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> It's distributed trust. That's the problem it solves. It's incredibly cool technology. That solves a specific problem. That's still not it. "Distributed Trus

• endlessvoid94 8y ago
  You're right, I pointed to the solution instead of the problem. I'm still an engineer at heart, it seems! What should I have said instead? Centralization of data? Unreliability of single-points-of-failure?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • caust1c 8y ago
    It provides distributed trust for the class of problems wherein you have multiple competitive parties trying to achieve consensus on a sequence of transactions (or contracts, if you will). I believe a massive number of social and societal problems are solved by distributed trust models in the same ways free market economies generally lead to more equality and democracy leads to more freedoms.
    • endlessvoid94 8y ago
      Can you give me an example?
      • mhluongo 8y ago
        Anything involving a clearing house.
        • madeofpalk 8y ago
          What about all the existing clearing houses we have today? How have they managed to survive without Blockchain? Again. What specific problem does Blockchain solve?
        • endlessvoid94 8y ago
          Such as?
          • vntok 8y ago
            I gave you a few specific examples earlier in the thread: - Art transactions: registry of origin and property transfers for any object (with authenticated certificate), currently done by lawyers & auction houses (costly, inefficient, painful, near-impossible in some cases involving war/expropriation because records were destroyed at some point) - International shipping: INCOTERMS, currently handled through various specialized intermediaries (costly, inefficient, painful) - Registry of operations over the life of a company (creation/address change/acquisitions/foreclosure), currently done by national commerce courts & accredited local newspapers (costly, inefficient, painful) - Wills: self-authentication of one's will preventing repudiation attempts by third parties, currently done by lawyers and witnesses (costly, inefficient, painful) - Escrow accounts for service providers (ex freelancers) through multisig wallets, currently done by intermediary platforms (costly, inefficient)
            • 0x006A 8y ago
              how would any of those problems be solved with a blockchain? you are taking about real world things and actors that need to be matched to something on a blockchain. don't see how you get around that part and that is the costly, inefficient and painful one. not the ledger.
  • pjc50 8y ago
    The original bitcoin whitepaper is focused on avoiding double-spend of digital cash, facilitating non-reversible transactions in a way that's not vulnerable to collapse or suborning of the central counterparty. It has the following statement in its introduction: "Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable." (No solution is offered for the merchant defrauding the customer, which is the business that ebay was built on solving)
    • s73v3r_ 8y ago
      But with non-reversable transactions, you still have the trust issue. Now it's that the customer has to trust the merchant, that they're not going to completely rip them off.
  • madeofpalk 8y ago
    Solve an actual, real life problem. All I see are Long Island Ice Tea Blockchain Corp. and Walmat saying that they're using blockchain to help their supply chain (whatever that means). The reality is is that Blockchain is no longer new. Compare it to iPhone - they both roughly came out at the same time, yet we're still having the same conversations - "What problem does Blockchain solve" - while the iPhone found its place in the market. The reality is is that if Blockchain had a 'killer app' beyond tech bros speculating, we would have found it by now.
    • bsparker 8y ago
      I believe the actual problem this solves, the "killer application," is already out there.
      • wool_gather 8y ago
        Can you specify what that is?
        • kirillseva 8y ago
          Blockchain conferences.
        • Trundle 8y ago
          Buying drugs off the internet.
      • torpfactory 8y ago
        Murder for hire?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • abritinthebay 8y ago
      The sad thing about the Walmart usecase is all they really mean is hashing. Just hashing. That’s it.
    • 8y ago
  • wpietri 8y ago
    No, those aren't real problems either. Problems are experienced by humans. Humans willing to pay money for solutions. Actual problems are things like "I want to buy this candy bar," or "I want to fly to New York in August and I need to pay for the ticket." Those are problems Bitcoin, as "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash" [1], was intended to solve. It didn't. As far as I can tell, the main problems blockchains "solve" are things like, "I would like to run a Ponzi scheme and not go to jail." Or, "I would like to hype something and make a lot of money off people." Or, "I would like my consulting company to bill a lot of hours." Or, "I would like to gamble on price fluctuations, and gold isn't volatile enough for me." But I wouldn't call any of those real problems in the sense of being things where solving them is positive sum for the society as a whole. I would be happy to be proven wrong, of course. Blockchains are a cool technology. But I've spent nearly a decade asking for actual customer problems that are demonstrably solved better by a blockchain. I haven't found one yet. [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
    • sjeohp 8y ago
      "I would like to pay/donate to an organization even though no major credit card will let me."
      • wpietri 8y ago
        Thanks. That's a plausible hypothetical. Could you name an organization like that? One that you are eager to donate to? How many people would like to donate to it? What's the total payment volume per year? The only organization I can think of that might be in that category is Wikileaks. But they take both credit cards and Paypal, so they don't qualify. Maybe Hamas or Al Qaeda? Except that those are illegal to donate to, so the market is not going to be large.
        • TJSomething 8y ago
          I once backed crowdfunded hardware before crowdfunding services like Kickstarter were really a thing and they couldn't really get their credit card provider to accept the risk, so I had to use an international wire transfer for it. I guess cryptocurrency would be decent for that. That really just boils down to cryptocurrency being good for business models that are so new that they sound really risky. I'm not really sure that enabling such models is really a net good to society.
• therein 8y ago
  > "Distributed Trust" isn't a problem, its a trait I like how you phrased it. It tickled the Rustacean in me.
  • madeofpalk 8y ago
    I cannot take credit for it. I got it from Harry Roberts (@csswizard) on, of all things, CSS naming conventions https://twitter.com/csswizardry/status/539697101853429760 https://twitter.com/csswizardry/status/539697101853429760 > Modularity, DRY, SRP, etc. is never a goal, it’s a trait. Don’t let the pursuit of theory get in the way of actual productivity. > That’s not to say Modularity, DRY, SRP, etc. aren’t great ideas—they are!—but understand that they’re approaches and not achievements. I know it might sound lame, but these two tweets have stuck by with my as probably the best piece of advice I've ever read. "approaches and not achievements" has found itself useful on so many occasions.
• tomc1985 8y ago
  If you can fix distributed trust you could probably reshape global trade however you see fit. Lack of systemic trust creates mountains of complexity to deal with -- look at how many parties have to be involved just to have a product manufactured in another country
  • dd36 8y ago
    Are you sure that’s a problem? Doesn’t seem to be. Moreover blockchain doesn’t solve it.
    • tomc1985 8y ago
      Uh.... oh it is. It's an old one. There are at least a dozen parties and counterparties involved in most trade because of currency, political, legal, and delivery risks. You, your trade partner, your bank, your bank's correspondence bank, their bank, their bank's correspondence bank, customs at ports of entry, shipping agents, and others, and they're all taking their time and their cut to manage your risks for you. I don't think blockchain solves anything remotely close to all problems but I think it could have its uses in providing services for escrow and a gigantic, tamper-proof distributed log.
      • dd36 8y ago
        How does it tamper-proof better than existing solutions?
        • tomc1985 8y ago
          By reducing the coordination of truth between so many parties to an offline, distributed data-structure, in a way that assures integrity mathematically. As alternative to the constellation of approaches (email, IT integrations, filing cabinets full of records, etc) currently in use. With a global peer-distributed database you can change the risks with your truth provider to risks that the data doesn't update. Depending on a lot of factors I think that may be more desireable That said I don't work anywhere near international trade, just recalling some stuff I learned in an old college class
• Findeton 8y ago
  I'll tell you the problem. The problem is the government. You can't and shouldn't trust the government, but nevertheless the government is forcing everyone to use their government-issued currency. Yes, I know US Gov is not like Venezuela, they are not printing money like there's no tomorrow, but they still do stupid shit and try to control the economy. Crypto at least gives you money that is not issued by the government. Of course, governments can try to control it, like they do with everything else, at least through taxes etc.
  • speedplane 8y ago
    You have to trust someone, at some point. HTTPS/SSL relies on a distributed trust system. Even with crypto, you have to trust the developers that created the protocol and the consortium of groups that operate it.
    • clu3 8y ago
      At least these things are opensourced
      • speedplane 8y ago
        Actually, no. Plenty of SSL/HTTPS servers run non-open sourced software. Plenty of open source foundations have closed decision making processes. Being open source is neither necessary nor sufficient to being trustworthy.