6 ms·

Exactly, at its core blockchain is very simple. What I would really like to see is a paper/article/study where Blockchain based solution is demonstrably superi

by yumraj 5y ago

Exactly, at its core blockchain is very simple. What I would really like to see is a paper/article/study where Blockchain based solution is demonstrably superior, or ideally the only solution, when compared to traditional, AKA non-blockchain based, solution. I have yet to see one of those.

trutannus 5y ago
> I have yet to see one of those That's because a lot of the supposed benefits are ideological, as opposed to technological. You end up having to sacrifice a superior technological solution for one which better aligns with some specific ideological goal (eg: decentralization, non-state money, censorship-resilience). Really though, for any serious use case, efficacy trumps ideology every time.
- coralreef 5y ago
  > Really though, for any serious use case, efficacy trumps ideology every time. What's that mean? If efficacy trumps ideology, then why do cryptos exist?
  - trutannus 5y ago
    Just because something exists does not negate the existence of the tradeoff. For example, not a single nation dropped their paper fiat money for cryptocurrencies as their primary exchange medium. That's because the advantage is ideological. Cryptocurrencies are superior to fiat money only if you accept the ideological basis for them. The advantage of fiat money now massively outweighs the advantages offered by crypto by orders of magnitude. For now, having actual cash in my hand trumps having tokens in a wallet in at least 99% of cases. You can't buy airline tickets with bitcoins, but with USD, or EUR, or any other fiat, you can. Even if you could buy one or two, with fiat you can buy any.
    - sjtindell 5y ago
      Ethereum is a totally open source, globally decentralized compute infrastructure that executes programs. To say that it gets its value purely from ideology doesn't seem right at all. That is a tangible, valuable development in computer science that is being leveraged more and more.
      - trutannus 5y ago
        That's all fine and dandy until you have to spend $40 per transaction, whereas a $40 old computer can run billions of transaction-like operations for free. Eth is a bad example since seeing value in it requires you to focus on the abstract and ignore the real problems it has.
        TimJRobinson 5y ago
        You can already use services like DyDx, Axie Infinity, ImmutableX for free, and they all run on Ethereum. They are Layer 2's that use Ethereum for security. There's a ton of amazing technical innovation going on here, dismissing it is like dismissing the internet because "You have to pay $50 to buy 50 internet hours on a CD and dialup is soo slow".
      - pcwalton 5y ago
        Ethereum has one ten-thousandth of the power of a Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. We had efficient distributed computing long before Ethereum. Ethereum absolutely is something that appeals only to those on the economic right, for those willing to sacrifice all but the tiniest amount of computing power in service of libertarian ideology.
      - yumraj 5y ago
        > that is being leveraged more and more. That is what I’m asking, being leveraged to do what exactly. Abstract doesn’t work for me, I’m asking for real world use case. > globally decentralized compute infrastructure that executes programs What is the benefit of this? Who needs this, and where does this add value over not-this? Where does this provide a superior solution over a solution based on not-this? That is my question above, that is yet to be answered. Think a pitch deck: What is it, What is the Problem, What is the solution, How is the technology solving the problem, Why now, Competition and so on ... I'd love to see the pitch deck of Etherium, or any blockchain technology really..
    - coralreef 5y ago
      > Cryptocurrencies are superior to fiat money only if you accept the ideological basis for them. Hmm, ask the people who depend on the Turkish Lira, Argentine Peso, Venezuelan Bolivar, Lebanese pound, etc. if the ideological basis of cryptocurrencies delivers enough utility for them.
      - trutannus 5y ago
        Can you buy food in Venezuela with Ethereum or crypto? Somewhat difficult in a nation which has sporadic problems with blackouts. In situations like this people generally start using a more stable fiat like the USD in place of their local one.
      - kalleboo 5y ago
        My experience with countries that have poor trust in the local currency is that they use US dollars instead, not cryptocurrency. I'm not sure what that says about ideology.
        coralreef 5y ago
        It says that an asset was trustworthy until it failed to be trustworthy.
        trutannus 5y ago
        The issue with local currencies isn't trust, it's if you can use them to buy your food or not.
        coralreef 5y ago
        Yeah, I would call that trusting the notes to retain their value by lunch time. It’s confidence in the currency and ultimately the central bank/government. If you don’t have confidence in it, you don’t want it.
        trutannus 5y ago
    - hythythyt 5y ago
      you can buy airplane tickets at travala.com
em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
I recall Energy Footprint of Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms Beyond Proof-of-Work [1] showing Polkadot comparative to visa in energy efficiency, and Tezos and Hedera significantly more energy efficient than visa, and Eth. 2.0 optimistically more energy efficient than visa. Platform | Per transaction (kW h/tx) Eth. 2.0 | 0.00009 – 0.00286 (High throughput projection) Eth. 2.0 | 0.01823 – 0.55713 (Low throughput projection) Algorand | 0.00017 – 0.00534 Cardano | 0.01239 – 0.37854 Polkadot | 0.00378 – 0.11556 Tezos | 0.00036 – 0.01096 Hedera | 0.00002 – 0.00004 Bitcoin | 360.39300 – 3691.40700 VisaNet | 0.00358 [1] http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UCL_CBT_DPS_Q32021_updated-2.pdf http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UC...
TimJRobinson 5y ago
There's many in decentralized finance. I work for a company called Balancer. On it you can invest in/create an index fund of your favorite currencies, then traders use it to arbitrage and pay you fees for doing so. So instead of having an index fund you pay someone else to maintain, you get paid for it. Or take Alchemix - You can get a loan that pays itself back over time, rather than you pay interest. Can think of it like a term deposit account where you get the payout up front instead of at the end. Or Pool Together - a no loss lottery - you can use it as a savings account which is used to generate yield, then that yield is paid out as a prize every week. Even just providing liquidity and earning a good return on that, or using something like Aave to get leverage, are things that very few people have access to in traditional finance. There's a rabbithole of super interesting innovation going on in Decentralized Finance right now that you'll never hear about from mainstream publications because it's so hard to comprehend + explain for most people. This will go mainstream over the next decade.
- sofixa 5y ago
  None of those sound impossible or worse without a blockchain. Alchemix and Pook Together sound like scams.
  - TimJRobinson 5y ago
    Please let me know where I can do these things outside of blockchain based systems? You can literally read the source code of these apps if you're skeptical. Almost everything in this world is open source.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      You run a random database? The fact nobody has thought to run that particular type of scam ( the Alchemix one for instance) with MySQL instead of a blockchain doesn't mean it can only possibly run on a blockchain.
      - TimJRobinson 5y ago

by yumraj 5y ago

trutannus 5y ago

> I have yet to see one of those That's because a lot of the supposed benefits are ideological, as opposed to technological. You end up having to sacrifice a superior technological solution for one which better aligns with some specific ideological goal (eg: decentralization, non-state money, censorship-resilience). Really though, for any serious use case, efficacy trumps ideology every time.

coralreef 5y ago
> Really though, for any serious use case, efficacy trumps ideology every time. What's that mean? If efficacy trumps ideology, then why do cryptos exist?
- trutannus 5y ago
  Just because something exists does not negate the existence of the tradeoff. For example, not a single nation dropped their paper fiat money for cryptocurrencies as their primary exchange medium. That's because the advantage is ideological. Cryptocurrencies are superior to fiat money only if you accept the ideological basis for them. The advantage of fiat money now massively outweighs the advantages offered by crypto by orders of magnitude. For now, having actual cash in my hand trumps having tokens in a wallet in at least 99% of cases. You can't buy airline tickets with bitcoins, but with USD, or EUR, or any other fiat, you can. Even if you could buy one or two, with fiat you can buy any.
  - sjtindell 5y ago
    Ethereum is a totally open source, globally decentralized compute infrastructure that executes programs. To say that it gets its value purely from ideology doesn't seem right at all. That is a tangible, valuable development in computer science that is being leveraged more and more.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      That's all fine and dandy until you have to spend $40 per transaction, whereas a $40 old computer can run billions of transaction-like operations for free. Eth is a bad example since seeing value in it requires you to focus on the abstract and ignore the real problems it has.
      - TimJRobinson 5y ago
        You can already use services like DyDx, Axie Infinity, ImmutableX for free, and they all run on Ethereum. They are Layer 2's that use Ethereum for security. There's a ton of amazing technical innovation going on here, dismissing it is like dismissing the internet because "You have to pay $50 to buy 50 internet hours on a CD and dialup is soo slow".
    - pcwalton 5y ago
      Ethereum has one ten-thousandth of the power of a Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. We had efficient distributed computing long before Ethereum. Ethereum absolutely is something that appeals only to those on the economic right, for those willing to sacrifice all but the tiniest amount of computing power in service of libertarian ideology.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      > that is being leveraged more and more. That is what I’m asking, being leveraged to do what exactly. Abstract doesn’t work for me, I’m asking for real world use case. > globally decentralized compute infrastructure that executes programs What is the benefit of this? Who needs this, and where does this add value over not-this? Where does this provide a superior solution over a solution based on not-this? That is my question above, that is yet to be answered. Think a pitch deck: What is it, What is the Problem, What is the solution, How is the technology solving the problem, Why now, Competition and so on ... I'd love to see the pitch deck of Etherium, or any blockchain technology really..
  - coralreef 5y ago
    > Cryptocurrencies are superior to fiat money only if you accept the ideological basis for them. Hmm, ask the people who depend on the Turkish Lira, Argentine Peso, Venezuelan Bolivar, Lebanese pound, etc. if the ideological basis of cryptocurrencies delivers enough utility for them.
    - trutannus 5y ago
      Can you buy food in Venezuela with Ethereum or crypto? Somewhat difficult in a nation which has sporadic problems with blackouts. In situations like this people generally start using a more stable fiat like the USD in place of their local one.
    - kalleboo 5y ago
      My experience with countries that have poor trust in the local currency is that they use US dollars instead, not cryptocurrency. I'm not sure what that says about ideology.
      - coralreef 5y ago
        It says that an asset was trustworthy until it failed to be trustworthy.
        trutannus 5y ago
        The issue with local currencies isn't trust, it's if you can use them to buy your food or not.
        coralreef 5y ago
        Yeah, I would call that trusting the notes to retain their value by lunch time. It’s confidence in the currency and ultimately the central bank/government. If you don’t have confidence in it, you don’t want it.
        trutannus 5y ago
  - hythythyt 5y ago
    you can buy airplane tickets at travala.com

em3rgent0rdr 5y ago

I recall Energy Footprint of Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms Beyond Proof-of-Work [1] showing Polkadot comparative to visa in energy efficiency, and Tezos and Hedera significantly more energy efficient than visa, and Eth. 2.0 optimistically more energy efficient than visa. Platform | Per transaction (kW h/tx) Eth. 2.0 | 0.00009 – 0.00286 (High throughput projection) Eth. 2.0 | 0.01823 – 0.55713 (Low throughput projection) Algorand | 0.00017 – 0.00534 Cardano | 0.01239 – 0.37854 Polkadot | 0.00378 – 0.11556 Tezos | 0.00036 – 0.01096 Hedera | 0.00002 – 0.00004 Bitcoin | 360.39300 – 3691.40700 VisaNet | 0.00358 [1] http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UCL_CBT_DPS_Q32021_updated-2.pdf http://blockchain.cs.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/UC...

TimJRobinson 5y ago

There's many in decentralized finance. I work for a company called Balancer. On it you can invest in/create an index fund of your favorite currencies, then traders use it to arbitrage and pay you fees for doing so. So instead of having an index fund you pay someone else to maintain, you get paid for it. Or take Alchemix - You can get a loan that pays itself back over time, rather than you pay interest. Can think of it like a term deposit account where you get the payout up front instead of at the end. Or Pool Together - a no loss lottery - you can use it as a savings account which is used to generate yield, then that yield is paid out as a prize every week. Even just providing liquidity and earning a good return on that, or using something like Aave to get leverage, are things that very few people have access to in traditional finance. There's a rabbithole of super interesting innovation going on in Decentralized Finance right now that you'll never hear about from mainstream publications because it's so hard to comprehend + explain for most people. This will go mainstream over the next decade.

sofixa 5y ago
None of those sound impossible or worse without a blockchain. Alchemix and Pook Together sound like scams.
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  Please let me know where I can do these things outside of blockchain based systems? You can literally read the source code of these apps if you're skeptical. Almost everything in this world is open source.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    You run a random database? The fact nobody has thought to run that particular type of scam ( the Alchemix one for instance) with MySQL instead of a blockchain doesn't mean it can only possibly run on a blockchain.
    - TimJRobinson 5y ago