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I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. How

I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. Achieving these goals is not the same as "decentralization" but more about a concept where you start from a decentralized and open base (blockchain) and build structures atop that base that are appropriately balanced between centralized and decentralized. This is all very ambitious and may fail utterly and completely. But if it does succeed there will be a period where people have wild ambitious visions about what could be while the technology progresses to actualize those visions at what appears to be a slow pace. To provide a specific ambitious vision: you could have a world where appropriate taxation of a transaction is built into a smart contract and everything from deciding on how to spend that tax money to the project management for the efforts those tax dollars fund is conducted in the open by people who have achieved various types of stakeholder status. Actually creating a system that allows for this and doesn't have tons of other problems will take time.

CJefferson 5y ago
Your last point (everything in smart contracts) I just can't understand. I personally wouldn't want to live in a world where the "computer says no", and even if a court and Jury disagrees, it's impossible to change. Similarly (and it's already happened several times), what happens when someone finds a loophole and drains the entire GDP of a country into their account? Do we say "Oh, well that's what the smart contract said, so bye bye country?"
- deweller 5y ago
  The smart contracts you are seeing now are relatively simple programs and are woefully insufficient for nation-state level use. Imagine a future with multiple levels of smart contracts that allow for court intervention and arbitration. It starts to resemble the checks and balances we have in place now, but the rules are public and codified.
  - CJefferson 5y ago
    But, if there is a "court intervention" clause that just lets you say "Transfer X money from Y to Z", then why bother with full blockchain/crypto? You have effectively central control.
    - deweller 5y ago
      I agree that would be a useless smart contract. If that is your intention, then don't use a smart contract. If, however, there are a limited number of known possible outcomes, then smart contracts offer advantages over court-based settlements.
      - CJefferson 5y ago
        Can you give a concrete example? I can't think of anything where you wouldn't need a fallback "human takes control".
  - notamy 5y ago
    > but the rules are public and codified. You mean like, say, the current system of laws we have? (: Sure, laws are strange and arcane and require expertise to translate them into understandable terms, but any form of code has the exact same problem.
    - deweller 5y ago
      No. Better than the current system of laws we have. Currently, the current system requires lengthy court intervention with interpretation done after the fact. Smart contracts can allow for a fixed number of resolutions with a timeframe defined up front. Smart contracts won't work for everything, but they might be a better fit for some things.
- serverholic 5y ago
  One thing I've realized is that it's best to think about crypto and smart contracts as a foundation to build upon. They're tools in our toolbox. What we build is up to us. In the future, I don't think we'll see many monolithic contracts like you're describing (no USA smart contract). Instead I think we'll have a bunch of small, simple, and battle tested smart contracts that we can fit together like lego bricks.
  - _hyn3 5y ago
    I agree, but that's assuming the whole concept survives to maturity and engenders public trust. At this point, I have my doubts.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    This is what people said about objects in the context of object-oriented programming and it never really happened. Currently software doesn't really feel like lego bricks, it feels more like the mix of legos, mega blocks, duplos, kaplas and playmobiles that I played with when I was younger. You can build lots of stuff with it, and they can kind of go together, but not as easily as things from the same brand.
    - crypto_is_king 5y ago
      Have you checked your npm_modules folder lately?
      - Zababa 5y ago
        Yes, and it's full of little packages that are made to make sure one package will work with the other. In my example, this would be duplo to lego connectors, duplo to mega blocks connectors, lego to mega blocks connectors, etc. I also often write myself glue code between two packages.
- 21eleven 5y ago
  I agree, you wouldn't want a world where either of those two scenarios you mention are possible. But are those examples inescapable risks inherent to having smart contracts? Or does the design of current smart contracts lack maturity in such a way that allows for problems similar to the ones you mention? Maybe better smart contract design could arise that prevents these issues.
  - zaphar 5y ago
    I think the case that they are inescapable risks is pretty strong. I think the history of formal design and software engineering is pretty clear that the designing a foolproof system is effectively and practically speaking impossible except for extremely small, extremely isolated problem spaces. I don't think smart contracts are in that space and I don't think any level of maturity is going to get you there.
- Sevii 5y ago
  A lot of people live in a world where the courts, police and politicians are corrupt. Using smart contracts is a tradeoff for lack of rule of law. Its essentially people thinking "we're not getting a fair shake here from human law, let's try robot law".
  - spiralx 5y ago
    Presumably those corrupt people will be the ones in charge of writing smart contracts as well if you're living somewhere so deeply corrupt.
m3kw9 5y ago
Govt won’t likely allow that because who needs government if people look to governing tokens?
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Mark my words, Tech people believing they can solve political problems with technology will doom us all.
- dqpb 5y ago
  Operations Research already solves a huge number of problems which, in its absence, would be political problems.
- crypto_is_king 5y ago
  This is true. But your statement applies to Big Tech more so than independent builders who are working out how to redistribute their power.
- tenuousemphasis 5y ago
  Here I thought politicians pretending like they can solve political problems is dooming us all.
- cslarson 5y ago
  this tech will present many challenges. it could make many political problems much worse. but it is also unstoppable.
tata71 5y ago
zkRollups, (specifically Loopring!), should replace our COBOL banking systems, and WILL replace our stock exchange.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  I have no idea if this is parody.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” are out there, somewhere, while ignoring the fact that the blockchain/crypto space is absolutely drowning in meme tokens and obvious cash grabs. The superiority of blockchain solutions seems to be assumed for many believers, so it’s natural to assume that superior solutions will eventually arise from this superior blockchain technology. But the superiority of blockchain isn’t obvious for most problems. Moreover, if someone does build a superior solution on top of a blockchain, what’s stopping a centralized player from duplicating the benefits of that superior solution at a lower cost in a centralized platform? This is the conundrum of blockchain and token projects: For them to be superior to the consumer they must eventually have lower fees and costs. Yet blockchain is inherently more expensive than equivalent centralized solutions and, even worse, the token investors expect astronomical (to the moon) returns on their investments, which necessitates extracting a lot of money from the users after the speculative frenzy has died off. At least currently, most blockchain/crypto/token schemes are built with the assumption that the consumer is the person they will sell the tokens to as a speculative investment, not the person who will actually use the service itself. Decentralized solutions actually have a lot of problems that proponents avoid talking about. For example, DAOs are promoted as ways of decentralizing ownership, but we're supposed to ignore the fact that a well-capitalized player could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO by purchasing up enough tokens. And unlike with real-world companies, the ownership can be purchased anonymously in a way that makes it appear to come from a lot of organic traction. A well-funded company could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO and neither regulators, users, nor consumers would even know. We're supposed to believe this model is a boon for decentralization, but it's a dream come true for surreptitious takeovers.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. I know very little about this space, but I get a very strong "real deal" feel from Charles Hoskinson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hoskinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hoskinson https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/etc democracy. https://cardano.org/governance/ https://cardano.org/governance/
pkdpic 5y ago
In Kim Stanley Robinsons Ministry for the Future carbon coins seem to act in this way kinda sorta without depending on a complete decentralization of society or anything particularly revolutionary. They become popular as an investment opportunity because they act like 100 year high yield bonds and then they make tax avoision more difficult because of the record of the blockchain. Anyway its all dependent on the support of national banks in the book but it comes to mind reading this in any case. I just finished the book finally so Im still figuring out what I think of the whole thing...
serverholic 5y ago
This is why I support crypto. I view it as a laboratory where we can experiment with ideas around finance and governance. Many of the currently accepted ideas around these topics came from a pre-internet world. However, myself and others think that certain technologies have changed the game. Maybe we need government or maybe we don't. Maybe we need a centralized currency, maybe we don't. The thing is we won't really know what we need until we run the experiments. Personally I think these experiments are too important to silence them.
- VHRanger 5y ago
  Your laboratory has run for 12 years and is currently consuming 0.5% of the world energy output and 20% of new GPUs. All of that without a popular usecase yet. Except for financial speculation, finance-of-last-resort, and crime. I would say that laboratory is not using the research grants well.
  - dqpb 5y ago
    Algorand is carbon negative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM
    - VHRanger 5y ago
      Yes, the laboratory would be fine if it weren't for BTC and ETH. Experiment away! But not with mega-scale proof-of-work projects that consume ungodly resource as a byproduct of securing the network (which is a financial problem in any case)
      - disruptalot 5y ago
        > Experiment away! But not with mega-scale proof-of-work projects Are you familiar with any methods to achieve the same characteristics of Bitcoin but without PoW? Perhaps the energy is not the issue, perhaps it's your view to the importance of it.
Kalium 5y ago
> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. That's great! Could you provide some details on what these projects might be and how they aim to reshape political and economic life to be more open, formal, and participatory? As others have noted, and indeed the author might point to, this kind of response is sort of a quantum woo dodge. It asserts that some of the quantum woo is genuinely helpful and useful and functional with clear mechanisms, but by coincidence fails to point to any in particular or specify mechanisms.
- cle 5y ago
  Here's a random one I stumbled on the other day: https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/10/project-starling-uses-technology-to-preserve-authenticity-of-capitol-riot-images/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/10/project-starling-uses-tec...
- dqpb 5y ago
  Look up Turing award winner Silvio Micali.
  - Kalium 5y ago
    Can you point me to something more specific? It looks like he was part of some major cryptographic advances before sailing off into snowballscheme land.
    - dqpb 5y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- lifty 5y ago
ilaksh 5y ago
If you have to limit the extent then it's inaccurate to characterize it as fair.
uncomputation 5y ago
I am actually a rare breed excited about the potential about cryptocurrency here on HN. That said, when I go through your example, I don’t see much difference from the current system despite the illusion that it’s different. > appropriate taxation of a transaction is built into a smart contract So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. > everything from deciding on how to spend that tax money to the project management for the efforts those tax dollars fund is conducted in the open Tax laws are public knowledge. So are spending decisions. For example, the infrastructure bill that just passed. Anyone can see exactly the allocation of funds to where. > by people who have achieved various types of stakeholder status So, senators. Which we have already. Or direct democracy without senators, which the founding fathers (US-specific) agreed was bad because most people do not understand how taxes and budgeting work. I want to be convinced that this is somehow different from the current system, but any example I see is either the same (but looks very different) or worse (this part is arguable, but I don’t think proportional voting on tax law would end well. Most people would certainly just end taxes if given the choice with little regard to the long-term consequences of this.)
- jollybean 5y ago
  "So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for." Laws are not mechanisms, proof of transaction, records etc.. 'Smart Contracts' as something unassailable in courts are ridiculous obviously. But 'smart contracts' that facilitate micro-transactions, every day purchases, and flow through the system without human interaction seem like a good idea. Imagine when you buy that thing on your Business Visa, and the 'smart contract' is signed, sent to head office, sent to your accounting software, balanced, money in your bank account immediately etc.. All with a series of signed elements. I understand that's not exactly what it's supposed to look like, but that's the kind of thing I see happening. While you could say 'there should be a standard for that' it might be that the standards are not nimble enough, and a more generic 'start contract' system could work to tie it all together. And maybe importantly: to skip VISA and classical banks while we're at it.
  - 5y ago
cslarson 5y ago
> the crypto world is full of useless memecoins This criticism should really end - yes, it misleads many people! Creating a decentralised app, or a token, is permisssionless! Yes, anyone anywhere can do it. Much like publishing a website, or writing a blog article, the costs are negligible. The fact that there are a lot of useless websites and blog articles does not invalidate the usefulness of the web! The existence of shitcoins means absolutely nothing.

CJefferson 5y ago

Your last point (everything in smart contracts) I just can't understand. I personally wouldn't want to live in a world where the "computer says no", and even if a court and Jury disagrees, it's impossible to change. Similarly (and it's already happened several times), what happens when someone finds a loophole and drains the entire GDP of a country into their account? Do we say "Oh, well that's what the smart contract said, so bye bye country?"

deweller 5y ago
The smart contracts you are seeing now are relatively simple programs and are woefully insufficient for nation-state level use. Imagine a future with multiple levels of smart contracts that allow for court intervention and arbitration. It starts to resemble the checks and balances we have in place now, but the rules are public and codified.
- CJefferson 5y ago
  But, if there is a "court intervention" clause that just lets you say "Transfer X money from Y to Z", then why bother with full blockchain/crypto? You have effectively central control.
  - deweller 5y ago
    I agree that would be a useless smart contract. If that is your intention, then don't use a smart contract. If, however, there are a limited number of known possible outcomes, then smart contracts offer advantages over court-based settlements.
    - CJefferson 5y ago
      Can you give a concrete example? I can't think of anything where you wouldn't need a fallback "human takes control".
- notamy 5y ago
  > but the rules are public and codified. You mean like, say, the current system of laws we have? (: Sure, laws are strange and arcane and require expertise to translate them into understandable terms, but any form of code has the exact same problem.
  - deweller 5y ago
    No. Better than the current system of laws we have. Currently, the current system requires lengthy court intervention with interpretation done after the fact. Smart contracts can allow for a fixed number of resolutions with a timeframe defined up front. Smart contracts won't work for everything, but they might be a better fit for some things.
serverholic 5y ago
One thing I've realized is that it's best to think about crypto and smart contracts as a foundation to build upon. They're tools in our toolbox. What we build is up to us. In the future, I don't think we'll see many monolithic contracts like you're describing (no USA smart contract). Instead I think we'll have a bunch of small, simple, and battle tested smart contracts that we can fit together like lego bricks.
- _hyn3 5y ago
  I agree, but that's assuming the whole concept survives to maturity and engenders public trust. At this point, I have my doubts.
- Zababa 5y ago
  This is what people said about objects in the context of object-oriented programming and it never really happened. Currently software doesn't really feel like lego bricks, it feels more like the mix of legos, mega blocks, duplos, kaplas and playmobiles that I played with when I was younger. You can build lots of stuff with it, and they can kind of go together, but not as easily as things from the same brand.
  - crypto_is_king 5y ago
    Have you checked your npm_modules folder lately?
    - Zababa 5y ago
      Yes, and it's full of little packages that are made to make sure one package will work with the other. In my example, this would be duplo to lego connectors, duplo to mega blocks connectors, lego to mega blocks connectors, etc. I also often write myself glue code between two packages.
21eleven 5y ago
I agree, you wouldn't want a world where either of those two scenarios you mention are possible. But are those examples inescapable risks inherent to having smart contracts? Or does the design of current smart contracts lack maturity in such a way that allows for problems similar to the ones you mention? Maybe better smart contract design could arise that prevents these issues.
- zaphar 5y ago
  I think the case that they are inescapable risks is pretty strong. I think the history of formal design and software engineering is pretty clear that the designing a foolproof system is effectively and practically speaking impossible except for extremely small, extremely isolated problem spaces. I don't think smart contracts are in that space and I don't think any level of maturity is going to get you there.
Sevii 5y ago
A lot of people live in a world where the courts, police and politicians are corrupt. Using smart contracts is a tradeoff for lack of rule of law. Its essentially people thinking "we're not getting a fair shake here from human law, let's try robot law".
- spiralx 5y ago
  Presumably those corrupt people will be the ones in charge of writing smart contracts as well if you're living somewhere so deeply corrupt.

m3kw9 5y ago

Govt won’t likely allow that because who needs government if people look to governing tokens?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Mark my words, Tech people believing they can solve political problems with technology will doom us all.

dqpb 5y ago
Operations Research already solves a huge number of problems which, in its absence, would be political problems.
crypto_is_king 5y ago
This is true. But your statement applies to Big Tech more so than independent builders who are working out how to redistribute their power.
tenuousemphasis 5y ago
Here I thought politicians pretending like they can solve political problems is dooming us all.
cslarson 5y ago
this tech will present many challenges. it could make many political problems much worse. but it is also unstoppable.

tata71 5y ago

zkRollups, (specifically Loopring!), should replace our COBOL banking systems, and WILL replace our stock exchange.

Daishiman 5y ago
I have no idea if this is parody.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” are out there, somewhere, while ignoring the fact that the blockchain/crypto space is absolutely drowning in meme tokens and obvious cash grabs. The superiority of blockchain solutions seems to be assumed for many believers, so it’s natural to assume that superior solutions will eventually arise from this superior blockchain technology. But the superiority of blockchain isn’t obvious for most problems. Moreover, if someone does build a superior solution on top of a blockchain, what’s stopping a centralized player from duplicating the benefits of that superior solution at a lower cost in a centralized platform? This is the conundrum of blockchain and token projects: For them to be superior to the consumer they must eventually have lower fees and costs. Yet blockchain is inherently more expensive than equivalent centralized solutions and, even worse, the token investors expect astronomical (to the moon) returns on their investments, which necessitates extracting a lot of money from the users after the speculative frenzy has died off. At least currently, most blockchain/crypto/token schemes are built with the assumption that the consumer is the person they will sell the tokens to as a speculative investment, not the person who will actually use the service itself. Decentralized solutions actually have a lot of problems that proponents avoid talking about. For example, DAOs are promoted as ways of decentralizing ownership, but we're supposed to ignore the fact that a well-capitalized player could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO by purchasing up enough tokens. And unlike with real-world companies, the ownership can be purchased anonymously in a way that makes it appear to come from a lot of organic traction. A well-funded company could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO and neither regulators, users, nor consumers would even know. We're supposed to believe this model is a boon for decentralization, but it's a dream come true for surreptitious takeovers.

mistermann 5y ago
> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. I know very little about this space, but I get a very strong "real deal" feel from Charles Hoskinson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hoskinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hoskinson https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/etc democracy. https://cardano.org/governance/ https://cardano.org/governance/

pkdpic 5y ago

In Kim Stanley Robinsons Ministry for the Future carbon coins seem to act in this way kinda sorta without depending on a complete decentralization of society or anything particularly revolutionary. They become popular as an investment opportunity because they act like 100 year high yield bonds and then they make tax avoision more difficult because of the record of the blockchain. Anyway its all dependent on the support of national banks in the book but it comes to mind reading this in any case. I just finished the book finally so Im still figuring out what I think of the whole thing...

serverholic 5y ago

This is why I support crypto. I view it as a laboratory where we can experiment with ideas around finance and governance. Many of the currently accepted ideas around these topics came from a pre-internet world. However, myself and others think that certain technologies have changed the game. Maybe we need government or maybe we don't. Maybe we need a centralized currency, maybe we don't. The thing is we won't really know what we need until we run the experiments. Personally I think these experiments are too important to silence them.

VHRanger 5y ago
Your laboratory has run for 12 years and is currently consuming 0.5% of the world energy output and 20% of new GPUs. All of that without a popular usecase yet. Except for financial speculation, finance-of-last-resort, and crime. I would say that laboratory is not using the research grants well.
- dqpb 5y ago
  Algorand is carbon negative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM
  - VHRanger 5y ago
    Yes, the laboratory would be fine if it weren't for BTC and ETH. Experiment away! But not with mega-scale proof-of-work projects that consume ungodly resource as a byproduct of securing the network (which is a financial problem in any case)
    - disruptalot 5y ago
      > Experiment away! But not with mega-scale proof-of-work projects Are you familiar with any methods to achieve the same characteristics of Bitcoin but without PoW? Perhaps the energy is not the issue, perhaps it's your view to the importance of it.

Kalium 5y ago

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. That's great! Could you provide some details on what these projects might be and how they aim to reshape political and economic life to be more open, formal, and participatory? As others have noted, and indeed the author might point to, this kind of response is sort of a quantum woo dodge. It asserts that some of the quantum woo is genuinely helpful and useful and functional with clear mechanisms, but by coincidence fails to point to any in particular or specify mechanisms.

cle 5y ago
Here's a random one I stumbled on the other day: https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/10/project-starling-uses-technology-to-preserve-authenticity-of-capitol-riot-images/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/10/project-starling-uses-tec...
dqpb 5y ago
Look up Turing award winner Silvio Micali.
- Kalium 5y ago
  Can you point me to something more specific? It looks like he was part of some major cryptographic advances before sailing off into snowballscheme land.
  - dqpb 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
lifty 5y ago

ilaksh 5y ago

If you have to limit the extent then it's inaccurate to characterize it as fair.

uncomputation 5y ago

I am actually a rare breed excited about the potential about cryptocurrency here on HN. That said, when I go through your example, I don’t see much difference from the current system despite the illusion that it’s different. > appropriate taxation of a transaction is built into a smart contract So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. > everything from deciding on how to spend that tax money to the project management for the efforts those tax dollars fund is conducted in the open Tax laws are public knowledge. So are spending decisions. For example, the infrastructure bill that just passed. Anyone can see exactly the allocation of funds to where. > by people who have achieved various types of stakeholder status So, senators. Which we have already. Or direct democracy without senators, which the founding fathers (US-specific) agreed was bad because most people do not understand how taxes and budgeting work. I want to be convinced that this is somehow different from the current system, but any example I see is either the same (but looks very different) or worse (this part is arguable, but I don’t think proportional voting on tax law would end well. Most people would certainly just end taxes if given the choice with little regard to the long-term consequences of this.)

jollybean 5y ago
"So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for." Laws are not mechanisms, proof of transaction, records etc.. 'Smart Contracts' as something unassailable in courts are ridiculous obviously. But 'smart contracts' that facilitate micro-transactions, every day purchases, and flow through the system without human interaction seem like a good idea. Imagine when you buy that thing on your Business Visa, and the 'smart contract' is signed, sent to head office, sent to your accounting software, balanced, money in your bank account immediately etc.. All with a series of signed elements. I understand that's not exactly what it's supposed to look like, but that's the kind of thing I see happening. While you could say 'there should be a standard for that' it might be that the standards are not nimble enough, and a more generic 'start contract' system could work to tie it all together. And maybe importantly: to skip VISA and classical banks while we're at it.
- 5y ago

cslarson 5y ago

> the crypto world is full of useless memecoins This criticism should really end - yes, it misleads many people! Creating a decentralised app, or a token, is permisssionless! Yes, anyone anywhere can do it. Much like publishing a website, or writing a blog article, the costs are negligible. The fact that there are a lot of useless websites and blog articles does not invalidate the usefulness of the web! The existence of shitcoins means absolutely nothing.