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Most of the people on hacker news, myself included, aren’t skeptical of the technologicy of block chain. I grant Block Chain’s central technical premise, no oth
by hacknat 8y ago
Most of the people on hacker news, myself included, aren’t skeptical of the technologicy of block chain. I grant Block Chain’s central technical premise, no other medium/platform/whatever can create decentralized trust wherein all you have to trust is the network. Where I think most of the criticism comes from is that many of us don’t see why this decentralization is actually all that valuable. Currency seems like the most likely candidate, but even it has proven finicky. What efficiencies are gained from decentralized trust. I’m skeptical that decentralized trust creates that much of an improvement.
Case-in-point:
Block chain for supply chain problems was touted and hyped a few years ago, only to fall flat on its face. Why? For most companies decentralized trust in their supply chain didn’t provide that much of a benefit. I know a bit about supply chains, and from what I have heard from most supply chain experts (yes I know a fair number of supply chain experts) centrally managed trust works fine for them.
That’s the extrapolated crux of the issue. I am open to being proven wrong, but so far no one has ever been able to calmly explain to me what fields would see a 10x improvement from decentralized trust.
We’ve been dealing with centrally authenticated trust and decentralized unauthenticated trust for 100k+ years as a species. Block chain promises decentralized authenticated trust and it delivers, but why should I care? Is it actually going to be beneficial. No one can argue that the jury is still out.
- unabridged 8y agoDecentralized trust is a way to "open source" a customer/merchant database. If centralized trust is required the company controlling it can charge people to use it, for example think of listing fees as ebay charging people for access to their seller ratings. Or uber charging people to access its driver ratings. With decentralized trust we could create a decentralized uber, where drivers get 99% of the money and 1% going to developers and providers of decentralized insurance. One alternative to decentralized trust would be setting up a nonprofit to control the trust database, but then you are relying on the government to enforce that the nonprofit doesn't gouge the customers, manipulate the ratings, or embezzle the funds. You are basically just pushing the trust onto courts and law enforcement.
- alonmower 8y agoI would question the viability of a decentralized uber when non-idealistic consumers need to use it. In a decentralized uber where do consumers go if they feel that they were charged in error, or their driver took too long of a route, or... It's not enough for a lot of people to just give someone bad feedback, they want to know that there's a (hopefully) reasonable human on the other end that they can reach out to in case things go sideways.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago"With decentralized trust we could create a decentralized uber, where drivers get 99% of the money and 1% going to developers and providers of decentralized insurance." Why do we want decentralized Uber? Do we not want some basic vetting of the people who are driving us around? I imagine decentralized Uber isn't going to be too quick to remove drivers who sexually harass riders, if it does so at all.