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Bullcrap. Why? Any written contract can be reviewed and understood by a person. These contracts can be enforced by the use of the existing institutions. Where

Bullcrap. Why? Any written contract can be reviewed and understood by a person. These contracts can be enforced by the use of the existing institutions. Where as something something tokens offering: - Contracts are written in an esotheric programming language that pretends to reflect a real-world contract - These contracts are unenforceable - And they still depend on some entity somewhere to enter correct info into the system. All that can be done and is being done by hundreds of companies without the use of bullshit tech.

sanderjd 5y ago
I think this sort of gets at something that makes me uneasy about the "there are no use cases" criticism. People seem to want to see use cases tackled that were impossible before this technology came onto the scene. But that doesn't seem like the right standard to me. We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said that sending digital communications to one another could "be done and is being done by hundreds of companies without the use of bullshit tech" with respect to faxing vs. emailing, and yet email is still better. I don't know if this ILO thing is useful at all, but it doesn't have to be brand new to be useful. If it eliminates some inefficiencies in some part of the process, that's useful. If you could have eliminated those same inefficiencies using a database and a normal company running services on top of it, that's interesting, and the question is whether there is some competitive advantage to implementing it this way instead of that way. Enough people think there is an advantage in implementing these things that require coordination using public blockchains to make me think there might be, but it is not obvious enough that there is an advantage to make me certain. But I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said that sending digital communications to one another could "be done and is being done by hundreds of companies without the use of bullshit tech" No. No, I couldn't. The value of email was immediately evident and apparent. One of the major reasons fax survived for as long as it had is the lack of good/accepted digital signatures. > and yet email is still better. You said it yourself: email is better. Is "run-esotheric-programming-language-on-worlds-most-innefecient-computer" better? While keeping literally every other part of the process either the same (litigation, proceding, money etc. are handled through the same old channels) or worse (everyone has to get onto this particular coin) > it doesn't have to be brand new to be useful. If it eliminates some inefficiencies in some part of the process, that's useful. Does it? Where's the proof it does? And "by eliminating some inefficiencies, how many new inefficiencies does it introduce"? > Enough people think there is an advantage in implementing these things that require coordination using public blockchains to make me think there might be No. Enough people are enamoured with the idea of getting rich quick that we are witnessing a never ending (for now) rat race to develop with and come up with justifications for the tech. > But I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take. I literally provided reasons why this is bullshit. There's nothing knee-jerk about my reaction. However, crypto-peddlers have the same knee-jerk reaction to any criticism: "crypto will magically solve all the issues because crypto" and "crypto is the next email/world-wide-web/fairy-pixel-dust/cure-for-cancer, you just have to believe it".
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    This really seems like an overreaction to what I said. The email thing is a metaphor. The point it attempts to make is not about obviousness of superiority of a technology, but that not all new technologies are novel. Sometimes they do an existing thing in a different way. I do think it is inaccurate to say that everyone interested in the space is just in it as a get rich quick scheme. There is a very unfortunate and distracting amount of hype and speculation, but lots of people are just trying to build stuff they (correctly or incorrectly) believe will be useful, just like I've seen people do during the mobile boom and the web boom before that. I share your skepticism, but not your certainty.
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
  All use cases are going to be in the form "you can do X, but now in a decentralized way" because at the end of the day, it's just code running in a virtual machine while some startup could've run similar code on a machine in AWS. Many people do not see any value in decentralization and think traditional (centralized) solutions are fine or better (I'm not saying they are right or wrong). But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable. No. We don't "fundamentally disagree". We're looking at proposed "solutions" and immediately see the vast disconnect between what they claim to do/solve/improve and what they actually do/solve/improve. Any questions and criticism of these claims and solutions is immediately dismissed because these are unquestionable magical solutions beyond any reproach. And proponents of these things can't even show how and why they are better beyond "because crypto", "because decentralised", "because blockchain", as if this explains things and makes thing automatically better. No, they don't.
    - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
      > Any questions and criticism of these claims and solutions is immediately dismissed because these are unquestionable magical solutions beyond any reproach. Do you have an example of this happening in this thread? Because I don't think this is the case on HN generally. > And proponents of these things can't even show how and why they are better beyond [...] "because decentralised" [...] as if this explains things and makes thing automatically better. No, they don't. You seem to be agreeing with my point about how the value of a decentralized solution is a fundamental disagreement.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > Do you have an example of this happening in this thread? This thread doesn't say this outright, but these basically says the same thing: - "We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said..." - "I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take." > You seem to be agreeing with my point about how the value of a decentralized solution is a fundamental disagreement. No, I don't agree. Your original quote is: "But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable." Critics do not disagree that decentralized coordination is valuable. Decentralized coordination is an interesting and complex topic. We will never see any use cases as valid because none of the provided use cases are valid because of either or both of these: - a staggering amount of issues introduced by using blockchains. Because the people proposing blockchains have little to no understanding of what the real world needs - solutions already exist that provide the same thing faster, better, and with significantly more guarantees than any blockchain solution. First and foremost because none of the moving parts in the solution actually have a need for a blockchain All this has nothing to do with the "value of distributed coordination". Blockchain is a distributed append-only ledger. Give me a use-case for that, and I, as a critic, will say: yup, a valid use case. If you're saying "yes, litigation funding needs blockchain because crypto and decentralized", I will come at you with criticism, and will ask you to prove that bringing blockchain into the equation actually improves things or solves any significant number of issues.

sanderjd 5y ago

I think this sort of gets at something that makes me uneasy about the "there are no use cases" criticism. People seem to want to see use cases tackled that were impossible before this technology came onto the scene. But that doesn't seem like the right standard to me. We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said that sending digital communications to one another could "be done and is being done by hundreds of companies without the use of bullshit tech" with respect to faxing vs. emailing, and yet email is still better. I don't know if this ILO thing is useful at all, but it doesn't have to be brand new to be useful. If it eliminates some inefficiencies in some part of the process, that's useful. If you could have eliminated those same inefficiencies using a database and a normal company running services on top of it, that's interesting, and the question is whether there is some competitive advantage to implementing it this way instead of that way. Enough people think there is an advantage in implementing these things that require coordination using public blockchains to make me think there might be, but it is not obvious enough that there is an advantage to make me certain. But I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take.

dmitriid 5y ago
> We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said that sending digital communications to one another could "be done and is being done by hundreds of companies without the use of bullshit tech" No. No, I couldn't. The value of email was immediately evident and apparent. One of the major reasons fax survived for as long as it had is the lack of good/accepted digital signatures. > and yet email is still better. You said it yourself: email is better. Is "run-esotheric-programming-language-on-worlds-most-innefecient-computer" better? While keeping literally every other part of the process either the same (litigation, proceding, money etc. are handled through the same old channels) or worse (everyone has to get onto this particular coin) > it doesn't have to be brand new to be useful. If it eliminates some inefficiencies in some part of the process, that's useful. Does it? Where's the proof it does? And "by eliminating some inefficiencies, how many new inefficiencies does it introduce"? > Enough people think there is an advantage in implementing these things that require coordination using public blockchains to make me think there might be No. Enough people are enamoured with the idea of getting rich quick that we are witnessing a never ending (for now) rat race to develop with and come up with justifications for the tech. > But I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take. I literally provided reasons why this is bullshit. There's nothing knee-jerk about my reaction. However, crypto-peddlers have the same knee-jerk reaction to any criticism: "crypto will magically solve all the issues because crypto" and "crypto is the next email/world-wide-web/fairy-pixel-dust/cure-for-cancer, you just have to believe it".
- sanderjd 5y ago
  This really seems like an overreaction to what I said. The email thing is a metaphor. The point it attempts to make is not about obviousness of superiority of a technology, but that not all new technologies are novel. Sometimes they do an existing thing in a different way. I do think it is inaccurate to say that everyone interested in the space is just in it as a get rich quick scheme. There is a very unfortunate and distracting amount of hype and speculation, but lots of people are just trying to build stuff they (correctly or incorrectly) believe will be useful, just like I've seen people do during the mobile boom and the web boom before that. I share your skepticism, but not your certainty.
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
All use cases are going to be in the form "you can do X, but now in a decentralized way" because at the end of the day, it's just code running in a virtual machine while some startup could've run similar code on a machine in AWS. Many people do not see any value in decentralization and think traditional (centralized) solutions are fine or better (I'm not saying they are right or wrong). But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable. No. We don't "fundamentally disagree". We're looking at proposed "solutions" and immediately see the vast disconnect between what they claim to do/solve/improve and what they actually do/solve/improve. Any questions and criticism of these claims and solutions is immediately dismissed because these are unquestionable magical solutions beyond any reproach. And proponents of these things can't even show how and why they are better beyond "because crypto", "because decentralised", "because blockchain", as if this explains things and makes thing automatically better. No, they don't.
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    > Any questions and criticism of these claims and solutions is immediately dismissed because these are unquestionable magical solutions beyond any reproach. Do you have an example of this happening in this thread? Because I don't think this is the case on HN generally. > And proponents of these things can't even show how and why they are better beyond [...] "because decentralised" [...] as if this explains things and makes thing automatically better. No, they don't. You seem to be agreeing with my point about how the value of a decentralized solution is a fundamental disagreement.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > Do you have an example of this happening in this thread? This thread doesn't say this outright, but these basically says the same thing: - "We had fax machines before we had email. You could have said..." - "I don't think knee jerk dismissal is the right stance to take." > You seem to be agreeing with my point about how the value of a decentralized solution is a fundamental disagreement. No, I don't agree. Your original quote is: "But this is why critics will never see any use cases as valid, because they fundamentally disagree that the thing blockchains do (decentralized coordination) is valuable." Critics do not disagree that decentralized coordination is valuable. Decentralized coordination is an interesting and complex topic. We will never see any use cases as valid because none of the provided use cases are valid because of either or both of these: - a staggering amount of issues introduced by using blockchains. Because the people proposing blockchains have little to no understanding of what the real world needs - solutions already exist that provide the same thing faster, better, and with significantly more guarantees than any blockchain solution. First and foremost because none of the moving parts in the solution actually have a need for a blockchain All this has nothing to do with the "value of distributed coordination". Blockchain is a distributed append-only ledger. Give me a use-case for that, and I, as a critic, will say: yup, a valid use case. If you're saying "yes, litigation funding needs blockchain because crypto and decentralized", I will come at you with criticism, and will ask you to prove that bringing blockchain into the equation actually improves things or solves any significant number of issues.