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I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I've realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why ente

I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I've realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why enterprise block chains make little sense. Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing. We've never had this before, and it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it. I work for a platform (Balancer) that has had over 20 different companies (Aave, Element, CopperLaunch, Gyro, Aura, Hidden Hand) build financial applications on top of our tech stack in the last 2 years. Then there are different wallets (Metamask, Rainbow, Ledger), aggregators (1inch, Matcha, 0x), portfolio management tools (Zapper, Zerion, DeFi Saver). All of these work with each other mostly out of the box and without any formal partnerships between anyone. This is a radical new way of building finance and it's the fastest paced industry I've ever been a part of. It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added - but the entire world can contribute to it. Like AWS people didn't understand the value initially, but over time they realized how big of a deal it was as more and more components were added.

delaaxe 4y ago
Completely agree
dsco 4y ago
See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s been the majority of HNs take on the technology. But the Internet was made for text communication and here we are decades later with social media and streaming video. TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology with experimental instead of theoretical knowledge on the subject matter.
- gatewaynode 4y ago
  This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing." Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. And it's not a magic bullet statement either.
  - bartread 4y ago
    > Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyone with technical background can understand. Again, Tim's post may be right, but it really falls short here and that's a big problem for the perception of blockchain. Until you can get people to understand why it's valuable, without the answer being to go and spend hours reading when there's perhaps no certainty of what you learn being valuable, it's always going to face this scepticism. It's not helped by the fact that the scammers and the non-scammers talk about it in the same kind of way, so you end up unable to distinguish the real information from the "blockchain doublespeak" - again, certainly without a lot of research. If you're busy you end up developing a heuristic where you file all of this in the mental waste basket.
    - TimJRobinson 4y ago
      You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it. I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.
      - likeabbas 4y ago
        > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. The people I've talked to in finance are really excited about Blockchain/DeFi because it's an opportunity for arbitrage in a completely unregulated market.
      - 4y ago
- threeseed 4y ago
  > But the Internet was made for text communication No it wasn't. ARPANET [1] was made for transferring software and allowing remote access into the large mainframes on the network. Email came in 1971 and then 6 years later audio was being transferred. So it was always intended to support binary transmission and streaming video was being demoed by the BBC not soon after. The reason to be nitpicking is that the original protocols were flexible and efficient enough from day one to support a myriad of use cases. Where as platforms like Ethereum are already struggling with a lack of flexibility and a lack of efficient and cheap data transfer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
- iterateofen 4y ago
  the examples he gave of 20 companies building on defi on his platform are all varying examples of a liquidity pools that if you go to their websites need yet another layer of companies to use their platforms to build the exciting products on.
- bnralt 4y ago
  Are the comments different, though? "Permissionless composability" - basically blockchain jargon for financial transactions that have no oversight - are made possible by the things runeks mentions. It's like someone saying "this solves the double spending problem," and someone else going "no, this allows me to buy contraband." It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is whether or not that's something actually useful, and for the vast majority of people it clearly isn't.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    It is a surprise, since all accounts and transactions are teansparent to all. And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)
- sbf501 4y ago
  TimJ lists simply enumerates a bunch of software names with almost no content to move the discussion along. I could have said, "Well blockchain is important because I used Schmaltz, Goober, and Cookie deployed on Flanders, Homer and Kearney, the open API just works out of the box," and by your logic I'd be some wizened mage on the subject. There is a cliff on HN, but you might want to invest in a parachute.
dtoma 4y ago
> Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing. Isn't that also an open door to bad actors?
- djbebs 4y ago
  Define bad actor.
- mhluongo 4y ago
  Freedom always is.
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  For sure, it's the same principles as the internet, and that unfortunately is why there are so many bad actors in the space. There are companies and technologies being created to mitigate them just like how the internet spawned anti-(virus/spam/malware) companies. On the early internet with ActiveX, Flash, and few firewalls it was so easy to get exploited and this is the phase of DeFi we're in now, but it will get better over time.
RandomLensman 4y ago
My best guess is that unless the rules around large-scale finance change, in the end permissionless composability will go away and the platforms will get controls of some sort, e.g, who can do what, reporting requirements, KYC, ... And that also does not have to come just from direct rules, but could come via capital requirements when touching such systems or users of such systems.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
candiddevmike 4y ago
What is the benefit of deploying something on a platform controlled by no one? Why not just run all of those things on a server you own?
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises. I haven’t audited Uniswap’s smart contract code, but if I did I feel I could be pretty confident they won’t steal my money. Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted. disclosure: I work for a crypto company
  - markdestouches 4y ago
    > One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises. We are yet to see a working example of that. > Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted. These two sentences contradict each other. And no, there was no government regulation that insured FTX deposits. There was so little regulation, they didn't even keep their transaction history.
    - ChadNauseam 4y ago
      > We are yet to see a working example of that. I referenced Uniswap, which seems like it works to me > These two sentences contradict each other. And no, there was no government regulation that insured FTX deposits. There was so little regulation, they didn't even keep their transaction history. There's no public insurance for it, but if there were no regulations against doing what FTX did I'm not sure why their executives are fleeing the country
      - habinero 4y ago
        Because "there are no regulations" is not permission to defraud others.
anonymousDan 4y ago
Good comment. While a lot of the complaints about blockchain are valid issues, the argument that it is useless and could be replaced with a database always makes me roll my eyes given the fundamental benefit is the open nature of the platform. Nonetheless, I think the key issue is scalability/performance.
- kranke155 4y ago
  "It could just be a database" is my litmus test now for an engineer who thinks he's really smart but really isn't.
super256 4y ago
> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value. All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap, which the hunted takes a loss (this is not different from tradfi). I am looking at Aave right now, and all I see is a speculation platform with tokens instead of currencies. So basically, you guys are re-inventing what tradfi had years ago, just with worthless(?) tokens instead of debt backed assets. I am assuming they are worthless because every project you have mentioned is optimized for USD cash inflow, as you have "buy crypto with fiat"-buttons on almost every project[1][2][3], but no way to cash out to fiat. Furthermore, the staking feature from AAVE seems to only artificially decrease supply, so prices rise. What's the value proposition here? Anyway, I don't really think that this stuff is even remotely comparable to AWS. [1] https://app.aave.com/ https://app.aave.com/ (press "more" on the nav bar) [2] https://zerion.io/ https://zerion.io/ (FAQ > "just tap the blue button in the center of your screen, select ‘Buy’, and you will be taken to the dialogue window where you can buy crypto with a credit or debit card.") [3] https://blog.1inch.io/transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integrated-into-the-1inch-wallet-19934e710506 https://blog.1inch.io/transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integ...
- themihai 4y ago
  I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. It's obvious that all those pegged currencies are prone to "bank run" scenarios. Not to mention the fiat conversion ruines the whole experience. With a real currency we could have at least real open and standards based p2p payments which would be great! Just like with cash offline we would no longer need visa, paypal or banks to transact online.
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    > I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. So making sure I understand, there’s no value today?
pjkundert 4y ago
You're dead on. It's staggering in its power -- permissionless composability, even if most of the data is not on-chain, and the programs are very limited in size/complexity due to the expense of running them. Now, imagine a system where all of the data is also on-chain, and the programs you can compose are full-complexity applications... All while maintaining every independent program's data invariant in a completely decentralized manner, with transaction rates that grow linearly with the DHT size. Such a system is now in public beta. It could be world-changing (at least for programmers).
- daveguy 4y ago
  How is permissionless composability different from the MIT license? I'm confused what you're composing now that you couldn't before and the benefit of that permissionless composability. Ecosystems of programming libraries and compostable abstractions don't require a blockchain as far as I can tell.
  - pjkundert 4y ago
    It's like the MIT license, plus AWS with an unlimited account and auto-scaling. In the case of self-hosted Apps (ie. where you need to "install" something on your phone or computer), each peer provides their own compute/storage/networking to host their own usage of the App, plus a small fragment of everyone else's usage (proportional to a few average user's worth). So, the cost to each user is a small constant C times the average user's utilization. And the benefit is that the application persists, in its entirety, as long as any number of users >= 1 continue to use the App.
    - hestefisk 4y ago
      It’s not really an unlimited account. Execution on eth is expensive…
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        It's like AWS serverless compute with inefficiency built-in as a feature and a jacked-up billing rate.
dmitriid 4y ago
> controlled by no one, with standardized API's Controlled by no one, but suddenly standardized APIs exist. Who standardized them? Controlled by no one, but suddenly everyone is going to use those standardized APIs that appeared by magic. And even those entities that never ever used open or standardized APIs will rush to use them because blockchain. > We've never had this before, and it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it Theres nothing amazing about companies busy reinventing flash loans and currency speculation. > This is a radical new way of building finance and it's the fastest paced industry I've ever been a part of. It's only fast because it deals in fantasy tokens in a very limited scope with zero oversight or regulation. And this space is busy re-discovering why these regulations exist in the first place. > Like AWS people didn't understand the value initially Most people understood AWS value initially. 2-3 years after launch everyone understood AWS. Now everyone uses it. AWS provided, and still provides, a multitude of services that are actually useful. Where as the "fast moving space" offers nothing outside the "buy low sell high flash loan" hamster wheel that is "defi"? > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. There are very very few people in finance who are excited about it. For many, many, many reasons. Those who are excited are excited for all the wrong reasons: scams, speculations, unlimited investor money. The last one will probably go away soon. Speculations are only valuable as long as the fictional tokens are valuable for some definition of value. There's almost nothing else in the crypto space.
kranke155 4y ago
Thank you. I feel like the tide is finally turning on this. The Ethereum VM (and its derivatives) is one of the biggest innovations in recent history. I've been yelling at the top of my lungs why NFTs have revolutionized digital art and happy to see the top comment nails it - a zero trust verification environment makes it possible to sell it on an open global market. This just wasn't there before. Blockchains are useless takes are already out of date.
- adammarples 4y ago
  Have nfts revolutionised digital art? I haven't seen it. Stable diffusion is potentially revolutionary, but nfts seem like last years fad.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    You guys are never going to get it, its hilarious.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Stable Diffusion is certainly revolutionary as a tool of mass IP theft and data laundering.
cactus2093 4y ago
It is a neat property but lines like this trip me up: "it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it". The crypto/dapp/defi/etc spaces have supposedly been "moving incredibly fast" and "all the smartest people are working on it" for ~5 years now. That's a long time to be moving really fast without really getting anywhere. Where's the payoff? To me this space feels like a solution without a real problem. The decentralized part is a neat trick, but on the margin a centralized authority to mediate financial platforms is more good than bad.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  And these arguments are being made just as the crypto industry is imploding all around us. Gives new meaning to the motto "move fast and break things".
- bombcar 4y ago
  I feel the "value" of DeFi only appears once all the scams have broken - and then only if there is actual value in trading crypto beyond just buying drugs or whatever people used to do with bitcoin before it was "popular".
_9omd 4y ago
> the killer feature is actually permissionless composability This right here is it! Everyone is always focused on the main feature being decentralization, but decentralization isn't a feature, it's an implementation detail. Decentralization is certainly a requirement for these goals, but permissionlessness is the goal. I'll note that permisionless for users, in the ability to create accounts and send transactions is every bit as import as permisionless building. This is why I think the term DeFi misses the mark a bit, because it's a nod to the implementation (decentralized) rather than the features (open and permissionless). But at the end of the day I think it's catchier than something like OpenFi, and the terminology is set at this point.
- oblio 4y ago
  How does this work faced with legal systems, which <<mandate>> permissions?
rightttttt 4y ago
The issue with this story is this: Governments will not protect something they have no control over. When they regulate it, that control will come in. Some of the things you speak about will disappear. Kinda like if you have a wife and you care about her if she is loyal. But once she cheats you don't care anymore. Similar situation between unregulated financial systems and the government.
primax 4y ago
The main problem is when weighing these things is not blockchain advocate honestly asks the question: "why is this better than using a simple relational database, in a way that makes all the extra complexity worthwhile?"
deanCommie 4y ago
> Hidden Hand is a marketplace for governance incentives, commonly referred to as "bribes". Protocols can leverage Hidden Hand to enable more efficient governance processes and to engage their voters, while users can earn extra yield on their favorite vote escrowed governance tokens through bribes. https://hiddenhand.finance/ https://hiddenhand.finance/ I...i mean this just speaks for itself doesn't it?

delaaxe 4y ago

Completely agree

dsco 4y ago

See this is where HN has fallen off a cliff, the top commented Runeks supplies a highly theoretical and nonchalant answer to what blockchains _can_ be. That’s been the majority of HNs take on the technology. But the Internet was made for text communication and here we are decades later with social media and streaming video. TimJRobinson at least states something which is rare on HN, a take on blockchain technology with experimental instead of theoretical knowledge on the subject matter.

gatewaynode 4y ago
This. It's not like all innovation that has occurred in the crypto-currency space is useless, there are some real valuable innovations there. Blockchain as a whole is just too tainted to see the forest for the trees in all the greed, specifically the word "blockchain" has become magical and deceptive. "Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing." Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. And it's not a magic bullet statement either.
- bartread 4y ago
  > Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyone with technical background can understand. Again, Tim's post may be right, but it really falls short here and that's a big problem for the perception of blockchain. Until you can get people to understand why it's valuable, without the answer being to go and spend hours reading when there's perhaps no certainty of what you learn being valuable, it's always going to face this scepticism. It's not helped by the fact that the scammers and the non-scammers talk about it in the same kind of way, so you end up unable to distinguish the real information from the "blockchain doublespeak" - again, certainly without a lot of research. If you're busy you end up developing a heuristic where you file all of this in the mental waste basket.
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it. I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. Then again, a lot of people didn't understand the internet or it's jargon in the 90's, so we'll see how it plays out.
    - likeabbas 4y ago
      > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. The people I've talked to in finance are really excited about Blockchain/DeFi because it's an opportunity for arbitrage in a completely unregulated market.
    - 4y ago
threeseed 4y ago
> But the Internet was made for text communication No it wasn't. ARPANET [1] was made for transferring software and allowing remote access into the large mainframes on the network. Email came in 1971 and then 6 years later audio was being transferred. So it was always intended to support binary transmission and streaming video was being demoed by the BBC not soon after. The reason to be nitpicking is that the original protocols were flexible and efficient enough from day one to support a myriad of use cases. Where as platforms like Ethereum are already struggling with a lack of flexibility and a lack of efficient and cheap data transfer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
iterateofen 4y ago
the examples he gave of 20 companies building on defi on his platform are all varying examples of a liquidity pools that if you go to their websites need yet another layer of companies to use their platforms to build the exciting products on.
bnralt 4y ago
Are the comments different, though? "Permissionless composability" - basically blockchain jargon for financial transactions that have no oversight - are made possible by the things runeks mentions. It's like someone saying "this solves the double spending problem," and someone else going "no, this allows me to buy contraband." It's not exactly a surprise that crypto allows transactions without oversight. The issue is whether or not that's something actually useful, and for the vast majority of people it clearly isn't.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  It is a surprise, since all accounts and transactions are teansparent to all. And if you say that it was "obvious" that working mixers would exist, we are going to have to disagree. (Also I am willing to bet that if you put a significant amount of computing power into it, you can untangle that ball of yarn, and the US intelligence agencies did, like for Tor.)
sbf501 4y ago
TimJ lists simply enumerates a bunch of software names with almost no content to move the discussion along. I could have said, "Well blockchain is important because I used Schmaltz, Goober, and Cookie deployed on Flanders, Homer and Kearney, the open API just works out of the box," and by your logic I'd be some wizened mage on the subject. There is a cliff on HN, but you might want to invest in a parachute.

dtoma 4y ago

> Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API's and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing. Isn't that also an open door to bad actors?

djbebs 4y ago
Define bad actor.
mhluongo 4y ago
Freedom always is.
TimJRobinson 4y ago
For sure, it's the same principles as the internet, and that unfortunately is why there are so many bad actors in the space. There are companies and technologies being created to mitigate them just like how the internet spawned anti-(virus/spam/malware) companies. On the early internet with ActiveX, Flash, and few firewalls it was so easy to get exploited and this is the phase of DeFi we're in now, but it will get better over time.

RandomLensman 4y ago

My best guess is that unless the rules around large-scale finance change, in the end permissionless composability will go away and the platforms will get controls of some sort, e.g, who can do what, reporting requirements, KYC, ... And that also does not have to come just from direct rules, but could come via capital requirements when touching such systems or users of such systems.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

candiddevmike 4y ago

What is the benefit of deploying something on a platform controlled by no one? Why not just run all of those things on a server you own?

ChadNauseam 4y ago
One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises. I haven’t audited Uniswap’s smart contract code, but if I did I feel I could be pretty confident they won’t steal my money. Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted. disclosure: I work for a crypto company
- markdestouches 4y ago
  > One benefit is that you can more credibly offer to keep your promises. We are yet to see a working example of that. > Meanwhile, users of FTX depended on government regulation and pinky-swears to keep their money safe, but since SBF owned the platform he could do whatever he wanted. These two sentences contradict each other. And no, there was no government regulation that insured FTX deposits. There was so little regulation, they didn't even keep their transaction history.
  - ChadNauseam 4y ago
    > We are yet to see a working example of that. I referenced Uniswap, which seems like it works to me > These two sentences contradict each other. And no, there was no government regulation that insured FTX deposits. There was so little regulation, they didn't even keep their transaction history. There's no public insurance for it, but if there were no regulations against doing what FTX did I'm not sure why their executives are fleeing the country
    - habinero 4y ago
      Because "there are no regulations" is not permission to defraud others.

anonymousDan 4y ago

Good comment. While a lot of the complaints about blockchain are valid issues, the argument that it is useless and could be replaced with a database always makes me roll my eyes given the fundamental benefit is the open nature of the platform. Nonetheless, I think the key issue is scalability/performance.

kranke155 4y ago
"It could just be a database" is my litmus test now for an engineer who thinks he's really smart but really isn't.

super256 4y ago

> It's similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added But... I have yet to see a service which really adds value. All I've seen so far are: A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money. B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants' stops/liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap, which the hunted takes a loss (this is not different from tradfi). I am looking at Aave right now, and all I see is a speculation platform with tokens instead of currencies. So basically, you guys are re-inventing what tradfi had years ago, just with worthless(?) tokens instead of debt backed assets. I am assuming they are worthless because every project you have mentioned is optimized for USD cash inflow, as you have "buy crypto with fiat"-buttons on almost every project[1][2][3], but no way to cash out to fiat. Furthermore, the staking feature from AAVE seems to only artificially decrease supply, so prices rise. What's the value proposition here? Anyway, I don't really think that this stuff is even remotely comparable to AWS. [1] https://app.aave.com/ https://app.aave.com/ (press "more" on the nav bar) [2] https://zerion.io/ https://zerion.io/ (FAQ > "just tap the blue button in the center of your screen, select ‘Buy’, and you will be taken to the dialogue window where you can buy crypto with a credit or debit card.") [3] https://blog.1inch.io/transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integrated-into-the-1inch-wallet-19934e710506 https://blog.1inch.io/transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integ...

themihai 4y ago
I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. It's obvious that all those pegged currencies are prone to "bank run" scenarios. Not to mention the fiat conversion ruines the whole experience. With a real currency we could have at least real open and standards based p2p payments which would be great! Just like with cash offline we would no longer need visa, paypal or banks to transact online.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  > I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. So making sure I understand, there’s no value today?

pjkundert 4y ago

You're dead on. It's staggering in its power -- permissionless composability, even if most of the data is not on-chain, and the programs are very limited in size/complexity due to the expense of running them. Now, imagine a system where all of the data is also on-chain, and the programs you can compose are full-complexity applications... All while maintaining every independent program's data invariant in a completely decentralized manner, with transaction rates that grow linearly with the DHT size. Such a system is now in public beta. It could be world-changing (at least for programmers).

daveguy 4y ago
How is permissionless composability different from the MIT license? I'm confused what you're composing now that you couldn't before and the benefit of that permissionless composability. Ecosystems of programming libraries and compostable abstractions don't require a blockchain as far as I can tell.
- pjkundert 4y ago
  It's like the MIT license, plus AWS with an unlimited account and auto-scaling. In the case of self-hosted Apps (ie. where you need to "install" something on your phone or computer), each peer provides their own compute/storage/networking to host their own usage of the App, plus a small fragment of everyone else's usage (proportional to a few average user's worth). So, the cost to each user is a small constant C times the average user's utilization. And the benefit is that the application persists, in its entirety, as long as any number of users >= 1 continue to use the App.
  - hestefisk 4y ago
    It’s not really an unlimited account. Execution on eth is expensive…
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      It's like AWS serverless compute with inefficiency built-in as a feature and a jacked-up billing rate.

dmitriid 4y ago

> controlled by no one, with standardized API's Controlled by no one, but suddenly standardized APIs exist. Who standardized them? Controlled by no one, but suddenly everyone is going to use those standardized APIs that appeared by magic. And even those entities that never ever used open or standardized APIs will rush to use them because blockchain. > We've never had this before, and it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it Theres nothing amazing about companies busy reinventing flash loans and currency speculation. > This is a radical new way of building finance and it's the fastest paced industry I've ever been a part of. It's only fast because it deals in fantasy tokens in a very limited scope with zero oversight or regulation. And this space is busy re-discovering why these regulations exist in the first place. > Like AWS people didn't understand the value initially Most people understood AWS value initially. 2-3 years after launch everyone understood AWS. Now everyone uses it. AWS provided, and still provides, a multitude of services that are actually useful. Where as the "fast moving space" offers nothing outside the "buy low sell high flash loan" hamster wheel that is "defi"? > I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. There are very very few people in finance who are excited about it. For many, many, many reasons. Those who are excited are excited for all the wrong reasons: scams, speculations, unlimited investor money. The last one will probably go away soon. Speculations are only valuable as long as the fictional tokens are valuable for some definition of value. There's almost nothing else in the crypto space.

kranke155 4y ago

Thank you. I feel like the tide is finally turning on this. The Ethereum VM (and its derivatives) is one of the biggest innovations in recent history. I've been yelling at the top of my lungs why NFTs have revolutionized digital art and happy to see the top comment nails it - a zero trust verification environment makes it possible to sell it on an open global market. This just wasn't there before. Blockchains are useless takes are already out of date.

adammarples 4y ago
Have nfts revolutionised digital art? I haven't seen it. Stable diffusion is potentially revolutionary, but nfts seem like last years fad.
- kranke155 4y ago
  You guys are never going to get it, its hilarious.
- kranke155 4y ago
  Stable Diffusion is certainly revolutionary as a tool of mass IP theft and data laundering.

cactus2093 4y ago

It is a neat property but lines like this trip me up: "it's incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it". The crypto/dapp/defi/etc spaces have supposedly been "moving incredibly fast" and "all the smartest people are working on it" for ~5 years now. That's a long time to be moving really fast without really getting anywhere. Where's the payoff? To me this space feels like a solution without a real problem. The decentralized part is a neat trick, but on the margin a centralized authority to mediate financial platforms is more good than bad.

timmytokyo 4y ago
And these arguments are being made just as the crypto industry is imploding all around us. Gives new meaning to the motto "move fast and break things".
bombcar 4y ago
I feel the "value" of DeFi only appears once all the scams have broken - and then only if there is actual value in trading crypto beyond just buying drugs or whatever people used to do with bitcoin before it was "popular".

_9omd 4y ago

> the killer feature is actually permissionless composability This right here is it! Everyone is always focused on the main feature being decentralization, but decentralization isn't a feature, it's an implementation detail. Decentralization is certainly a requirement for these goals, but permissionlessness is the goal. I'll note that permisionless for users, in the ability to create accounts and send transactions is every bit as import as permisionless building. This is why I think the term DeFi misses the mark a bit, because it's a nod to the implementation (decentralized) rather than the features (open and permissionless). But at the end of the day I think it's catchier than something like OpenFi, and the terminology is set at this point.

oblio 4y ago
How does this work faced with legal systems, which <<mandate>> permissions?

rightttttt 4y ago

The issue with this story is this: Governments will not protect something they have no control over. When they regulate it, that control will come in. Some of the things you speak about will disappear. Kinda like if you have a wife and you care about her if she is loyal. But once she cheats you don't care anymore. Similar situation between unregulated financial systems and the government.

primax 4y ago

The main problem is when weighing these things is not blockchain advocate honestly asks the question: "why is this better than using a simple relational database, in a way that makes all the extra complexity worthwhile?"

deanCommie 4y ago

> Hidden Hand is a marketplace for governance incentives, commonly referred to as "bribes". Protocols can leverage Hidden Hand to enable more efficient governance processes and to engage their voters, while users can earn extra yield on their favorite vote escrowed governance tokens through bribes. https://hiddenhand.finance/ https://hiddenhand.finance/ I...i mean this just speaks for itself doesn't it?