4 ms·

Fast and fee-less? Does that work on a distributed ledger? Is there some magic I’m missing to make consensus quick and cheap? Micro-transactions were never goi

• mandmandam 3y ago
  Block lattice tech has been around for seven years. All your points would be answered by looking into it - it's not a secret. Eg, Nano uses it. It's been working, efficient, safe, fast (<1 second) and completely fee-less, for seven years now. The entire network could run on a single windmill. It's tending toward decentralization because there's no mining, no staking, and there was a genuinely fair distribution. Fee-less transactions come with bad actors spamming the network with microscopic transactions, like a DDOS. So, Nano uses a 'bucket' system to keep things moving. Tbh, this is exactly what I mean - all of this ought to be well known. People in general have a massive blind spot on what money actually is, and a weird reluctance to discuss what it could be. We're talking about all the crypto that doesn't work, so much so that people don't even know there's good and working crypto right now. We're talking about the scammers, instead of the people doing cool things without seeking glory for it.
  • pauselaugh 3y ago
    Nano is a great example against your point as well. Its design flaw is the ORV system requiring someone who just wants the elevator pitch and their life to be wildly more efficient via using digital currency that's faster, safer, cheaper than their debit card having to educate themselves on what-even-is an ORV, how does the voting work, how do you know what a good representative is, and so on. And, as with a lot of the cryptos working on different vectors of what efficiency means, it's also its strength. It's, you know, how it's fast. So yes, o boy, if people just adopted it, informed themselves about it, and used it in volume "phase 2" could commence and as with crypto it comes in the form of major traffic revealing scalability necessities. Unfortunately who is going to do that to see in X years what the issues are, when there are the grandfather cryptos that do what they do and work how they work (sidestepping the "how they were meant to work/layer2 protocols don't count/cup of coffee as priority or no" dramatics). And so its largest general population adoption, friction creating flaw is that people do not want to be their own bank. This is absolutely where the smugness from the tech sector comes from regarding the unwashed masses clicking excel macros from email scammers and uninformed people not having a functioning BS-detector and opting in to be the greater fool because they know there is bound to be many more greater fools than themselves. The other bit that was omitted in your "we fixate on bitcoin and nfts and failures and dismiss the advancements smugly" is how many more declared-better-than cryptos have there been that didn't even make it to the scalability discussion that mature cryptos have and have modified and built systems around the transaction issues? Case in point, you say "genuinely fair distribution" but that's a massive *citation needed. Back to genpop, they will never think it is fair if they didn't know about it and someone they consider their peer was able to obtain it with relatively less work or cost than they'd have to right now. One of the key features of bitcoin (and maybe a small handful others) were that there was no ICO, and no opportunity to be unfair past you were either there and aware or you weren't. Now that more people are aware of the space in general, you cannot simply flip the switch without bad actors doing their thing. That era will never happen again, it was those people (or mmm intel agencies) at the forefront of dropping the tech in the wild interacting with it. That said, there-and-aware with those early cryptos had a relatively massive near decade-long runway. I honestly would not know where to begin with assessing all cryptos around in 2020 to form an opinion on viability for 2030. Those good ol' days had what, 6-12 to sort out and work on? Between 2018 and 2022 there are around 1,000 dead cryptos alone. I don't have the time to parse them all out and barely have the knowledge to assert that one that is dead should not be and has something worth pursuing. I don't want my jadedness of being in the space for 15+ years at this point to lead me by the nose, but my bias would definitely be "if it was worth pursuing, one of the big ones' communities would pursue it as it means more value and a better product" (conspiracies about new world order digi-currency agenda aside). Case in point, NFTs. Those in the know understand the potential value of an NFT and how they're not just "goofy internet jpgs" and have built in versions of systems accomodating them, or, you know, let parallel tech be the guinea pig. I can see use cases for them regarding licensing, but I can also see very little incentive for any entity to lose their centralized power to accomodate a tech that directly usurps it over time.
    • mandmandam 3y ago
      > Its design flaw is the ORV system requiring someone who just wants the elevator pitch and their life to be wildly more efficient via using digital currency that's faster, safer, cheaper than their debit card having to educate themselves on what-even-is an ORV, how does the voting work, how do you know what a good representative is, and so on. It doesn't though. It requires installing a wallet app. > And so its largest general population adoption, friction creating flaw is that people do not want to be their own bank Maybe you didn't see that story here yesterday about banks simply closing people's accounts for no reason. Maybe you missed Mastercard and Visa blocking Wikileaks and OnlyFans payments. Maybe you missed the bank bailouts, and the housing crisis, and the Epstein funding, and the Panama papers, etc. If you've ever seen a bank run, you know that there are times when people absolutely do want to be their own bank. > my bias would definitely be "if it was worth pursuing, one of the big ones' communities would pursue it as it means more value and a better product" That's not how a status quo works. When you talk about digital cash, you're stepping on some very sensitive and powerful toes, conspiracy or no. > I can also see very little incentive for any entity to lose their centralized power to accomodate a tech that directly usurps it over time. Well now you've hit the nail on the head. Fortunately, accommodation might not be a requirement to success.
  • yunwal 3y ago
    Block lattice is IMO far too unwieldy to use, and is useless for decentralization unless the system you're making payments on is actually yours, meaning you can't use it for real-world payments. Also, still nothing solves the oracle problem. Any form of crypto does nothing for any transaction that doesn't purely take place in digital space. This really is never the case, even when people claim it is. People always use the "NFTs could be used for concert tickets" example, but when it comes down to it, the venue still has to physically let you in. Same with DNS. Sure, you could have a record put on a blockchain, but somewhere down the road, you're gonna have to be routed through a DNS server owned by someone, and the decision to use a decentralized record is purely theirs. At some point, there's some centralized entity that needs to be trusted or regulated. As long as the thing being bought/sold with crypto can't be decentralized (nearly everything), you're still kicking the centralization can down the road, and spending a whole bunch of time and energy doing it.
    • mandmandam 3y ago
      > Block lattice is IMO far too unwieldy to use ... It involves scanning a QR code and clicking confirm. It's faster and easier than using a credit card, and uses a tenth of the energy. > is useless for decentralization unless the system you're making payments on is actually yours No idea where you got that idea, but it's very silly. You've missed the first principles of cyrpto payments somehow. > still nothing solves the oracle problem And cash does? Did Nano claim to solve it? Did I? >you're still kicking the centralization can down the road I don't think you understand what 'decentralization' means in the context of crypto. I'm a little curious why you feel qualified to talk authoritatively about this topic?
      • yunwal 3y ago
        > It involves scanning a QR code and clicking confirm > No idea where you got that idea… Block lattice relies on private ledgers owned by the 2 parties of a transaction. It then consolidates those ledgers which is how it saves energy. If you’re giving someone else access to change that ledger, it’s no more decentralized than cash. > And cash does? Cash doesn’t, but it also doesn’t claim to provide decentralization or enforce contracts without state involvement. The entire purpose of crypto is to remove state involvement from contracts, which it fails to do.