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I feel like the author here really misses what makes this movement in technology interesting, and that is evident in the title. Blockchain is not the innovation

I feel like the author here really misses what makes this movement in technology interesting, and that is evident in the title. Blockchain is not the innovation, distributed ledgers are. Blockchain is just one component in one formula that made it work. When you take DLT as the focus, you can examine how disruptive the technology CAN be on traditional ledger systems that require enormous amounts of human energy to maintain. And those who maintain these systems tend to take advantage of those systems. There's so much to be gained by automating away many of the traditional roles banks play. One handy thing about Bitcoin and systems like it is that, by creating digital money systems, the industry is funding itself which will hopefully lead to the rapid evolution of technologies within the space. There are hard problems to solve, but enormous incentives to solve those problems.

xmly 6y ago
If you ever maintain an Ethereum node, you know how hard it is.
- inter_netuser 6y ago
  how hard is it exactly? Genuine question.
thezoginator 6y ago
But do we even need a distributed ledger? Centralized ledgers are easy to maintain in the modern world, and don't require much human energy (or compute energy) to maintain. It is why transaction costs are generally extremely low. Blockchain transactions on the other hand are astronomically expensive and slow. The value of a distributed ledger derives solely from paranoia of a central authority, despite there being little evidence for said paranoia.
- Terretta 6y ago
  On the contrary, the power of distributed ledger is akin to the power of federation instead of centralization vs. decentralization. It’s a proverbial third way.
  - worik 6y ago
    No it is not. The solution you are looking for is transparency. Perhaps the only thing I like about crypto as money (well Bitcoin) is the that every transaction can be traced back to the transactor (think about that buying and selling drugs). Speaking as Finance Nerd I think all finance should be that transparent. There is no room for privacy in financial matters. But that is one aspect of crypto money that is being deprecated by the people who invent it
Jasper_ 6y ago
Can you name one specific use case you see distributed ledgers being useful?
- vvpan 6y ago
  * Example 1. Look at Uniswap, it's an unstoppable exchange that is a tiny program in terms of lines of code on the blockchain. The team is tiny. And the thing sees $2 billions of volume every day. Imagine, say, stock being digitized onto a trustless system like this. Every exchange out there, clearing houses, market makers, millions of jobs (not a good thing, but just a reality) would become obsolete. You just don't see the complex process of how transactions happen in real life because there is a massive system that's evolved over many decades to make it happen. Also note that majority people in developing countries don't have access to a bank, much less investment vehicles so the "non-distributed ledger" cannot even reach them. But internet can! * Example 2. Alexey Navalny is a Russian opposition politician. What the state practices routinely is coming up with fake court cases and freezing assets of his team, their families and even their neighbors. People in US in Europe are very trusting to the banking system because they do not have thing like these happen to them routinely. A counter-example is my beloved Argent wallet. Argent is an example of a "contract wallet" with social recovery. In other words it's a place to store tokens (for examples ones that represent USD) that comes with a complex system of security measures. And there are no middlemen to this system. Nobody can freeze the account, or even steal your phone and try to transfer the account to them, they would hit a hard limit writ into the chain. These systems are still evolving but I gladly and proudly make use of them now.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
I keep hearing this, that blockchain is, of itself, an interesting solution to problems we are having. But I don't see any evidence of it. I tend to agree with the author, that blockchain doesn't solve any problems that can't be solved better by a database. So far, no-one has come up with a problem outside of cryptocurrency that actually needs a blockchain to solve it. The only evidence of any innovation that I see (and I'm not that into the space, so I'm probably missing things) is scammers learning how to scam better. Given that currency is actually this great use case for blockchain, can we solve the outstanding issues for that? Bitcoin has some serious problems with transaction speed that stopped it from being used as an actual currency. Can we solve those yet? Can you actually buy a coffee with a cryptocurrency without having to wait 10 minutes for the block to resolve and confirm? If so, can we actually use that as a currency?

xmly 6y ago

If you ever maintain an Ethereum node, you know how hard it is.

inter_netuser 6y ago
how hard is it exactly? Genuine question.

thezoginator 6y ago

But do we even need a distributed ledger? Centralized ledgers are easy to maintain in the modern world, and don't require much human energy (or compute energy) to maintain. It is why transaction costs are generally extremely low. Blockchain transactions on the other hand are astronomically expensive and slow. The value of a distributed ledger derives solely from paranoia of a central authority, despite there being little evidence for said paranoia.

Terretta 6y ago
On the contrary, the power of distributed ledger is akin to the power of federation instead of centralization vs. decentralization. It’s a proverbial third way.
- worik 6y ago
  No it is not. The solution you are looking for is transparency. Perhaps the only thing I like about crypto as money (well Bitcoin) is the that every transaction can be traced back to the transactor (think about that buying and selling drugs). Speaking as Finance Nerd I think all finance should be that transparent. There is no room for privacy in financial matters. But that is one aspect of crypto money that is being deprecated by the people who invent it

Jasper_ 6y ago

Can you name one specific use case you see distributed ledgers being useful?

vvpan 6y ago
* Example 1. Look at Uniswap, it's an unstoppable exchange that is a tiny program in terms of lines of code on the blockchain. The team is tiny. And the thing sees $2 billions of volume every day. Imagine, say, stock being digitized onto a trustless system like this. Every exchange out there, clearing houses, market makers, millions of jobs (not a good thing, but just a reality) would become obsolete. You just don't see the complex process of how transactions happen in real life because there is a massive system that's evolved over many decades to make it happen. Also note that majority people in developing countries don't have access to a bank, much less investment vehicles so the "non-distributed ledger" cannot even reach them. But internet can! * Example 2. Alexey Navalny is a Russian opposition politician. What the state practices routinely is coming up with fake court cases and freezing assets of his team, their families and even their neighbors. People in US in Europe are very trusting to the banking system because they do not have thing like these happen to them routinely. A counter-example is my beloved Argent wallet. Argent is an example of a "contract wallet" with social recovery. In other words it's a place to store tokens (for examples ones that represent USD) that comes with a complex system of security measures. And there are no middlemen to this system. Nobody can freeze the account, or even steal your phone and try to transfer the account to them, they would hit a hard limit writ into the chain. These systems are still evolving but I gladly and proudly make use of them now.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

I keep hearing this, that blockchain is, of itself, an interesting solution to problems we are having. But I don't see any evidence of it. I tend to agree with the author, that blockchain doesn't solve any problems that can't be solved better by a database. So far, no-one has come up with a problem outside of cryptocurrency that actually needs a blockchain to solve it. The only evidence of any innovation that I see (and I'm not that into the space, so I'm probably missing things) is scammers learning how to scam better. Given that currency is actually this great use case for blockchain, can we solve the outstanding issues for that? Bitcoin has some serious problems with transaction speed that stopped it from being used as an actual currency. Can we solve those yet? Can you actually buy a coffee with a cryptocurrency without having to wait 10 minutes for the block to resolve and confirm? If so, can we actually use that as a currency?