3 ms·

> The author seems to miss that one of Moxie's central criticisms is that, all else being equal, distributed solutions tend to lag centralized ones. Distribute

> The author seems to miss that one of Moxie's central criticisms is that, all else being equal, distributed solutions tend to lag centralized ones. Distributed crypto offerings do not lag much behind in terms of features, but they are costly and inefficient, which drives most users to centralized solutions. This creates positive network effects for OpenSea (nft), Binance, Coinbase (crypto trading). L2 / zk-rollups / validiums have potential to change this balance of power by introducing low-cost, fast transactions. Which can be achieved by making transaction execution/verification faster through ZK proofs and offloading execution off-chain (without sacrificing security). There is intense competition in the space (zkSync, Polygon Hermez, Starkware, Loopring and others). Some large players like banks or BaaS companies may create or license their own private rollups. So far most wallets do not support L2 rollups, I've only heard of Argent supporting zkSync. This is of course a hybrid solution, not for purists. Blockchain critics will have fun criticizing it for the next 5 years while it scales. :)

md_ 5y ago
It’s a fair point, but it’s unclear to me to what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up. I’m not at all an expert, but I’ve been wondering if a world where we all regularly use Bitcoin, but only via large, centralized L2 networks, would be one which feels exactly like the world of today, except (say) Visa or Stripe use Bitcoin instead of…fedwire? I dunno?…for clearance. And as a user, would that actually benefit me?
- practice9 5y ago
  > what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up Security guarantees don't change, zk-proof will guarantee that your transaction was processed as is (without modifications). The resiliency of a rollup would depend on how it's off-chain "backend" is implemented - if it has good load-balancing, if it is multi-cloud etc. It's possible that a specific rollup can try to censor your transaction (similar to Visa or Mastercard). I can see a future where if a specific rollup cannot accept your transaction, your wallet would retry successfully with another rollup or try a censorship-resistant channel to push your transaction through. Transaction fees being negligible simplify the UX for user, they may not even know there was any problem unless they look. This is a good post (somewhat technical) on rollups in Ethereum ecosystem and the areas for improvements: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html I don't know much about Bitcoin L2 networks, but it makes sense that lots of infra/business logic around that would be implemented by centralized companies (Square, Stripe?). No smart contracts support is a limiting factor.
8note 5y ago
what would be the time required to add transaction invalidation to the bitcoin blockchain to undo frauduluent transactions?

md_ 5y ago

It’s a fair point, but it’s unclear to me to what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up. I’m not at all an expert, but I’ve been wondering if a world where we all regularly use Bitcoin, but only via large, centralized L2 networks, would be one which feels exactly like the world of today, except (say) Visa or Stripe use Bitcoin instead of…fedwire? I dunno?…for clearance. And as a user, would that actually benefit me?

practice9 5y ago
> what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up Security guarantees don't change, zk-proof will guarantee that your transaction was processed as is (without modifications). The resiliency of a rollup would depend on how it's off-chain "backend" is implemented - if it has good load-balancing, if it is multi-cloud etc. It's possible that a specific rollup can try to censor your transaction (similar to Visa or Mastercard). I can see a future where if a specific rollup cannot accept your transaction, your wallet would retry successfully with another rollup or try a censorship-resistant channel to push your transaction through. Transaction fees being negligible simplify the UX for user, they may not even know there was any problem unless they look. This is a good post (somewhat technical) on rollups in Ethereum ecosystem and the areas for improvements: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html I don't know much about Bitcoin L2 networks, but it makes sense that lots of infra/business logic around that would be implemented by centralized companies (Square, Stripe?). No smart contracts support is a limiting factor.

8note 5y ago

what would be the time required to add transaction invalidation to the bitcoin blockchain to undo frauduluent transactions?