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Blockchain is overhypered nonsense 99.9999% of the time. But seriously this is the one in a billion projects where you should use the Bitcoin blockchain as much

Blockchain is overhypered nonsense 99.9999% of the time. But seriously this is the one in a billion projects where you should use the Bitcoin blockchain as much as I hate to say it

viraptor 6y ago
What feature would a blockchain give them that they can't have now in a simpler way?
- kngl 6y ago
  A proof that the pok and its hash hasn't been altered since its creation.
  - smt88 6y ago
    You can accomplish this with plain old cryptography. No blockchain needed. There are lots of ways to do it. One of them would be for Fuuture to publish the hash to literally anywhere. Public + cryptographically verifiable + distributed + append-only still does not equal blockchain, as long as we're defining blockchain as something that was not invented before 2009.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - space_rock 6y ago
      So these hashes are distributed. How do we know they haven't been altered since future reveal? How does one find the "true" dataset? Trust random people on the internet?
      - dnautics 6y ago
        no, since it's public, if you care so much about it, you keep a periodic snapshot of the hashes. So you're trusting yourself (and math). What's missing to be a "blockchain" in (what should be) the generally accepted definition is byzantine fault tolerance.
        space_rock 6y ago
        Right so save some time and put the hashes in a Merkel tree and publish on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now the proof can be found trustlessly and the longest PoW points to the true dataset
    - ginger_beer_m 6y ago
      Once you're done building a working system to do the above, you'd have basically built a blockchain.
      - smt88 6y ago
        Using a very loose definition of blockchain, sure. For anything post-Satoshi, no. The extra governance layer that makes it a blockchain is also not trivial.
- space_rock 6y ago
  It's a tamper-proof prediction to the world that cannot be altered by any party
atleta 6y ago
Indeed, there was a service I used back in around 2008 that did just this. It wasn't about predictions per se, but timestamping content. They were called GuardTime. The company still exists, but the service does not seem to, anymore. It wasn't based on a public, distributed block chain, but it was a kind of a block chain (without PoW, PoS etc. - which you don't need if it's run by a single actor). The way they built trust was that they did publish their hash (tip of the block chain) I think in the (printed) Financial Times periodically. That made it impossible even for them to forge the chain.
pablovidal85 6y ago
It could commit the hashes via https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ to the bitcoin blockchain for example.
- space_rock 6y ago
  Yes. Nice link. This is the project that I had in mind
OJFord 6y ago
There is (was?) a relatively popular Ethereum one isn't (wasn't) there? Adding in the 'contracts' nature of it to commit to a wager on the prediction.

Blockchain is overhypered nonsense 99.9999% of the time. But seriously this is the one in a billion projects where you should use the Bitcoin blockchain as much as I hate to say it

viraptor 6y ago

What feature would a blockchain give them that they can't have now in a simpler way?

kngl 6y ago
A proof that the pok and its hash hasn't been altered since its creation.
- smt88 6y ago
  You can accomplish this with plain old cryptography. No blockchain needed. There are lots of ways to do it. One of them would be for Fuuture to publish the hash to literally anywhere. Public + cryptographically verifiable + distributed + append-only still does not equal blockchain, as long as we're defining blockchain as something that was not invented before 2009.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - space_rock 6y ago
    So these hashes are distributed. How do we know they haven't been altered since future reveal? How does one find the "true" dataset? Trust random people on the internet?
    - dnautics 6y ago
      no, since it's public, if you care so much about it, you keep a periodic snapshot of the hashes. So you're trusting yourself (and math). What's missing to be a "blockchain" in (what should be) the generally accepted definition is byzantine fault tolerance.
      - space_rock 6y ago
        Right so save some time and put the hashes in a Merkel tree and publish on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now the proof can be found trustlessly and the longest PoW points to the true dataset
  - ginger_beer_m 6y ago
    Once you're done building a working system to do the above, you'd have basically built a blockchain.
    - smt88 6y ago
      Using a very loose definition of blockchain, sure. For anything post-Satoshi, no. The extra governance layer that makes it a blockchain is also not trivial.
space_rock 6y ago
It's a tamper-proof prediction to the world that cannot be altered by any party

atleta 6y ago

Indeed, there was a service I used back in around 2008 that did just this. It wasn't about predictions per se, but timestamping content. They were called GuardTime. The company still exists, but the service does not seem to, anymore. It wasn't based on a public, distributed block chain, but it was a kind of a block chain (without PoW, PoS etc. - which you don't need if it's run by a single actor). The way they built trust was that they did publish their hash (tip of the block chain) I think in the (printed) Financial Times periodically. That made it impossible even for them to forge the chain.

pablovidal85 6y ago

It could commit the hashes via https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ to the bitcoin blockchain for example.

space_rock 6y ago
Yes. Nice link. This is the project that I had in mind

OJFord 6y ago

There is (was?) a relatively popular Ethereum one isn't (wasn't) there? Adding in the 'contracts' nature of it to commit to a wager on the prediction.