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comment by mk
mk  ·  1555 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing

This is wrong:

    At its core, blockchain is a glorified spreadsheet (think: Excel with one table). In other words, a new way to store data. In traditional databases there’s usually one person who’s in charge, who decides who can access and input data, who can edit and remove it. That’s different in a blockchain. Nobody’s in charge, and you can’t change or delete anything, only view and input data.

Blockchain is not a new way to store data. Data has been stored in a distributed manner before. (Napster was a successful distributed data application) Blockchain is a method of securing state. In the case of Bitcoin, this enables a ledger that anyone can use, but no one can corrupt. This creates digital scarcity (a completely new phenomenon), but bitcoin also comes with a protocol for transactions. This is exactly what you need to make a basic digital currency, and thus, bitcoin was created. Bitcoin has serious drawbacks regarding speed and energy consumption, but it succeeds as a digital store of value. I used bitcoin last week to pay developers in another country.

Now, what Bitcoin does not do, but what Ethereum does, is use blockchain-secured state to create a global permissionless application. Computers are state machines. Ethereum is a turing-complete state machine that is accessible to anyone. Code runs on Ethereum much like transactions are made on Bitcoin. The result is that you can execute code that the entire world can interact with, and everyone shares the same results. You can create digital currencies using Ethereum, but because of its turing-complete nature, you can also do much more.

For example, because of blockchain, a girl in Poland can now buy shares in a house in the US, earn a portion of the rent, and sell the shares at a later date: https://realt.co/

Digital trading card games can be created with limited numbers of cards, and people can trade, buy, and sell these cards directly, or on unaffiliated marketplaces: https://godsunchained.com/ https://opensea.io/

Derivatives can be created around any of these assets, and markets for these derivatives are global: https://synthetix.exchange

As a result, there is an explosion of applications, and transactions are increasing https://etherscan.io/chart/tx

This author does not understand the technology, and is attacking the hype and failed early use-cases. The early web had similar hype and use case failures. However, the technology was transformative.





ooli  ·  1554 days ago  ·  link  ·  

what do you think about the privacy argument?

Using blockchain is private, until you've been figured out. Then your whole usage is public with no way to suppress that?

mk  ·  1554 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's not technically true. There are zero-knowledge proofs that can be used to deidentify assets and transactions.

As an example, JPMorgan has developed one type: https://www.coindesk.com/jpmorgan-adds-new-privacy-features-to-its-ethereum-based-quorum-blockchain

That's one of the wonders of Ethereum. Because it is turing-complete, it unleashes a huge amount of creativity.

Bitcoin has transaction mixers, but they are far from optimal. I am not long-term bullish on bitcoin.

BTW, these zero-knowledge proofs have now been leveraged for both privacy and increased bandwidth on the main chain: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/80495/aztec-ethereum-layer-2-unveil