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> So would basic PKI or a Merkle tree, but those would be orders of magnitude less expensive to operate and more robust. Almost every argument I have on HN wit

> So would basic PKI or a Merkle tree, but those would be orders of magnitude less expensive to operate and more robust. Almost every argument I have on HN with blockchain skeptics boils down to the skeptic pointing out that if you unbundle blockchain component X, Y or Z to use it independently from the rest of the blockchain system, it would save money. Yes, if you extract the PKI and Merkle tree out of the blockchain system, and operate them on your own, it may save you money in terms of infrastructure cost. But then you would have to figure out how to manage the PKI and the Merkle tree. A blockchain gives you both of those things, plus massive replication, high availability and audit-ability built right in, as well as well-defined and decentralized public interfaces that make it easy to interact with the system, and you don't need to manage any of it. And what's more, the blockchain gives you a built-in way to pay for services rendered by diverse and decentralized set of service providers, without needing to engage with a middleman, or depend on any single service provider. People complain all the time that AWS is too expensive, and that there are more economical alternatives providing comparable services—but there are still millions of people who are willing to pay Amazon for the convenience. How is that any different than paying a blockchain network for a similar convenience?

acdha 4y ago
It comes back to how well you understand the system design. The major public blockchains impose massive penalties on the people using them because they’re trying to avoid things like trusted third parties. That’s an interesting problem from a CS perspective but it’s not a problem most people have or one which blockchains solve in scenarios where not everything is on the blockchain. That matters because the costs of transactions are much higher, overall system performance is much lower, and reliability is lower. You can no longer operate offline, maintaining your own nodes becomes expensive, and that extra infrastructure isn’t buying you things which most applications need. Going back to the AWS question, if I need immutability I can use QLDB to log my transactions. It’s cheaper, scales really well, has excellent support, and I’ll never have a business operation fail because some grifter is minting a bunch of NFTs and temporarily overloaded the network (Solana) or made it unaffordable (Ethereum). There are very few businesses where it’s not a better deal to go with a more predictable system based on your existing legal relationships, especially when it’s also the cheaper and safer option.
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radicalbyte 4y ago
I see it the other way around: blockchain people are desperately looking for a problem for their solution. If you ignore how the real world (and thus Governance) works and squint a bit then yes, you have a "killer app" for blockchain which isn't scamming people. The thing is when you compare your problem to a range of solutions you almost always discover that blockchain isn't even close to usable.

acdha 4y ago

It comes back to how well you understand the system design. The major public blockchains impose massive penalties on the people using them because they’re trying to avoid things like trusted third parties. That’s an interesting problem from a CS perspective but it’s not a problem most people have or one which blockchains solve in scenarios where not everything is on the blockchain. That matters because the costs of transactions are much higher, overall system performance is much lower, and reliability is lower. You can no longer operate offline, maintaining your own nodes becomes expensive, and that extra infrastructure isn’t buying you things which most applications need. Going back to the AWS question, if I need immutability I can use QLDB to log my transactions. It’s cheaper, scales really well, has excellent support, and I’ll never have a business operation fail because some grifter is minting a bunch of NFTs and temporarily overloaded the network (Solana) or made it unaffordable (Ethereum). There are very few businesses where it’s not a better deal to go with a more predictable system based on your existing legal relationships, especially when it’s also the cheaper and safer option.

deleted 4y ago
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radicalbyte 4y ago

I see it the other way around: blockchain people are desperately looking for a problem for their solution. If you ignore how the real world (and thus Governance) works and squint a bit then yes, you have a "killer app" for blockchain which isn't scamming people. The thing is when you compare your problem to a range of solutions you almost always discover that blockchain isn't even close to usable.