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I'm amused that people here are all "blockchain," which technically could work but is completely unnecessary. The only time you need blockchain ever, is for ce

by jrm4 4y ago

I'm amused that people here are all "blockchain," which technically could work but is completely unnecessary. The only time you need blockchain ever, is for censorship/government resistance; and e.g. "decentralised Uber" could literally be done municipally. Strikes me as a good government use case.

maxerickson 4y ago
The answer depends a lot on what you decide "Uber" means (the article talks about "User Needs", which is a good lens to make this decision through). For riders, not having to locate and setup the service is going to matter at least some of the time, and is not well addressed by local systems. I don't think blockchain is likely to be the answer either. It adds enough complexity that things anyway end up "centralized" in the primary implementation of the system, so you might as well directly implement something that isn't all turned inside out to enable blockchain storage.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Not well addressed today, sure. But that strikes me purely as a result of Uber/Lyfts first mover advantage plus scale; today they're enormously deep-pocketed and could (and probably have) easily squelch any sort of "local Uber" chatter, despite it being (to me at least) a no brainer.
mgraczyk 4y ago
Most people who are into blockchain stuff would not use the word "decentralised" to describe a system where a municipal government has unilateral control. The thing that they solve well is incentivizing people to operate a network, and doing so with security properties that are different from centralized networks. In the case of "decentralised Uber", that would look like an Uber network that continued working even if some subset of participants became evil or disappeared. With sometime like Bitcoin for example, you could shift the security property from "network behaves correctly as long as the local government is honest and online" to "network behaves correctly as long as >50% of hash power is honest and >X% of hashpower is online" It's not really about censorship and only a tiny bit about government resistance. It's more about not trusting anyone. My personal take is that some trust is good for an uber-like product, so current-gen blockchain solution would be worse than actual Uber.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Exactly; the "trust" problem is the only one that "blockchain" solves, and it does so at the price of extreme inefficiency. As for your first statement; exactly, and to me this sort of shows the limited thinking of many "into blockchain" people. Bitcoin and money is a pretty good use-case, and I can think of maybe a few others. But, local government control of some local things works extremely well in a lot of cases, and I can see no reason why it couldn't for an uber/doordash replacement.

by jrm4 4y ago

maxerickson 4y ago

The answer depends a lot on what you decide "Uber" means (the article talks about "User Needs", which is a good lens to make this decision through). For riders, not having to locate and setup the service is going to matter at least some of the time, and is not well addressed by local systems. I don't think blockchain is likely to be the answer either. It adds enough complexity that things anyway end up "centralized" in the primary implementation of the system, so you might as well directly implement something that isn't all turned inside out to enable blockchain storage.

jrm4 4y ago
Not well addressed today, sure. But that strikes me purely as a result of Uber/Lyfts first mover advantage plus scale; today they're enormously deep-pocketed and could (and probably have) easily squelch any sort of "local Uber" chatter, despite it being (to me at least) a no brainer.

mgraczyk 4y ago

Most people who are into blockchain stuff would not use the word "decentralised" to describe a system where a municipal government has unilateral control. The thing that they solve well is incentivizing people to operate a network, and doing so with security properties that are different from centralized networks. In the case of "decentralised Uber", that would look like an Uber network that continued working even if some subset of participants became evil or disappeared. With sometime like Bitcoin for example, you could shift the security property from "network behaves correctly as long as the local government is honest and online" to "network behaves correctly as long as >50% of hash power is honest and >X% of hashpower is online" It's not really about censorship and only a tiny bit about government resistance. It's more about not trusting anyone. My personal take is that some trust is good for an uber-like product, so current-gen blockchain solution would be worse than actual Uber.

jrm4 4y ago
Exactly; the "trust" problem is the only one that "blockchain" solves, and it does so at the price of extreme inefficiency. As for your first statement; exactly, and to me this sort of shows the limited thinking of many "into blockchain" people. Bitcoin and money is a pretty good use-case, and I can think of maybe a few others. But, local government control of some local things works extremely well in a lot of cases, and I can see no reason why it couldn't for an uber/doordash replacement.