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> All that to say, a lot has changed in the technology world in the past six to twelve years It sure has. But not really that fundamentally, since 2009. A lot

> All that to say, a lot has changed in the technology world in the past six to twelve years It sure has. But not really that fundamentally, since 2009. A lot has changed in the blockchain space too. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it isn't true. A lot of those changes are on par with some of the tech advancements mentioned before my quote in the article. In 2009, you had bitcoin, so basically a distributed consensus workaround that enables artificial scarcity of fungible digital items. Today, you have sharded blockchains, triple entry bookkeeping, proof of stake, blockchains that handle incentivized file storage, alternate name lookup systems, purchasing compute power on an automated order book, liquidity pools (a major, major fintech advancement if you're not familiar with then), arbitrary code execution with a canonical record of it. It is absolutely still early days. Because these are decentralized consensus networks, there's inertia. Bitcoin is never going to be cutting edge. Because there's a lot of money to be made, there will be scams. Most of the "cutting edge" isn't cutting edge at all. But there are some real developments happening, allowing novel use cases, enabling very interesting things to be done. I'm not a fan of the whole web3 concept. I think 99% of the selling points that the charlatans hype every market cycle are nonsense. But a little digging beyond an animated JS bloat landing page (a red flag all it's own) and you can quickly figure out what projects potentially have something and what's bullshit. Or you can do what I do and assume a project is a scam until proven otherwise.

chx 5y ago
> Today, you have snip weird things no one gives one hoot about outside of the crypto shill word. All of this is just buttering the cat. https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1476873668605186050 https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1476873668605186050
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Well then what's the point of this discussion? The thread is "how has it advanced? How long can you call it early days?" If you just stop reading rebuttals as soon as they're mentioned you're better off talking to a wall, and you'd waste less people's time that way too.
  - Daishiman 5y ago
    Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vaporware.
    - barnabee 5y ago
      > Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. Why? You might care about building businesses, mass-market appeal, blah blah, but many (most?) technologies were created because people thought they were cool or interesting or just because they could. Nobody knew what LASERs were for when they invented them. To me the point of tech is to invent stuff and see what people do with it, not to make money or feed the economy or whatever, that’s a byproduct. Which coin is worth more money or what will gain mass market adoption is the least exciting part of the whole thing to me. We started with bitcoin having BFT consensus and proof of work to create decentralised, permissionless value (volatile or not!) but we now have multiple chains that can execute arbitrary code, sharding, performance improvements, lightweight chains, various types of proof of stake, token standards, automated market makers, DeFI, NFTs, DAOs, data availability proofs, IPFS, etc. etc.… that’s incredibly exciting! And if you read the actual academic and published research and see the advances being made, it’s even more incredible and wide ranging, and progress is very rapid. Of course it’d be nice if _some_ of it changed the world (and maybe it already has), but there’s plenty of time for that and it may only be 1% of the interesting new tech that turns out to do so. So what? It’s incredibly cool just to learn and understand it all and think about what might be. (And sure, buy tokens or whatever if you like them or just fancy a gamble. Do your research and don’t spend what you can’t afford to lose.)
      - chx 5y ago
        > to create decentralised, permissionless value Since when do we call a Ponzi value?
deanCommie 5y ago
Do we have proof of stake or do we have a lot of bitcoin folks avoiding criticism about the wasteful nature of most chains by claiming that proof of stake will fix all this. How many coins are actually using proof of stake? Why haven't the biggest including Ethereum done so?
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  The same reason Bitcoin doesn't implement every tom dick and Harry's supposed solution to every technical problem. The big boys have to get it right the first time. Again, inertia. Ethereum does have proof of stake, a protocol called Casper FFG. It is currently live on the Ethereum beacon chain, waiting for consensus to move the entire network to it. There are lots of smaller projects trying different protocols they call proof of stake too, as well as different proof of whatever they came up with for whatever reason. Most of them are veiled centralization, some of them are interesting for one reason or another. I'm not here to shill networks or coins so I won't be tossing names around.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    > waiting for consensus to move the entire network to it. May I clarify what that means? Does that mean a vote of the existing participants? If so, might it never happen?
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Here's some info on it, I believe your question is answered near the top where they talk about the transition mechanism. https://ethmerge.com/ https://ethmerge.com/
- baby 5y ago
  I’d say most of the coins today are proof of stake
  - eco 5y ago
    Most of the "proof of stake" coins are some form of delegated proof of stake, usually with an opaque and shady set of highly compensated validators with hidden connections to the project. Effectively proof of authority masquerading as proof of stake. This lets them have big TPS bragging rights while maintaining the appearance that they are running a decentralized blockchain rather than a centralized database with extra steps. Real, decentralized proof of stake is a hard problem that has only just started to become reality.
MaxfordAndSons 5y ago
> blockchains that handle incentivized file storage, alternate name lookup systems It would be a shame if IPFS and Filecoin end up in the dustbin of history if the web3 music stops. They're the only reasonable non-financial applications of blockchain tech that I've been able to wrap my head around to date.
- tim333 5y ago
  And IPFS isn't even really a blockchain tech. It's more a variation on bittorrent which predates bitcoin by several years.
  - laserlight 5y ago
    8 years, to be exact.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Yep, they're great. I prefer IPFS without the incentive layer of filecoin, but it is interesting to be able to incentivize storage in protocol, and there's obvious use cases. Plenty of people pay google drive or Dropbox for extra storage. Democratizing access to the demand and supply side of that market is pretty cool. There was a project called Golem aiming to do the same thing with compute, it was pretty cool last time I read about it. Not sure how far along it is, and I'm sure there are other projects aiming to do the same thing.
tootie 5y ago
Changes in the implementations are not the question. It's application that she's skeptical of. Who has found a reason to use Blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency? I actually witnessed one attempt. An actual Fortune 100 built a Blockchain for their public communications. Mostly just an excuse to show off their street cred. It landed with an absolute thud. Nobody cared.
- sweetbitter 5y ago
  One idea that I am fond of is Nym, an implementation of the high-latency mix network Loopix[0], but with incentives for nodes to act as mixnodes and message providers, using a model in which users pay nodes for their bandwidth. The goal being to provide strong anonymity in the face of a global passive adversary. [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536 https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536
- samhw 5y ago
  I’m not a crypto fan, but I’m not sure what that example demonstrates. A company made an overengineered gimmick just to show off their street cred; nothing came of it, just as they expected, and it was a waste of the engineering. I’m lost as to how this reflects poorly on the engineering technique.
  - tootie 5y ago
    My point is that big companies are pouring resources into finding something to do with Blockchain and just can't.
RustyConsul 5y ago
Comments like these make me wish hackernews had a follow button. You leave the article with a certain conception and sometimes it's utterly shattered in the comments; This is one of those times.

chx 5y ago

> Today, you have snip weird things no one gives one hoot about outside of the crypto shill word. All of this is just buttering the cat. https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1476873668605186050 https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1476873668605186050

betwixthewires 5y ago
Well then what's the point of this discussion? The thread is "how has it advanced? How long can you call it early days?" If you just stop reading rebuttals as soon as they're mentioned you're better off talking to a wall, and you'd waste less people's time that way too.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vaporware.
  - barnabee 5y ago
    > Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. Why? You might care about building businesses, mass-market appeal, blah blah, but many (most?) technologies were created because people thought they were cool or interesting or just because they could. Nobody knew what LASERs were for when they invented them. To me the point of tech is to invent stuff and see what people do with it, not to make money or feed the economy or whatever, that’s a byproduct. Which coin is worth more money or what will gain mass market adoption is the least exciting part of the whole thing to me. We started with bitcoin having BFT consensus and proof of work to create decentralised, permissionless value (volatile or not!) but we now have multiple chains that can execute arbitrary code, sharding, performance improvements, lightweight chains, various types of proof of stake, token standards, automated market makers, DeFI, NFTs, DAOs, data availability proofs, IPFS, etc. etc.… that’s incredibly exciting! And if you read the actual academic and published research and see the advances being made, it’s even more incredible and wide ranging, and progress is very rapid. Of course it’d be nice if _some_ of it changed the world (and maybe it already has), but there’s plenty of time for that and it may only be 1% of the interesting new tech that turns out to do so. So what? It’s incredibly cool just to learn and understand it all and think about what might be. (And sure, buy tokens or whatever if you like them or just fancy a gamble. Do your research and don’t spend what you can’t afford to lose.)
    - chx 5y ago
      > to create decentralised, permissionless value Since when do we call a Ponzi value?

deanCommie 5y ago

Do we have proof of stake or do we have a lot of bitcoin folks avoiding criticism about the wasteful nature of most chains by claiming that proof of stake will fix all this. How many coins are actually using proof of stake? Why haven't the biggest including Ethereum done so?

betwixthewires 5y ago
The same reason Bitcoin doesn't implement every tom dick and Harry's supposed solution to every technical problem. The big boys have to get it right the first time. Again, inertia. Ethereum does have proof of stake, a protocol called Casper FFG. It is currently live on the Ethereum beacon chain, waiting for consensus to move the entire network to it. There are lots of smaller projects trying different protocols they call proof of stake too, as well as different proof of whatever they came up with for whatever reason. Most of them are veiled centralization, some of them are interesting for one reason or another. I'm not here to shill networks or coins so I won't be tossing names around.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  > waiting for consensus to move the entire network to it. May I clarify what that means? Does that mean a vote of the existing participants? If so, might it never happen?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Here's some info on it, I believe your question is answered near the top where they talk about the transition mechanism. https://ethmerge.com/ https://ethmerge.com/
baby 5y ago
I’d say most of the coins today are proof of stake
- eco 5y ago
  Most of the "proof of stake" coins are some form of delegated proof of stake, usually with an opaque and shady set of highly compensated validators with hidden connections to the project. Effectively proof of authority masquerading as proof of stake. This lets them have big TPS bragging rights while maintaining the appearance that they are running a decentralized blockchain rather than a centralized database with extra steps. Real, decentralized proof of stake is a hard problem that has only just started to become reality.

MaxfordAndSons 5y ago

> blockchains that handle incentivized file storage, alternate name lookup systems It would be a shame if IPFS and Filecoin end up in the dustbin of history if the web3 music stops. They're the only reasonable non-financial applications of blockchain tech that I've been able to wrap my head around to date.

tim333 5y ago
And IPFS isn't even really a blockchain tech. It's more a variation on bittorrent which predates bitcoin by several years.
- laserlight 5y ago
  8 years, to be exact.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Yep, they're great. I prefer IPFS without the incentive layer of filecoin, but it is interesting to be able to incentivize storage in protocol, and there's obvious use cases. Plenty of people pay google drive or Dropbox for extra storage. Democratizing access to the demand and supply side of that market is pretty cool. There was a project called Golem aiming to do the same thing with compute, it was pretty cool last time I read about it. Not sure how far along it is, and I'm sure there are other projects aiming to do the same thing.

tootie 5y ago

Changes in the implementations are not the question. It's application that she's skeptical of. Who has found a reason to use Blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency? I actually witnessed one attempt. An actual Fortune 100 built a Blockchain for their public communications. Mostly just an excuse to show off their street cred. It landed with an absolute thud. Nobody cared.

sweetbitter 5y ago
One idea that I am fond of is Nym, an implementation of the high-latency mix network Loopix[0], but with incentives for nodes to act as mixnodes and message providers, using a model in which users pay nodes for their bandwidth. The goal being to provide strong anonymity in the face of a global passive adversary. [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536 https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536
samhw 5y ago
I’m not a crypto fan, but I’m not sure what that example demonstrates. A company made an overengineered gimmick just to show off their street cred; nothing came of it, just as they expected, and it was a waste of the engineering. I’m lost as to how this reflects poorly on the engineering technique.
- tootie 5y ago
  My point is that big companies are pouring resources into finding something to do with Blockchain and just can't.

RustyConsul 5y ago

Comments like these make me wish hackernews had a follow button. You leave the article with a certain conception and sometimes it's utterly shattered in the comments; This is one of those times.