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I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having a

I don't think it's too hard to find potential problems it can solve, but it's not necessarily needed to solve it. 1. Imagine you use FB. Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain (encrypted). The problem we have now is if a new social network comes along if you create an account you lose all of your previous data (which may or may not be what you want). This would let you easily bring in any old data that you want. 2. I want to transfer funds/ownership or whatever to someone in X number of years. Instead of going through a lawyer, paying money, I make this a smart contract. 3. Right now most payment processors do not work with adult industries and the ones that do charge exorbitant fees. Blockchain can bring those fees down a lot and let performers keep a lot more of their money. 4. We rely on sites like stackoverflow and what not. If those sites were to go down we would lose all of that information (if it wasn't archived). If that was run on the blockchain as long as a few people were still using the site it could stay running. 5. It's also just a solution to the problem of "send money to someone". That was solved by banks and cash, but blockchain can be another solution that doesn't require an insane amount of infrastructure, employees, call centers, etc to run. Ya, it creates its own set of problems (no chargebacks, still may need escrow services, etc) but maybe those can be run more efficiently than our current system. 6. I think voting is something that could happen on the blockchain. Boom, now anyone can verify the results of the election. People can't as easily scream election fraud.

HenryTheHorse 8y ago
> 2. Instead of going through a lawyer, paying money, I make this a smart contract. What is a "smart contract" and how would this contract be aware of legal requirements?
- Jonovono 8y ago
  Sure, I suppose it couldn't replace every payment like this from needing to go through a lawyer. I suppose if you wanted to send 10 billion over seas to someone in 20 years, you might want to seek some legal input. But say for the simplest case I just wanna set something up that sends some money to my child on his 18th birthday I could use a smart contract like: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ww0sr/need_a_contract_developed_to_release_funds_after/d6adul7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ww0sr/need_a_con....
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    Again, where is the problem? If you want to send money to your child on their birthday, just send it. Why do you need a contract, 'smart' or otherwise, for that? Edit: What's funny about that thread is that it's someone asking for help to get a contract written (...like you do when you see a lawyer), and there's supposedly (or not, unsure about the sarcasm) a venerability in the contract itself.
  - codebje 8y ago
    You're placing a heck of a lot of trust in a digital system if you're putting a significant (as in "I would hate to lose this") sum of money into it in the expectation it'll still be there in the future. Even if we put aside the problem of unstable valuation, forks, and potential total collapse of cryptocurrencies, you're going to face the challenge of keeping a private key secure for however many years you plan to escrow the money. Compared to creating a trust account, this is insanely risky - you'd have to be convinced that the legal and banking systems were facing imminent catastrophic collapse to think that's better than what we've got.
rlucas 8y ago
What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy. So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't actually do any storage (for which you'd still need technology and a business model to support it). I'm only a little bit being snarky here: is there a deeper / more robust meaning to the shorthand of "we can store [some kind of rich, lots-of-bits] data 'on the blockchain'" that isn't clear to the dilettante?
- Jonovono 8y ago
  Totally fair point. I don't intend to mean that blockchain works right now for storing all of this efficiently, but I know people are working on solutions to this. Steemit uses https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ which I am not super familiar with. http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html is another. Another possible solution is something like Torrent, not everyone needs to have a replication of every single file - it's spread out but decentralised enough. And then a non blockchain solution to this is: https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/ which from what I understand is more similar to an email protocol for social networks. I didn't go into too much depth in any of the points. I am not super invested in this space, nor up to date completely. It's just been an interest of mine since 2012 and i've been also trying to come up with real life use cases that blockchain could solve well.
  - leppr 8y ago
    Filecoin, Bluzelle, Sia, Genaro, Arweave, are projects that try to solve trustless decentralized storage. Most use blockchain as the incentive and accountability layer only, files aren't stored directly on the blockchain. (Of these projects, only Sia is currently live)
- jsutton 8y ago
  Depends on how much censorship protection you want. Journalism of dangerous topics? Store it on a decentralized solution like IPFS, Swarm, Sia. Just want to store ownership records and transactions related to that data? Use AWS and store the pointer.
wool_gather 8y ago
You really haven't explained what "on the blockchain" means and how it helps any of these situations. "voting ... on the blockchain" This just sounds like the hype that parent was talking about. Maybe all of this means something in your head, but the way it reads is the same as when companies file patents for "Doing ${THING}, but on the internet", as if that categorically changes the thing.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"3. Right now most payment processors do not work with adult industries and the ones that do charge exorbitant fees. Blockchain can bring those fees down a lot and let performers keep a lot more of their money." There is literally nothing about blockchain that would inherently do this. that is entirely on the payment processor. "That was solved by banks and cash, but blockchain can be another solution that doesn't require an insane amount of infrastructure, employees, call centers, etc to run." This is quite false; bitcoin requires a very large infrastructure with incredible energy costs to run. "6. I think voting is something that could happen on the blockchain. Boom, now anyone can verify the results of the election. People can't as easily scream election fraud." But now my boss can verify who I voted for. So can the mafia.
madeofpalk 8y ago
> 1. "Open APIs", backing and sharing data is all possible without Blockchain. > 2. The problem with contracts isn't contract itself, but the humans involved. Instead of having a lawyer write a contract, instead you'll have Smart Lawyers write Smart Contracts. > 3. Ok, sure. I would like to see what this is in practice though. The reason payment processors don't like dealing with adult industries is due to the higher rate of fraud and/or chargebacks, things like that. Either processors involved would be affected by the same things, or consumers would have to forgo things like fraud prevention and protection. > 4. Stackoverflow data is Creative Commons. If those sites go down we wouldn't loose the information. This is not a real problem. > 5. You detailed yourself why this isn't actually a problem solved. > 6. How? You can't just say "voting, but on the blockchain" and leave it at that. Wouldn't a voting-only blockchain would be susceptible to 51% attacks?

HenryTheHorse 8y ago

> 2. Instead of going through a lawyer, paying money, I make this a smart contract. What is a "smart contract" and how would this contract be aware of legal requirements?

Jonovono 8y ago
Sure, I suppose it couldn't replace every payment like this from needing to go through a lawyer. I suppose if you wanted to send 10 billion over seas to someone in 20 years, you might want to seek some legal input. But say for the simplest case I just wanna set something up that sends some money to my child on his 18th birthday I could use a smart contract like: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ww0sr/need_a_contract_developed_to_release_funds_after/d6adul7/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ww0sr/need_a_con....
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Again, where is the problem? If you want to send money to your child on their birthday, just send it. Why do you need a contract, 'smart' or otherwise, for that? Edit: What's funny about that thread is that it's someone asking for help to get a contract written (...like you do when you see a lawyer), and there's supposedly (or not, unsure about the sarcasm) a venerability in the contract itself.
- codebje 8y ago
  You're placing a heck of a lot of trust in a digital system if you're putting a significant (as in "I would hate to lose this") sum of money into it in the expectation it'll still be there in the future. Even if we put aside the problem of unstable valuation, forks, and potential total collapse of cryptocurrencies, you're going to face the challenge of keeping a private key secure for however many years you plan to escrow the money. Compared to creating a trust account, this is insanely risky - you'd have to be convinced that the legal and banking systems were facing imminent catastrophic collapse to think that's better than what we've got.

rlucas 8y ago

What on earth does storage mean in this context: "Instead of FB having all of your data, it's stored on the blockchain"?? It doesn't mean actually, "store thousands of messages, posts, and photos literally 'on' the blockchain" because that would get ridiculously unwieldy. So maybe it means, "store pointers to the above-mentioned data within a blockchain," which makes for a plausible organizing principle but doesn't actually do any storage (for which you'd still need technology and a business model to support it). I'm only a little bit being snarky here: is there a deeper / more robust meaning to the shorthand of "we can store [some kind of rich, lots-of-bits] data 'on the blockchain'" that isn't clear to the dilettante?

Jonovono 8y ago
Totally fair point. I don't intend to mean that blockchain works right now for storing all of this efficiently, but I know people are working on solutions to this. Steemit uses https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ which I am not super familiar with. http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html http://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html is another. Another possible solution is something like Torrent, not everyone needs to have a replication of every single file - it's spread out but decentralised enough. And then a non blockchain solution to this is: https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/ which from what I understand is more similar to an email protocol for social networks. I didn't go into too much depth in any of the points. I am not super invested in this space, nor up to date completely. It's just been an interest of mine since 2012 and i've been also trying to come up with real life use cases that blockchain could solve well.
- leppr 8y ago
  Filecoin, Bluzelle, Sia, Genaro, Arweave, are projects that try to solve trustless decentralized storage. Most use blockchain as the incentive and accountability layer only, files aren't stored directly on the blockchain. (Of these projects, only Sia is currently live)
jsutton 8y ago
Depends on how much censorship protection you want. Journalism of dangerous topics? Store it on a decentralized solution like IPFS, Swarm, Sia. Just want to store ownership records and transactions related to that data? Use AWS and store the pointer.

wool_gather 8y ago

You really haven't explained what "on the blockchain" means and how it helps any of these situations. "voting ... on the blockchain" This just sounds like the hype that parent was talking about. Maybe all of this means something in your head, but the way it reads is the same as when companies file patents for "Doing ${THING}, but on the internet", as if that categorically changes the thing.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"3. Right now most payment processors do not work with adult industries and the ones that do charge exorbitant fees. Blockchain can bring those fees down a lot and let performers keep a lot more of their money." There is literally nothing about blockchain that would inherently do this. that is entirely on the payment processor. "That was solved by banks and cash, but blockchain can be another solution that doesn't require an insane amount of infrastructure, employees, call centers, etc to run." This is quite false; bitcoin requires a very large infrastructure with incredible energy costs to run. "6. I think voting is something that could happen on the blockchain. Boom, now anyone can verify the results of the election. People can't as easily scream election fraud." But now my boss can verify who I voted for. So can the mafia.

madeofpalk 8y ago

> 1. "Open APIs", backing and sharing data is all possible without Blockchain. > 2. The problem with contracts isn't contract itself, but the humans involved. Instead of having a lawyer write a contract, instead you'll have Smart Lawyers write Smart Contracts. > 3. Ok, sure. I would like to see what this is in practice though. The reason payment processors don't like dealing with adult industries is due to the higher rate of fraud and/or chargebacks, things like that. Either processors involved would be affected by the same things, or consumers would have to forgo things like fraud prevention and protection. > 4. Stackoverflow data is Creative Commons. If those sites go down we wouldn't loose the information. This is not a real problem. > 5. You detailed yourself why this isn't actually a problem solved. > 6. How? You can't just say "voting, but on the blockchain" and leave it at that. Wouldn't a voting-only blockchain would be susceptible to 51% attacks?