5 ms·

Ah the layers. Okay, so one: Obviously pointless from a tech POV. There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not.

by jrm4 1y ago

Ah the layers. Okay, so one: Obviously pointless from a tech POV. There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. But then, why? Sadly, as someone who does like the ideals of true cryptocurrency, yet another way to make sure "real" crypto doesn't happen, much like what is happening to BTC. Here's hoping (yeah, it's a long shot) people see through all of this and maybe, MAYBE, get into the actual ideals of cryptocurrency again.

Goofy_Coyote 1y ago
Can you elaborate on what is real crypto, vs what’s happening now with BTC or other decentralized stable coins, please? I’m curious to know more. Thanks
- jrm4 1y ago
  The fees and slowness of BTC have essentially rendered it unusable as a "real cryptocurrency" and is more-or-less just being taken over by the banks. The others aren't doing well right now despite the fact that the tech that runs them can do what crypto promised, often better. It will all come down to whether people will buy in?
  - chabes 1y ago
    Wow, flashback to 2017. This was a narrative back then, and it led to the creation of (and eventual demise of) the bcash fork.
  - martinohansen 1y ago
    Isn’t the lightning network solving the slowness and high fees problem?
    - jrm4 1y ago
      Supposedly, but it doesn't seem to be happening -- the problem with those 2nd layers is that they end up simply inserting a point of failure that happens to be the entire point of cryptocurrency.
petertodd 1y ago
> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it.
- 3PS 1y ago
  > One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it. Even more specifically, a blockchain is for when you want Byzantine fault tolerance, i.e. you don't trust one or more of the actors involved. This is the main distinguishing feature of blockchains IMO, the reason we have proof of work, proof of stake, etc. It's also the main thing I saw people getting wrong when using blockchains during the earlier waves of cryptocurrency fever; most proposals for blockchains did make sense as distributed public ledgers, but didn't really need the extra computational overhead because only trusted parties were adding blocks to begin with.
  - petertodd 1y ago
    > Even more specifically, a blockchain is for when you want Byzantine fault tolerance, i.e. you don't trust one or more of the actors involved. Often yes. But also blockchain's can be useful simply for backups and scaling: by cryptographically linking every bit of data together you can be confident that you actually have a complete copy without any errors. Git is basically a blockchain for this exact reason: starting from a git commit hash, git works backwards, checking that every byte of data is what it should be. Similarly, modern filesystems like btrfs use strong (if not cryptographically strong) hashes for this same reason. Though in a sense, you're still correct: the "actor" you aren't trusting here is your own computer hardware.
    - 3PS 1y ago
stale2002 1y ago
> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. There absolutely is. Its called having access to the ecosystem. The money features that exist in the current blockchain landscape are simply a better developer ecosystem, with many more features, than the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Blockchains are no longer about the singular feature of having a trustless ledger that bitcoin tried to provide. No, instead it is about a whole variety of money related features and developer ecosystems that simply do not exist outside of the crypto space. Recreating all that exists in the crypto space, but using a database instead, sounds like a lot of wasted work when you can just use the tools that are already available.
- dmbche 1y ago
  > No, instead it is about a whole variety of money related features and developer ecosystems that simply do not exist outside of the crypto space. Like what? Speculation?
- vanviegen 1y ago
  > the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? Genuinely curious though; what kind of 'money related features', that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to?
  - stale2002 1y ago
    > Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? No, I am claiming that I couldn't spin up a bank or a stock market on my laptop, that is compatible with all the other stock markets, by forking a git repo. > that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to? The git repo fork button, that slots right into a whole ecosystem that has 10s of thousands of contributors to it. Ease of use, and developer experience and existing markets and existing integrations with all of these businesses is a big deal. It doesn't matter if someone could hypothetically spend 1 billion dollars recreating all of that, using a database. Because that would require 1 billion dollars.
baby 1y ago
A cryptocurrency is basically a distributed database, except that you are getting different actors who don't necessarily trust one to run it cooperatively.
- udev4096 1y ago
  It's a LOT more than that. You are still stuck in satoshi-era. Things have evolved quite a bit that it's no longer just a db sync
  - serial_dev 1y ago
    Care to elaborate?
    - jrm4 1y ago
      I'll chime in here;e.g. Ethereum is more than a database. It's a computer. You can write and execute code on it. (but also, as OP, Stripe will almost certainly not have any use for this)
      - nairboon 1y ago
        Technically, it's a program, not a computer; Ethereum still needs actual computers to do the computing.
        jrm4 1y ago
        Operating system or perhaps virtual machine, then.
        jgilias 1y ago
        Yes, a VM, the EVM.
      - fruitworks 1y ago
        Etherium is a database. It's a database that contains scripts (not unlike bitcoin) that some computers can run if they want to determine the balance of accounts. Etherium itself is not a computer, that's marketing speak.
udev4096 1y ago
Monero is pretty much what satoshi envisioned. Strong math, real value and active community. Sadly, it's getting attacked by qubic
- louisanderson01 1y ago
  Monero got 51% attacked
  - fruitworks 1y ago
    The media has reported on it incorrectly. It's more like a 41% attack. Stochasticially, you are likely to get large reorgs every once in a while but the network sorts itself out after a while.
    - udev4096 1y ago
      Currently, they have mined 42 blocks out of last 100 blocks. Source: https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
> Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. A database cannot resist tampering by somebody with admin access to the database. It may be the only thing that blockchains have going for them, but it's a big one.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  Stripe would never create a blockchain they can't control, because if it has anything to do with fiat then it's going to need to have that control. I have an extremely high suspicion they have some sort of admin access.
- fruitworks 1y ago
  But this is a classical consensus setup where stripe has a front door to change anything about the network they want. Never trust a cryptocurrency developed by a for-profit corporation.
- ab5tract 1y ago
  Can you name any significant economic fallout of any kind related to this attack vector? Because I feel pretty confident that it is dwarfed by the volume of money that has been unlocked by tying crypto to ransomware.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    Enron
- jamesmccann 1y ago
  You can sign records in a normal database. Implement some segregation of duty and don't give your DB admins access to any signing keys.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    They can still delete records, restore from backups, etc
wmf 1y ago
If Stripe can kill "real crypto" then it deserves to fail.

by jrm4 1y ago

Goofy_Coyote 1y ago

Can you elaborate on what is real crypto, vs what’s happening now with BTC or other decentralized stable coins, please? I’m curious to know more. Thanks

jrm4 1y ago
The fees and slowness of BTC have essentially rendered it unusable as a "real cryptocurrency" and is more-or-less just being taken over by the banks. The others aren't doing well right now despite the fact that the tech that runs them can do what crypto promised, often better. It will all come down to whether people will buy in?
- chabes 1y ago
  Wow, flashback to 2017. This was a narrative back then, and it led to the creation of (and eventual demise of) the bcash fork.
- martinohansen 1y ago
  Isn’t the lightning network solving the slowness and high fees problem?
  - jrm4 1y ago
    Supposedly, but it doesn't seem to be happening -- the problem with those 2nd layers is that they end up simply inserting a point of failure that happens to be the entire point of cryptocurrency.

petertodd 1y ago

> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it.

3PS 1y ago
> One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it. Even more specifically, a blockchain is for when you want Byzantine fault tolerance, i.e. you don't trust one or more of the actors involved. This is the main distinguishing feature of blockchains IMO, the reason we have proof of work, proof of stake, etc. It's also the main thing I saw people getting wrong when using blockchains during the earlier waves of cryptocurrency fever; most proposals for blockchains did make sense as distributed public ledgers, but didn't really need the extra computational overhead because only trusted parties were adding blocks to begin with.
- petertodd 1y ago
  > Even more specifically, a blockchain is for when you want Byzantine fault tolerance, i.e. you don't trust one or more of the actors involved. Often yes. But also blockchain's can be useful simply for backups and scaling: by cryptographically linking every bit of data together you can be confident that you actually have a complete copy without any errors. Git is basically a blockchain for this exact reason: starting from a git commit hash, git works backwards, checking that every byte of data is what it should be. Similarly, modern filesystems like btrfs use strong (if not cryptographically strong) hashes for this same reason. Though in a sense, you're still correct: the "actor" you aren't trusting here is your own computer hardware.
  - 3PS 1y ago

stale2002 1y ago

> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. There absolutely is. Its called having access to the ecosystem. The money features that exist in the current blockchain landscape are simply a better developer ecosystem, with many more features, than the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Blockchains are no longer about the singular feature of having a trustless ledger that bitcoin tried to provide. No, instead it is about a whole variety of money related features and developer ecosystems that simply do not exist outside of the crypto space. Recreating all that exists in the crypto space, but using a database instead, sounds like a lot of wasted work when you can just use the tools that are already available.

dmbche 1y ago
> No, instead it is about a whole variety of money related features and developer ecosystems that simply do not exist outside of the crypto space. Like what? Speculation?
vanviegen 1y ago
> the non existent "Database driven", uhh money tools. Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? Genuinely curious though; what kind of 'money related features', that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to?
- stale2002 1y ago
  > Are you claiming here that things like banks and stock markets don't exist? No, I am claiming that I couldn't spin up a bank or a stock market on my laptop, that is compatible with all the other stock markets, by forking a git repo. > that have no non-crypto counterparts, are you referring to? The git repo fork button, that slots right into a whole ecosystem that has 10s of thousands of contributors to it. Ease of use, and developer experience and existing markets and existing integrations with all of these businesses is a big deal. It doesn't matter if someone could hypothetically spend 1 billion dollars recreating all of that, using a database. Because that would require 1 billion dollars.

baby 1y ago

A cryptocurrency is basically a distributed database, except that you are getting different actors who don't necessarily trust one to run it cooperatively.

udev4096 1y ago
It's a LOT more than that. You are still stuck in satoshi-era. Things have evolved quite a bit that it's no longer just a db sync
- serial_dev 1y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - jrm4 1y ago
    I'll chime in here;e.g. Ethereum is more than a database. It's a computer. You can write and execute code on it. (but also, as OP, Stripe will almost certainly not have any use for this)
    - nairboon 1y ago
      Technically, it's a program, not a computer; Ethereum still needs actual computers to do the computing.
      - jrm4 1y ago
        Operating system or perhaps virtual machine, then.
        jgilias 1y ago
        Yes, a VM, the EVM.
    - fruitworks 1y ago
      Etherium is a database. It's a database that contains scripts (not unlike bitcoin) that some computers can run if they want to determine the balance of accounts. Etherium itself is not a computer, that's marketing speak.

udev4096 1y ago

Monero is pretty much what satoshi envisioned. Strong math, real value and active community. Sadly, it's getting attacked by qubic

louisanderson01 1y ago
Monero got 51% attacked
- fruitworks 1y ago
  The media has reported on it incorrectly. It's more like a 41% attack. Stochasticially, you are likely to get large reorgs every once in a while but the network sorts itself out after a while.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    Currently, they have mined 42 blocks out of last 100 blocks. Source: https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

> Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. A database cannot resist tampering by somebody with admin access to the database. It may be the only thing that blockchains have going for them, but it's a big one.

LoganDark 1y ago
Stripe would never create a blockchain they can't control, because if it has anything to do with fiat then it's going to need to have that control. I have an extremely high suspicion they have some sort of admin access.
fruitworks 1y ago
But this is a classical consensus setup where stripe has a front door to change anything about the network they want. Never trust a cryptocurrency developed by a for-profit corporation.
ab5tract 1y ago
Can you name any significant economic fallout of any kind related to this attack vector? Because I feel pretty confident that it is dwarfed by the volume of money that has been unlocked by tying crypto to ransomware.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Enron
jamesmccann 1y ago
You can sign records in a normal database. Implement some segregation of duty and don't give your DB admins access to any signing keys.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  They can still delete records, restore from backups, etc

wmf 1y ago

If Stripe can kill "real crypto" then it deserves to fail.