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Which is quite decentralized in a way. Instead of paying 10 bucks to pollute the main Ethereum blockchain, I pay pennies in some second hand pepsi wannabe bloc

Which is quite decentralized in a way. Instead of paying 10 bucks to pollute the main Ethereum blockchain, I pay pennies in some second hand pepsi wannabe blockchain like Tron or Solana. I trade my assets once to the secondary chain and then I microtransact on what's effectively an L2 network. Same thing with banks, we can't have dozens of transactions per day for stuff like a hamburger and a coffee, so they invented credit cards as a sort of L2 layer that does smaller transactions. And then wallets like paypal popped up to fill the void in places where the transaction was too low or insecure to even warrant the use of a card, like when you buy porn o dumb videogames. So L3. Having everything on THE blockchain is not actually the decentralized vision we would have in mind, quite the opposite, there's a bunch of blockchains and they communicate with each other.

ethbr1 2y ago
Unfortunately, blockchains sprung into popularity right around the time traditional bank transfers were finally prodded into the 21st century (SEPA, UPI, FedNow, etc). Which means they're now competing against a digital, trusted-counterparty system.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  Blockchains don't compete with banks, they compete with stock markets and other exchanges. Basically Bitcoin exists because nerds wanted to play Wolf of Wall Street and thought the government was holding them down.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Blockchains compete with the existing financial system, which is largely held together by the major central banks and commercial banks. And because of poor timing as mentioned, they just seem like a shabby deal since nowadays it’s entirely possible to get nearly all the benefits in the existing system without the drawbacks.
    - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
      > Blockchains compete with the existing financial system Nobody actually uses blockchains for accounts or money transfers. (Nobody as in actually nobody.) Lots of people use blockchains for speculation purposes, though.
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Who said the existing financial system is limited to "accounts or money transfers"?
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        Wrong. Usd Stablecoins (tether) are very popular in my country. Salaries are paid with that shit
        bitxbitxbitcoin 2y ago
        The people who say nobody uses blockchains for actual money are showing their privilege.
  - makingstuffs 2y ago
    Bitcoin was literally created as a P2P replacement for the financial industry. The title of its white paper is “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”[0]. How is that not ‘competing with banks’? [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
    - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
      > Bitcoin was literally created as a P2P replacement for the financial industry. No, that was "literally" the user-facing justification. But it was created as a get-rich-quick scheme for nerds.
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        That is both a cynical take and an anachronistic one. Sure you can argue that currently it is only used for get rich quick schemes. But to argue that it was get rich quick schemes from the start is innecessary. Also while get rich quick schemes are a problem with crypto, and there are crypto securities that evade regulation, there's also tax evasion, cybersecurity ransomware payments, drug trade, and not an insignificant amount of real legitimate transactions. You can again argue that the real transactions serve to pool illegitimate usecases with legitimate ones, like an xkcd mirror on the Tor network. But that would be a more nuanced and accurate take.
ahtihn 2y ago
> Same thing with banks, we can't have dozens of transactions per day for stuff like a hamburger and a coffee We can't? I guess this is US specific, because I've been able to use my bank card for all transactions since I have a bank account (at least 20 years). All transactions hit the bank account directly and are rejected if balance is insufficient. I don't think credit cards have anything to do with scaling.
- sshine 2y ago
  Depends on what level of the banking system you’re talking. Only other banks can transact with the national bank, so you can’t pay for your hamburgers there. When I pay for public transportation, they batch my travels per day to minimise the transaction fees because they figured most people travel twice per day.
  - omnimus 2y ago
    The public transport transaction fees are because VISA/Mastercard. Atleast in europe bank accounts transact wihtout fees. Also its becoming instant and in some countries even mandatory to be instant. Because of that QRcodes for transactions are picking up with many ecommerce stores pushing QR payment (simply bank transfer) because of the fees. Soon we might soon see VISA/Mastercard less banking.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      > QRcodes That's actually a bit disappointing. Someone I know recently had a QR code sent to them in the mail, which they scanned out of curiosity -- not a technical person. Turns out it was a URL to a rather malicious server and they had to scramble to secure logins and such. Encouraging people to scan QR codes as if stuff like that can't happen just makes it more likely for stuff like that to happen. Not to say that it's strictly a bad thing, just that this particular implementation detail could be improved.
      - theamk 2y ago
mycall 2y ago
Nano is one crypto that is a block-lattice instead of a blockchain and doesn't need the nested layering you refer to.

ethbr1 2y ago

Unfortunately, blockchains sprung into popularity right around the time traditional bank transfers were finally prodded into the 21st century (SEPA, UPI, FedNow, etc). Which means they're now competing against a digital, trusted-counterparty system.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago
Blockchains don't compete with banks, they compete with stock markets and other exchanges. Basically Bitcoin exists because nerds wanted to play Wolf of Wall Street and thought the government was holding them down.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Blockchains compete with the existing financial system, which is largely held together by the major central banks and commercial banks. And because of poor timing as mentioned, they just seem like a shabby deal since nowadays it’s entirely possible to get nearly all the benefits in the existing system without the drawbacks.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    > Blockchains compete with the existing financial system Nobody actually uses blockchains for accounts or money transfers. (Nobody as in actually nobody.) Lots of people use blockchains for speculation purposes, though.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      Who said the existing financial system is limited to "accounts or money transfers"?
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      Wrong. Usd Stablecoins (tether) are very popular in my country. Salaries are paid with that shit
      - bitxbitxbitcoin 2y ago
        The people who say nobody uses blockchains for actual money are showing their privilege.
- makingstuffs 2y ago
  Bitcoin was literally created as a P2P replacement for the financial industry. The title of its white paper is “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”[0]. How is that not ‘competing with banks’? [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    > Bitcoin was literally created as a P2P replacement for the financial industry. No, that was "literally" the user-facing justification. But it was created as a get-rich-quick scheme for nerds.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      That is both a cynical take and an anachronistic one. Sure you can argue that currently it is only used for get rich quick schemes. But to argue that it was get rich quick schemes from the start is innecessary. Also while get rich quick schemes are a problem with crypto, and there are crypto securities that evade regulation, there's also tax evasion, cybersecurity ransomware payments, drug trade, and not an insignificant amount of real legitimate transactions. You can again argue that the real transactions serve to pool illegitimate usecases with legitimate ones, like an xkcd mirror on the Tor network. But that would be a more nuanced and accurate take.

ahtihn 2y ago

> Same thing with banks, we can't have dozens of transactions per day for stuff like a hamburger and a coffee We can't? I guess this is US specific, because I've been able to use my bank card for all transactions since I have a bank account (at least 20 years). All transactions hit the bank account directly and are rejected if balance is insufficient. I don't think credit cards have anything to do with scaling.

sshine 2y ago
Depends on what level of the banking system you’re talking. Only other banks can transact with the national bank, so you can’t pay for your hamburgers there. When I pay for public transportation, they batch my travels per day to minimise the transaction fees because they figured most people travel twice per day.
- omnimus 2y ago
  The public transport transaction fees are because VISA/Mastercard. Atleast in europe bank accounts transact wihtout fees. Also its becoming instant and in some countries even mandatory to be instant. Because of that QRcodes for transactions are picking up with many ecommerce stores pushing QR payment (simply bank transfer) because of the fees. Soon we might soon see VISA/Mastercard less banking.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    > QRcodes That's actually a bit disappointing. Someone I know recently had a QR code sent to them in the mail, which they scanned out of curiosity -- not a technical person. Turns out it was a URL to a rather malicious server and they had to scramble to secure logins and such. Encouraging people to scan QR codes as if stuff like that can't happen just makes it more likely for stuff like that to happen. Not to say that it's strictly a bad thing, just that this particular implementation detail could be improved.
    - theamk 2y ago

mycall 2y ago

Nano is one crypto that is a block-lattice instead of a blockchain and doesn't need the nested layering you refer to.