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I deliberately wrote "decentralized anonymous immutable", not just "immutable". It's the combination of those features (which happens to be the selling point o
by brazzy 7y ago
I deliberately wrote "decentralized anonymous immutable", not just "immutable".
It's the combination of those features (which happens to be the selling point of cryptocurrencies) that is problematic.
Because if transactions are not anoymous, you can (at least in principle) track down a thief and make them give back the money. And it they're not decentralized, the central authority can be made to add a reversing transaction.
- DennisP 7y agoYes, I include all three of those. On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. But there's no way to implement anything decentralized, anonymous, and immutable on top of a base layer which is not those things.
- brazzy 7y ago> On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. ...and when that code has a bug, we're fucked. And until then we've spent a ridiculous amount of effort to get what we already have.
- DennisP 7y agoNot necessarily fucked. If you want the authority to be able to handle that scenario, then you can give it the power to swap out the contract code. Some smart contracts on Ethereum do exactly that. But to the extent you want immutability, you can have it this way.