4 ms·

Disclaimer: I don’t own any crypto, even though I can tell it’s the future because I don’t know which ones will win. Web3s “killer app” is government services.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any crypto, even though I can tell it’s the future because I don’t know which ones will win. Web3s “killer app” is government services. Crypto in general is a pseudonym for open source rewrites of developed countries’ legacy government infrastructure for developing countries. Eventually it’ll be so good it’ll replace the legacy variants that exist today.

dangoor 5y ago
> Web3s “killer app” is government services. I don't understand. Can you give an example? A government is already a central entity. If you have some service controlled by a central entity, why not build it in the standard database-on-a-server approach which is much easier?
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Because whoever controls that database can change the data in it.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    This was the crypto pitch for several years except it was for supply chain. "You can't hack the database!!" that didn't work out either because it doesn't stop someone from putting incorrect data into a database regardless of how easy it is to hack the database. Same thing here. There is nothing to stop the government employee from putting incorrect data in the database. This is why people see Crypto/Web3 as a solution looking for a problem. The complaint people have about the DMV isn't that their database gets hacked. The complaint is that the government workers do not care about doing a good or quick job.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Blockchain seems like a very costly way to add transparency and auditing. Especially if the chain will be controlled by one or only a few stakeholders.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    So maybe rather than investing in the hope of some technologically-provided immutability, you just use the historical method(s) of (a) applying significant criminal charges to changing the data (b) structures and processes to audit data transformation.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  For example, when buying a house you need to transfer the title into your name. The title is stored as a public ledger that can currently be requested by anyone. There is also other public metadata about houses that are public like the purchased price. This is a very good example of a government service that will be disrupted by blockchain. The US, Canada, UK versions are relatively good today. However, maybe El Salvador[0] needs a better way to manage its titles and hiring a software consultanting firm to build that would be “too expensive” (not including the variability in the final product - i.e. it could cost a lot and still suck) for it to be worthwhile. Even for the service in the US there are still middlemen needed and it’s relatively clear that security is not a strong suit of corporate America let alone the revolving door of government contractors. In the long run it’s just cheaper to use the open source blockchain code built with first class security in mind. The standardized and public interface of a blockchain also lets other companies extend the services without the extra red tape, e.g. it would be nice to get notifications of my neighborhood housing getting sold, etc. But this is really a bonus and up in the air, the killer app is really for developing countries. [0] not to pick on El Salvador I don’t know the quality of their services. I’m only using them because of the BitCoin stuff.
ramijames 5y ago
I hope that you are right. Using open networks for transparent governance is the right way to go for democracies.
HideousKojima 5y ago
Why can't we just pass legislation requiring government software to be open source and government databases to be open access? This is already the case in several jurisdictions. I currently work for a local government, and pretty much everything in our databases (apart from SSNs and certain HIPAA-protected data in the health department's database) can be freely accessed via an FOIA request. Some legislation requiring that these DBs (or a live copy) be directly accessible by the public would be relatively easy and inexpensive to implement. What advantages would there be by doing this via crypto/blockchain/whatever?
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  As it’s been explained to me the biggest benefit is for countries that don’t yet have this infrastructure built. For countries that do have this built, it’s been explained to me as a cost savings compared with hiring a government contractor to maintain or improve the service. Especially in the context of InfoSec. Not only do these legacy services need to keep being updated because of potential zero-days but also even the expensive contractors (even mega-cap corporations) fuck up InfoSec “relatively” regularly and the cheaper government contractors are only going to be worse on average. Having the worlds best minds build and test the InfoSec of different crypto solutions seems like it will just be the cheapest option in the long run.

dangoor 5y ago

> Web3s “killer app” is government services. I don't understand. Can you give an example? A government is already a central entity. If you have some service controlled by a central entity, why not build it in the standard database-on-a-server approach which is much easier?

thepasswordis 5y ago
Because whoever controls that database can change the data in it.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  This was the crypto pitch for several years except it was for supply chain. "You can't hack the database!!" that didn't work out either because it doesn't stop someone from putting incorrect data into a database regardless of how easy it is to hack the database. Same thing here. There is nothing to stop the government employee from putting incorrect data in the database. This is why people see Crypto/Web3 as a solution looking for a problem. The complaint people have about the DMV isn't that their database gets hacked. The complaint is that the government workers do not care about doing a good or quick job.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Blockchain seems like a very costly way to add transparency and auditing. Especially if the chain will be controlled by one or only a few stakeholders.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  So maybe rather than investing in the hope of some technologically-provided immutability, you just use the historical method(s) of (a) applying significant criminal charges to changing the data (b) structures and processes to audit data transformation.
yazaddaruvala 5y ago
For example, when buying a house you need to transfer the title into your name. The title is stored as a public ledger that can currently be requested by anyone. There is also other public metadata about houses that are public like the purchased price. This is a very good example of a government service that will be disrupted by blockchain. The US, Canada, UK versions are relatively good today. However, maybe El Salvador[0] needs a better way to manage its titles and hiring a software consultanting firm to build that would be “too expensive” (not including the variability in the final product - i.e. it could cost a lot and still suck) for it to be worthwhile. Even for the service in the US there are still middlemen needed and it’s relatively clear that security is not a strong suit of corporate America let alone the revolving door of government contractors. In the long run it’s just cheaper to use the open source blockchain code built with first class security in mind. The standardized and public interface of a blockchain also lets other companies extend the services without the extra red tape, e.g. it would be nice to get notifications of my neighborhood housing getting sold, etc. But this is really a bonus and up in the air, the killer app is really for developing countries. [0] not to pick on El Salvador I don’t know the quality of their services. I’m only using them because of the BitCoin stuff.

ramijames 5y ago

I hope that you are right. Using open networks for transparent governance is the right way to go for democracies.

HideousKojima 5y ago

Why can't we just pass legislation requiring government software to be open source and government databases to be open access? This is already the case in several jurisdictions. I currently work for a local government, and pretty much everything in our databases (apart from SSNs and certain HIPAA-protected data in the health department's database) can be freely accessed via an FOIA request. Some legislation requiring that these DBs (or a live copy) be directly accessible by the public would be relatively easy and inexpensive to implement. What advantages would there be by doing this via crypto/blockchain/whatever?

yazaddaruvala 5y ago
As it’s been explained to me the biggest benefit is for countries that don’t yet have this infrastructure built. For countries that do have this built, it’s been explained to me as a cost savings compared with hiring a government contractor to maintain or improve the service. Especially in the context of InfoSec. Not only do these legacy services need to keep being updated because of potential zero-days but also even the expensive contractors (even mega-cap corporations) fuck up InfoSec “relatively” regularly and the cheaper government contractors are only going to be worse on average. Having the worlds best minds build and test the InfoSec of different crypto solutions seems like it will just be the cheapest option in the long run.