5 ms·

> Eventually the computational capacity will reach the levels that virtually any app can be replicated inside of it, with a much lower fee for the developers/ow

> Eventually the computational capacity will reach the levels that virtually any app can be replicated inside of it, with a much lower fee for the developers/owners and having full open source code. How do you figure? Skilled developers have struggled to efficiently scale an application from one to two rack servers connected with Infiniband, never mind a hodgepodge of heterogeneous hardware and WAN interconnects running a distributed VM. There is nothing in blockchain (nor immutability generally) that actually addresses the underlying issues here, and if anything I would expect the requirement to cryptographically validate all data committed to the chain to make inefficiencies related to synchronization orders of magnitude worse, not better.

kranke155 4y ago
I assume something like Moore’s Law applies tbh. I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The point is - how long until this slow is good enough to perform immensely useful things, with a better distribution of wealth generation than the current datacenter model? I would say in the next 5 years we’ll start seeing breakthrough apps. Like I said above I don’t expect everything ever to go on chain in the near future, you can have very useful apps that only touch on chain for the truly necessary. Even doing the “truly necessary” was painful until very recently, but now with Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Algorand, Polkadot and Solana, it’s becoming more and more accessible over time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > I assume something like Moore’s Law applies tbh. We're nearing the limits of physics already. I do expect hardware to get much faster still, but not forever and not as fast as now. > I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The point is - how long until this slow is good enough to perform immensely useful things, with a better distribution of wealth generation than the current datacenter model? I think really never. Because the rest of the world doesn't sit idle, and most anything can be done the traditional way. You could pay huge $$$ to create a smart contract on ETH, or you could get more power than any normal person could afford on the Ethereum blockchain on the AWS EC2 free tier. If you think paying amounts with a few zeroes in them is a sensible thing, then you have far more computing power available. I think the only reason to use the blockchain is if you really need the blockchain. And the vast majority of computing doesn't. And as we're seeing, the blockchain is very much vulnerable if the world wants to push it around badly enough.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way - and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a superior social solution, not technical. I agree with you we will use blockchain where it’s necessary, but I suspect that’s a decent percentage of our future digital world.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      > Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way - and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a superior social solution, not technical. That's highly arguable. It's a superior social solution if you buy into a very, very specific kind of "social", and are happy with systems that operate within a very limited realm. Eg, if you like the existence of things like chargebacks, then the blockchain isn't the kind of solution you want. And you also need for the entire problem to reside inside the blockchain ideally. Blockchains lose any power if they have to interact with the outside world. You can make guarantees around how ETH moves from A to B, but if say, a physical product is involved then the blockchain can't do anything about it.
      - kranke155 4y ago
        This is true and also why I think NFTs worked so well - they solved a digital asset problem, not a physical asset problem. I suspect that’s the kind of problem blockchain will solve more. The “physical things on blockchain” movement is sort of not working out imo.
        dale_glass 4y ago
        I don't think NFTs worked well at all -- they had a brief spike of popularity then were mostly forgotten. Right now BendDAO is in trouble because nobody really cares about NFTs anymore, they can't sell the ones they got as a collateral, and already ran out of funds.
        kranke155 4y ago

kranke155 4y ago

I assume something like Moore’s Law applies tbh. I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The point is - how long until this slow is good enough to perform immensely useful things, with a better distribution of wealth generation than the current datacenter model? I would say in the next 5 years we’ll start seeing breakthrough apps. Like I said above I don’t expect everything ever to go on chain in the near future, you can have very useful apps that only touch on chain for the truly necessary. Even doing the “truly necessary” was painful until very recently, but now with Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Algorand, Polkadot and Solana, it’s becoming more and more accessible over time.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dale_glass 4y ago
> I assume something like Moore’s Law applies tbh. We're nearing the limits of physics already. I do expect hardware to get much faster still, but not forever and not as fast as now. > I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The point is - how long until this slow is good enough to perform immensely useful things, with a better distribution of wealth generation than the current datacenter model? I think really never. Because the rest of the world doesn't sit idle, and most anything can be done the traditional way. You could pay huge $$$ to create a smart contract on ETH, or you could get more power than any normal person could afford on the Ethereum blockchain on the AWS EC2 free tier. If you think paying amounts with a few zeroes in them is a sensible thing, then you have far more computing power available. I think the only reason to use the blockchain is if you really need the blockchain. And the vast majority of computing doesn't. And as we're seeing, the blockchain is very much vulnerable if the world wants to push it around badly enough.
- kranke155 4y ago
  Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way - and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a superior social solution, not technical. I agree with you we will use blockchain where it’s necessary, but I suspect that’s a decent percentage of our future digital world.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    > Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way - and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a superior social solution, not technical. That's highly arguable. It's a superior social solution if you buy into a very, very specific kind of "social", and are happy with systems that operate within a very limited realm. Eg, if you like the existence of things like chargebacks, then the blockchain isn't the kind of solution you want. And you also need for the entire problem to reside inside the blockchain ideally. Blockchains lose any power if they have to interact with the outside world. You can make guarantees around how ETH moves from A to B, but if say, a physical product is involved then the blockchain can't do anything about it.
    - kranke155 4y ago
      This is true and also why I think NFTs worked so well - they solved a digital asset problem, not a physical asset problem. I suspect that’s the kind of problem blockchain will solve more. The “physical things on blockchain” movement is sort of not working out imo.
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        I don't think NFTs worked well at all -- they had a brief spike of popularity then were mostly forgotten. Right now BendDAO is in trouble because nobody really cares about NFTs anymore, they can't sell the ones they got as a collateral, and already ran out of funds.
        kranke155 4y ago