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This is an honest question, and I'm not trying to pour cold water on DAI. What would happen if DAI had a single centralised source of truth which could be mirro
by ogogmad 5y ago
This is an honest question, and I'm not trying to pour cold water on DAI. What would happen if DAI had a single centralised source of truth which could be mirrored as needed if people lost faith in the central entity? This is a bit like what Wikipedia has, which is a fully open database that can be mirrored ad infinitum -- but still remains the central source of truth as long as people respect the organisation that runs it. More broadly, does DAI really need to be on a blockchain*? Are there efficient non-blockchain ways to make verifiable stablecoins?
I ask this question because a lot of things that are run on blockchains seem like they're losing more than they're gaining. It makes me suspicious of even DAI.
When I say "fully open database", you might object that this compromises a person's privacy in order to make the database mirror-able. But then again, all blockchains are fully open and public, so there's nothing more to be lost there.
* - By which I mean the Ethereum blockchain, which is inefficient like all blockchains currently are.
- DennisP 5y agoEthereum is going to stop being so inefficient in about six months. The proof-of-stake migration will reduce its energy usage by about 99.95%. So that will make it an efficient way to make verifiable stablecoins. https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/
- cvdub 5y agoThe US government could make a centralized digital currency without a blockchain. That makes way more sense to me than dealing with all the overhead associated with a trustless decentralized ledger.
- zie 5y agoThey are working on it. they call it a "digital dollar".
- shawnz 5y agoI suspect if such a service was not hosted on a blockchain, it would be quickly shut down by regulators
- ogogmad 5y agoDoes mirroring deal with this? Somebody downloads the database and hosts it somewhere else, a bit like TPB or Sci-hub. I suggested this in my original post. Which host gets "elevated" to be the official source of truth is decided by community concensus.
- shawnz 5y agoThen you run into the problem of deciding who is running the authoritative mirror when the existing one goes down. If there's no single authoritative mirror then you could potentially double-spend your money by spending it in different places on different mirrors.
- terafo 5y agoMirroring doesn't deal with this because there's always a single target, elimination of which disrupts the whole system, since some time will pass until yet another person puts a target on his back, and there is the problem of finding out which one is legitimate in case if there are few successors.