is there any legitimate use of blockchains?
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The lack of a trusted central authority is key. If you have at least one authority you can trust just barely enough, the whole idea of a blockchain collapses. There needs to be an urgent trust crisis for this to work.
Also, if you have no trusted parties, you have a huge "First Owner" problem.
If we were to set up a blockchain to track the ownership of fluffy hats, what's to stop me from seeing your fluffy hat, and quickly registering it as mine?
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I appreciate that when you find a relevant xkcd, the explainxkcd page also has relevant information to the discussion:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2030%3A_Voting_Software
When the reporter follows the interview up with a mention of blockchain technology, Megan and Cueball reflexively tell the reporter to avoid any voting system using the technology at all costs. Blockchain is a relatively new technology that is intended to solve some computer security issues by making it difficult to doctor old data. However, in the process of solving the old computer security issues, it has introduced new computer security issues that have not yet been ironed out; for instance, it doesn't solve input fraud issues, only data-doctoring fraud, so if a program caused the voting machine to record a vote for candidate B whenever a vote for candidate A was cast (such a program could be uploaded to the voting machines through USB, or through the internet which the voting machine must be connected to for blockchain), blockchain would not prevent it. Blockchain has also had a large number of high-profile scams, thefts, and implementations with critical security holes. Thus, Megan and Cueball may not trust this blockchain solution because of this history.
Blockchain is really great at preventing post-facto data changes. With blockchain you can somewhat guarantee that no one comes in after the election and changes the votes on the machines. (Unless they're handling the blockchain in a stupid fashion, for example without the distribution.) But you cannot prevent tampering with the machines themselves, such as making them record votes that didn't happen, or tampering the data before it's written to the blockchain.
Also, the security issues that Blockchain solves could also be solved via write-once memory, which would be more secure and more difficult to doctor.
Most computer security specialists are more worried about programs that randomly and/or deliberately misreport a vote, than people changing the votes after they're already recorded, so blockchain would solve an issue that most computer security specialists are less worried about, while causing new issues (the perpetual internet connection among them).
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?
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OpenCerts does require institutions to be trusted partners, so this isn't permissionless. Why not just make the normal database searchable if it relies on trusting someone?
It's not that blockchain doesn't have any applications. It's just that it only solves problems in ways that are easier and better solved by other implementations. It's not that are no practical applications, it's that there aren't even any realistic theoretical applications.
it's that there aren't even any realistic theoretical applications.
Here's the neat thing about research: the researcher themselves may not even know the kind of outcomes their research would bring about in the future.
It is not necessarily a known unknown in which we work towards a theoretical application; it could very well be an unknown unknown.
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it's that there aren't even any realistic theoretical applications.
Here's the neat thing about research: the researcher themselves may not even know the kind of outcomes their research would bring about in the future.
It is not necessarily a known unknown in which we work towards a theoretical application; it could very well be an unknown unknown.
I have a PhD, I know how research works. But the new for a new data distribution system isn't caused by a technological advancement, it's driven by social systems.
The usecases for blockchain technology are wellknown, and they are basicaly the antithesis of the technology itself. You need a massive breach of trusted institutions, while maintaining free, open and fast electronic communication throughout the network. You also need to solve the first-owner problem without introducing a trusted party, which is a huge issue in almost every practical application.
So yeah, it can be an unknown unknown, but it's one in the same way that research into moonratpoison has potential applications. Maybe something vastly unlikely happens, and then it'll be a good thing we have the tech.
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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?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Believing all the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a scam is just a big indicator that you know nothing about it
The main thing is to have a trustless currency that is decentralized (canāt be easily censored), and that isnāt owned nor controlled by some centralized organization (ex: a country). Its uses are best seen in countries where the government goes bankrupt or fucked up the currency by printing a lot of it, or for currencies that no other country trust
It will be niche and useless to most people, but itās a verifiable way to check money is not being tampered with. Itās also the best way to transact online anonymously or pseudonymously, and not relying on a company thatās trying to make as much money as possible
Due to the way some cryptos are, they became a speculative investment. The fact that theyāre not well known increases this use. Some cryptocurrencies are designed to be inflationary. Some are straight up pump and dump scams, like a lot of things. There will be assholes everywhere
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Some countries are considering using blockchain in the future for their land title registry.
I read something about potentially using blockchain the future while using onland (ontarios land registry service) but i can't seem to find the page that mentions it.
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.
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Why can't I use swift to buy anything of eg steam? I genuinely don't know but there has to be a reason.
SWIFT is pretty low-level, e.g. a bank transfer you start in your bank app could be processed through SWIFT. But Valve probably doesn't want to deal with reconciliation of manual transfers, so they either use payment methods running on SWIFT or other options.
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Good question why corporations turned to payment processors when we were simply able to wire money from our bank accounts to others.
Reconciliation is a big reason, people suck at copying a reference for their manual transfers.
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No. From the most base concepts, some authority still needs to recognize and enforce the contents of the blockchain (ownership, currency, whatever). If an authority is already trusted to act on this data, they might as well be the secure custodian of it. Or, if not entirely trusted, a third party trustee. At very best the blockchain offers complete transparency and auditability, but this is the trust you place into any given system on your end. If you do not place trust in a system, what are you doing engaging with it?
Supporters of blockchain generally don't accept these arguments because they are anti-authority, and without passing further comment on that, fair enough. But that means it will only ever be relegated to buying drugs on the internet and scams.
No. From the most base concepts, some authority still needs to recognize and enforce the contents of the blockchain (ownership, currency, whatever).
What authority is needed when blockchain is used as a currency, what is there to enforce?
But that means it will only ever be relegated to buying drugs on the internet and scams.
You can buy much more than drugs using cryptocurrency, so this is absolutely false.
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However git can be considered to be based on blockchain so in that sense, absolutely.
How would that work?
I think parent is referring to Merkle trees.
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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?
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.
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SWIFT is pretty low-level, e.g. a bank transfer you start in your bank app could be processed through SWIFT. But Valve probably doesn't want to deal with reconciliation of manual transfers, so they either use payment methods running on SWIFT or other options.
Doesn't that bring in a lot of fees
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People will easily list a lot of credible legitimate usecases
that are hypothetical
and have remained hypothetical for 18 years.
Yes, your honor. My buying of drugs online was only hypothetical, it never happened.
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Also, if you have no trusted parties, you have a huge "First Owner" problem.
If we were to set up a blockchain to track the ownership of fluffy hats, what's to stop me from seeing your fluffy hat, and quickly registering it as mine?
That is a good point. If thereās a dispute about the first owner, thereās no clean way to solve it. However, the current owner is clear, so we could just start tracking the history from the current time onwards, and ignore the history thatās shrouded in mystery and controversy.
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That is a good point. If thereās a dispute about the first owner, thereās no clean way to solve it. However, the current owner is clear, so we could just start tracking the history from the current time onwards, and ignore the history thatās shrouded in mystery and controversy.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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If the political vote is public, voters are exposed to blackmail or they may sell their vote. Itās 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]Ohā¦ Well thatās pretty bad. Itās 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 shouldnāt 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 donāt 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 doesnāt require the tokens to be connected to real world objects?
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