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> It could be a meaningful technological shift if a lot of the financial infrastructure goes decentralized It's important to note that “DeFi” is more centralis

> It could be a meaningful technological shift if a lot of the financial infrastructure goes decentralized It's important to note that “DeFi” is more centralised than our existing financial infrastructure. (Also, our existing infrastructure mostly uses open, public, well-known standards with many implementations; most DeFi stuff… documents how it currently works, I guess? Though it's hard to find that documentation.)

spinny 5y ago
have you tried google?
- NationalPark 5y ago
  Seems super unlikely that somebody with a HN account is unfamiliar with search engines, doesn't it?
  - spinny 5y ago
    Seems super unlikely that somebody with a HN account can't find docs for defi projects that in most cases have github accounts with available contracts and api docs, doesn't it? Maybe it's just deceptive
    - erulabs 5y ago
      And not to mention that by definition, those DeFi contracts are readable. The actual code, itself. Sure, there might be (and probably are) bugs, and we need auditing tools, the list goes on, but at least it's not a black box.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        The compiled binaries, sure. If you peer with the blockchain, collect a block containing the smart contract and extract the binary from it. At least smart contracts usually don't have that much code, so it's not too much effort to reverse-engineer. But that's not source code.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  If you know where the documentation for the most popular DeFi system, Bitcoin, is, then by all means share it. • What does the peer-to-peer network protocol look like? • How do I make a transaction / mine a block? I know how to do this using end-user wallet applications, but the open protocols are so very well documented that I'm sure you can find this information easily. The pages that show up in search results[0][1] don't really have this information. It gives me a high-level overview, tells me that it uses TCP and which port it uses, and gives the structure of the TCP packets (with some examples), but there's a whole load of stuff that's just never defined. To actually understand what's going on, I then have to read the source code. And… making a transaction?[3] Mining a block?[2] No chance. I know it's “double SHA256” and that's about it. (I can look at the source code to find out, sure… but an open standard? Open secret, more like. The flaming whitepaper[4] is more useful than these docs.) This is Bitcoin, the best-known, most-popular, (presumably) best-documented DeFi system on the 'net. Ethereum has… a blog post, an onlinelibrary.wiley.com book and an academic article. I don't even want to know what other stuff has. Most DeFi garbage barely has a whitepaper. [0]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/p2p_network.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/p2p_network.html [1]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/p2p_networking.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/p2p_networking.html [2]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html#serialized-blocks https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html#ser... [3]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/transactions.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/transactions.html [4]: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (which has apparently been taken down…?) https://web.archive.org/web/20140320135003if_/https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140320135003if_/https://bitcoi...
  - spinny 5y ago
    "How do I make a transaction / mine a block?" that's a "how does it works ?" kind of question, you need to know how all the small parts work to explain the functionality. Yes, some aspects you need to look at the code, others you will find documented i would recommend https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ which has very in-depth resources but it seems to be down at the moment
    - 5y ago

spinny 5y ago

have you tried google?

NationalPark 5y ago
Seems super unlikely that somebody with a HN account is unfamiliar with search engines, doesn't it?
- spinny 5y ago
  Seems super unlikely that somebody with a HN account can't find docs for defi projects that in most cases have github accounts with available contracts and api docs, doesn't it? Maybe it's just deceptive
  - erulabs 5y ago
    And not to mention that by definition, those DeFi contracts are readable. The actual code, itself. Sure, there might be (and probably are) bugs, and we need auditing tools, the list goes on, but at least it's not a black box.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      The compiled binaries, sure. If you peer with the blockchain, collect a block containing the smart contract and extract the binary from it. At least smart contracts usually don't have that much code, so it's not too much effort to reverse-engineer. But that's not source code.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
If you know where the documentation for the most popular DeFi system, Bitcoin, is, then by all means share it. • What does the peer-to-peer network protocol look like? • How do I make a transaction / mine a block? I know how to do this using end-user wallet applications, but the open protocols are so very well documented that I'm sure you can find this information easily. The pages that show up in search results[0][1] don't really have this information. It gives me a high-level overview, tells me that it uses TCP and which port it uses, and gives the structure of the TCP packets (with some examples), but there's a whole load of stuff that's just never defined. To actually understand what's going on, I then have to read the source code. And… making a transaction?[3] Mining a block?[2] No chance. I know it's “double SHA256” and that's about it. (I can look at the source code to find out, sure… but an open standard? Open secret, more like. The flaming whitepaper[4] is more useful than these docs.) This is Bitcoin, the best-known, most-popular, (presumably) best-documented DeFi system on the 'net. Ethereum has… a blog post, an onlinelibrary.wiley.com book and an academic article. I don't even want to know what other stuff has. Most DeFi garbage barely has a whitepaper. [0]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/p2p_network.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/p2p_network.html [1]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/p2p_networking.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/p2p_networking.html [2]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html#serialized-blocks https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html#ser... [3]: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/transactions.html https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/transactions.html [4]: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (which has apparently been taken down…?) https://web.archive.org/web/20140320135003if_/https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140320135003if_/https://bitcoi...
- spinny 5y ago
  "How do I make a transaction / mine a block?" that's a "how does it works ?" kind of question, you need to know how all the small parts work to explain the functionality. Yes, some aspects you need to look at the code, others you will find documented i would recommend https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ https://learnmeabitcoin.com/ which has very in-depth resources but it seems to be down at the moment
  - 5y ago