6 ms·

Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. This is the case with bitcoin, since the purpose of the blockchain is to be, for exampl

Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. This is the case with bitcoin, since the purpose of the blockchain is to be, for example, trustless, protecting you from someone whom you don't trust lying about your bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin will show you the truth about those transactions. The blockchain also tries to protect against fraudulent double spends and do on, and this like all fraud is also lying, untruth. Likewise, the economist Hernando de Soto Polar's work on property rights and "dead capital" has led to his creation of a blockchain app to allow people in unstable political environments to prove their property claims. If the old data is destroyed in the flames of the next revolution or hacked by your neighbor bribing an official, it doesn't matter as much because you have your claims on a global registry, and that global registry contains the truth. And maybe when machine learning can allow bad actors to create false media, change what a politician has said in a video, perfectly alter or even create fictional recordings of conversations in order to deceive, the blockchain may provide some shelter for the truth. Edit: Of course there is a caveat: bad data in, bad data out.

nradov 8y ago
That's naively idealistic. In unstable political environments when someone with power and weapons wants your property he'll just take it. No one cares about "truth". And they can use threats of violence or imprisonment to force people to update any property registry to their liking.
- malloryerik 8y ago
  Of course de Soto Polar's vision isn't all-powerful but it is worth looking into just the same. Here's his website: https://www.desoto.com/ https://www.desoto.com/ And from one of many many articles: "In the late 1980s and early 90s, de Soto played a key role in ending the Peruvian Terrorist group Shining Path’s violence by getting the Peruvian government to recognize poor property owners’ land deeds." https://medium.com/transpartisan-notes/blockchain-hernando-de-soto-a-transpartisan-path-to-reducing-poverty-99f42e3107e7 https://medium.com/transpartisan-notes/blockchain-hernando-d...
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Your comment is exactly why I believe many blockchain (and even cryptocurrency) technologies are useless. There seems to be this underlying pull for many crypto/blockchain enthusiasts that this technology frees us from the constraints of governments and society. "The truth is in the blockchain" and "There is no government in charge" are common refrains. The thing is, unless you want to be a true hermit, you can't escape the bounds of society. Nobody really cares about the "truth", they care what society says is acceptable (and what governments will enforce). I'm pretty sure there were a lot of contracts between Native American tribes and American settlers that were basically ignored, and everyone knows this, but there aren't any title companies that are worried about this fact.
- speedplane 8y ago
  You're taking an absolutist view. Crypto currencies weren't intended to free people from every constraint of society, just a few constraints, and only to a degree. Crypto clearly has the potential to make enforcing trade and currency restrictions far more difficult. When it's too difficult to enforce a rule, governments can (1) stop enforcing it; or (2) ratchet up the penalty when someone does get caught as a deterrent. The second option can lead to unpopular disproportionate punishment, and slowly melts away towards the first one (e.g., war on drugs). Crypto-currency won't take down governments, especially overnight, but they clearly have a long-term potential to alter some levers of power.
- malloryerik 8y ago
  I don't wish for myself or others to escape the bounds of society and government (ok, maybe some of the bounds but that's another talk). Indeed my premise is that individuals, society and government must all be bound to each other in order to have a desirable society, and the sin qua non of this is respect for the truth. As for government, I happen to prefer democracies, and they are especially beholden to truth. When saying that the blockchain's killer app might be the truth, I'm thinking about how it could help save our democracies. As for The Truth, as in the ultimate truth, for when you'd use quotation marks -- the "truth" -- I'm not going there. We need only concern ourselves with the notion of truth as opposed to lies. To clarify the distinction, see how this doesn't work: "Is it true that you were in Symphony Hall at the time of the murder?" "Is it 'true'?... What do you mean by that slippery word, 'true'? This notion of 'truth' is simply whatever we agree on and therefore irrelevant." Edit: And if the truth is simply what is agreed upon, then are lies simply what is not agreed upon? If so, perhaps we can agree together that the year is 1984.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
If so then the ultimate application of blockchain is authentication of recorded video as actual, unadulterated video of an event.
- speedplane 8y ago
  Why stop at video? Every application that creates any file should take a hash of it and upload it to a public blockchain. You could use it to identify tampering with any individual file. If deployed more broadly (e.g., on the file system level), you could easily identify if your systems have been hacked.
- Kadin 8y ago
  Yes, that is a possible application of "blockchain technology", given a broad-enough definition of what constitutes "blockchain technology". But the consensus-based proof-of-work (or proof of storage, or proof of memory, etc.) models aren't really necessary or even clearly desirable. There are timestamping systems dating from long before "blockchain" (at least 1990, probably before) which involve sequential hashes, with each subsequent hash also including the previous one (in some respects this is a very simple blockchain), and then if desired you can roll them up through a directed graph to one master hash produced periodically and published immutably -- printed in a newspaper was one approach, or posted to Usenet, but you could think of others -- such that it validates all previous hashes as having been created before a particular time. Guardtime was doing this back in 2007 or 2008 and printing the top-level daily or weekly hashes in the newspaper; I noticed they are now marketing themselves as a "blockchain" company, which is astute marketing (and I'd do the same if I were them, probably), but the ability to do secure timestamping existed in several forms without blockchain. The reasons these systems weren't used have less to do with technical feasibility than lack of pressure to implement them.
  - rusk 8y ago
    > sequential hashes, with each subsequent hash also including the previous one Isn't this "in principal" what a blockchain is? Just because they didn't call it a blockchain back then doesn't mean it isn't. You could also consider Git to be a blockchain of sorts. What distinguishes Bitcoin in particular is proof of work which provides a means by which distributed untrusted actors can transact in a trusted way. The actual chain of hashes just records these transactions.
Terr_ 8y ago
> Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. That isn't any objective truth though, it's merely the consensus as currently defined by the majority of participating processing power.
Terr_ 8y ago
> Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. That isn't any objective truth though, it's merely the consensus as defined by the majority of current participants weighed by the processing power they command. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but I think it helps make the benefits and risks clearer.

nradov 8y ago

That's naively idealistic. In unstable political environments when someone with power and weapons wants your property he'll just take it. No one cares about "truth". And they can use threats of violence or imprisonment to force people to update any property registry to their liking.

malloryerik 8y ago
Of course de Soto Polar's vision isn't all-powerful but it is worth looking into just the same. Here's his website: https://www.desoto.com/ https://www.desoto.com/ And from one of many many articles: "In the late 1980s and early 90s, de Soto played a key role in ending the Peruvian Terrorist group Shining Path’s violence by getting the Peruvian government to recognize poor property owners’ land deeds." https://medium.com/transpartisan-notes/blockchain-hernando-de-soto-a-transpartisan-path-to-reducing-poverty-99f42e3107e7 https://medium.com/transpartisan-notes/blockchain-hernando-d...

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Your comment is exactly why I believe many blockchain (and even cryptocurrency) technologies are useless. There seems to be this underlying pull for many crypto/blockchain enthusiasts that this technology frees us from the constraints of governments and society. "The truth is in the blockchain" and "There is no government in charge" are common refrains. The thing is, unless you want to be a true hermit, you can't escape the bounds of society. Nobody really cares about the "truth", they care what society says is acceptable (and what governments will enforce). I'm pretty sure there were a lot of contracts between Native American tribes and American settlers that were basically ignored, and everyone knows this, but there aren't any title companies that are worried about this fact.

speedplane 8y ago
You're taking an absolutist view. Crypto currencies weren't intended to free people from every constraint of society, just a few constraints, and only to a degree. Crypto clearly has the potential to make enforcing trade and currency restrictions far more difficult. When it's too difficult to enforce a rule, governments can (1) stop enforcing it; or (2) ratchet up the penalty when someone does get caught as a deterrent. The second option can lead to unpopular disproportionate punishment, and slowly melts away towards the first one (e.g., war on drugs). Crypto-currency won't take down governments, especially overnight, but they clearly have a long-term potential to alter some levers of power.
malloryerik 8y ago
I don't wish for myself or others to escape the bounds of society and government (ok, maybe some of the bounds but that's another talk). Indeed my premise is that individuals, society and government must all be bound to each other in order to have a desirable society, and the sin qua non of this is respect for the truth. As for government, I happen to prefer democracies, and they are especially beholden to truth. When saying that the blockchain's killer app might be the truth, I'm thinking about how it could help save our democracies. As for The Truth, as in the ultimate truth, for when you'd use quotation marks -- the "truth" -- I'm not going there. We need only concern ourselves with the notion of truth as opposed to lies. To clarify the distinction, see how this doesn't work: "Is it true that you were in Symphony Hall at the time of the murder?" "Is it 'true'?... What do you mean by that slippery word, 'true'? This notion of 'truth' is simply whatever we agree on and therefore irrelevant." Edit: And if the truth is simply what is agreed upon, then are lies simply what is not agreed upon? If so, perhaps we can agree together that the year is 1984.

SubiculumCode 8y ago

If so then the ultimate application of blockchain is authentication of recorded video as actual, unadulterated video of an event.

speedplane 8y ago
Why stop at video? Every application that creates any file should take a hash of it and upload it to a public blockchain. You could use it to identify tampering with any individual file. If deployed more broadly (e.g., on the file system level), you could easily identify if your systems have been hacked.
Kadin 8y ago
Yes, that is a possible application of "blockchain technology", given a broad-enough definition of what constitutes "blockchain technology". But the consensus-based proof-of-work (or proof of storage, or proof of memory, etc.) models aren't really necessary or even clearly desirable. There are timestamping systems dating from long before "blockchain" (at least 1990, probably before) which involve sequential hashes, with each subsequent hash also including the previous one (in some respects this is a very simple blockchain), and then if desired you can roll them up through a directed graph to one master hash produced periodically and published immutably -- printed in a newspaper was one approach, or posted to Usenet, but you could think of others -- such that it validates all previous hashes as having been created before a particular time. Guardtime was doing this back in 2007 or 2008 and printing the top-level daily or weekly hashes in the newspaper; I noticed they are now marketing themselves as a "blockchain" company, which is astute marketing (and I'd do the same if I were them, probably), but the ability to do secure timestamping existed in several forms without blockchain. The reasons these systems weren't used have less to do with technical feasibility than lack of pressure to implement them.
- rusk 8y ago
  > sequential hashes, with each subsequent hash also including the previous one Isn't this "in principal" what a blockchain is? Just because they didn't call it a blockchain back then doesn't mean it isn't. You could also consider Git to be a blockchain of sorts. What distinguishes Bitcoin in particular is proof of work which provides a means by which distributed untrusted actors can transact in a trusted way. The actual chain of hashes just records these transactions.

Terr_ 8y ago

> Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. That isn't any objective truth though, it's merely the consensus as currently defined by the majority of participating processing power.

Terr_ 8y ago

> Maybe we should consider that the blockchain's killer app is the truth. That isn't any objective truth though, it's merely the consensus as defined by the majority of current participants weighed by the processing power they command. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but I think it helps make the benefits and risks clearer.