
456hdsaq234g 8y ago
it seems the ethereum blockchain is not immune to human lies. Aka the oracle problem, provenance problem.
hobofan 8y ago
A blockchain only guarantees that calculations are done in a certain way, not that the input data is correct. That same problem also existed before the blockchain as you can see with e.g. Amazon reviews and fake news. Traditionally that problem was solved by having a centralized authority that decides on what input data is correct and what isn't, but that, of course, comes with the usual problems of centralization and monopolies, and also, doesn't seem to work well at scale (as you can again see with the crumbling Amazon review system). While the criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected in my opinion (and maybe even purposefully misunderstanding what problems blockchains solve), I think the main problem of "shit in - shit out" is a very interesting and important one, even more so in decentralized systems where you don't have the crutches of a centralized verifier available. However, I'm pretty optimistic that that problem can even be solved with the help of blockchain. I hoped that I wouldn't have to plug our project[0] before we have anything published, but this seems too close of a topic to pass up. Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper for a decentralized information verification system that aims to solve the problems laid out in this blog post, that we worked on for quite some time. [0]: https://rlay.com https://rlay.com
- 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
  your website has no details and you don't publish your whitepaper.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    > Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper If you can be patient for a bit there will be something to see. If you want to you can also shoot me an email, and I'll send you the whitepaper ASAP.
- nbeleski 8y ago
  How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so?
davesque 8y ago
> I don't understand the blockchain hype. > A startup has certified my artwork & placed their verification on the bitcoin blockchain. > Now art dealers & auctioneers can feel secure that I am the original artist. > One small problem… I am not Leonardo da Vinci!https://www.verisart.com/works/23f2c64a-08c6-4a42-8013-84ac8422dffb https://www.verisart.com/works/23f2c64a-08c6-4a42-8013-84ac8... … Mkay, so the system is working as designed? It seems the issue in this case is that the people behind that startup are dumb. How does that translate to blockchain tech not being useful? If you don't properly verify the information you commit to a blockchain, don't trust the information on the blockchain. Meanwhile, you can rest assured that the information was committed by someone who controls a specific private key. Why would anyone expect anything more?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
  One of the major points that people like to push to justify the valuations of blockchain is that it will make things that verifying authenticity near free and trustless. Then people make the leap to say that you can basically assign ownership of physical items or IP on the blockchain then you increase the efficiency of all of the actions taken on it. What they seem to miss is that you need a real authority, or oracle, to issue and enforce the connection. It only works if that authority can be trusted and doesn't lose control of their private keys. This is an example of someone not to be trusted.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  Its a distributed trustless ledger that relies entirely on trust.
  - davesque 8y ago
    That's a very crafty over-simplification. You can choose to interpret "trustless" literally like it's magic, or you can actual work to understand what blockchain advocates mean when they say that. It's "trustless" because you don't have to trust a central authority not to tamper with the data once it's been committed to the ledger, not because there's no need for trust of any kind or at any level.
- 8y ago
alcipir 8y ago
cool, now we all know that you are a fraud, permanently. Your reputation as an artist is doomed since the blockchain is nothing but a reliable and immutable ledger. Since it's public and verifiable now that you are knowingly stealing other artist's work, all of your other works and contracts will be crushed in the market. (yes, I'm being hypothetical here, I know it was just a proof of concept, etc) So.. it is working as intended?
- Isomatik 8y ago
  But the knowledge that he's stealing others' work comes from sources other than the blockchain record, if you don't count the fact that it's internally invalid for a living person to claim a work created in 1506. So the immutable ledger provides no value. Regardless, taking a picture of a painting doesn't verify that you painted, or even currently own that painting. Adding a timestamp doesn't change that.
dick_sucker2 8y ago
Check out the book The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace if you're interested in learning the background on why blockchain technology won't solve these kind of problems. Hardy Rodenstock fooled the foremost wine expert in the world.
shp0ngle 8y ago
The only good implementation of blockchain stamping is OpenTimestamps from Peter Todd. And because it is smart and nor an overhyped ICO, it is offered for free and actually works. See https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ edit: oh, it seems the project in question (veritart) is actually using opentimestamps.
- Animats 8y ago
  You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps. There have been timestamping services for years.[1] There's a standard: RFC 3161. Many of the SSL cert providers also have a timestamping service. Timestamping would be very useful if Google used signed timestamps to determine provenance. Scraper sites should be outranked by the original source. [1] https://freetsa.org/index_en.php https://freetsa.org/index_en.php
  - 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
    You need a blockchain for decentralised timestamps. That is because a blockchain is basically a slow clock. Its not easy to spoof as you would need to spoof the Proof of Work. Any existing signature relies on a 3rd party trusted clock (like symantecs signing service for Authenticode).
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      In the white paper it's literally called the "timestamp server" and that is its sole function. Timestamping transactions in a decentralized environment.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    The obvious rebuttal to your claim is that those services are all centralized.
    - briatx 8y ago
      His claim was: > You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps. He didn't say anything about whether the timestamp services were centralized or not. So saying "ha, but they're centralized!" is not a rebuttal.
mjgoeke 8y ago
"On two occasions I have been asked, — 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_(1864) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_...
- Avshalom 8y ago
  Which is cute and all but it's the blockchain proponents that seem to think it will give right answers. Hell they frequently ellide the need to supply figures-right or wrong- at all.
  - kryogen1c 8y ago
    I don't think this is accurate. It's the nontechnical zeitgeist shouting blockchain, not those in the know. Just like how carbon nanotubes were supposed to be the best at everything from conductors to batteries to bullet proof vests, and there are 0 usable products on the market. It's just easier to to get away with for programs.
    - Avshalom 8y ago
      And yet here we are discussing a blockchain start up putting almost zero effort into verifying the provenance of a piece of art despite verifying the provenance of art being its entire business model. Or are we just going to Scotsman them into non-technical shouting?
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  If you take this question out of context, it’s pretty easy to dismiss that a human operator, on the other hand - would be, in most of the cases, be able to tell if the numbers are wrong. So I believe Babbidge is incredibly wrong here.
- toss1 8y ago
  Perhaps unwittingly the earliest request for the "DWIM" command in a computing environment... DWIM==<Do What I Mean>
ThomPete 8y ago
Blockchain is not optimized for physical reality but the digital one.
chandsie 8y ago
In the comments the author says, "Blockchain is amazing technology - but it is a solution in search of a problem." That's really the tl;dr of this article. Blockchain has a lot of potential value but arbitrarily throwing it at problems won't magically create the value (not counting investors blindly throwing money at buzzwords).
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.
  - 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
    also decentralised clocks, which can provide decentralised timestamps, which is a kind of related concept (double spend resistance)
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      It's not just related, it's the entire idea of the blockchain. It only exists to timestamp data; in the case of Bitcoin that data is a commitment to a set of transactions.
    - a1369209993 8y ago
      Also a non-redactable public record, although it's a bit hard to do that robustly; you need a transaction saying "find md5^[N]([X]) xor [md5^N(X) xor data]" to ensure you data is already securely embedded before anyone can determine that it's classified/copyrighted/otherwise-censor-bait.
  - tardo99 8y ago
    I strongly agree with your comment. It's frustrating that people won't even attempt to address this glaring deficiency. When I ask people for examples they do the verbal equivalent of running away babbling.
stucof 8y ago
To wit: "In other words, blockchain can guarantee parameters of transactions, but it cannot sanitize the endpoints. It cannot impose the type of social-justice and good-actor constraints that some of its proponents believe will lead to disintermediation of centralized marketplaces like Amazon (customers will still want easy returns, "no questions asked" guarantees and customer service) or large financial intermediaries (banking clients will still want automatic fraud reversal and credit card rewards)." -- http://goo.gl/BtVyx3 http://goo.gl/BtVyx3
slasdfh 8y ago
You can assert that you created media by proving that you had it before anyone else. Blockchains allow you to upload media or a hash of the media into a (relatively) permanent, (relatively) immutable ledger. Relative permanence and immutability are valuable qualities. Uploading a hash into the bitcoin blockchain is trivial; marketing this type of service is not. The advertising or promises of a specific venture do not necessarily reflect the value of a technology.
- SCAQTony 8y ago
  ...and that is the purpose of a copyright too when filed with the USPTO.
mkirklions 8y ago
My criticism of blockchain is how niche the uses are. Bitcoin is great, worldwide transactions that are immune from the US government printing money every year. I understand that. Voting and timestamps, great uses for blockchain. However more complex work may need significantly more oversight. Sure its not great to add columns to a database, but you are not going to have this ability if millions of people dont need the columns. Thats the fault of decentralized chains. Centralized blockchains defeat the purpose obv, but that hasnt stopped hundreds of coins from doing this. Im very skeptical of crypto outside of bitcoin.
root_axis 8y ago
There are other prohibitive problems with this idea. What happens if someone dies or the private key is otherwise lost? What if the private key is stolen and the thief uses it to authorize a dirt-cheap sale to themselves? What happens if the item is sold but the "token" is accidentally (or deliberately) sent to the wrong recipient? What happens if the courts determine that someone else is legally entitled to the work in question (e.g. via divorce judgement) but the current owner destroys the private key out of spite? Additionally, this system does not solve any practical problems. If I am a collector of stolen art, I don't really care about some ephemeral blockchain token, all I really care about is being in possession of rare art that I can personally admire. Finally, it is impossible to generate a reproducible hash based on a physical object, so there is nothing preventing someone from keeping the original and selling off a fake in its place, forever corrupting the supposed chain of trust established by the artist.
- biztos 8y ago
  > being in possession of rare art that I can personally admire Isn't it usually more about showing off that de Hory painting[0] to your Yakuza friends? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory
amenod 8y ago
Bad application of technology doesn't (necessarily) mean that technology sucks. Not that I care for most projects in blockchain sphere, as 95% of them are scam and 4.9% naive / misguided. But blockchain does have its uses, it's just the ICOs (and other manifestations of greed) that gave it a bad name. Audit logs anyone? That's the killer feature.
- dullgiulio 8y ago
  For auditing there are auditing companies, they can timestamp the consumers data. If you don't want to pay an auditing company, you will have to pay the computing power for proof of work. Not a big gain.
  - amenod 8y ago
    Sure it is. It commoditizes trust, making audit logs easily accessible and cheap for many many companies. Besides, which auditing company do you trust?
- admax88q 8y ago
  Honest question, what uses does blockchain have? I have yet to find a single use case that isn't better served by a few centralized or federated systems. Even digital currency I believe is better solved by systems like GNU Taler.
cwkoss 8y ago
Blockchains don't really work for ownership of non-digital assets. I think they can and will be incredibly useful for digital trade, but too many people are trying to make rigid secure digital systems represent the squishy nondeterminism of analog law. Fundamentally, you can't keep an accurate ledger, because there is no interface for proving ownership of physical items.
- coralreef 8y ago
  There is an interface for proving ownership of physical items. It is a centralized system, composed of courts and governments, but it works. If someone challenges your ownership of property, you bring your papers to court. The same thing could work for cryptoassets: you have a centralized, trusted system for validation of custody of assets, and then its share distribution is handled on the blockchain.
  - kfarr 8y ago
    Cryptocourt? Bitjudge?
  - robbiep 8y ago
    In this instance, what advantage does blockchain offer over the existing systems?
    - coralreef 8y ago
      I guess fast, low cost transactions
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Using cryptotokens as a method of recording who-owns-X-physical-thing seems useful at first glance. It would work for as long as there are no bad actors. The main issue is dealing with a 'fork'. If Person A has the private key that 'possesses' an item, but the courts say that Person B is the rightful owner (and physically transfers it to them), how do you securely fix the chain? If person A cannot or will not be compelled to transfer the cryptoasset with their private key, then the chain now has incorrect and uncorrectable information on it. If some records on your chain are not trustworthy, trust in the whole chain breaks down. The only fix is requiring a centralized backdoor, at which point you might as well just use a non-blockchain database.
chainyard 8y ago
We actually built something very similar to this recently. It's an art auction house app running on a private blockchain that we spun up using Hyperledger Fabric, with the front-end written in React. Video walkthrough of the app if you're interested: https://youtu.be/HScND22bPcU?t=198 https://youtu.be/HScND22bPcU?t=198 (Actual demo starts at 3:20)
kelvin0 8y ago
When you only have a hammer, everything's a nail?
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
This is confusing claim and dispute resolution. The Louvre Museum possesses the Mona Lisa, and claims it is the owner. If I break in and steal it, I possess it, and I can claim ownership. But the Louvre can take me to court and the judge will resolve the dispute. Any blockchain is not a dispute resolution mechanism but an efficient claim storage, and as such blockchains can never expect to replace authority of courts - which leads to back to the usual politics
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  I think cryptocurrencies could be part of a novel arbitration system, actually. Parties to a human-readable contract put up a bond on a smart contract which authorizes some mutually agreed arbitrator to disburse the bonds on completion of the contract, according to how things turned out. It's an irrevocable submission to the arbitrator's authority over restitution and punishment, but the smart contract prevents the arbitrator from absconding with the bonds (though they could still collude with one of the participants.)
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    This is how we do arbitration in OpenBazaar. Users can offer their services as arbitrators and compete on terms, price, and reputation. When a buyer makes a purchase they can choose one from a list of ones pre-approved by the seller. Then funds are sent to a 2-of-3 multisig address where each of the parties has 1 key.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    I don't see the difference - both parties are agreeing to submit to a third party decision. Given most lands have hundreds of years of case law, generally strong ethical expectations of judiciary etc, I think this would be something i would only trust as an escrow service still under a strong legal system
- acjohnson55 8y ago
  Aren't there far more efficient forms of "claim storage"?
paulkrush 8y ago
One could use blockchain to record the microscopic surface imperfections on the art. It would be like matching up the broken ends of stick...
gabcoh 8y ago
After just reading the title I thought this was going to be an article about all of the bots "painting the tape" and manipulating bitcoin prices on various exchanges.

206 points by edent 8y ago

sahoo 8y ago

> Blockchain is amazing technology - but it is a solution in search of a problem. True.

SolarNet 8y ago
Yea exactly, there is only one problem it really solves, and it's already found it. Currency (and sure some stuff that touches it like smart contracts) is the one use case where all the blockchain's properties are useful. Everything else, just use a public/distributed cryptographic ledger, save yourself a ton of money. Use technology that's worked for 30 years.
drexlspivey 8y ago
No it's not. Blockchain was created to solve a very specific problem, "how to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant" and it did so with great success. It is the thousands of startups that try to apply this solution without having this exact problem.
- smnrchrds 8y ago
  Then "consensus on a distributed ledger" is a solution in search of a problem.
  - lmkg 8y ago
    One could be generous and call it a problem in search of an application.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    No, it's not. The problem is clearly laid out in the Bitcoin whitepaper. The problem was known long before the solution. The root problem is how to make functional and secure trustless money which doesn't rely on third parties. Decentralizing the control is the best solution known to date to remove trust from the system. This introduces the problem of ordering distributed events in a trustless environment. The solution to that is the timestamp server proposed in the Bitcoin whitepaper. That timestamp server is what has been rebranded "blockchain". It's useless for 99% of things it's proposed to solve, but it's the only known solution the original problem.
    - vkou 8y ago
      Except that we don't want trustless money. We want reversible transactions, and funds that can be seized. Given how My.Gox and the DAO thefts went down, so do people actually using cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin does a great job of being trustless money, and a terrible job of being money. I don't need trustless money in my life.
      - robotrout 8y ago
        You may not need it, but I am thankful that it now exists. You may be happy with centralized services such as banks and credit cards. But those institutions are vulnerable to intimidation and so proved unsuitable for pot growers in Colorado and for Wikileaks. In the cases of Wikileaks and Colorado pot farmers, they angered a government, even if many other governments (and the state of Colorado) supported them. So it's not about being some bad-ass who fights all forms of government. It's about pushing the boundaries enough that somebody powerful may choose to intimidate your financial provider. Given the number of powerful entities in the world with conflicting world-views, if you're doing anything interesting, you may run afoul of one of them. Even if you personally will never use trustless money, having it exist in the world is making you a little bit more free.
        vkou 8y ago
        It does make the world a little more free, and I have some sympathy for some of those causes. It also seems to come at a great price, in terms of pollution and energy waste. Your right to buy heroin, or child pornography, or organically grown cruelty-and-cartel free marijuana is great, but your externalities are horrific.
        robotrout 8y ago
        I really don't want to get into a global warming fapping session with you, on a thread that has nothing to do with that, but casually dropping the "horrific" bomb is difficult for me to ignore. I will just remind you that there is a thing called a carbon cycle. Carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere. Carbon is not a poison, but is instead, a fundamental component of all life on earth. It does not accumulate forever, but instead, is reabsorbed back out of the atmosphere at some often debated rate. Climate scientists know this, but people who drop the "horrific" bomb, generally do not. Please reserve the word "horrific" for things that actually are. I'm sure you'll find something that is legitimately horrific if you try.
  - drexlspivey 8y ago
    This video does a very good job explaining what exact problems you would face if you tried to create a decentralized payment system and how bitcoin solved these problems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4&vl=en
- rtkwe 8y ago
  > how to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant The problem is that that is just a solution in disguise as a problem. Why do we need to achieve consensus on a distributed ledger without trusting any participant? It works, I think, for bitcoin because the ledger is an end unto itself and didn't have to interface with any existing system (no existing accounts/items/entries to assign to existing owners).
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Credit card fraud and chargebacks online are brutal, and can sink many innocent and legitimate online small businesses. The 'cash-like' quality of Bitcoin, that the sender cannot take it back or contest the transaction after the fact, is a solution to a real problem.
    - rspeer 8y ago
      You think online small businesses are transacting directly with their customers using Bitcoin?
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      On the opposite side of the coin the same reversibility is also great for fighting fraud from scammy sellers. For consumers anything interacting with real world items really needs to be reversible or scammers will have a field day with it and damage the brand.
    - spiralx 8y ago
      > Credit card fraud and chargebacks online are brutal, and can sink many innocent and legitimate online small businesses. Unless you're talking adult businesses, gambling or one of the other industries with known issues with card fraud and/or excessive charge-backs, they aren't a significant problem for legitimate businesses at all. Even a 1% charge-back rate is unusual enough that card providers will flag the retailer for investigation.
      - cwkoss 8y ago
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  It's ironic how the blockchain claims to let you do all these things without trusting any of the participants, yet it attracts some of the most untrustworthy participants the world has ever seen. #BrockPierce from @AnOpenSecret on #LastWeekTonight with John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAnAYa8gas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAnAYa8gas Brock Pierce posing with his "Make Bitcoin Great Again" at Trump's inaugural lounge: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155736654012782&set=a.112810102781.118888.749357781&type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155736654012782&se... DEN Sources: A document-in-progress compiling firsthand reporting on DEN, Bitcoin, Brock Pierce and the Mike Egan / Bryan Singer lawsuit: https://medium.com/@cuttlefish_btc/den-sources-af289efd690b https://medium.com/@cuttlefish_btc/den-sources-af289efd690b
  - nickrivadeneira 8y ago
    That's not surprising at all. Untrustworthy people doing untrustworthy business are the people most in need of a platform that doesn't rely on trust.
    - DonHopkins 8y ago
      So you're saying the Bitcoin Foundation should let anyone like Brock Pierce be the director, because the Blockchain globally and completely eliminates the need to trust anyone, and EOS shouldn't have parted ways with Brock Pierce, and should hire even more untrustworthy people, because the Blockchain makes it perfectly safe and wise to work with untrustworthy people? Black is white! Good is bad! It's wonderful for scammers to be in charge! The Blockchain is the solution to everything! You can trust the Blockchain so much, that you don't need to trust people any more! Nothing could possibly go wrong! No snake oil! You're the snake oil! ;)
      - nickrivadeneira 8y ago
        I didn't say any of those things even remotely. It kind of feels like you've imagined both sides of an argument in your head, and are projecting the other side on me. The only thing I'm saying is: If I'm a known con man, and I'm trying to do a deal with another known con man, I'd like to have a platform that supposedly doesn't require me to trust a con man. I never said anything about whether blockchain can or cannot do that, never said anything about globally eliminating the need for trust, nor that blockchain is a solution for anything, nor what is "safe and wise". I'm not even a proponent of blockchain...I can just see why some types of people are attracted to the advertised benefits.
this_user 8y ago
I disagree. Blockchain and crypto currencies that use PoW are a terrible invention. Bitcoin mining alone is now using more electricity than Ireland, and this figure is only increasing even more. In an age where the global effects of climate change are becoming more and more apparent while still too little is done to mitigate it, maybe we should not exacerbate the problem even further This applies especially to something like crypto currencies that, so far, provide very little in terms of tangible societal benefits. We could of course discuss PoS solutions, but those have their own drawbacks, and that still would not change the fundamental fact that crypto currencies and blockchains have yet, after roughly a decade, to find any kind of non-niche use case. Google needed far less than a decade to become the dominant search engine. Netflix did the same of video streaming. Modern smartphones exist for about as long as Bitcoin, and they have become globally ubiquitous. So how good can the blockchain really be?
- quadrature 8y ago
  I think the two of you are violently agreeing with each other.
- kang 8y ago
  sorry, but blockchain should be compared to internet, not google & yes packet-switching took a decade to become TCP/IP and took more than 2 decades, to become the internet. Bitcoin should be compared to google.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Good thing there are no negative externalities from our current financial system! /s
optimuspaul 8y ago
I disagree, I don't think there is anything amazing about blockchains. But I do agree that it is a solution in search of a problem.

krrrh 8y ago

It’s worth noting that Verisart is very similar to https://www.ascribe.io https://www.ascribe.io which preceded it. Though ascribe has focused their marketing more towards digital art.

snissn 8y ago

now try to sell it

456hdsaq234g 8y ago

it seems the ethereum blockchain is not immune to human lies. Aka the oracle problem, provenance problem.

hobofan 8y ago

A blockchain only guarantees that calculations are done in a certain way, not that the input data is correct. That same problem also existed before the blockchain as you can see with e.g. Amazon reviews and fake news. Traditionally that problem was solved by having a centralized authority that decides on what input data is correct and what isn't, but that, of course, comes with the usual problems of centralization and monopolies, and also, doesn't seem to work well at scale (as you can again see with the crumbling Amazon review system). While the criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected in my opinion (and maybe even purposefully misunderstanding what problems blockchains solve), I think the main problem of "shit in - shit out" is a very interesting and important one, even more so in decentralized systems where you don't have the crutches of a centralized verifier available. However, I'm pretty optimistic that that problem can even be solved with the help of blockchain. I hoped that I wouldn't have to plug our project[0] before we have anything published, but this seems too close of a topic to pass up. Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper for a decentralized information verification system that aims to solve the problems laid out in this blog post, that we worked on for quite some time. [0]: https://rlay.com https://rlay.com

456hdsaq234g 8y ago
your website has no details and you don't publish your whitepaper.
- hobofan 8y ago
  > Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper If you can be patient for a bit there will be something to see. If you want to you can also shoot me an email, and I'll send you the whitepaper ASAP.
nbeleski 8y ago
How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so?

davesque 8y ago

> I don't understand the blockchain hype. > A startup has certified my artwork & placed their verification on the bitcoin blockchain. > Now art dealers & auctioneers can feel secure that I am the original artist. > One small problem… I am not Leonardo da Vinci!https://www.verisart.com/works/23f2c64a-08c6-4a42-8013-84ac8422dffb https://www.verisart.com/works/23f2c64a-08c6-4a42-8013-84ac8... … Mkay, so the system is working as designed? It seems the issue in this case is that the people behind that startup are dumb. How does that translate to blockchain tech not being useful? If you don't properly verify the information you commit to a blockchain, don't trust the information on the blockchain. Meanwhile, you can rest assured that the information was committed by someone who controls a specific private key. Why would anyone expect anything more?

X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
One of the major points that people like to push to justify the valuations of blockchain is that it will make things that verifying authenticity near free and trustless. Then people make the leap to say that you can basically assign ownership of physical items or IP on the blockchain then you increase the efficiency of all of the actions taken on it. What they seem to miss is that you need a real authority, or oracle, to issue and enforce the connection. It only works if that authority can be trusted and doesn't lose control of their private keys. This is an example of someone not to be trusted.
Avshalom 8y ago
Its a distributed trustless ledger that relies entirely on trust.
- davesque 8y ago
  That's a very crafty over-simplification. You can choose to interpret "trustless" literally like it's magic, or you can actual work to understand what blockchain advocates mean when they say that. It's "trustless" because you don't have to trust a central authority not to tamper with the data once it's been committed to the ledger, not because there's no need for trust of any kind or at any level.
8y ago

alcipir 8y ago

cool, now we all know that you are a fraud, permanently. Your reputation as an artist is doomed since the blockchain is nothing but a reliable and immutable ledger. Since it's public and verifiable now that you are knowingly stealing other artist's work, all of your other works and contracts will be crushed in the market. (yes, I'm being hypothetical here, I know it was just a proof of concept, etc) So.. it is working as intended?

Isomatik 8y ago
But the knowledge that he's stealing others' work comes from sources other than the blockchain record, if you don't count the fact that it's internally invalid for a living person to claim a work created in 1506. So the immutable ledger provides no value. Regardless, taking a picture of a painting doesn't verify that you painted, or even currently own that painting. Adding a timestamp doesn't change that.

dick_sucker2 8y ago

Check out the book The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace if you're interested in learning the background on why blockchain technology won't solve these kind of problems. Hardy Rodenstock fooled the foremost wine expert in the world.

shp0ngle 8y ago

The only good implementation of blockchain stamping is OpenTimestamps from Peter Todd. And because it is smart and nor an overhyped ICO, it is offered for free and actually works. See https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ edit: oh, it seems the project in question (veritart) is actually using opentimestamps.

Animats 8y ago
You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps. There have been timestamping services for years.[1] There's a standard: RFC 3161. Many of the SSL cert providers also have a timestamping service. Timestamping would be very useful if Google used signed timestamps to determine provenance. Scraper sites should be outranked by the original source. [1] https://freetsa.org/index_en.php https://freetsa.org/index_en.php
- 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
  You need a blockchain for decentralised timestamps. That is because a blockchain is basically a slow clock. Its not easy to spoof as you would need to spoof the Proof of Work. Any existing signature relies on a 3rd party trusted clock (like symantecs signing service for Authenticode).
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    In the white paper it's literally called the "timestamp server" and that is its sole function. Timestamping transactions in a decentralized environment.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  The obvious rebuttal to your claim is that those services are all centralized.
  - briatx 8y ago
    His claim was: > You don't need a "blockchain" for timestamps. He didn't say anything about whether the timestamp services were centralized or not. So saying "ha, but they're centralized!" is not a rebuttal.

mjgoeke 8y ago

"On two occasions I have been asked, — 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_(1864) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_...

Avshalom 8y ago
Which is cute and all but it's the blockchain proponents that seem to think it will give right answers. Hell they frequently ellide the need to supply figures-right or wrong- at all.
- kryogen1c 8y ago
  I don't think this is accurate. It's the nontechnical zeitgeist shouting blockchain, not those in the know. Just like how carbon nanotubes were supposed to be the best at everything from conductors to batteries to bullet proof vests, and there are 0 usable products on the market. It's just easier to to get away with for programs.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    And yet here we are discussing a blockchain start up putting almost zero effort into verifying the provenance of a piece of art despite verifying the provenance of art being its entire business model. Or are we just going to Scotsman them into non-technical shouting?
heavenlyblue 8y ago
If you take this question out of context, it’s pretty easy to dismiss that a human operator, on the other hand - would be, in most of the cases, be able to tell if the numbers are wrong. So I believe Babbidge is incredibly wrong here.
toss1 8y ago
Perhaps unwittingly the earliest request for the "DWIM" command in a computing environment... DWIM==<Do What I Mean>

ThomPete 8y ago

Blockchain is not optimized for physical reality but the digital one.

chandsie 8y ago

In the comments the author says, "Blockchain is amazing technology - but it is a solution in search of a problem." That's really the tl;dr of this article. Blockchain has a lot of potential value but arbitrarily throwing it at problems won't magically create the value (not counting investors blindly throwing money at buzzwords).

LeoPanthera 8y ago
I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.
- 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
  also decentralised clocks, which can provide decentralised timestamps, which is a kind of related concept (double spend resistance)
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    It's not just related, it's the entire idea of the blockchain. It only exists to timestamp data; in the case of Bitcoin that data is a commitment to a set of transactions.
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    Also a non-redactable public record, although it's a bit hard to do that robustly; you need a transaction saying "find md5^[N]([X]) xor [md5^N(X) xor data]" to ensure you data is already securely embedded before anyone can determine that it's classified/copyrighted/otherwise-censor-bait.
- tardo99 8y ago
  I strongly agree with your comment. It's frustrating that people won't even attempt to address this glaring deficiency. When I ask people for examples they do the verbal equivalent of running away babbling.

stucof 8y ago

To wit: "In other words, blockchain can guarantee parameters of transactions, but it cannot sanitize the endpoints. It cannot impose the type of social-justice and good-actor constraints that some of its proponents believe will lead to disintermediation of centralized marketplaces like Amazon (customers will still want easy returns, "no questions asked" guarantees and customer service) or large financial intermediaries (banking clients will still want automatic fraud reversal and credit card rewards)." -- http://goo.gl/BtVyx3 http://goo.gl/BtVyx3

slasdfh 8y ago

You can assert that you created media by proving that you had it before anyone else. Blockchains allow you to upload media or a hash of the media into a (relatively) permanent, (relatively) immutable ledger. Relative permanence and immutability are valuable qualities. Uploading a hash into the bitcoin blockchain is trivial; marketing this type of service is not. The advertising or promises of a specific venture do not necessarily reflect the value of a technology.

SCAQTony 8y ago
...and that is the purpose of a copyright too when filed with the USPTO.

mkirklions 8y ago

My criticism of blockchain is how niche the uses are. Bitcoin is great, worldwide transactions that are immune from the US government printing money every year. I understand that. Voting and timestamps, great uses for blockchain. However more complex work may need significantly more oversight. Sure its not great to add columns to a database, but you are not going to have this ability if millions of people dont need the columns. Thats the fault of decentralized chains. Centralized blockchains defeat the purpose obv, but that hasnt stopped hundreds of coins from doing this. Im very skeptical of crypto outside of bitcoin.

root_axis 8y ago

There are other prohibitive problems with this idea. What happens if someone dies or the private key is otherwise lost? What if the private key is stolen and the thief uses it to authorize a dirt-cheap sale to themselves? What happens if the item is sold but the "token" is accidentally (or deliberately) sent to the wrong recipient? What happens if the courts determine that someone else is legally entitled to the work in question (e.g. via divorce judgement) but the current owner destroys the private key out of spite? Additionally, this system does not solve any practical problems. If I am a collector of stolen art, I don't really care about some ephemeral blockchain token, all I really care about is being in possession of rare art that I can personally admire. Finally, it is impossible to generate a reproducible hash based on a physical object, so there is nothing preventing someone from keeping the original and selling off a fake in its place, forever corrupting the supposed chain of trust established by the artist.

biztos 8y ago
> being in possession of rare art that I can personally admire Isn't it usually more about showing off that de Hory painting[0] to your Yakuza friends? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory

amenod 8y ago

Bad application of technology doesn't (necessarily) mean that technology sucks. Not that I care for most projects in blockchain sphere, as 95% of them are scam and 4.9% naive / misguided. But blockchain does have its uses, it's just the ICOs (and other manifestations of greed) that gave it a bad name. Audit logs anyone? That's the killer feature.

dullgiulio 8y ago
For auditing there are auditing companies, they can timestamp the consumers data. If you don't want to pay an auditing company, you will have to pay the computing power for proof of work. Not a big gain.
- amenod 8y ago
  Sure it is. It commoditizes trust, making audit logs easily accessible and cheap for many many companies. Besides, which auditing company do you trust?
admax88q 8y ago
Honest question, what uses does blockchain have? I have yet to find a single use case that isn't better served by a few centralized or federated systems. Even digital currency I believe is better solved by systems like GNU Taler.

cwkoss 8y ago

Blockchains don't really work for ownership of non-digital assets. I think they can and will be incredibly useful for digital trade, but too many people are trying to make rigid secure digital systems represent the squishy nondeterminism of analog law. Fundamentally, you can't keep an accurate ledger, because there is no interface for proving ownership of physical items.

coralreef 8y ago
There is an interface for proving ownership of physical items. It is a centralized system, composed of courts and governments, but it works. If someone challenges your ownership of property, you bring your papers to court. The same thing could work for cryptoassets: you have a centralized, trusted system for validation of custody of assets, and then its share distribution is handled on the blockchain.
- kfarr 8y ago
  Cryptocourt? Bitjudge?
- robbiep 8y ago
  In this instance, what advantage does blockchain offer over the existing systems?
  - coralreef 8y ago
    I guess fast, low cost transactions
- cwkoss 8y ago
  Using cryptotokens as a method of recording who-owns-X-physical-thing seems useful at first glance. It would work for as long as there are no bad actors. The main issue is dealing with a 'fork'. If Person A has the private key that 'possesses' an item, but the courts say that Person B is the rightful owner (and physically transfers it to them), how do you securely fix the chain? If person A cannot or will not be compelled to transfer the cryptoasset with their private key, then the chain now has incorrect and uncorrectable information on it. If some records on your chain are not trustworthy, trust in the whole chain breaks down. The only fix is requiring a centralized backdoor, at which point you might as well just use a non-blockchain database.

chainyard 8y ago

We actually built something very similar to this recently. It's an art auction house app running on a private blockchain that we spun up using Hyperledger Fabric, with the front-end written in React. Video walkthrough of the app if you're interested: https://youtu.be/HScND22bPcU?t=198 https://youtu.be/HScND22bPcU?t=198 (Actual demo starts at 3:20)

kelvin0 8y ago

When you only have a hammer, everything's a nail?

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

This is confusing claim and dispute resolution. The Louvre Museum possesses the Mona Lisa, and claims it is the owner. If I break in and steal it, I possess it, and I can claim ownership. But the Louvre can take me to court and the judge will resolve the dispute. Any blockchain is not a dispute resolution mechanism but an efficient claim storage, and as such blockchains can never expect to replace authority of courts - which leads to back to the usual politics

AlexCoventry 8y ago
I think cryptocurrencies could be part of a novel arbitration system, actually. Parties to a human-readable contract put up a bond on a smart contract which authorizes some mutually agreed arbitrator to disburse the bonds on completion of the contract, according to how things turned out. It's an irrevocable submission to the arbitrator's authority over restitution and punishment, but the smart contract prevents the arbitrator from absconding with the bonds (though they could still collude with one of the participants.)
- tylersmith 8y ago
  This is how we do arbitration in OpenBazaar. Users can offer their services as arbitrators and compete on terms, price, and reputation. When a buyer makes a purchase they can choose one from a list of ones pre-approved by the seller. Then funds are sent to a 2-of-3 multisig address where each of the parties has 1 key.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  I don't see the difference - both parties are agreeing to submit to a third party decision. Given most lands have hundreds of years of case law, generally strong ethical expectations of judiciary etc, I think this would be something i would only trust as an escrow service still under a strong legal system
acjohnson55 8y ago
Aren't there far more efficient forms of "claim storage"?

paulkrush 8y ago

One could use blockchain to record the microscopic surface imperfections on the art. It would be like matching up the broken ends of stick...

gabcoh 8y ago

After just reading the title I thought this was going to be an article about all of the bots "painting the tape" and manipulating bitcoin prices on various exchanges.