4 ms·
> Governments A and B meet and discuss some deal. Their agreement is recorded on a public append-only ledger, which is hosted by participants worldwide. If any
by SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
> Governments A and B meet and discuss some deal. Their agreement is recorded on a public append-only ledger, which is hosted by participants worldwide. If any party reneges on the deal, that's remembered by the public record too, where no amount of propaganda can erase it.
You can do this with paper. Signed paper documents. You have invented the "treaty". It has been a thing for centuries.
- htrp 6y agoA "signed paper document" or a "treaty" is also meaningless without robust enforcement mechanisms.... or the instant it's in either side's interest to ignore.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y agoThat goes double for blockchains.
- tnzm 6y agoThe keyword here is consensus. Using an append-only distributed public ledger to record your governance decisions (and be held accountable for them) is a lot like using a memory-safe language when programming. It induces non-negligible overhead, but prevents entire classes of opportunities for abuse. The whole "blockchain-backed international treaty" example is admittedly a bit contrived though. It's kind of a "horseless carriage" thing - trying to explain to @markwkw that no "blockchain payments" would be necessary, by expanding on their mental model. (Maybe that's an unwise strategy, and I need to start just rudely dismissing people instead, but I'm not sure how that would help with comprehension)