4 ms·

At its heart, the strongest claim blockchain technology offers is pretty good data consistency assurances between nodes that don't trust one another. I guess th

At its heart, the strongest claim blockchain technology offers is pretty good data consistency assurances between nodes that don't trust one another. I guess that's kind of interesting as a technical demonstration, but it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that. This has been around and under continuous development since 2008, and still no actual use case. It seems like the space is full of hype-bro crooks and hype-bro dupes who feed off one another, warping a niche technical toy into whatever get-rich-quick revolutionary fantasy they want.

dehrmann 5y ago
The expression you're looking for to describe blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.
s3tz 5y ago
That's because everyone fell for the systems fallacy. Blockchain was designed for bitcoin to function, for that purpose alone. Then because it worked for that one use case of a decentralized storage/transfer of value, people assumed they could make it work for everything else. Not how technology works.
bawolff 5y ago
I think its important to add, with open group membership to that definition. If there is a known fixed list of nodes participating in the system, blockchain again becomes a bad choice.
Vetch 5y ago
> it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that Its utility is much easier to see if you're stuck in a system rife with corruption and have a general lack of trust in central institutions. A key aspect of corruption is that central authorities are not accountable to anyone. With blockchains, you can design systems where game theory via what's encoded into system design, can limit what concentrations of power can do. The centralized powers in bitcoin for example, can't rationally act in way that destroys the value of the system they're participating in. This is totally not true for many developing economies; just that property is already an encouraging one. Working on scaling these systems, making them less resource intensive and proving stronger more formal bounds for open peer to peer friendly non-discriminatory systems that are harder to corrupt and more robust to bad actors is a not a solution in search of a problem.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  Can you elaborate more? It's unclear to me how a data storage technology has any bearing on trust and power relationships, especially in interactions that are largely in meatspace.
- gls2ro 5y ago
  This sounds good. But I think technology cannot solve political issues or corruption of central authorities. The reason in my mind is simple: a corrupt central system will never choose such technology. In our human history we kept inventing technology but it (the technology) never fixed corruption. Of course maybe web3 is truly something special but I doubt this. Why: because I dont see how this techology changes fundamental human nature. Here is an example: people were saying that internet (web1 or web2 not sure how to name this) will offer free access to knowledge thus making everybody smarter. But we see this not happening. It is true that more people are smarter or better but many many more are influenced by internet in bad (corrupted) ways.

dehrmann 5y ago

The expression you're looking for to describe blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.

s3tz 5y ago

That's because everyone fell for the systems fallacy. Blockchain was designed for bitcoin to function, for that purpose alone. Then because it worked for that one use case of a decentralized storage/transfer of value, people assumed they could make it work for everything else. Not how technology works.

bawolff 5y ago

I think its important to add, with open group membership to that definition. If there is a known fixed list of nodes participating in the system, blockchain again becomes a bad choice.

Vetch 5y ago

> it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that Its utility is much easier to see if you're stuck in a system rife with corruption and have a general lack of trust in central institutions. A key aspect of corruption is that central authorities are not accountable to anyone. With blockchains, you can design systems where game theory via what's encoded into system design, can limit what concentrations of power can do. The centralized powers in bitcoin for example, can't rationally act in way that destroys the value of the system they're participating in. This is totally not true for many developing economies; just that property is already an encouraging one. Working on scaling these systems, making them less resource intensive and proving stronger more formal bounds for open peer to peer friendly non-discriminatory systems that are harder to corrupt and more robust to bad actors is a not a solution in search of a problem.

the_snooze 5y ago
Can you elaborate more? It's unclear to me how a data storage technology has any bearing on trust and power relationships, especially in interactions that are largely in meatspace.
gls2ro 5y ago
This sounds good. But I think technology cannot solve political issues or corruption of central authorities. The reason in my mind is simple: a corrupt central system will never choose such technology. In our human history we kept inventing technology but it (the technology) never fixed corruption. Of course maybe web3 is truly something special but I doubt this. Why: because I dont see how this techology changes fundamental human nature. Here is an example: people were saying that internet (web1 or web2 not sure how to name this) will offer free access to knowledge thus making everybody smarter. But we see this not happening. It is true that more people are smarter or better but many many more are influenced by internet in bad (corrupted) ways.