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The world's most expensive tech demo / self-assembling pyramid scheme continues apace. Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? Preferably

The world's most expensive tech demo / self-assembling pyramid scheme continues apace. Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? Preferably one that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance?

RexetBlell 6y ago
Yes, here’s a use case - an open, decentralized, neutral, borderless and censorship resistant prediction market like Augur.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Why does anyone want that? Aren't you describing the supposed proposed assassination market? https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-everybody-panic/ https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-every...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    Why do people instantly jump to the extreme negative? Any technology can be used for to do bad things. The community is aware of this possibility and have taken precautions. Also any financial market can also be viewed as an assassination market. You can short a stock and assassinate the CEO and profit, but people don’t actually do that in practice. Also, Augur v1 (V2 is coming out this month) has existed for about 2 years and there were no assassination markets on it. The community would resolve them as “invalid”, so it’a not possible to guarantee profit unlike in the regular stock market.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      If people tout anonymity and 'censorship resistance' as a market's main advantage over other markets, it's hardly surprising that people focus on the use cases - hypothetical and otherwise - which wouldn't be possible on prediction market platforms where the platform operator knows their customer and rules out certain types of trade. If your USP is the ability to do 'bad things' to manipulate outcomes [manipulating the 'reporting' is probably a likelier outcome than assassination, admittedly] with little chance of your trades being discovered or reversed then people are going to focus on that.
  - yarrel 6y ago
    Because prediction markets are useful tools. They are not the assassination market thought experiment.
- TheCapn 6y ago
  >prediction market Am I looking at the wrong product website or is Auger a betting site?
  - antepodius 6y ago
    Yes, in the same way an online stock market interface is a betting site. In the same way that stock markets allow (in principle) accurate valuation of companies through people buying and selling stocks, a prediction market should enable better-than current prediction of the future- because the people making the predictions have skin in the game, and have an incentive to change their prediction if they genuinely think the event will go the other way.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  That's probably mostly for criminals. The average person has absolutely no use for this. And a shitty government is not fixed with a rogue currency.
- Nursie 6y ago
  Augur is hilarious, and has not lived up to its original hype as a solution to the oracle problem.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Blockchain: Making MongoDB look like a good idea in comparison since 2009.
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    Augur 2.0 is coming out this month and it solves many of the problems of the original one.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Ah yes, the real solution is always just round the corner. Then blockchains will take over the world!
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        Have you heard the Good News about the Lightning Network and off-chain transactions?
pragmar 6y ago
> Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? As others has pointed out, DeFi is impressive, though still mostly fueled by speculation at this point. Digital collectables is another (think digital trading cards with limited supply). Might sound silly at first, but could prove an economic lever for artists and game designers. > Preferably one that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance? And here's the problem. Blockchain is expensive. A central, trustworthy server is going to be ridiculously inexpensive in comparison. For all the cost, the major benefit is resilience.
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Layer 1 is expensive. There are other really cool projects that get the same level of security as layer 1, but are much faster and cheaper. For example https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ allows payments that take less than a second and cost less than 1 cent. It’s based on zero knowledge cryptography. Someone should build a way for people to pay 10 cents per article to read the New York Times without registering using this technology and a stable coin.
miguelmota 6y ago
How can I prove if tables holding records of balances of money hasn't been tampered with in a single postgres instance? Can the integrity of data of a single postgres instance be verifiable in a trustless way? When the internet first came out people thought it was only for porn and criminals. Look at where it's at now. Don't focus strictly on the negative aspects and instead look at the possible things that the technology unlocks that didn't exist before. For one, Ethereum has unlocked global banking through defi for anyone in the world.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  > When the internet first came out people thought it was only for porn and criminals. Look at where it's at now. This is such a bogus analogy, and cryptocurrency stans keep pushing it. Not even counting the internet, ten years after the world wide web was opened to commercial use, we had Wikipedia, Google, eBay, Craigslist, MapQuest... We're now 11+ years on from bitcoin's start, and what have you got to show for it? Not a single thing that any normal mainstream user would care about.
  - miguelmota 6y ago
    I agree it's not a good analogy but ask any of my peers in Venezuela how they feel about bitcoin and they'll strongly disagree with your sentiment that users don't care about a single thing about it. Saying bitcoin is a failure because mainstream users don't care about it is like saying electric cars are a failure because they've been around for decades and aren't mainstream yet. Disruptive technologies take time to become the de facto standard.
parksy 6y ago
Yes - establishing provenance of digital assets for one example. In a democracy, it is critical that legislators have access to verified sources. Most legislative assemblies in non-corrupt democracies don't allow representatives simply waving documents around to make a point if they aren't "tabled" - which is an entire verification process with a full chain of custody so that if as a result of some kind of negligence or nefarious intent certain "facts" which ultimately encourage an outcome that favours a particular agenda prove to be inaccurate (whether or not the legislators are aware of this at the time), the source of the inaccuracy can be traced, the cause investigated, and the situation remedied. Current processes used by the less corrupt governments around the world ostensibly work, but they are labour intensive. Think carefully scheduled vans of printed documents moving between supreme courts where laws are passed, and humidity controlled vaults adjoining parliaments and senates with layers of approvals and security at each step. These documents have been reviewed, verified, signed, stamped, approved, classified and filed. These exact documents, that is, those specific printed copies. If a document or collection is lost, damaged, or otherwise tampered with, they must be resourced and re-validated. This manual and physical re-validation occurs whenever the contents of the document changes in any way. Think about the EU parliament which moves from Brussels to Strasbourg every month, which costs €114m per year. A big portion of this cost is transporting the physical documents back and forth. They can't just print new copies at both ends, because you can't trust the version you're printing at one side or the other is the same document you think you're printing. A digital solution could be more efficient but then you worry about the security of your database. All it would take if you have a single postgres instance is a single breach and every document in your system would be in question - you wouldn't know what to trust. The physical process currently used has that major selling point - if someone steals a box or a document at least you don't have to burn every document in the country and start over. So what you could do is have all the documents in digital form in a single PostGres database, and stick that on a thumb drive. Now instead of trucking tons of printed material back and forth you only have to move a single thumbdrive. Or by this point, why not forget about the thumb drive and just email the copy to the destination. Or, why not just upload it to a server. But how can you be certain that the database that ends up at the destination is the same database that came from the origin? How can you be certain that whoever emailed, drove, or uploaded the database didn't pull a switcheroo before they even sent it? What you could do is, every time the database changes, you log who changed it, what they changed, and when exactly they changed it. Then both sides can compare their logs and if they differ, you know something is afoot. Then all you'd need to do is get the real, verified change log which starts from scratch, and replay all the changes to reconstitute the correct and verified data set right? Ah, but where are the logs stored? Are they stored in the same or a separate database? Do we still need to go through a process of printing and verifying the logs through umpteen different government staff wherever the database needs to be used? I can't trust your version of the change logs is the real version and you can't trust that my version is the real version, so now what do we do? Well, we know that if we just keep a log of changes that we can replay them. What we need is a consensus on which changes are actually official and which changes are nefarious or erroneous. How can we build a consensus agreement? With oversight. So rather than having one PostGres database, we can install PostGres on 10, 100, 1000 computers, and every time someone logs a change, every one of those "nodes" verifies that the change is acceptable. But how would the nodes know if an incoming change is acceptable? How would the person making a real, official change know which node to send their changes to? If there's still just one central authority node, then you still have a single point of failure. Thankfully we have cryptographic key pairs that can already be used to verify our identity. I can use my master key to encrypt my update to the nearest database. We can write some code that will use my public key to verify that I am who I say I am, and the other nodes in the network can then individually pick up my change, and if they agree that I am who I say I am, add my record to their log of changes too. But how will they know who is who? Each would individually need to be aware of the key pairs of every authorised person who is allowed to update the database. We can't have a central key register because again that's a single point of failure, so we need a method of securely distributing the authorised users list without relying on a centralised automated server, which could be compromised if someone honeytraps the system administrator. So, perhaps we just have a process that involves layers of government staff that verify keys, cross reference and double check, distribute globally via armed courier etc. More efficient than the current paper-based system, but still reliant on human processes that are slow (what if some corrupt official is fired, it still takes a week for the process to remove them...) So what you could do is also have the access list shared. Not only is the information replicated automatically by all of the PostGres databases, but the authorised users list is as well. You'd have to write a ton of code, and ultimately blockchain or not there would still be a super-duper level of access to manage the keys, but you would eventually have a distributed, self-healing network of databases that can reject unauthorised changes. Or, you can use a private blockchain with smart contracts, because they already do all of this stuff. You wouldn't have to necessarily store the digital assets in the blockchain itself, just reasonably collision-resistant hashes of them, but you could quickly verify whether or not a particular digital asset was legitimate at the click of a button. Corrupt officials could be expelled instantly and all of their updates immediately queried for further investigation. I am skeptical of many of the "schemes" that crop up in the world of "distributed ledgers" but I think this is a valid usecase of blockchain and its derivatives worth further investigation.

RexetBlell 6y ago

Yes, here’s a use case - an open, decentralized, neutral, borderless and censorship resistant prediction market like Augur.

ForHackernews 6y ago
Why does anyone want that? Aren't you describing the supposed proposed assassination market? https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-everybody-panic/ https://reason.com/2018/07/27/markets-in-assassination-every...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Why do people instantly jump to the extreme negative? Any technology can be used for to do bad things. The community is aware of this possibility and have taken precautions. Also any financial market can also be viewed as an assassination market. You can short a stock and assassinate the CEO and profit, but people don’t actually do that in practice. Also, Augur v1 (V2 is coming out this month) has existed for about 2 years and there were no assassination markets on it. The community would resolve them as “invalid”, so it’a not possible to guarantee profit unlike in the regular stock market.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    If people tout anonymity and 'censorship resistance' as a market's main advantage over other markets, it's hardly surprising that people focus on the use cases - hypothetical and otherwise - which wouldn't be possible on prediction market platforms where the platform operator knows their customer and rules out certain types of trade. If your USP is the ability to do 'bad things' to manipulate outcomes [manipulating the 'reporting' is probably a likelier outcome than assassination, admittedly] with little chance of your trades being discovered or reversed then people are going to focus on that.
- yarrel 6y ago
  Because prediction markets are useful tools. They are not the assassination market thought experiment.
TheCapn 6y ago
>prediction market Am I looking at the wrong product website or is Auger a betting site?
- antepodius 6y ago
  Yes, in the same way an online stock market interface is a betting site. In the same way that stock markets allow (in principle) accurate valuation of companies through people buying and selling stocks, a prediction market should enable better-than current prediction of the future- because the people making the predictions have skin in the game, and have an incentive to change their prediction if they genuinely think the event will go the other way.
louwrentius 6y ago
That's probably mostly for criminals. The average person has absolutely no use for this. And a shitty government is not fixed with a rogue currency.
Nursie 6y ago
Augur is hilarious, and has not lived up to its original hype as a solution to the oracle problem.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Blockchain: Making MongoDB look like a good idea in comparison since 2009.
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  Augur 2.0 is coming out this month and it solves many of the problems of the original one.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Ah yes, the real solution is always just round the corner. Then blockchains will take over the world!
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Have you heard the Good News about the Lightning Network and off-chain transactions?

pragmar 6y ago

> Has anyone found a non-criminal use case for blockchain yet? As others has pointed out, DeFi is impressive, though still mostly fueled by speculation at this point. Digital collectables is another (think digital trading cards with limited supply). Might sound silly at first, but could prove an economic lever for artists and game designers. > Preferably one that isn't better addressed by a single Postgres instance? And here's the problem. Blockchain is expensive. A central, trustworthy server is going to be ridiculously inexpensive in comparison. For all the cost, the major benefit is resilience.

RexetBlell 6y ago
Layer 1 is expensive. There are other really cool projects that get the same level of security as layer 1, but are much faster and cheaper. For example https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ allows payments that take less than a second and cost less than 1 cent. It’s based on zero knowledge cryptography. Someone should build a way for people to pay 10 cents per article to read the New York Times without registering using this technology and a stable coin.

miguelmota 6y ago

How can I prove if tables holding records of balances of money hasn't been tampered with in a single postgres instance? Can the integrity of data of a single postgres instance be verifiable in a trustless way? When the internet first came out people thought it was only for porn and criminals. Look at where it's at now. Don't focus strictly on the negative aspects and instead look at the possible things that the technology unlocks that didn't exist before. For one, Ethereum has unlocked global banking through defi for anyone in the world.

ForHackernews 6y ago
> When the internet first came out people thought it was only for porn and criminals. Look at where it's at now. This is such a bogus analogy, and cryptocurrency stans keep pushing it. Not even counting the internet, ten years after the world wide web was opened to commercial use, we had Wikipedia, Google, eBay, Craigslist, MapQuest... We're now 11+ years on from bitcoin's start, and what have you got to show for it? Not a single thing that any normal mainstream user would care about.
- miguelmota 6y ago
  I agree it's not a good analogy but ask any of my peers in Venezuela how they feel about bitcoin and they'll strongly disagree with your sentiment that users don't care about a single thing about it. Saying bitcoin is a failure because mainstream users don't care about it is like saying electric cars are a failure because they've been around for decades and aren't mainstream yet. Disruptive technologies take time to become the de facto standard.

parksy 6y ago

Yes - establishing provenance of digital assets for one example. In a democracy, it is critical that legislators have access to verified sources. Most legislative assemblies in non-corrupt democracies don't allow representatives simply waving documents around to make a point if they aren't "tabled" - which is an entire verification process with a full chain of custody so that if as a result of some kind of negligence or nefarious intent certain "facts" which ultimately encourage an outcome that favours a particular agenda prove to be inaccurate (whether or not the legislators are aware of this at the time), the source of the inaccuracy can be traced, the cause investigated, and the situation remedied. Current processes used by the less corrupt governments around the world ostensibly work, but they are labour intensive. Think carefully scheduled vans of printed documents moving between supreme courts where laws are passed, and humidity controlled vaults adjoining parliaments and senates with layers of approvals and security at each step. These documents have been reviewed, verified, signed, stamped, approved, classified and filed. These exact documents, that is, those specific printed copies. If a document or collection is lost, damaged, or otherwise tampered with, they must be resourced and re-validated. This manual and physical re-validation occurs whenever the contents of the document changes in any way. Think about the EU parliament which moves from Brussels to Strasbourg every month, which costs €114m per year. A big portion of this cost is transporting the physical documents back and forth. They can't just print new copies at both ends, because you can't trust the version you're printing at one side or the other is the same document you think you're printing. A digital solution could be more efficient but then you worry about the security of your database. All it would take if you have a single postgres instance is a single breach and every document in your system would be in question - you wouldn't know what to trust. The physical process currently used has that major selling point - if someone steals a box or a document at least you don't have to burn every document in the country and start over. So what you could do is have all the documents in digital form in a single PostGres database, and stick that on a thumb drive. Now instead of trucking tons of printed material back and forth you only have to move a single thumbdrive. Or by this point, why not forget about the thumb drive and just email the copy to the destination. Or, why not just upload it to a server. But how can you be certain that the database that ends up at the destination is the same database that came from the origin? How can you be certain that whoever emailed, drove, or uploaded the database didn't pull a switcheroo before they even sent it? What you could do is, every time the database changes, you log who changed it, what they changed, and when exactly they changed it. Then both sides can compare their logs and if they differ, you know something is afoot. Then all you'd need to do is get the real, verified change log which starts from scratch, and replay all the changes to reconstitute the correct and verified data set right? Ah, but where are the logs stored? Are they stored in the same or a separate database? Do we still need to go through a process of printing and verifying the logs through umpteen different government staff wherever the database needs to be used? I can't trust your version of the change logs is the real version and you can't trust that my version is the real version, so now what do we do? Well, we know that if we just keep a log of changes that we can replay them. What we need is a consensus on which changes are actually official and which changes are nefarious or erroneous. How can we build a consensus agreement? With oversight. So rather than having one PostGres database, we can install PostGres on 10, 100, 1000 computers, and every time someone logs a change, every one of those "nodes" verifies that the change is acceptable. But how would the nodes know if an incoming change is acceptable? How would the person making a real, official change know which node to send their changes to? If there's still just one central authority node, then you still have a single point of failure. Thankfully we have cryptographic key pairs that can already be used to verify our identity. I can use my master key to encrypt my update to the nearest database. We can write some code that will use my public key to verify that I am who I say I am, and the other nodes in the network can then individually pick up my change, and if they agree that I am who I say I am, add my record to their log of changes too. But how will they know who is who? Each would individually need to be aware of the key pairs of every authorised person who is allowed to update the database. We can't have a central key register because again that's a single point of failure, so we need a method of securely distributing the authorised users list without relying on a centralised automated server, which could be compromised if someone honeytraps the system administrator. So, perhaps we just have a process that involves layers of government staff that verify keys, cross reference and double check, distribute globally via armed courier etc. More efficient than the current paper-based system, but still reliant on human processes that are slow (what if some corrupt official is fired, it still takes a week for the process to remove them...) So what you could do is also have the access list shared. Not only is the information replicated automatically by all of the PostGres databases, but the authorised users list is as well. You'd have to write a ton of code, and ultimately blockchain or not there would still be a super-duper level of access to manage the keys, but you would eventually have a distributed, self-healing network of databases that can reject unauthorised changes. Or, you can use a private blockchain with smart contracts, because they already do all of this stuff. You wouldn't have to necessarily store the digital assets in the blockchain itself, just reasonably collision-resistant hashes of them, but you could quickly verify whether or not a particular digital asset was legitimate at the click of a button. Corrupt officials could be expelled instantly and all of their updates immediately queried for further investigation. I am skeptical of many of the "schemes" that crop up in the world of "distributed ledgers" but I think this is a valid usecase of blockchain and its derivatives worth further investigation.