6 ms·

The Truth on the Blockchain

35 points by p4bl0 5y ago

aeternum 5y ago
The author gets it wrong with this quote: >The only truth that is guaranteed by the recording of a given information on a given blockchain, is that this particular information is written on this particular blockchain. The second part is that $X worth of real-world resources have been consumed in building this blockchain, so this one blockchain and the particular information inside is worth paying attention to. Whether or not you feel that this resource consumption is worthwhile, it is at least an objective way to stack-rank the proof-of-work blockchains.
- p4bl0 5y ago
  So I have this factory that builds objects. Building an object requires $X of energy. Because of a temporary malfunction in the factory, a few of them required 10 times that amount of energy. Are you saying that these selected objects that were built during the malfunction, and which are otherwise identical to all other objects produced in this factory, are more valuable because of that? I must admit that it makes no sense to me.
  - ffwacom 5y ago
    It’s a market. Anyone that spends more than the value of the information they are recording on the blockchain, will eventually be unable to do so, because they’re bankrupt. On a short timeline garbage can be written, but at the limit it should be flushed out.
    - p4bl0 5y ago
      Believing this necessitate to blindly trust market economy. Market economy is what makes NFT works. It always needs new places to expand to, even if those are entirely virtual. What makes mining profitable for some is not the value of the information stored on the blockchain they're mining for, it purely is speculation.
      - ffwacom 5y ago
        If the information has no value then surely the market will eventually price the whole chain at $0. The short term is just noise, ‘price discovery’, whatever.
        p4bl0 5y ago
        Again, this is true only if you have a complete trust in market economy to make reasonable decisions. I don't. And evidence support that it doesn't always do that (I'm sorry I only have French ressources on this subject).
        ffwacom 5y ago
        What’s the alternative? Centrally planned economies lead to people dying, messing with them via regulation hasn’t seemed to help at all, just leads to some financial crisis.
        p4bl0 5y ago
        Here too you are asserting things that are highly ideologically biased, or at least influenced.
        ffwacom 5y ago
        Sigh.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    This isn't the best analogy since PoW was declared beforehand that more work = more trust. In the manufacturing example though, there are many examples of collectables that trade at a huge premium due to a very subtle manufacturing defect.
    - p4bl0 5y ago
      > more work = more trust This is not true. The trust you are talking about is the "solidity" of the blockchain, i.e., it's immutability feature, what (supposedly) makes it a trustable source. But it is not PoW that makes the blockchain immutable. A lot of people are saying that, but they're wrong, I'm sorry. What actually makes the blockchain immutable is that it is distributed and that it cannot be done to rewrite it's history discretely. People will notice because the hash of the blocks would change. The same is true for a Git repository. If you have a Git repository that everyone mirrors regularly (so that it is distributed, just like a blockchain), then you can't rewrite it's history without having people notice: the new log will be incompatible with the history they already have all the commits hash will be different. The only solution would be, in both case, to find entire collision for each block/commit. This is waaaaay more expansive than mining to find new valid hashes for a given blockchain.
      - selestify 5y ago
        You’re talking about the problem after the network has already reached consensus on a block. Problem is, if you’re downloading new blocks from the blockchain, and you’re getting two sets of history, which one do you pick? With Git, it’s trivial to recreate history differently, albeit with different hashes. With crypto, you pick the chain with more resources put into its creation. Otherwise, any random person can spin up a hundred Bitcoin nodes and start spoofing the latest transactions pretty easily.
        p4bl0 5y ago
        Yes, this is true in a decentralized and adversarial environment. This is exactly the problem that blockchains have been invented for! In such an environment, we do not have solutions to reach "consensus" apart from blockchains. My point is that apart from cryptocurrencies (where the blockchain is enough because it defines the truth), since you need some form of trusted third-party to make what's written on the blockchain relevant, then you're not in a decentralized and adversarial setting. So you can do things more efficiently, you don't need a blockchain. You don't have to solve the distributed consensus problem.
- tromp 5y ago
  I feel that the best blockchains are those that do not allow for any publicly visible data, just random curve points and cryptographic signatures.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Consuming $X amount of resources makes you poorer in the real world. At the end of the day it is just an overengineered accounting system.
abss 5y ago
Well.. this articole has some points but is not 100% fair or correct. The value of distributed ledger (aka blockchain) is given by the fact that you can find the latest version of a record in a decentralised way. This is usefull outside cryptocurencies (even for university diplomas you need a good mecanism for revocation). You can do revocation with a centralised system but a decentralised version could actualy imprive security and privacy (not with blockchains alone you need encryption and other cryprographic tools)
- p4bl0 5y ago
  There are other ways of having a distributed immutable ledger than a blockchain, if you don't have the constraints of a decentralized adversarial context. You don't have this context for diplomas. Also, neither revocation nor security and privacy does seem like good examples of what a blockchain would allow that a non-blockchain based approach wouldn't.
  - errantmind 5y ago
    That is a big 'if'. The adversarial context is everything. As for diploma's, I'm not sure what your point is. There is nothing decentralized about them.
    - p4bl0 5y ago
      The adversarial context is everything, but it doesn't exist in most case, because the blockchain is not self sufficient, it needs an external authority to make what's written on it relevant. As for diplomas, I didn't choose this example at random. A lot of startups are trying to sell exactly that. I've been approached myself multiple times about that. And some higher education institutions already do it…
- boublepop 5y ago
  Amazing, we might finally be able to solve the great university diploma verification problem. It’s really held back society that we haven’t been able to verify diplomas issued by centralized trusted institutions in a decentralized trustless fashion. /s
galaxyyy 5y ago
Imo the point of the blockchain is that it can do many things (such as payments, storage, immutable records) all in one place which will lead to an overall increase in societal productivity. In the case of your diploma, it's true that there are other ways to have a distributed immutable ledger that contains a signature leading to the diploma. However, by having one agreed upon global ledger for any university to upload to with a proven statement of authenticity for the degree, you then have the ability to build technologies on top of that massive ledger that would have been much, much harder if each university decided to host their own distributed ledger. A simple example would be a hiring company (like lever.co) being able to verify degrees instantaneously on-chain instead of requesting a proof of degree from the university. This request for a proof already happens in real-life and requires a relationship between the university and the hiring company. The blockchain can then come in and allow companies to verify degrees in seconds, rather than days, leading to an overall increase in productivity.
- p4bl0 5y ago
  I don't see why saying "we don't need a blockchain" would imply that we can't have one agreed upon global distributed immutable ledger. To problem to achieve that is probably more political than technical. But then if HE institutions come to an agreement, we can totally have what you suggest without a blockchain :).
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Why not just use a docusigned diploma pdf? And if you care about revocation (why?) then you can just store the pdf on git

35 points by p4bl0 5y ago

The author gets it wrong with this quote: >The only truth that is guaranteed by the recording of a given information on a given blockchain, is that this particular information is written on this particular blockchain. The second part is that $X worth of real-world resources have been consumed in building this blockchain, so this one blockchain and the particular information inside is worth paying attention to. Whether or not you feel that this resource consumption is worthwhile, it is at least an objective way to stack-rank the proof-of-work blockchains.

p4bl0 5y ago
So I have this factory that builds objects. Building an object requires $X of energy. Because of a temporary malfunction in the factory, a few of them required 10 times that amount of energy. Are you saying that these selected objects that were built during the malfunction, and which are otherwise identical to all other objects produced in this factory, are more valuable because of that? I must admit that it makes no sense to me.
- ffwacom 5y ago
  It’s a market. Anyone that spends more than the value of the information they are recording on the blockchain, will eventually be unable to do so, because they’re bankrupt. On a short timeline garbage can be written, but at the limit it should be flushed out.
  - p4bl0 5y ago
    Believing this necessitate to blindly trust market economy. Market economy is what makes NFT works. It always needs new places to expand to, even if those are entirely virtual. What makes mining profitable for some is not the value of the information stored on the blockchain they're mining for, it purely is speculation.
    - ffwacom 5y ago
      If the information has no value then surely the market will eventually price the whole chain at $0. The short term is just noise, ‘price discovery’, whatever.
      - p4bl0 5y ago
        Again, this is true only if you have a complete trust in market economy to make reasonable decisions. I don't. And evidence support that it doesn't always do that (I'm sorry I only have French ressources on this subject).
        ffwacom 5y ago
        What’s the alternative? Centrally planned economies lead to people dying, messing with them via regulation hasn’t seemed to help at all, just leads to some financial crisis.
        p4bl0 5y ago
        Here too you are asserting things that are highly ideologically biased, or at least influenced.
        ffwacom 5y ago
        Sigh.
- aeternum 5y ago
  This isn't the best analogy since PoW was declared beforehand that more work = more trust. In the manufacturing example though, there are many examples of collectables that trade at a huge premium due to a very subtle manufacturing defect.
  - p4bl0 5y ago
    > more work = more trust This is not true. The trust you are talking about is the "solidity" of the blockchain, i.e., it's immutability feature, what (supposedly) makes it a trustable source. But it is not PoW that makes the blockchain immutable. A lot of people are saying that, but they're wrong, I'm sorry. What actually makes the blockchain immutable is that it is distributed and that it cannot be done to rewrite it's history discretely. People will notice because the hash of the blocks would change. The same is true for a Git repository. If you have a Git repository that everyone mirrors regularly (so that it is distributed, just like a blockchain), then you can't rewrite it's history without having people notice: the new log will be incompatible with the history they already have all the commits hash will be different. The only solution would be, in both case, to find entire collision for each block/commit. This is waaaaay more expansive than mining to find new valid hashes for a given blockchain.
    - selestify 5y ago
      You’re talking about the problem after the network has already reached consensus on a block. Problem is, if you’re downloading new blocks from the blockchain, and you’re getting two sets of history, which one do you pick? With Git, it’s trivial to recreate history differently, albeit with different hashes. With crypto, you pick the chain with more resources put into its creation. Otherwise, any random person can spin up a hundred Bitcoin nodes and start spoofing the latest transactions pretty easily.
      - p4bl0 5y ago
        Yes, this is true in a decentralized and adversarial environment. This is exactly the problem that blockchains have been invented for! In such an environment, we do not have solutions to reach "consensus" apart from blockchains. My point is that apart from cryptocurrencies (where the blockchain is enough because it defines the truth), since you need some form of trusted third-party to make what's written on the blockchain relevant, then you're not in a decentralized and adversarial setting. So you can do things more efficiently, you don't need a blockchain. You don't have to solve the distributed consensus problem.
tromp 5y ago
I feel that the best blockchains are those that do not allow for any publicly visible data, just random curve points and cryptographic signatures.
imtringued 5y ago
Consuming $X amount of resources makes you poorer in the real world. At the end of the day it is just an overengineered accounting system.

abss 5y ago

Well.. this articole has some points but is not 100% fair or correct. The value of distributed ledger (aka blockchain) is given by the fact that you can find the latest version of a record in a decentralised way. This is usefull outside cryptocurencies (even for university diplomas you need a good mecanism for revocation). You can do revocation with a centralised system but a decentralised version could actualy imprive security and privacy (not with blockchains alone you need encryption and other cryprographic tools)

p4bl0 5y ago
There are other ways of having a distributed immutable ledger than a blockchain, if you don't have the constraints of a decentralized adversarial context. You don't have this context for diplomas. Also, neither revocation nor security and privacy does seem like good examples of what a blockchain would allow that a non-blockchain based approach wouldn't.
- errantmind 5y ago
  That is a big 'if'. The adversarial context is everything. As for diploma's, I'm not sure what your point is. There is nothing decentralized about them.
  - p4bl0 5y ago
    The adversarial context is everything, but it doesn't exist in most case, because the blockchain is not self sufficient, it needs an external authority to make what's written on it relevant. As for diplomas, I didn't choose this example at random. A lot of startups are trying to sell exactly that. I've been approached myself multiple times about that. And some higher education institutions already do it…
boublepop 5y ago
Amazing, we might finally be able to solve the great university diploma verification problem. It’s really held back society that we haven’t been able to verify diplomas issued by centralized trusted institutions in a decentralized trustless fashion. /s

galaxyyy 5y ago

Imo the point of the blockchain is that it can do many things (such as payments, storage, immutable records) all in one place which will lead to an overall increase in societal productivity. In the case of your diploma, it's true that there are other ways to have a distributed immutable ledger that contains a signature leading to the diploma. However, by having one agreed upon global ledger for any university to upload to with a proven statement of authenticity for the degree, you then have the ability to build technologies on top of that massive ledger that would have been much, much harder if each university decided to host their own distributed ledger. A simple example would be a hiring company (like lever.co) being able to verify degrees instantaneously on-chain instead of requesting a proof of degree from the university. This request for a proof already happens in real-life and requires a relationship between the university and the hiring company. The blockchain can then come in and allow companies to verify degrees in seconds, rather than days, leading to an overall increase in productivity.

p4bl0 5y ago
I don't see why saying "we don't need a blockchain" would imply that we can't have one agreed upon global distributed immutable ledger. To problem to achieve that is probably more political than technical. But then if HE institutions come to an agreement, we can totally have what you suggest without a blockchain :).
cuteboy19 5y ago
Why not just use a docusigned diploma pdf? And if you care about revocation (why?) then you can just store the pdf on git