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“Blockchain” is a class of technologies. I don’t think I would even call it a specific technology. It’s more akin to “packet switching” than it is akin to “Et

“Blockchain” is a class of technologies. I don’t think I would even call it a specific technology. It’s more akin to “packet switching” than it is akin to “Ethernet” or “TCP/IP”. I can understand some critics’ opposition to cryptocurrencies on public policy grounds (although I think most critics are too broad in their critique), or their opposition to NFTs based on the fact that many NFTs are bullshit don’t represent ownership of anything at all (although I think that will not always be the case). What I don’t understand—and where these critics loose credibility with me—is their rejection of the entire class of blockchain technologies. If you don’t want to use a blockchain to build your app, fine! Don’t do it! But if I want to build my app with a blockchain integration, or using a blockchain to store a portion of my data, what’s your problem with that? To me, it all sounds very similar to, “don’t build your app using Microsoft tech, only use open source” or “don’t use NoSQL for storage, use an RDBMS instead.” It’s like a new version of those ridiculous religious wars people would have over technology preferences, only now higher-stakes and even more passionate.

deleted 5y ago
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throwaway1777 5y ago
Agreed, the problem would be if we were forced to use blockchains, not if some people choose to use them. We aren’t there yet so I don’t see the problem.
caaqil 5y ago
People dismiss blockchain mainly because it's a solution looking for a problem, something that's not true for the other examples in your last paragraph. The fact that the people who are trying to sell it almost always seem to peddle some old scams in a trenchcoat doesn't help.
- z3c0 5y ago
  It isn't a "solution looking for a problem" anymore than any technology repeatedly shoehorned into unnecessary situations. NoSQL and AI were deployed in the same overzealous fashion, with the latter producing almost as much snake oil as the blockchain scene. If anything, it's the FOMO-ing developers of these techs that are looking for problems.
  - shafyy 5y ago
    > NoSQL and AI were deployed in the same overzealous fashion, with the latter producing almost as much snake oil as the blockchain scene. You must be kidding when you say that AI produced as much snake oil as cryptos. Sure, there were/are startups using AI as a selling point when there is not much behind, but in most cases AI actually solves real world problems and adds value. Cryptos are stricly a negative-sum game and ponzi schemes.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      I wouldn't say "in most cases", but I would also point out that AI has probably not been at the center of quite so many scams.
    - z3c0 5y ago
      I am not kidding. I work in the AI industry and I'd go so far as so say that less than half of deployed AI is properly tuned and not overfit. Tons of companies rushed to market half-baked "AI" solutions built by the cheapest "data scientist" they could find. Just because it's corporate snake-oil doesn't mean it isn't snake oil.
- birracerveza 5y ago
  No, it's a solution that solves the problem of centralization, stop with this "it's a solution looking for a problem" regurgitated rhetoric.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    Standardized APIs solve centralization. The use of Merkle trees to store way too much data and make a distributed computer slower than any individual node has nothing to do with that.
    - birracerveza 5y ago
      No, they don't. They still don't ensure data availability, consistency and you still have to trust the API provider, a third party. Web3 does away will all that. You just use the service.
      - moron4hire 5y ago
        Decentralization itself is what gets you availability, not the blockchain structure. A consensus algorithm is what gets you consistency, not a blockchain structure. There's no need to store your data in the most wasteful way to store data and perform compute to get these features. And "zero trust" is a myth. We can see that from the $7.7 BILLION in fraud that has been committed in crypto markets in just the last year. https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-grabbed-7-7-billion-worth-of-cryptocurrency-in-2021-say-researchers/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-grabbed-7-7-billion-w...
        birracerveza 5y ago
        How does decentralization give you availability? You need a financial incentive to make data available, that's where the tokens come in. Also stop conflating all crypto with scams, it's a moot point and borders on arguing in bad faith. People use good old money to run scams and rob people all the time. The fact that people use the tool with malicious intents doesn't detract from the value of the tool itself.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it. Tell me how someone living in a country with heavy capital controls can participate in the global economy on equal footing with someone from a more developed country without blockchain, and you might be a candidate for a Nobel Prize. Or tell me simply how someone can make a living with work that threatens the status quo without worrying about being ostracized. If you want to have any kind of hedge against the continuous, systemic institutional failures, you can not simply try to build another system that puts another institution at the top.
  - espadrine 5y ago
    > Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it. I doubt you will, but you asked, so: byzantine Paxos. The point of the person you are responding to is that solving decentralized consensus is only an academic exercise. If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can; the only recourse is political.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > byzantine Paxos. Okay, I should've added "permissionless" to the list of desired properties. If you can a priori choose who gets to participate you´d have a point. > If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can I think that the eternally losing "War on Drugs" should be a lesson that shows this is simply not true. Also, consider how Black Markets are a thing in authoritarian places, not free ones. So, no, as much as a country can make it difficult for others, they can not outright stop anyone without significant cost to themselves.
egeozcan 5y ago
Let's take another concept: Don't build your authentication on the idea of communication strictly through immutable cryptographic tokens (JWT). They do shine for resource sharing and caching though! So if someone completely rejected the idea of using cryptographic tokens completely, I'd say, wait a second... So don't use blockchain to create a digital currency, or anything decentralized because it still needs a central authority to determine the truth. What is the actual use case then?! What app uses it successfully and solves problems that were hard to solve before? I'm sincere, BTW. You sound like you have some examples in mind.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  Why shouldn't one build authentication on the idea of communication strictly through immutable cryptographic tokens?
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    You can't log out other sessions, for example, if you don't have a central Auth point. Anyway, this topic has been discussed to death already, you can also search in HN for detailed articles on the topic.
rvz 5y ago
> If you don’t want to use a blockchain to build your app, fine! Don’t do it! There you go. > But if I want to build my app with a blockchain integration, or using a blockchain to store a portion of my data, what’s your problem with that? Many people incorrectly associate 'blockchain' == 'Bitcoin' with all the issues it has. So anything blockchain is bad / scam / pyramid ponzi / planet destroyer, proof-of-waste (PoW), piece-of-sh*t (PoS) etc. If web3 with blockchain / NFT / metaverse / etc is not the future, ignore it. Simple. I should not see anyone who hates blockchains, NFTs or metaverse in general to continue to comment on every. single. thread. tweet. or post about it. as it is excruciatingly difficult for some to do this. So I will expect a ton of responses when another crypto scam happens, but not when an emerging regulated application of a blockchain project is used today.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  > Many people incorrectly associate 'blockchain' == 'Bitcoin' with all the issues it has. So anything blockchain is bad / scam / pyramid ponzi / planet destroyer, proof-of-waste (PoW), piece-of-sh*t (PoS) etc. The problem is that many people building blockchain projects mean "Blockchain" == "Ethereum", which is basically the same thing.
john61 5y ago
“don’t build your app using Microsoft tech, only use open source” is not a religious advice but a political and strategic one. It is about power, not technology.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  What do you think religions are?
rapnie 5y ago
I think that the main frustration is that the way that Web3 and Decentralization are promoted in blockchain/crypto circles is as if they are the only means of decentralization, and that Web 3.0 === blockchain/cryptocurrency only. And with that shoving numerous non-blockchain tech under the carpet. Drowned out because not on the hype train where the money fountain is.
Yizahi 5y ago
It's because people saying "I'm just building my own app with blockchain, don't hate me", are either lying to us or to themselves. Every honestly distributed blockchain is scam or soon to be scam, because to incentivize distribution a rewards are required (tokens), and that completely upends social expectations of the app, regardless of its stated purpose. Node keepers and token owners want to pump the token price by any means necessary. App users (if any) are facing an adversary and hostile environment because they are the afterthought, second class, and hodlers are a priority. Centralized blockchain on the other hand is simply ridiculous, except for the ultra narrow market of version control systems. People are delusional if they think a centralized blockchain will ever be more useful for anything else than a normal DB.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwaway1777 5y ago

Agreed, the problem would be if we were forced to use blockchains, not if some people choose to use them. We aren’t there yet so I don’t see the problem.

caaqil 5y ago

People dismiss blockchain mainly because it's a solution looking for a problem, something that's not true for the other examples in your last paragraph. The fact that the people who are trying to sell it almost always seem to peddle some old scams in a trenchcoat doesn't help.

z3c0 5y ago
It isn't a "solution looking for a problem" anymore than any technology repeatedly shoehorned into unnecessary situations. NoSQL and AI were deployed in the same overzealous fashion, with the latter producing almost as much snake oil as the blockchain scene. If anything, it's the FOMO-ing developers of these techs that are looking for problems.
- shafyy 5y ago
  > NoSQL and AI were deployed in the same overzealous fashion, with the latter producing almost as much snake oil as the blockchain scene. You must be kidding when you say that AI produced as much snake oil as cryptos. Sure, there were/are startups using AI as a selling point when there is not much behind, but in most cases AI actually solves real world problems and adds value. Cryptos are stricly a negative-sum game and ponzi schemes.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    I wouldn't say "in most cases", but I would also point out that AI has probably not been at the center of quite so many scams.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    I am not kidding. I work in the AI industry and I'd go so far as so say that less than half of deployed AI is properly tuned and not overfit. Tons of companies rushed to market half-baked "AI" solutions built by the cheapest "data scientist" they could find. Just because it's corporate snake-oil doesn't mean it isn't snake oil.
birracerveza 5y ago
No, it's a solution that solves the problem of centralization, stop with this "it's a solution looking for a problem" regurgitated rhetoric.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Standardized APIs solve centralization. The use of Merkle trees to store way too much data and make a distributed computer slower than any individual node has nothing to do with that.
  - birracerveza 5y ago
    No, they don't. They still don't ensure data availability, consistency and you still have to trust the API provider, a third party. Web3 does away will all that. You just use the service.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      Decentralization itself is what gets you availability, not the blockchain structure. A consensus algorithm is what gets you consistency, not a blockchain structure. There's no need to store your data in the most wasteful way to store data and perform compute to get these features. And "zero trust" is a myth. We can see that from the $7.7 BILLION in fraud that has been committed in crypto markets in just the last year. https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-grabbed-7-7-billion-worth-of-cryptocurrency-in-2021-say-researchers/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/scammers-grabbed-7-7-billion-w...
      - birracerveza 5y ago
        How does decentralization give you availability? You need a financial incentive to make data available, that's where the tokens come in. Also stop conflating all crypto with scams, it's a moot point and borders on arguing in bad faith. People use good old money to run scams and rob people all the time. The fact that people use the tool with malicious intents doesn't detract from the value of the tool itself.
rglullis 5y ago
Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it. Tell me how someone living in a country with heavy capital controls can participate in the global economy on equal footing with someone from a more developed country without blockchain, and you might be a candidate for a Nobel Prize. Or tell me simply how someone can make a living with work that threatens the status quo without worrying about being ostracized. If you want to have any kind of hedge against the continuous, systemic institutional failures, you can not simply try to build another system that puts another institution at the top.
- espadrine 5y ago
  > Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it. I doubt you will, but you asked, so: byzantine Paxos. The point of the person you are responding to is that solving decentralized consensus is only an academic exercise. If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can; the only recourse is political.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > byzantine Paxos. Okay, I should've added "permissionless" to the list of desired properties. If you can a priori choose who gets to participate you´d have a point. > If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can I think that the eternally losing "War on Drugs" should be a lesson that shows this is simply not true. Also, consider how Black Markets are a thing in authoritarian places, not free ones. So, no, as much as a country can make it difficult for others, they can not outright stop anyone without significant cost to themselves.

egeozcan 5y ago

Let's take another concept: Don't build your authentication on the idea of communication strictly through immutable cryptographic tokens (JWT). They do shine for resource sharing and caching though! So if someone completely rejected the idea of using cryptographic tokens completely, I'd say, wait a second... So don't use blockchain to create a digital currency, or anything decentralized because it still needs a central authority to determine the truth. What is the actual use case then?! What app uses it successfully and solves problems that were hard to solve before? I'm sincere, BTW. You sound like you have some examples in mind.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
Why shouldn't one build authentication on the idea of communication strictly through immutable cryptographic tokens?
- egeozcan 5y ago
  You can't log out other sessions, for example, if you don't have a central Auth point. Anyway, this topic has been discussed to death already, you can also search in HN for detailed articles on the topic.

rvz 5y ago

> If you don’t want to use a blockchain to build your app, fine! Don’t do it! There you go. > But if I want to build my app with a blockchain integration, or using a blockchain to store a portion of my data, what’s your problem with that? Many people incorrectly associate 'blockchain' == 'Bitcoin' with all the issues it has. So anything blockchain is bad / scam / pyramid ponzi / planet destroyer, proof-of-waste (PoW), piece-of-sh*t (PoS) etc. If web3 with blockchain / NFT / metaverse / etc is not the future, ignore it. Simple. I should not see anyone who hates blockchains, NFTs or metaverse in general to continue to comment on every. single. thread. tweet. or post about it. as it is excruciatingly difficult for some to do this. So I will expect a ton of responses when another crypto scam happens, but not when an emerging regulated application of a blockchain project is used today.

moron4hire 5y ago
> Many people incorrectly associate 'blockchain' == 'Bitcoin' with all the issues it has. So anything blockchain is bad / scam / pyramid ponzi / planet destroyer, proof-of-waste (PoW), piece-of-sh*t (PoS) etc. The problem is that many people building blockchain projects mean "Blockchain" == "Ethereum", which is basically the same thing.

john61 5y ago

“don’t build your app using Microsoft tech, only use open source” is not a religious advice but a political and strategic one. It is about power, not technology.

moron4hire 5y ago
What do you think religions are?

rapnie 5y ago

I think that the main frustration is that the way that Web3 and Decentralization are promoted in blockchain/crypto circles is as if they are the only means of decentralization, and that Web 3.0 === blockchain/cryptocurrency only. And with that shoving numerous non-blockchain tech under the carpet. Drowned out because not on the hype train where the money fountain is.

Yizahi 5y ago

It's because people saying "I'm just building my own app with blockchain, don't hate me", are either lying to us or to themselves. Every honestly distributed blockchain is scam or soon to be scam, because to incentivize distribution a rewards are required (tokens), and that completely upends social expectations of the app, regardless of its stated purpose. Node keepers and token owners want to pump the token price by any means necessary. App users (if any) are facing an adversary and hostile environment because they are the afterthought, second class, and hodlers are a priority. Centralized blockchain on the other hand is simply ridiculous, except for the ultra narrow market of version control systems. People are delusional if they think a centralized blockchain will ever be more useful for anything else than a normal DB.