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> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics

> 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/
- kcabdelta 5y ago
  @mistermann: "I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/etc democracy." Please stop pushing this snakeoil!
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    Name the criteria by which Cardano fits into the snakeoil category.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      That user account has only made two comments on all of HN, and they're both in this thread. Not worth wasting your time.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    I'm curious why you consider these ideas to be snake oil.
delaaxe 5y ago
The projects reshaping the economy are named. The good ones are Ethereum and L2s. Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy. There's such an abundance of VC money that funding isn't scarce. Developer talent is however.
- boringg 5y ago
  Doesn't the thought of "something that is supposedly/hypothetically going to change the fundamental economic system of the planet" built on back of VC money (I realize not all of crypto started from VC funding) seem to likely have some fundamental flaws? That and quality developer talent is rare that the final products shipped are going to be poor? I really don't see how this thing shakes out well for humanity (not even including carbon costs)
- kcabdelta 5y ago
  @delaaxe: "Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy." Seeing as this "planetary infrastructure" will consume more energy than it produces. A better description would be "planetary snakeoil". The economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Tons of things consume more energy than they produce. Humans for one. I don't even know what 'energy' you're thinking crypto produces here, or that dollars produce in comparison (The only electricity I've seen dollars generate is static electricity). I'm guessing you're being metaphoric here, but your comment is too vague to be useful.
- ddeyar 5y ago
  Tezos will be a big competitor. Its self amending mechanism allows developers to inject proposals on which the bakers are invited to vote on. Every ~3 months improvements are made. Its language allows formal verification. But the most important of all it upgrades itself without forks. It is liquid PoS since the beginning. Transactions or contract calls cost below 1 cent, due to steady implemented gas fee optimizations. This month 30M contract calls will be reached whereof almost all were done this year. More and more serious businesses are joining. https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/entrepreneur-first-launches-partnership-with-tezos-to-spin-up-web3-startups/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/entrepreneur-first-launche...
klntsky 5y ago
> but we're supposed to ignore the fact that a well-capitalized player could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO Is it a problem, though? Not according to the protocol. Asserting that it is a problem is a political statement.
danvoell 5y ago
"what’s stopping a centralized player from duplicating the benefits of that superior solution at a lower cost in a centralized platform?" - This has been my strategy as of late. There are some real cool concepts being built. But once you factor in gas/technology costs and the idea that they don't rely on anonymous p2p transactions, a centralized concept makes sense.
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. There are two good reasons for that: 1) The culture around careful discussion of crypto currencies does well to keep seperated financial advice and claims about economics, incentives and technology (or in the crypto space you call of these 'the protocol' or something else to refer to the complete package a distributed ledger technology aims to achieve) - these claims can quickly get mixed up with lies to make money using buzzwords. You don't want this discussion to turn into people shilling what they personally own, trust me, and refraining from naming good projects when off the metaphorical sale's floor is simply good manners. 2) Crypto is still very nascent. Smart contract platforms that are fast and cheap are only starting to be rolled out and stress tested - without that most of the auxiliary functions people envision are only aspirations. If that's where basic smart contracts are right now, then more advanced protocols you can easily tell are much less far along. Because of the lack of industry proven protocols to do what believers pretty much know will happen someday, recommending any means imparting risk on people like you who expect others to tell you "what's up." Its not that fun giving someone risky investment advice when they refuse to look into it themselves and shoulder that risk.
Destiner 5y ago
Let me name a few. Note there's a bias toward Ethereum-based projects, since I'm more well versed with those. Projects like Uniswap, Maker, Aave, Balancer, etc provide financial services similar to traditional exchanging and lending. There are also things like ENS and TheGraph that provide more infrastructural benefit (i.e. name server and data indexing layer). And many, many more in the space of games & collectibles. Many of these had been used for years. Some of that usage is speculative, sure, but not all of it. It's already there. It's just way too early to do 1:1 comparisons with established non-crypto projects.
cableshaft 5y ago
> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. I don't know about politics, but there are definitely coins reshaping the economy. Hell, bitcoin by itself is reshaping the economy, being considered by many major institutions to officially be a new asset class now[1]. It doesn't mean a total replacement of the economy, if that's what you're thinking, but it's definitely reshaping it. DeFi is already taking a nice chunk out of central banks' lunch. Celsius, USDC, BlockFi, etc, are able to credibly offer 6% or higher yield[2], whereas banks can only offer, at best 0.6%, nowhere close to beating inflation. That's just two use cases, and if I had more time this morning I could go into more (didn't even touch on smart contracts at all). Wouldn't be surprised if you'll dismiss them out of hand as bad projects according to whatever internal criteria you have, and if so, I don't think you'll ever be able to convinced that anything a good project. It just gets annoying to hear people dismiss the entire space all the time without spending more than a few minutes looking into it, and/or assuming that the space never evolved from 4-5 years ago, where you could safely make those claims. [1]: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-officially-a-new-asset-class-goldman-sachs-103540636.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-officially-a-ne... [2]: https://defirate.com/usdc/ https://defirate.com/usdc/

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/

kcabdelta 5y ago
@mistermann: "I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/etc democracy." Please stop pushing this snakeoil!
- ghostwriter 5y ago
  Name the criteria by which Cardano fits into the snakeoil category.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    That user account has only made two comments on all of HN, and they're both in this thread. Not worth wasting your time.
- mistermann 5y ago
  I'm curious why you consider these ideas to be snake oil.

delaaxe 5y ago

The projects reshaping the economy are named. The good ones are Ethereum and L2s. Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy. There's such an abundance of VC money that funding isn't scarce. Developer talent is however.

boringg 5y ago
Doesn't the thought of "something that is supposedly/hypothetically going to change the fundamental economic system of the planet" built on back of VC money (I realize not all of crypto started from VC funding) seem to likely have some fundamental flaws? That and quality developer talent is rare that the final products shipped are going to be poor? I really don't see how this thing shakes out well for humanity (not even including carbon costs)
kcabdelta 5y ago
@delaaxe: "Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy." Seeing as this "planetary infrastructure" will consume more energy than it produces. A better description would be "planetary snakeoil". The economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Tons of things consume more energy than they produce. Humans for one. I don't even know what 'energy' you're thinking crypto produces here, or that dollars produce in comparison (The only electricity I've seen dollars generate is static electricity). I'm guessing you're being metaphoric here, but your comment is too vague to be useful.
ddeyar 5y ago
Tezos will be a big competitor. Its self amending mechanism allows developers to inject proposals on which the bakers are invited to vote on. Every ~3 months improvements are made. Its language allows formal verification. But the most important of all it upgrades itself without forks. It is liquid PoS since the beginning. Transactions or contract calls cost below 1 cent, due to steady implemented gas fee optimizations. This month 30M contract calls will be reached whereof almost all were done this year. More and more serious businesses are joining. https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/entrepreneur-first-launches-partnership-with-tezos-to-spin-up-web3-startups/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/entrepreneur-first-launche...

klntsky 5y ago

> but we're supposed to ignore the fact that a well-capitalized player could simply spend their way into controlling a DAO Is it a problem, though? Not according to the protocol. Asserting that it is a problem is a political statement.

danvoell 5y ago

"what’s stopping a centralized player from duplicating the benefits of that superior solution at a lower cost in a centralized platform?" - This has been my strategy as of late. There are some real cool concepts being built. But once you factor in gas/technology costs and the idea that they don't rely on anonymous p2p transactions, a centralized concept makes sense.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. There are two good reasons for that: 1) The culture around careful discussion of crypto currencies does well to keep seperated financial advice and claims about economics, incentives and technology (or in the crypto space you call of these 'the protocol' or something else to refer to the complete package a distributed ledger technology aims to achieve) - these claims can quickly get mixed up with lies to make money using buzzwords. You don't want this discussion to turn into people shilling what they personally own, trust me, and refraining from naming good projects when off the metaphorical sale's floor is simply good manners. 2) Crypto is still very nascent. Smart contract platforms that are fast and cheap are only starting to be rolled out and stress tested - without that most of the auxiliary functions people envision are only aspirations. If that's where basic smart contracts are right now, then more advanced protocols you can easily tell are much less far along. Because of the lack of industry proven protocols to do what believers pretty much know will happen someday, recommending any means imparting risk on people like you who expect others to tell you "what's up." Its not that fun giving someone risky investment advice when they refuse to look into it themselves and shoulder that risk.

Destiner 5y ago

Let me name a few. Note there's a bias toward Ethereum-based projects, since I'm more well versed with those. Projects like Uniswap, Maker, Aave, Balancer, etc provide financial services similar to traditional exchanging and lending. There are also things like ENS and TheGraph that provide more infrastructural benefit (i.e. name server and data indexing layer). And many, many more in the space of games & collectibles. Many of these had been used for years. Some of that usage is speculative, sure, but not all of it. It's already there. It's just way too early to do 1:1 comparisons with established non-crypto projects.

cableshaft 5y ago

> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. I don't know about politics, but there are definitely coins reshaping the economy. Hell, bitcoin by itself is reshaping the economy, being considered by many major institutions to officially be a new asset class now[1]. It doesn't mean a total replacement of the economy, if that's what you're thinking, but it's definitely reshaping it. DeFi is already taking a nice chunk out of central banks' lunch. Celsius, USDC, BlockFi, etc, are able to credibly offer 6% or higher yield[2], whereas banks can only offer, at best 0.6%, nowhere close to beating inflation. That's just two use cases, and if I had more time this morning I could go into more (didn't even touch on smart contracts at all). Wouldn't be surprised if you'll dismiss them out of hand as bad projects according to whatever internal criteria you have, and if so, I don't think you'll ever be able to convinced that anything a good project. It just gets annoying to hear people dismiss the entire space all the time without spending more than a few minutes looking into it, and/or assuming that the space never evolved from 4-5 years ago, where you could safely make those claims. [1]: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-officially-a-new-asset-class-goldman-sachs-103540636.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-is-officially-a-ne... [2]: https://defirate.com/usdc/ https://defirate.com/usdc/