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> Why would you want to depend on a central authority when you can have a network of trusted blockchain users all signing and broadcasting their transactions to
by throwawaygh 5y ago
> Why would you want to depend on a central authority when you can have a network of trusted blockchain users all signing and broadcasting their transactions to each-other in real time, without an intermediary?
The choice here is between:
1. A known intermediary with a physical address to which a judge/magistrate can have a summons mailed and which my local elected government officials can at least in principle regulate, or
2. An unknown number of unidentified intermediaries, at least some of whom are almost certainly beyond jurisdictional reach.
If I'm fucking around with gambling money, whatever. If we're talking about national payment infrastructure, the choice is obvious.
> [databases and] upgradability woes therein, when you can use a blockchain
...huh? I don't understand.
- 3np 5y agoI think you misunderstand. The answer is most likely 3. A consortium of permissioned parties. I'm assuming at least the 3 major banks and some if not all of the 70 companies. This is similar to Diem (aka Facebook Libra). PoA (Proof-of-Authority) as opposed to PoW or PoS. The point is that the parties keep each other in check, and collectively have some level of fault tolerance. At the scale of a national economy, it's desirable to not have a single point of failure on an institutional level. If you think "Signed Git+Raft/Paxos", that's pretty close. I'm curious if they'll allow some level of unpermissioned access to the chain and/or for individuals to manage their own keys. The pessimist in my thinks no, but one can dream.
- throwawaygh 5y agoI don't think this is what rattlesnakedave was describing.
- 3np 5y agoIt was. The key words are "trusted" and "permissioned". Cryptocurrency validators are untrusted and the networks are unpermissioned. Money on a blockchain isn’t necessarily cryptocurrency.