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Why Zulip will not get on the blockchain bandwagon

248 points by williamstein 5y ago

flakiness 5y ago
It's fascinating to see a chat app company is kind of forced to make a comment on not accepting cryptocurrency. I'm also out of the bandwagon, but this rather adds a smoke to the bigger picture. (Not saying this is a bad move for Tulip. Just fascinating by this as a cultural phenomena.)
- Tenoke 5y ago
  They are not in any way forced to. There are a lot of bigger companies that have never made such a statement either way. They just chose to for idealogical reasons, PR or something else.
- jspaetzel 5y ago
  Heh. Tulip, what a surprisingly relevant typo when talking about crypto.
  - flakiness 5y ago
    Heh, too late to edit :-/
version_five 5y ago
Good decision but the reasons are not, imo. Current implementations are a scam, period. That's a reason not to get involved. Other concerns, they can be dismissed as growing pains, "this will end with proof of stake", and just because criminals use something does not make it bad, see torrents or the internet generally. Bottom line, why be an early adopter of a ponzi scheme. That is why they shouldn't get "on the bandwagon"
randomhodler84 5y ago
I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. Why would you bet your project against a technology? It’s analogous to refusing to use AI/ML because somewhere somehow someone is getting screwed. However, will this signal stand the test of time… my money is on, no.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >Why would you bet your project against a technology strange question because obviously you should not shove every technology into every project. I think a lot of projects would be actually very well served by not jumping on the ML bandwagon and throwing significant resources at problems that can often be solved in simpler ways. And not just for technical reasons but as Zulip has decided for ethical reasons. Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. I would very much be in favour of projects more strongly considering the negative impacts a technology choice can have.
  - madamelic 5y ago
    > Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. Yeah, except you are specifically calling out why their "we refuse to do crypto" post is just a virtue signal and a stupid one at that. Think of this way: If someone made a post saying their company refuses to use ML because Facebook has unethical machine-learning algorithms, they would get laughed to another planet. It's a straw-man opinion. It would be a far more reasonable blog post if they had said: "We don't need a blockchain or crypto tie-in because that has nothing to do with the problem we are solving nor will it solve it better". If they wanted to, they could do crypto and completely reject the current paradigm. They could easily create their own blockchain, create their own ecosystem in the hopes of changing the industry and status quo... or they could just not do anything because they aren't interested in crypto. Instead they made a virtue signal post to get kudos and back pats from crypto FUDs for the fact of crypto FUD-ing rather than the fact it's a reasonable and sound technical decision.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  Signalling stuff about what sort of company you are is sort of a whole industry, no?
  - whymauri 5y ago
    It's come to the point that any communication of opinion is 'virtue signaling', since opinions are virtues and communications are signaling. I struggle to find much meaning in the phrase these days other than implicit disagreement.
chickenpotpie 5y ago
I for one am glad to see a company push back on blockchain technologies and their horrendous environmental impact. As an environmentalist in the computing space, it makes me so depressed to see our industry regress so much in environmental impact.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  This is an assumption that all blockchains are a PoW, which isn't accurate.
  - basilgohar 5y ago
    With all due respect, that is similar to someone saying we need to get off of fossil fuels for the benefit of the environment, and complaining that that assumes all fossil fuels contribute equally to climate change. Technically right but distracting from the point that the most significant blockchain usage is PoW or some other methodology that massively wastes resources of some kind, such as Chia that wastes storage space for no good purpose.
    - culi 5y ago
      Not to mention that storage space is also an environmental impact. I think when thinking about environmental impact we're often too focused on emissions during usage and not looking at the environmental impact of manufacturing and recycling the objects themselves. Solar panels, for example, look a lot less eco-friendly when you realize their lifespans are about 20 years and our recycling solution is to... not recycle them. Not to mention precious metals like lithium are getting harder and harder to mine, meaning more and more emissions are required to acquire those materials in the first place. It's estimated that around 46% of an EV battery's carbon footprint is in the factory itself before it's even travelled a single mile. Which is part of why total lifetime GHG emissions for EVs are still around 65% that of gasoline powered cars.[0] and only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in the US (compared to 99% of lead-iron batteries). Sorry I'm rambling. I think my point was that we need to think more about where the materials come from and what happens to them afterwards if we want a more complete picture of the environmental impacts of a technology [0] https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-jul2021 https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-j...
paxys 5y ago
Whether or not you agree with their views on crypto in general, all that they really should need to say is – we are a chat product and have nothing to do with the crypto and NFT space. Period.
- baby 5y ago
  No but see, they really need to take a stand.
cateye 5y ago
After reading this, the reputation of the project improved in my mind tremendously. Not only because they take a clear standpoint from the core principles that they have chosen. But especially that this proofs that the whole project shows to be resilient even when a lot of money is involved.
eminence32 5y ago
My experiences so far with Zulip are exclusively with technical groups or programming language groups looking for a place to collaborate. My experiences with Discord have almost exclusively been related to gaming communities or twitch communities. I'm not sure if others have observed something similar. The anti-blockchain reasoning in this post seems well principled, but I also wonder if it's easier to get away with this position because not many zulip communities are asking for blockchain integration.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  It sounds like not many Discord users asked for blockchain integration either.
ipaddr 5y ago
"With many popular social and chat apps already on the blockchain bandwagon (including Facebook, Telegram, Signal, Twitter and Reddit), some are wondering whether Zulip might be next. The answer is no" I wasn't going to jump on the blockchain bandwagon until I heard from Zulip. Glad they could clear up their position.
- splitstud 5y ago
  I wasn't going to jump on the blockchain bandwagon and what is a zulip?
- nfw2 5y ago
  He wasn't suggesting Zulip is comparable to those companies or that the world is holding its breath on the issue. But it's reasonable that some people who use and/or develop Zulip (ie the typical readership of the blog) may be wondering the leadership's stance on crypto.
smoldesu 5y ago
This looks like the right decision, given the nature of their product, but they seem to be doing it for all the wrong reasons: >Cryptocurrencies have a significant negative impact on the environment They go on to describe Proof Of Work systems, which are indeed detrimental, but don't even mention the push away from that platform. Fair enough, but it doesn't really make a solid argument when alternatives are available. >Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior That could be said for 99% of computer software ever made. Criminals are going to use computers the same way we do, so using dumb words like 'enabling' completely miss the point. If anything, cryptocurrency has shown how arbitrary money really is in crime: as long as you exchange something of value, most criminals will be perfectly happy to continue their line of work. >The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk of being manipulated by scammers This one I really don't get. Yes, cryptocurrency is a volatile market. It's mostly ruled by people who have no idea what they're buying in to, contributing to a massive bubble that's eventually going to pop. However, if you have a legitimate product that can actually be enhanced by the blockchain, why would that stop you? You don't need to follow in the exact footsteps of everyone else, that's the beauty of such an open-ended system. Cryptocurrency, NFTs and all digital stores of value are a fad by design, but it sounds like the author of this article got sucked in by headlines and buzzwords. If the CEO can't put together a decent argument against the technology, it probably would have sufficed to just Tweet it or not offer any justification at all. I reckon the majority of people just outright don't care, and this only really serves to virtue signal into the "tech-bro" hate that has been spreading like wildfire across social media.
- another_story 5y ago
  I think most of their points are valid, especially the last one. Crypto is not consumer friendly. You can't dispute charges and your money is not backed anywhere along the line by insurance. If my crypto wallet is compromised and money stolen there is nothing I can do. If my credit card info is stolen and someone maxes it out, I'm covered by the company. That sort of experience on any platform will leave a bad taste, and avoiding crypto for that reason make sense from a business perspective.
  - 5y ago
ccamrobertson 5y ago
This piece is fantastically calculated marketing material given the recent Discord news. - "Blockchain" != cryptocurrency (and using Bitcoin as the primary bogeyman is silly given no one is using Bitcoin assets to authenticate into Discord groups; Ethereum is quite public about their ultimate desire to move to PoS) - Why note the "idealism" of folks in the space and then going on to completely ignoring the promise of web3? - The fact that an open source communication tool by its nature is ripe for usage by "scammers" seems hypocritical. Will Zulip abandon the Apache license if crypto "scammers" start using it?
- pavlov 5y ago
  Why note the "fanaticism" of Scientologists and then go on to completely ignore the promise of eliminating thetan alien souls polluting your mind and body?
  - ccamrobertson 5y ago
    Then the writer should have used “fanaticism”, a negative term, not “idealism”.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Wait, is blockchain now web3?
  - floatboth 5y ago
    "web3" is Ethereum's term for the API that lets web pages do things with your Ethereum client. It's also a vague marketing idea for some kind of a future web that also involves hosting pages on IPFS and registering domains with Ethereum, and still letting these pages do Ethereum things. It's all pretty stupid.
    - antifa 5y ago
      I remember when Web 3.0 refered to things more like IoT, which is still probably going to be more relevant to our daily lives and less niche than blockchain.
ilamont 5y ago
Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior. ... The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk of being manipulated by scammers. We've only gotten the first bitter taste of cryptocurrency-enabled scams like ransomware. The next wave of scams, enabled by apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and others that make it super easy for mainstream populations to hold crypto and transfer real money to random people, will be devastating.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Is this sarcasm? Scams via Venmo and even old school wire transfers are common and law enforcement doesn't particularly care despite transfers being easily traceable.
  - pcwalton 5y ago
    Law enforcement absolutely does care about scams via wire transfers, as a search for mail and wire fraud on justice.gov will confirm.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      My point is that enforcement is very scarce, otherwise all these phone scams (whether credit card, IRS, tech support) the US is constantly being assaulted with would no longer be so endemic. The argument is that crypto allows criminals to get away therefore let's ban crypto. Well, the real world shows that criminals are equally allowed to get away by conventional payment systems. I'm generally not in favour of banning crypto, but at least they'd have a point if the traditional banking system actually prevented financial crime. It clearly doesn't prevent it anywhere near enough. If anything, the complexity of using crypto for the average user means that a traditional payment system scam will yield more than a crypto scam.
- rednerrus 5y ago
  Criminal behaviour is the only value add worth anything in cryptocurrency.
sergiotapia 5y ago
Admirable - I wish them the very best. I wish I could use Zulip but a lot of the platforms I use do not integrate with them. For example render.com deploys wouldn't be able to trigger a message on our engineering Zulip. I hope they continue to grow.
aborsy 5y ago
Warning people of environmental damage and criminal activities won’t stop the gold rush.
- Igelau 5y ago
  Look at mother nature on the run in the 21st century
- floatboth 5y ago
  Stablecoins like Tether imploding will destroy the whole shitcoin economy though. We just don't know when, but someday it will happen. They're all clearly criminal fraudulent operations printing fake dollars not backed by anything. You can't do that endlessly.
_2d30 5y ago
Great answer to a question no one was asking. Solid PR bump, coupled with a partially absurd reasoning for why they aren’t working with cryptocurrencies. I wonder if they are aware that the internet itself is associated with the enablement of criminal activity and if, as such, they are going to remove all internet presence.
- kyleee 5y ago
  Hah. They do make a nice chat solution though. I would have enjoyed all the time and effort used for this to have been redirected to a good old tech stack blog, or a feature showcase of why some of their features standout
65 5y ago
I'm a software engineer, I understand the blockchain and crypto. I've been around Bitcoin since 2010. And yet I still don't know a single high utility use case for the blockchain. People keep saying it's the future but I can't really figure out how regular banking, accounting, or general software applications can't do the same basic task as one on the blockchain - but quicker and at a lower cost. For a moment, forget about the "so we can track things forever" and "not based on trust" - those are more ideological than anything. Why should I use the blockchain right now?
- xixixao 5y ago
  The only good use case I found is a distributed primary key DB. If you don’t trust the party that would normally hold the DB, this could be useful. Mostly some contract stuff. People are getting hyped about selling in-game NFTs. I still don’t get this because the value of an item is determined by the game, not by the NFT “record”. If I can make a game where your “expensive” NFT item has no value, then what’s the point. But people have build out virtual value systems before. Art is a good example. Nothing of “utility”, but people value it nevertheless. So reality is it’s mostly hype, but hype could turn into a long term value assignment. Or not.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Only things I see are underserved markets. Which are either illegal or probably not big enough or there isn't enough pressure to make them work on global scale. Then again world is complex place and financial transactions between different regulatory environments are especially so.
- madamelic 5y ago
  > People keep saying it's the future but I can't really figure out how regular banking, accounting, or general software applications can't do the same basic task as one on the blockchain - but quicker and at a lower cost. There isn't. I think a lot of people falsely think that Web3 is going to consume Web2 and everything will go on the blockchain and be decentralized. It just won't... we will still have centralized products, much like we still have "read-only websites" but, we are going to see a large increase in decentralization. I feel that we are the "early 1990's internet" stage of decentralization. There were (apparently) article after article, denouncing the internet as a fad, that it will be dead any day, just for <x>, just for <y>, "The internet is tearing apart the fabric of society"... Decentralization, in my opinion, is an inevitability. If the human race becomes multi-planetary and space-faring, we will need to be able to run independent nodes of services while keeping individual nodes honest and accurate. Do I believe BTC or ETH will be the winner? Probably not. But the huge explosion in decentralized tech and allowing technical individuals to sharpen their sticks for it will definitely lead the way for a better, healthier world. I believe the same for Hyperloop; it might fail but ultimately we will win because we have excited a huge number of people about high-speed travel along with having knowledge about what worked. And the multi-planetary argument is just one argument. We are on the cusp of a huge upheaval in government and society imo. We are at all-time peak of distrust among individuals, corporations and the gov't. The only way forward is going to be trust-less systems where everyone can inspect why and how things are working. I don't think that 2031 will look anything like 2021, just like 2011 didn't look like 2001.
TruthWillHurt 5y ago
But what's Zulip going to do about global warming? No idea who Zulip are, nor why should I care what they won't do.
norswap 5y ago
So I guess they're getting on the anti-bandwagon instead? Really transparent way to try to drive attention to themselves.
baby 5y ago
This is an incredible PR piece. #1 on hackernews, with an empty statement they’re making everyone talk about them at a time where probably not many people knew about them. I’m wondering how many users they’re going to attract. I predict that they can get x100 if they then announce they’ll support cryptocurrency in a month.
Igelau 5y ago
I think the author left out the most crucial argument: There's no good reason why Zulip should have block chain integration.
pezzana 5y ago
The article cites three extremely common criticisms of Bitcoin. In this sense, they add nothing to the conversation. All Zulip has to do is consult their own home page. There at the top in large font is this: > Zulip combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can catch up on important conversations while ignoring irrelevant ones. https://zulip.com https://zulip.com Where in that statement does something like "crypto assets" management fit in? Exactly nowhere. Crypto assets are not conversations. Nor can they help anyone catch up on important conversations. The Zulip team will not degrade its efforts to focus teams on communication by distracting them with useless fluff they can get elsewhere. End of story.
- jakobnissen 5y ago
  I, for one, am looking forward to reading their upcoming blog post on why Zulip won't invest in horse racing, Herbalife or "foolproof" subprime mortgages.
hbbio 5y ago
To start, I didn't know Zulip and it looks like a clickbait headline. Then, you read the article and you stumble upon a few well-known anti-blockchain arguments, that are designed to appeal to anti-something crowds. "We believe that doing so would inevitably compromise the integrity of our 100% free and open-source project." Most blockchains projects are fully 100% free and open-source projects, even more so than other domains in software. But uniquely, the data is 100% free and available too! "Cryptocurrencies have a significant negative impact on the environment." That is a PoW-only concern, which is well-known and is being technically addressed by PoS. Also, mining for PoW currently uses excess electricity which is *wasted anyway*. At that rate, Google and Facebook use a lot of energy too: Who needs to see videos and chat online with friends when we should all read books instead? "Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior". Probably no more than regular dollars: Everything is visible on blockchains (except some specialized chains) and it is poor judgement from criminals to use them. They will get caught, more quickly. Bad state and financial actors can much more easily hide things in the current financial world... look at all the Panama Papers and other ICIJ leaks! "The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk". The current financial regulations are a joke: You can use leverage on RobinHood and lose money at this casino pretty quickly. They will also cheat on you: restricting you to sell or instead selling stock you own without your consent, selling your order flow so financial giants can make the best of you! If you naively believe regulations are here, we're protected, think again. Most fines set by the US administration are used as a political tool (for instance against the French bank BNP Paribas for doing business in Iran). That said, blockchains regulations will come as the sector matures, you can just hope that they will be written by people who understand the technology. Edit: Since I'm being downvoted, please state why in a comment!
- jspaetzel 5y ago
  This isn't click bait, it's what happens when a maintainer gets the same question 100 times and feels the need to publish something publicly so they don't have to keep repeating themselves.
  - hbbio 5y ago
gog 5y ago
Speaking of regulation, I've opened an account on chat.zulip.org a while ago to check out what Zulip looks like. After playing with it for a while I've deleted my account. This blog post prompted me to check it out again, but to my surprise, although my account is disabled they still kept my email in their database and they won't let me signup with the same email again. Using the password reset option informs me that my account has been deactivated. When I delete my private information I expect it to really get deleted.
- hbbio 5y ago
  You mean they're 100% open source and all that but they keep their data hidden?
fionic 5y ago
I love this
zulipwebuser 5y ago
You should first fix your stupid ui than integrate metamask or whatever. It's 2021 for gods sake, have some self respect.
ftwynn 5y ago
I'm surprised to see a lot of people here skipping over why Zulip needs to write this article. Building a chat app brings you pretty quickly into the digital identity and presence space. Regardless of getting involved with NFTs and ICOs and such, a wallet is a pretty adjacent concept to this domain. There's a reason a ton of chat apps currently offer some form of payments or payments integration. Venmo shows how hard it is to build "social" from payments, while the other direction is much easier to do because of network effects.

248 points by williamstein 5y ago

It's fascinating to see a chat app company is kind of forced to make a comment on not accepting cryptocurrency. I'm also out of the bandwagon, but this rather adds a smoke to the bigger picture. (Not saying this is a bad move for Tulip. Just fascinating by this as a cultural phenomena.)

Tenoke 5y ago
They are not in any way forced to. There are a lot of bigger companies that have never made such a statement either way. They just chose to for idealogical reasons, PR or something else.
jspaetzel 5y ago
Heh. Tulip, what a surprisingly relevant typo when talking about crypto.
- flakiness 5y ago
  Heh, too late to edit :-/

version_five 5y ago

Good decision but the reasons are not, imo. Current implementations are a scam, period. That's a reason not to get involved. Other concerns, they can be dismissed as growing pains, "this will end with proof of stake", and just because criminals use something does not make it bad, see torrents or the internet generally. Bottom line, why be an early adopter of a ponzi scheme. That is why they shouldn't get "on the bandwagon"

randomhodler84 5y ago

I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. Why would you bet your project against a technology? It’s analogous to refusing to use AI/ML because somewhere somehow someone is getting screwed. However, will this signal stand the test of time… my money is on, no.

Barrin92 5y ago
>Why would you bet your project against a technology strange question because obviously you should not shove every technology into every project. I think a lot of projects would be actually very well served by not jumping on the ML bandwagon and throwing significant resources at problems that can often be solved in simpler ways. And not just for technical reasons but as Zulip has decided for ethical reasons. Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. I would very much be in favour of projects more strongly considering the negative impacts a technology choice can have.
- madamelic 5y ago
  > Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. Yeah, except you are specifically calling out why their "we refuse to do crypto" post is just a virtue signal and a stupid one at that. Think of this way: If someone made a post saying their company refuses to use ML because Facebook has unethical machine-learning algorithms, they would get laughed to another planet. It's a straw-man opinion. It would be a far more reasonable blog post if they had said: "We don't need a blockchain or crypto tie-in because that has nothing to do with the problem we are solving nor will it solve it better". If they wanted to, they could do crypto and completely reject the current paradigm. They could easily create their own blockchain, create their own ecosystem in the hopes of changing the industry and status quo... or they could just not do anything because they aren't interested in crypto. Instead they made a virtue signal post to get kudos and back pats from crypto FUDs for the fact of crypto FUD-ing rather than the fact it's a reasonable and sound technical decision.
roywiggins 5y ago
Signalling stuff about what sort of company you are is sort of a whole industry, no?
- whymauri 5y ago
  It's come to the point that any communication of opinion is 'virtue signaling', since opinions are virtues and communications are signaling. I struggle to find much meaning in the phrase these days other than implicit disagreement.

chickenpotpie 5y ago

I for one am glad to see a company push back on blockchain technologies and their horrendous environmental impact. As an environmentalist in the computing space, it makes me so depressed to see our industry regress so much in environmental impact.

encryptluks2 5y ago
This is an assumption that all blockchains are a PoW, which isn't accurate.
- basilgohar 5y ago
  With all due respect, that is similar to someone saying we need to get off of fossil fuels for the benefit of the environment, and complaining that that assumes all fossil fuels contribute equally to climate change. Technically right but distracting from the point that the most significant blockchain usage is PoW or some other methodology that massively wastes resources of some kind, such as Chia that wastes storage space for no good purpose.
  - culi 5y ago
    Not to mention that storage space is also an environmental impact. I think when thinking about environmental impact we're often too focused on emissions during usage and not looking at the environmental impact of manufacturing and recycling the objects themselves. Solar panels, for example, look a lot less eco-friendly when you realize their lifespans are about 20 years and our recycling solution is to... not recycle them. Not to mention precious metals like lithium are getting harder and harder to mine, meaning more and more emissions are required to acquire those materials in the first place. It's estimated that around 46% of an EV battery's carbon footprint is in the factory itself before it's even travelled a single mile. Which is part of why total lifetime GHG emissions for EVs are still around 65% that of gasoline powered cars.[0] and only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in the US (compared to 99% of lead-iron batteries). Sorry I'm rambling. I think my point was that we need to think more about where the materials come from and what happens to them afterwards if we want a more complete picture of the environmental impacts of a technology [0] https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-jul2021 https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-j...

paxys 5y ago

Whether or not you agree with their views on crypto in general, all that they really should need to say is – we are a chat product and have nothing to do with the crypto and NFT space. Period.

baby 5y ago
No but see, they really need to take a stand.

cateye 5y ago

After reading this, the reputation of the project improved in my mind tremendously. Not only because they take a clear standpoint from the core principles that they have chosen. But especially that this proofs that the whole project shows to be resilient even when a lot of money is involved.

eminence32 5y ago

My experiences so far with Zulip are exclusively with technical groups or programming language groups looking for a place to collaborate. My experiences with Discord have almost exclusively been related to gaming communities or twitch communities. I'm not sure if others have observed something similar. The anti-blockchain reasoning in this post seems well principled, but I also wonder if it's easier to get away with this position because not many zulip communities are asking for blockchain integration.

pseudalopex 5y ago
It sounds like not many Discord users asked for blockchain integration either.

ipaddr 5y ago

"With many popular social and chat apps already on the blockchain bandwagon (including Facebook, Telegram, Signal, Twitter and Reddit), some are wondering whether Zulip might be next. The answer is no" I wasn't going to jump on the blockchain bandwagon until I heard from Zulip. Glad they could clear up their position.

splitstud 5y ago
I wasn't going to jump on the blockchain bandwagon and what is a zulip?
nfw2 5y ago
He wasn't suggesting Zulip is comparable to those companies or that the world is holding its breath on the issue. But it's reasonable that some people who use and/or develop Zulip (ie the typical readership of the blog) may be wondering the leadership's stance on crypto.

smoldesu 5y ago

This looks like the right decision, given the nature of their product, but they seem to be doing it for all the wrong reasons: >Cryptocurrencies have a significant negative impact on the environment They go on to describe Proof Of Work systems, which are indeed detrimental, but don't even mention the push away from that platform. Fair enough, but it doesn't really make a solid argument when alternatives are available. >Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior That could be said for 99% of computer software ever made. Criminals are going to use computers the same way we do, so using dumb words like 'enabling' completely miss the point. If anything, cryptocurrency has shown how arbitrary money really is in crime: as long as you exchange something of value, most criminals will be perfectly happy to continue their line of work. >The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk of being manipulated by scammers This one I really don't get. Yes, cryptocurrency is a volatile market. It's mostly ruled by people who have no idea what they're buying in to, contributing to a massive bubble that's eventually going to pop. However, if you have a legitimate product that can actually be enhanced by the blockchain, why would that stop you? You don't need to follow in the exact footsteps of everyone else, that's the beauty of such an open-ended system. Cryptocurrency, NFTs and all digital stores of value are a fad by design, but it sounds like the author of this article got sucked in by headlines and buzzwords. If the CEO can't put together a decent argument against the technology, it probably would have sufficed to just Tweet it or not offer any justification at all. I reckon the majority of people just outright don't care, and this only really serves to virtue signal into the "tech-bro" hate that has been spreading like wildfire across social media.

another_story 5y ago
I think most of their points are valid, especially the last one. Crypto is not consumer friendly. You can't dispute charges and your money is not backed anywhere along the line by insurance. If my crypto wallet is compromised and money stolen there is nothing I can do. If my credit card info is stolen and someone maxes it out, I'm covered by the company. That sort of experience on any platform will leave a bad taste, and avoiding crypto for that reason make sense from a business perspective.
- 5y ago

ccamrobertson 5y ago

This piece is fantastically calculated marketing material given the recent Discord news. - "Blockchain" != cryptocurrency (and using Bitcoin as the primary bogeyman is silly given no one is using Bitcoin assets to authenticate into Discord groups; Ethereum is quite public about their ultimate desire to move to PoS) - Why note the "idealism" of folks in the space and then going on to completely ignoring the promise of web3? - The fact that an open source communication tool by its nature is ripe for usage by "scammers" seems hypocritical. Will Zulip abandon the Apache license if crypto "scammers" start using it?

pavlov 5y ago
Why note the "fanaticism" of Scientologists and then go on to completely ignore the promise of eliminating thetan alien souls polluting your mind and body?
- ccamrobertson 5y ago
  Then the writer should have used “fanaticism”, a negative term, not “idealism”.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
Wait, is blockchain now web3?
- floatboth 5y ago
  "web3" is Ethereum's term for the API that lets web pages do things with your Ethereum client. It's also a vague marketing idea for some kind of a future web that also involves hosting pages on IPFS and registering domains with Ethereum, and still letting these pages do Ethereum things. It's all pretty stupid.
  - antifa 5y ago
    I remember when Web 3.0 refered to things more like IoT, which is still probably going to be more relevant to our daily lives and less niche than blockchain.

ilamont 5y ago

Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior. ... The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk of being manipulated by scammers. We've only gotten the first bitter taste of cryptocurrency-enabled scams like ransomware. The next wave of scams, enabled by apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and others that make it super easy for mainstream populations to hold crypto and transfer real money to random people, will be devastating.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Is this sarcasm? Scams via Venmo and even old school wire transfers are common and law enforcement doesn't particularly care despite transfers being easily traceable.
- pcwalton 5y ago
  Law enforcement absolutely does care about scams via wire transfers, as a search for mail and wire fraud on justice.gov will confirm.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    My point is that enforcement is very scarce, otherwise all these phone scams (whether credit card, IRS, tech support) the US is constantly being assaulted with would no longer be so endemic. The argument is that crypto allows criminals to get away therefore let's ban crypto. Well, the real world shows that criminals are equally allowed to get away by conventional payment systems. I'm generally not in favour of banning crypto, but at least they'd have a point if the traditional banking system actually prevented financial crime. It clearly doesn't prevent it anywhere near enough. If anything, the complexity of using crypto for the average user means that a traditional payment system scam will yield more than a crypto scam.
rednerrus 5y ago
Criminal behaviour is the only value add worth anything in cryptocurrency.

sergiotapia 5y ago

Admirable - I wish them the very best. I wish I could use Zulip but a lot of the platforms I use do not integrate with them. For example render.com deploys wouldn't be able to trigger a message on our engineering Zulip. I hope they continue to grow.

aborsy 5y ago

Warning people of environmental damage and criminal activities won’t stop the gold rush.

Igelau 5y ago
Look at mother nature on the run in the 21st century
floatboth 5y ago
Stablecoins like Tether imploding will destroy the whole shitcoin economy though. We just don't know when, but someday it will happen. They're all clearly criminal fraudulent operations printing fake dollars not backed by anything. You can't do that endlessly.

_2d30 5y ago

Great answer to a question no one was asking. Solid PR bump, coupled with a partially absurd reasoning for why they aren’t working with cryptocurrencies. I wonder if they are aware that the internet itself is associated with the enablement of criminal activity and if, as such, they are going to remove all internet presence.

kyleee 5y ago
Hah. They do make a nice chat solution though. I would have enjoyed all the time and effort used for this to have been redirected to a good old tech stack blog, or a feature showcase of why some of their features standout

65 5y ago

I'm a software engineer, I understand the blockchain and crypto. I've been around Bitcoin since 2010. And yet I still don't know a single high utility use case for the blockchain. People keep saying it's the future but I can't really figure out how regular banking, accounting, or general software applications can't do the same basic task as one on the blockchain - but quicker and at a lower cost. For a moment, forget about the "so we can track things forever" and "not based on trust" - those are more ideological than anything. Why should I use the blockchain right now?

xixixao 5y ago
The only good use case I found is a distributed primary key DB. If you don’t trust the party that would normally hold the DB, this could be useful. Mostly some contract stuff. People are getting hyped about selling in-game NFTs. I still don’t get this because the value of an item is determined by the game, not by the NFT “record”. If I can make a game where your “expensive” NFT item has no value, then what’s the point. But people have build out virtual value systems before. Art is a good example. Nothing of “utility”, but people value it nevertheless. So reality is it’s mostly hype, but hype could turn into a long term value assignment. Or not.
Ekaros 5y ago
Only things I see are underserved markets. Which are either illegal or probably not big enough or there isn't enough pressure to make them work on global scale. Then again world is complex place and financial transactions between different regulatory environments are especially so.
madamelic 5y ago
> People keep saying it's the future but I can't really figure out how regular banking, accounting, or general software applications can't do the same basic task as one on the blockchain - but quicker and at a lower cost. There isn't. I think a lot of people falsely think that Web3 is going to consume Web2 and everything will go on the blockchain and be decentralized. It just won't... we will still have centralized products, much like we still have "read-only websites" but, we are going to see a large increase in decentralization. I feel that we are the "early 1990's internet" stage of decentralization. There were (apparently) article after article, denouncing the internet as a fad, that it will be dead any day, just for <x>, just for <y>, "The internet is tearing apart the fabric of society"... Decentralization, in my opinion, is an inevitability. If the human race becomes multi-planetary and space-faring, we will need to be able to run independent nodes of services while keeping individual nodes honest and accurate. Do I believe BTC or ETH will be the winner? Probably not. But the huge explosion in decentralized tech and allowing technical individuals to sharpen their sticks for it will definitely lead the way for a better, healthier world. I believe the same for Hyperloop; it might fail but ultimately we will win because we have excited a huge number of people about high-speed travel along with having knowledge about what worked. And the multi-planetary argument is just one argument. We are on the cusp of a huge upheaval in government and society imo. We are at all-time peak of distrust among individuals, corporations and the gov't. The only way forward is going to be trust-less systems where everyone can inspect why and how things are working. I don't think that 2031 will look anything like 2021, just like 2011 didn't look like 2001.

TruthWillHurt 5y ago

But what's Zulip going to do about global warming? No idea who Zulip are, nor why should I care what they won't do.

norswap 5y ago

So I guess they're getting on the anti-bandwagon instead? Really transparent way to try to drive attention to themselves.

baby 5y ago

This is an incredible PR piece. #1 on hackernews, with an empty statement they’re making everyone talk about them at a time where probably not many people knew about them. I’m wondering how many users they’re going to attract. I predict that they can get x100 if they then announce they’ll support cryptocurrency in a month.

Igelau 5y ago

I think the author left out the most crucial argument: There's no good reason why Zulip should have block chain integration.

pezzana 5y ago

The article cites three extremely common criticisms of Bitcoin. In this sense, they add nothing to the conversation. All Zulip has to do is consult their own home page. There at the top in large font is this: > Zulip combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can catch up on important conversations while ignoring irrelevant ones. https://zulip.com https://zulip.com Where in that statement does something like "crypto assets" management fit in? Exactly nowhere. Crypto assets are not conversations. Nor can they help anyone catch up on important conversations. The Zulip team will not degrade its efforts to focus teams on communication by distracting them with useless fluff they can get elsewhere. End of story.

jakobnissen 5y ago
I, for one, am looking forward to reading their upcoming blog post on why Zulip won't invest in horse racing, Herbalife or "foolproof" subprime mortgages.

hbbio 5y ago

To start, I didn't know Zulip and it looks like a clickbait headline. Then, you read the article and you stumble upon a few well-known anti-blockchain arguments, that are designed to appeal to anti-something crowds. "We believe that doing so would inevitably compromise the integrity of our 100% free and open-source project." Most blockchains projects are fully 100% free and open-source projects, even more so than other domains in software. But uniquely, the data is 100% free and available too! "Cryptocurrencies have a significant negative impact on the environment." That is a PoW-only concern, which is well-known and is being technically addressed by PoS. Also, mining for PoW currently uses excess electricity which is *wasted anyway*. At that rate, Google and Facebook use a lot of energy too: Who needs to see videos and chat online with friends when we should all read books instead? "Today’s reality is that cryptocurrencies are enabling massive amounts of criminal behavior". Probably no more than regular dollars: Everything is visible on blockchains (except some specialized chains) and it is poor judgement from criminals to use them. They will get caught, more quickly. Bad state and financial actors can much more easily hide things in the current financial world... look at all the Panama Papers and other ICIJ leaks! "The lack of effective regulation of crypto assets puts people at high risk". The current financial regulations are a joke: You can use leverage on RobinHood and lose money at this casino pretty quickly. They will also cheat on you: restricting you to sell or instead selling stock you own without your consent, selling your order flow so financial giants can make the best of you! If you naively believe regulations are here, we're protected, think again. Most fines set by the US administration are used as a political tool (for instance against the French bank BNP Paribas for doing business in Iran). That said, blockchains regulations will come as the sector matures, you can just hope that they will be written by people who understand the technology. Edit: Since I'm being downvoted, please state why in a comment!

jspaetzel 5y ago
This isn't click bait, it's what happens when a maintainer gets the same question 100 times and feels the need to publish something publicly so they don't have to keep repeating themselves.
- hbbio 5y ago

gog 5y ago

Speaking of regulation, I've opened an account on chat.zulip.org a while ago to check out what Zulip looks like. After playing with it for a while I've deleted my account. This blog post prompted me to check it out again, but to my surprise, although my account is disabled they still kept my email in their database and they won't let me signup with the same email again. Using the password reset option informs me that my account has been deactivated. When I delete my private information I expect it to really get deleted.

hbbio 5y ago
You mean they're 100% open source and all that but they keep their data hidden?

fionic 5y ago

I love this

zulipwebuser 5y ago

You should first fix your stupid ui than integrate metamask or whatever. It's 2021 for gods sake, have some self respect.

ftwynn 5y ago

I'm surprised to see a lot of people here skipping over why Zulip needs to write this article. Building a chat app brings you pretty quickly into the digital identity and presence space. Regardless of getting involved with NFTs and ICOs and such, a wallet is a pretty adjacent concept to this domain. There's a reason a ton of chat apps currently offer some form of payments or payments integration. Venmo shows how hard it is to build "social" from payments, while the other direction is much easier to do because of network effects.