6 ms·

Until someone unambiguously shows real-world (not a proof-of-concept) value of blockchain beyond crypto currencies, I’d be happy to never hear the word blockcha

by wepple 5y ago

Until someone unambiguously shows real-world (not a proof-of-concept) value of blockchain beyond crypto currencies, I’d be happy to never hear the word blockchain ever again. I don’t care what Mark Cuban thinks, I hardly know who he is beyond being wealthy and liking limelight.

afpx 5y ago
He put Radio on the Internet, man! Rad.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  For those who missed it, this is a reference to Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley. There are some good best-of clips on Youtube, but the summary is he's flashy with no substance. He's at least partially based on Mark Cuban.
basch 5y ago
The million dollar application is accounting systems like SAP etc. Where you have shares issued, the books, all incoming and outgoing transactions. And then every one of your partners is using a compatible system. In construction, a new building being built would be its own project that each firm interacts with. AP/AR/Inventory/Labor/Progress/ChangeManagement all in sync between all parties. Autodesk will probably get there first, and everyone will pay to use a centralized system instead and then have to export the data to their legacy accounting system. But, a group of collaborating firms, that still dont quite trust each other, or want to hide certain amounts of profit, are a use case.
- hluska 5y ago
  Accounting has already solved this problem. It’s based on double entries, separation of duties and audit. If there are still problems despite those controls, blockchain won’t solve them - those are human problems.
  - basch 5y ago
    A blockchain is triple entry accounting, which has advantages over double. http://www.warrenhenke.com/writing/essays/triple-entry-accounting http://www.warrenhenke.com/writing/essays/triple-entry-accou... https://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html https://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html I find it odd to say "thats a human problem" as if technical invention over centuries isnt specifically to abstract away human inefficiency. A group of somewhat trusting firms doesnt need crazy PoW/PoS. The idea of companies sharing a collaborative ledger when working together shouldnt be dismissed so flippantly. Everyone keeping their own (unreconciled automatically with each others) book may be the status quo, but it doesnt make it optimal.
sprafa 5y ago
DeFi is real - you now have multiple protocols for decentralised finance, where you can “be your own bank”. So those applications exist. Look into Compound, Balancer and MakerDAO.
- brighton36 5y ago
  Except that these banks aren't connected to the payment rails of the world's consumers. Most all of the Blockchain claims will never materialize, because the entire industry rests on hyperbole that social media amplifies, but which is not realized. (or realizable). It's a mirror. There's no depth to the claims.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  My bank allows me to send money to my landlord, pay direct debits for my bills, receive my salary, and (via Mastercard) spend my money in shops. How does "being your own bank" do these things? My understanding is that you would still need a "regular" banking layer for each of these activities, which seems like it defeats the point?
  - basch 5y ago
    Autonomous software exchanging currencies without anybody being in control is cool. I find it hard to think otherwise. You have a contract written in software, people pledging money to liquidity pools, and the rest is just magic. Sure you can go to a bank or someone and pay a currency exchange fee, but the fact that its possible P2P is quite neat. It's basically Banks-as-software, collaboratively maintained like Wikipedia.
    - danpalmer 5y ago
      But that still doesn't solve any of those problems I mentioned? Plus I can already do P2P currency exchange. I don't because it's inconvenient to find those to exchange with, so I happen to use a marketplace (TransferWise), and they take a cut because they're providing a useful service and now they're an exchange. Exactly the same will happen with DeFi currency exchange, so how is it better?
redpiller 5y ago
Real economic use cases appear to be suppressed in favor of frivolous tokens. I don't know why this is the case. If you're genuinely interested, you can check out my project which tokenizes real estate rental income: http://leasehold.io/ http://leasehold.io/ I wrote a detailed article which explains how it works: https://jonathangrosdubois.medium.com/how-leasehold-achieves-decentralization-8e311c6e55f https://jonathangrosdubois.medium.com/how-leasehold-achieves... The idea is to use blockchain tokens instead of shares but later we will also allow people to use LSH tokens to pay for rent when staying in one of the properties in our network. We essentially invented a new concept called 'Proof of Profit' - Imagine if you could have irrefutable proof that a company earned a certain amount of profit in a specific month. Typically you need to trust company financiers and accountants. Not so with Leasehold. If you just launch a node to sync with the blockchain, you can verify the profits yourself with absolute certainty; just by looking at on-chain buybacks for that month. Tell me this isn't innovative and useful.
- sprafa 5y ago
  The fact is you’re being downvoted. HN is going to miss the boat. Build more cool stuff. You will become insanely rich, since so many people seem set to let this opportunity go to waste.
- xur17 5y ago
  I saw a reference to this site elsewhere on HN, so I thought I'd respond: The focus on where to buy your token, how much your token is selling for, etc is a major turn off for me. It might not be fair, but my first thought after landing on your website is that it's another ICO that isn't going to go anywhere. And looking at your token model, users can "see" that Leasehold the company is reinvesting in itself by buying property or buying back shares. This seems very easy to game - what keeps you from just burning some of the "significant" shares that you own to prop up the price / prove that you are receiving income?
csomar 5y ago
Shipment tracking, Stocks delivery and settlement, the government official gazette. These are three I'm thinking of. Sure, you can do it with a centralized server, but a decentralized alternative can offer some kind of "Open World API". Now for a true defi, you can't depend on the physical world (some authority out-there). Only cryptocurrencies are possible in this case, and maybe, if the blockchain becomes advanced enough: Dynamic value derivatives denominated in crypto. It might sound as limited but money (and the transfer of it) is kinda a huge thing. Crypto's downside is volatility. Being able to hold crypto as crypto while preserving stability (or better: value) will be a game changer. It'll also mean KYC and regulation will be harder to implement. KYC/regulation/blacklisting are huge tools for governments. Government can have control over centralized entities (ie: an exchange, a bank, etc...) but they can't control everyone's wallet. They might be able to mess with a couple guys or figure out if a certain gang used such and such, but it'll be impossible to track everyone transactions that are happening in the blockchain (worse, the "whole world" is out there). And even worse: Current events have showed that governments are way behind when it comes to blockchain technologies. Some governments are not even aware of its existence or meaning. In my opinion, this is huge. Most societies/civilizations collapsed when they failed to collect taxes. Peasants (your lovely citizens) are unlikely to pay when given the opportunity. Less taxes means less control, it's a slippery slope. Bad news for many governments around the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pmulard 5y ago
How about a decentralized, open source cloud? https://akash.network/ https://akash.network/
- ac29 5y ago
  They claim to be "lower cost", yet the page is curiously devoid of pricing info (except on how much their token is worth and what its market cap is).
  - pmulard 5y ago
    They definitely could do a better job of marketing their pricing compared to the big three. https://akashlytics.com/price-compare https://akashlytics.com/price-compare
    - nathanyz 5y ago
      Am I correct that they are saying you get 0.1 of a CPU for $1.34/hr, but then AWS gives you 1.0 of a CPU for $4.25/hr. That would mean that for 1.0 CPU on Akashlytics, I would need to pay $13.40/hr versus $4.25/hr on AWS. The cost savings claims on their pricing is deceptive at best since it is not comparing apples to apples. I don't see how this makes sense unless you are looking for < 1 CPU, but then there are places like Digital Ocean which is likely more cost competitive there as well. I am totally open to being wrong though as Blockchain seems like something so many smart minds are working on, but the solutions where it makes sense over not using Blockchain have so far not been apparent to me.

by wepple 5y ago

afpx 5y ago

He put Radio on the Internet, man! Rad.

dehrmann 5y ago
For those who missed it, this is a reference to Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley. There are some good best-of clips on Youtube, but the summary is he's flashy with no substance. He's at least partially based on Mark Cuban.

basch 5y ago

The million dollar application is accounting systems like SAP etc. Where you have shares issued, the books, all incoming and outgoing transactions. And then every one of your partners is using a compatible system. In construction, a new building being built would be its own project that each firm interacts with. AP/AR/Inventory/Labor/Progress/ChangeManagement all in sync between all parties. Autodesk will probably get there first, and everyone will pay to use a centralized system instead and then have to export the data to their legacy accounting system. But, a group of collaborating firms, that still dont quite trust each other, or want to hide certain amounts of profit, are a use case.

hluska 5y ago
Accounting has already solved this problem. It’s based on double entries, separation of duties and audit. If there are still problems despite those controls, blockchain won’t solve them - those are human problems.
- basch 5y ago
  A blockchain is triple entry accounting, which has advantages over double. http://www.warrenhenke.com/writing/essays/triple-entry-accounting http://www.warrenhenke.com/writing/essays/triple-entry-accou... https://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html https://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html I find it odd to say "thats a human problem" as if technical invention over centuries isnt specifically to abstract away human inefficiency. A group of somewhat trusting firms doesnt need crazy PoW/PoS. The idea of companies sharing a collaborative ledger when working together shouldnt be dismissed so flippantly. Everyone keeping their own (unreconciled automatically with each others) book may be the status quo, but it doesnt make it optimal.

sprafa 5y ago

DeFi is real - you now have multiple protocols for decentralised finance, where you can “be your own bank”. So those applications exist. Look into Compound, Balancer and MakerDAO.

brighton36 5y ago
Except that these banks aren't connected to the payment rails of the world's consumers. Most all of the Blockchain claims will never materialize, because the entire industry rests on hyperbole that social media amplifies, but which is not realized. (or realizable). It's a mirror. There's no depth to the claims.
danpalmer 5y ago
My bank allows me to send money to my landlord, pay direct debits for my bills, receive my salary, and (via Mastercard) spend my money in shops. How does "being your own bank" do these things? My understanding is that you would still need a "regular" banking layer for each of these activities, which seems like it defeats the point?
- basch 5y ago
  Autonomous software exchanging currencies without anybody being in control is cool. I find it hard to think otherwise. You have a contract written in software, people pledging money to liquidity pools, and the rest is just magic. Sure you can go to a bank or someone and pay a currency exchange fee, but the fact that its possible P2P is quite neat. It's basically Banks-as-software, collaboratively maintained like Wikipedia.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    But that still doesn't solve any of those problems I mentioned? Plus I can already do P2P currency exchange. I don't because it's inconvenient to find those to exchange with, so I happen to use a marketplace (TransferWise), and they take a cut because they're providing a useful service and now they're an exchange. Exactly the same will happen with DeFi currency exchange, so how is it better?

redpiller 5y ago

Real economic use cases appear to be suppressed in favor of frivolous tokens. I don't know why this is the case. If you're genuinely interested, you can check out my project which tokenizes real estate rental income: http://leasehold.io/ http://leasehold.io/ I wrote a detailed article which explains how it works: https://jonathangrosdubois.medium.com/how-leasehold-achieves-decentralization-8e311c6e55f https://jonathangrosdubois.medium.com/how-leasehold-achieves... The idea is to use blockchain tokens instead of shares but later we will also allow people to use LSH tokens to pay for rent when staying in one of the properties in our network. We essentially invented a new concept called 'Proof of Profit' - Imagine if you could have irrefutable proof that a company earned a certain amount of profit in a specific month. Typically you need to trust company financiers and accountants. Not so with Leasehold. If you just launch a node to sync with the blockchain, you can verify the profits yourself with absolute certainty; just by looking at on-chain buybacks for that month. Tell me this isn't innovative and useful.

sprafa 5y ago
The fact is you’re being downvoted. HN is going to miss the boat. Build more cool stuff. You will become insanely rich, since so many people seem set to let this opportunity go to waste.
xur17 5y ago
I saw a reference to this site elsewhere on HN, so I thought I'd respond: The focus on where to buy your token, how much your token is selling for, etc is a major turn off for me. It might not be fair, but my first thought after landing on your website is that it's another ICO that isn't going to go anywhere. And looking at your token model, users can "see" that Leasehold the company is reinvesting in itself by buying property or buying back shares. This seems very easy to game - what keeps you from just burning some of the "significant" shares that you own to prop up the price / prove that you are receiving income?

csomar 5y ago

Shipment tracking, Stocks delivery and settlement, the government official gazette. These are three I'm thinking of. Sure, you can do it with a centralized server, but a decentralized alternative can offer some kind of "Open World API". Now for a true defi, you can't depend on the physical world (some authority out-there). Only cryptocurrencies are possible in this case, and maybe, if the blockchain becomes advanced enough: Dynamic value derivatives denominated in crypto. It might sound as limited but money (and the transfer of it) is kinda a huge thing. Crypto's downside is volatility. Being able to hold crypto as crypto while preserving stability (or better: value) will be a game changer. It'll also mean KYC and regulation will be harder to implement. KYC/regulation/blacklisting are huge tools for governments. Government can have control over centralized entities (ie: an exchange, a bank, etc...) but they can't control everyone's wallet. They might be able to mess with a couple guys or figure out if a certain gang used such and such, but it'll be impossible to track everyone transactions that are happening in the blockchain (worse, the "whole world" is out there). And even worse: Current events have showed that governments are way behind when it comes to blockchain technologies. Some governments are not even aware of its existence or meaning. In my opinion, this is huge. Most societies/civilizations collapsed when they failed to collect taxes. Peasants (your lovely citizens) are unlikely to pay when given the opportunity. Less taxes means less control, it's a slippery slope. Bad news for many governments around the world.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pmulard 5y ago

How about a decentralized, open source cloud? https://akash.network/ https://akash.network/

ac29 5y ago
They claim to be "lower cost", yet the page is curiously devoid of pricing info (except on how much their token is worth and what its market cap is).
- pmulard 5y ago
  They definitely could do a better job of marketing their pricing compared to the big three. https://akashlytics.com/price-compare https://akashlytics.com/price-compare
  - nathanyz 5y ago
    Am I correct that they are saying you get 0.1 of a CPU for $1.34/hr, but then AWS gives you 1.0 of a CPU for $4.25/hr. That would mean that for 1.0 CPU on Akashlytics, I would need to pay $13.40/hr versus $4.25/hr on AWS. The cost savings claims on their pricing is deceptive at best since it is not comparing apples to apples. I don't see how this makes sense unless you are looking for < 1 CPU, but then there are places like Digital Ocean which is likely more cost competitive there as well. I am totally open to being wrong though as Blockchain seems like something so many smart minds are working on, but the solutions where it makes sense over not using Blockchain have so far not been apparent to me.