is there any legitimate use of blockchains?
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If the political vote is public, voters are exposed to blackmail or they may sell their vote. It’s a bad idea unfortunately.
There is a project called MACI that prevents the blackmail part
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Yes. Decentralised certificates (NFTs) for the likes of digitally owning something non fungible (think like a concert or plane ticket that isn't tied to Ticketmaster, etc), or more commonly, cryptocurrency. A way of storing wealth digitally without anyone controlling it centrally.
I would argue against this stance, but not completely. The need for decentralized authorities only comes about due to a lack or trust or failure of the custodians of the product.
From your example, you could turn concert tickets into verifiable tokens (I do think this would be a good idea), and it would solve a lot of after market sale and validation issues. The only reason we have these issues in [checks current year] is because monopolies like LiveNation/TicketMaster have so throughly turbo-fucked the system that venues and customers cant do anything about it.
IMO, blockchains are a cool concept, and I love that cryptography is now a common topic of discussion because of it. However, its a solution looking for a problem and the problems up until this point are manufactured by the people selling the product or straight up ponzi schemes.
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There's a few issues with that approach:
- Blockchains can't forget, but they also need to add new blocks on every period, meaning that there's a lot of idle events that are added to the chain. You can increase the period, but then the chain has more latency. Either way, the disk space needed to store the full chain grows really fast, which becomes a problem when trying to bootstrap a new root node, or backup an existing one.
- Unless you're trading land titles internationally (read: there's no single trusted authority), blockchains could just be replaced with a regular distributed database and servers.
- Chains don't offer out of band recovery and error correction.
Totally agree. And my problem with the example of land use that a single entity (the government where the land is) will be the sole enforcer of it. So who cares if the information is slightly less centralized, when the actual product is just as centralized as ever?
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Hello,
I have been researching about blockchains and stuff and it all seems like a big scam. It's not sustainable and can be replaced by a simple database.
is there any legitimate use cases of blockchains or it is all just a big scam?
Like most of the tech bro industry, they take something with real value, completely misunderstand it, creates fake value, pumps.
LLMs are awesome, but the current AI industry is terrible and completely misses the actual value of LLMs.
NFTs are actually a great way to digitally prove ownership, basically the future of digital ownership certificates.
Crypto is a way to make money for the people by the people, and not for the rich, by the rich, through the people.
Blockchain is the core idea that makes crypto and NFTs possible. You can think of it as a decentralized DB, it's useful because it means that the majority controls the data and not a centralized authority.
Imagine that the government decided to print a million dollars and give it to some politician, it's small enough to not be noticed by the market, but it still devalues the money. They could only do it because they own the money management system. In Blockchain each transaction is confirmed by external parties (often multiple ones) and it has to align with the already existing db (which everyone has a copy of) so in that scenario if the government tries to "print" money it will be conflicting with the existing db and it will not be accepted, so they will have to either continue with an incompatible db (making it as worthless as monopoly money) or cancel the transactions by realigning with the common db.
Blockchain is not meant to be a database like the ones in web servers, it is meant to be a database for a consensus of users.
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That's not the first-owner problem. I'll try to explain in more detail. The problem arises when you're using the blockchain as a "reciept". You can only ever trace the ownership of the reciept, not the item it represents, without a trusted party.
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Say we made a blockchain that determines the ownership of all fluffy hats in the world. It starts at june 1st 2026. Lets just assume there's a trivial way to perfectly describe fluffy hats that we can put in a token. Or hell, pretend it's super complex, that changes nothing.
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You bought a fluffy hat in 2002, and made one for yourself in 2008. You own both, wearing one to bed when you go to sleep on may 31st, 2026.
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At 1 second past midnight, june 1st 2026, I make two tokens, one for each of your hats.
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I am now officially the first owner of those hats. You are suddenly a thief holding my property, even though it never left your head.
That's the first owner problem. Without a trusted source, there is no way to ensure the first owner in a blockchain is actually the owner under the current legal definition (as in, you made the hat from homespun wool, it's on your head right now). It gets even worse though, because I can even make tokens for nonexistent fluffy hats that haven't been made. As soon as someone makes it, i'm already the owner.
The ONLY application for a blockchain with a trustless system is if the entire property is directly on the blockchain, and that doesn't work.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Oh… Well that’s pretty bad. It’s like Wild West at that point. Anyone can make these fraudulent tokens. Someone would need to prove that there exists a connection between the token and the real world item it represents.
I guess therein lies the problem. These tokens shouldn’t represent physical objects. If you really want them to, you need a certification authority. If you can find one, it means that you actually can trust someone, so you don’t even need to use a blockchain for tracking these things. Why not just use a trusted authority to handle a traditional database.
So what does that leave us with? What can you do with a blockchain that doesn’t require the tokens to be connected to real world objects?
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I would argue against this stance, but not completely. The need for decentralized authorities only comes about due to a lack or trust or failure of the custodians of the product.
From your example, you could turn concert tickets into verifiable tokens (I do think this would be a good idea), and it would solve a lot of after market sale and validation issues. The only reason we have these issues in [checks current year] is because monopolies like LiveNation/TicketMaster have so throughly turbo-fucked the system that venues and customers cant do anything about it.
IMO, blockchains are a cool concept, and I love that cryptography is now a common topic of discussion because of it. However, its a solution looking for a problem and the problems up until this point are manufactured by the people selling the product or straight up ponzi schemes.
Most techbros trying to sell the Blockchain are just ponzi schemes/scams. It does have a legitimate use. But not for whatever the techbros are yapping about. It is essentially a decentralised database under nobody's control.
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Anything that requires a public, immutable database. Land registry would be one example. Notary public for electronic documents would be another.
You can leverage the majority consensus to create a trusted software build system. Each block would be a package build
land registry
Yes! No more need for title insurance if ownership records are clear and public.
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Hello,
I have been researching about blockchains and stuff and it all seems like a big scam. It's not sustainable and can be replaced by a simple database.
is there any legitimate use cases of blockchains or it is all just a big scam?
Sure, there are a ton of things the blockchain would be great for. Also, it just so happens that nobody uses them for that because the people developing the tech only dream about using it to join the bitcoin billionaires club.
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land registry
Yes! No more need for title insurance if ownership records are clear and public.
They already are in most countries. E.g. in Poland land registry is maintained by court system and any changes are made only as a result of court order or a filing made by a notary public, who has a real incentive to check all the documents, because they are on the hook financially for any false filings.
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Doesn't that bring in a lot of fees
Not really, SWIFT fees are pretty low. Lower than MasterCard and Visa generally charge afaik. For individual customers banks often offer it for free.
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land registry
Yes! No more need for title insurance if ownership records are clear and public.
But them the government can't unilaterally take your property from you for a pittance under eminent domain. Who wants a system like that?
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Hello,
I have been researching about blockchains and stuff and it all seems like a big scam. It's not sustainable and can be replaced by a simple database.
is there any legitimate use cases of blockchains or it is all just a big scam?
Gods unchained is a digital TCG that is the only good use of NFTs (and thus Blockchain) that I can think of.
The idea of NFTs is you have a specific instance of a thing that you can trade around. NFT art is stupid, because at the end of the day it's a jpg. However, with a digital TCG, each NFT can represent a singular copy of a digital trading card. It brings back the "trading" aspect of a digital TCG, made more convenient than physical cards due to digital transfers.
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But them the government can't unilaterally take your property from you for a pittance under eminent domain. Who wants a system like that?
Yes they could? Just append a block with the government stating they now own the land.
I guess you could fork the blockchain and don't accept this change but this would be useless. Even if no one accepted the claim, the government can just do whatever they want with that land.
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Hello,
I have been researching about blockchains and stuff and it all seems like a big scam. It's not sustainable and can be replaced by a simple database.
is there any legitimate use cases of blockchains or it is all just a big scam?
Git uses blockchains to store pretty much all of the worlds software...
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No a blockchain is a chain of blocks. Its an append only datastructure that provides a cryptographically verifiable history. Proof-of-work is what allows for public concensus in crypto currencies like bitcoin, where as git uses signed blocks to identify different chains.
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Whereas voting with a piece of paper can be tracked and validated by a severely myopic 6 year old. And you can recount it. You can't "recount" a blockchain if that's your only source.
And if you do both, then why bother with the blockhain?
You can't "recount" a blockchain if that's your only source.
What are you trying to say here?
If each vote is a block in the chain them it is definitely recountable.
If I get a reciept of my vote's hash in the chain, I can confirm it's being included.
The real issue with using a blockchain is it would anonymize the process.
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They already are in most countries. E.g. in Poland land registry is maintained by court system and any changes are made only as a result of court order or a filing made by a notary public, who has a real incentive to check all the documents, because they are on the hook financially for any false filings.
In other words, this is a solved problem without any blockchain nonsense.
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You can't "recount" a blockchain if that's your only source.
What are you trying to say here?
If each vote is a block in the chain them it is definitely recountable.
If I get a reciept of my vote's hash in the chain, I can confirm it's being included.
The real issue with using a blockchain is it would anonymize the process.
wrote last edited by [email protected]If each vote is a block in the chain them it is definitely recountable.
That's not what it means. With this system, you can't independently verify what happened. You can only also look at the blockchain and see that some hash has registered some vote.
But you don't know if that is actually true. You can't see if pushing the red button makes the red vote come out. You can manually count if you want, but the original billet doesn't exist, only a processed form of it on the blockchain.
If I get a reciept of my vote's hash in the chain, I can confirm it's being included.
Only THAT it's included. Otherwise you have something linking you to your vote, which is bad
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Most techbros trying to sell the Blockchain are just ponzi schemes/scams. It does have a legitimate use. But not for whatever the techbros are yapping about. It is essentially a decentralised database under nobody's control.
Exactly, and such things that require or could be improved by decentralized systems tend to be managed by companies (monopolies, or close to it) that already are acting like enshitifying goblins instead of responsible curators.
The ticky part is that when these decentralized systems are involved, the true costs (power, hardware, network, etc.) are distributed and not easily collected.
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Gods unchained is a digital TCG that is the only good use of NFTs (and thus Blockchain) that I can think of.
The idea of NFTs is you have a specific instance of a thing that you can trade around. NFT art is stupid, because at the end of the day it's a jpg. However, with a digital TCG, each NFT can represent a singular copy of a digital trading card. It brings back the "trading" aspect of a digital TCG, made more convenient than physical cards due to digital transfers.
Could you elaborate a bit how blockchain enables something unique here? I see that it enables trade between users, but if a single company controls the game and I assume supply of new cards, does the blockchain aspect for trading really matter?
Trading itself is basic and doesn't need a blockchain. I guess with it you have it implemented in a public and tamper proof way, but that second part doesn't seem to matter to me if the source is centralized.
So what exactly is gained from this approach over just your average ingame auction house?
