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> What I find interesting and promising is the ability to give uniqueness to THINGS in the digital world That's hashes you're thinking of. NFTs require hashes,

> What I find interesting and promising is the ability to give uniqueness to THINGS in the digital world That's hashes you're thinking of. NFTs require hashes, but hashes don't require NFTs. Whenever any cryptocurrency-related thing seems useful, you're seeing the potential of the underlying cryptography. Not the potential of the cryptocurrency thing.

rodiger 5y ago
Everything after that phrase does require the blockchain though- not individually, but as a sum it would be very difficult to bring that all together in a centralized manner.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Nope; you just need a P2P network. Exhibit A: BitTorrent. (Surprise surprise, the blockchain also requires an underlying P2P network.) A blockchain is actually more centralised than the underlying distributed network; it introduces centralisation-related problems that wouldn't otherwise exist.
  - rodiger 5y ago
    Yeah I agree. Though seems pedantic to imply blockchains aren't useful because they're "just" composed of cryptographic primitives. Shared state under potentially-adversarial conditions isn't an easy thing to achieve, and has usecases for which other P2P networks aren't sufficient.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      I'm sure blockchains are useful sometimes. I have never seen such a case in real life, though. (Until a few months ago, I was still looking.)
      - rodiger 5y ago
        I don't think they're useful to most people right now (or maybe ever), but there are some cool things in DeFi that are normally reserved for large institutions/not possible in traditional finance: 1. Being a liquidity provider to get a cut of exchange fees (https://docs.uniswap.org/protocol/concepts/V3-overview/concentrated-liquidity https://docs.uniswap.org/protocol/concepts/V3-overview/conce...) 2. Flashloans for arbitrage (https://aave.com/flash-loans/ https://aave.com/flash-loans/) 3. Autonomous governance for protocol updates (https://compound.finance/governance https://compound.finance/governance) 4. Decentralized perpetual contracts (https://www.perp.com/ https://www.perp.com/) 5. Decentralized mutual insurance (https://nexusmutual.io/ https://nexusmutual.io/) Many/all of these depend on speculation to derive value, but there's added value nonetheless

rodiger 5y ago

Everything after that phrase does require the blockchain though- not individually, but as a sum it would be very difficult to bring that all together in a centralized manner.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Nope; you just need a P2P network. Exhibit A: BitTorrent. (Surprise surprise, the blockchain also requires an underlying P2P network.) A blockchain is actually more centralised than the underlying distributed network; it introduces centralisation-related problems that wouldn't otherwise exist.
- rodiger 5y ago
  Yeah I agree. Though seems pedantic to imply blockchains aren't useful because they're "just" composed of cryptographic primitives. Shared state under potentially-adversarial conditions isn't an easy thing to achieve, and has usecases for which other P2P networks aren't sufficient.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    I'm sure blockchains are useful sometimes. I have never seen such a case in real life, though. (Until a few months ago, I was still looking.)
    - rodiger 5y ago
      I don't think they're useful to most people right now (or maybe ever), but there are some cool things in DeFi that are normally reserved for large institutions/not possible in traditional finance: 1. Being a liquidity provider to get a cut of exchange fees (https://docs.uniswap.org/protocol/concepts/V3-overview/concentrated-liquidity https://docs.uniswap.org/protocol/concepts/V3-overview/conce...) 2. Flashloans for arbitrage (https://aave.com/flash-loans/ https://aave.com/flash-loans/) 3. Autonomous governance for protocol updates (https://compound.finance/governance https://compound.finance/governance) 4. Decentralized perpetual contracts (https://www.perp.com/ https://www.perp.com/) 5. Decentralized mutual insurance (https://nexusmutual.io/ https://nexusmutual.io/) Many/all of these depend on speculation to derive value, but there's added value nonetheless