is there any legitimate use of blockchains?
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Updates lag 4-6 months after filing, so not 100% solved.
also you can only guarantee the records have not been tampered with if you maintain a full copy of the records to compare. Even if you do have that full copy you will have a problem proving your copy is the correct one. A full crypto-verified ledger solves that.
If you empower e.g. every change filer (court, notary public) to run a node fudging records becomes effectively impossible.
Usually, lag like that is due to an ancient codebase, database, and process setup. If you were to solve that, you still wouldn't need blockchain. The software and process engineering does need careful consideration--almost all the stuff like this has had at least one major attempt to replace it over the decades, and it obviously failed--but again, nothing you would be able to solve just because blockchain.
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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.
How is this different from MODO?
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because it means that the majority controls the data and not a centralized authority.
Only until it doesn't. A centralized authority could overwhelm and become the majority. Or more concretely, the US government has the resources to more than double the contribution to Bitcoin, thus giving it complete control.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The money required to double the bitcoin hash rate and maintain double is immense. It's specialized hardware that would need to be manufactured (lead time while network continues to grow, plus who even has the capacity to do that other than TSMC or Samsung) and the network would see it coming and have a chance to do something about it.
It was a risk when it was smaller, but the ability to pull an attack off like that now and maintain the attack isn't practically in the realm of possibilities. (Edit and that's not even getting into where they'd get the power to power the network which is estimated at 173Twh a year and the need to keep expanding that power to maintain the attack in adversarial conditions.)
Attacking the network in other ways via corrupt laws with multi government cooperation would be far easier.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You'd still have risks with a centralized db of the tickets which the tokens would solve.
Ticket master recently had an incident being hacked and that could literally happen to any company.
Granted a user could be hacked as well because of improper storage of the NFT. To really solve the problem it would also require everyone to be using good hardware wallets which I think is where things are going long term, but it's yet another complicated step which will slow adoption.
One day having a hardware wallet will just be normal.
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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?
Besides money laundering, you mean? Not as such.
Merkle Trees were thought up in the 70ies or so. A blockchain is a Merkle Tree without branches. They are used in a number of application; for example git which predates bitcoin.
The actual innovation behind bitcoin is mining. A payment system needs someone who runs it. Bitcoin introduced a way for these people to get paid by creating new currency for themselves. That way, there is no single entity in charge. There is no contractual relation that would require government enforcement.
If a Merkle Tree is the only thing a blockchain is to you, then it has legit uses. But that was already widely used before a simplified version became called blockchain.
If you're thinking about a bitcoin-type blockchain, then evading government oversight is its sole use. The technical overhead and the economic inefficiencies exist only to obscure identities and legal responsibilities.
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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?
Recording data on an "eternal" digital data storage is incredibly useful. You don't need much imagination here but I think we overestimated how much people actually want this and how ok we are with less perfectionist systems given that they work now just fine. Storing something on the web is usually just as good in practice despite being less perfect data store mechanism.
That being said what if we have incredibly important information that is difficult to share or preserve - an immutable blockchain with so much financial security is a really powerful tool here.
Thats what got me into bitcoin at the beginning but disappoingly it never reached the point where it would outcompete non-blockchain tech. Mostly because we live in a better world than many believe
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i feel like the only real 'advantage' here would be that the cards couldn't be proxied which sounds like only an 'advantage' to the people on the rent-seeking end of the bargain.
If blockchain could be used for DRM, we'd see more of it.
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Besides money laundering, you mean? Not as such.
Merkle Trees were thought up in the 70ies or so. A blockchain is a Merkle Tree without branches. They are used in a number of application; for example git which predates bitcoin.
The actual innovation behind bitcoin is mining. A payment system needs someone who runs it. Bitcoin introduced a way for these people to get paid by creating new currency for themselves. That way, there is no single entity in charge. There is no contractual relation that would require government enforcement.
If a Merkle Tree is the only thing a blockchain is to you, then it has legit uses. But that was already widely used before a simplified version became called blockchain.
If you're thinking about a bitcoin-type blockchain, then evading government oversight is its sole use. The technical overhead and the economic inefficiencies exist only to obscure identities and legal responsibilities.
wrote last edited by [email protected]It was an innovative way to use a blockchain/Merkle path, too. Even if you'd argue money but made in a different, harder to police way is a bad thing, it was new.
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because it means that the majority controls the data and not a centralized authority.
Only until it doesn't. A centralized authority could overwhelm and become the majority. Or more concretely, the US government has the resources to more than double the contribution to Bitcoin, thus giving it complete control.
The conventional wisdom is basically that that's never going to happen, though, and the barrier to becoming the majority is strong enough to stop any actual attacker.
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Good summary, a few additions from my side:
- Being public is not required. E.g. banks could form an internal block chain shared only with other banks.
- Blockchains are a database. An immutable and usually distributed database.
I would argue against blockchains being a database... its more of a 'signed sequential log' than a database.
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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?
It's just a data store (database kind of implies extra features) that's trust-free and decentralised. It's not even the only way to implement one; Ripple for example uses a slightly different scheme.
How has nobody linked the XKCD on this exact question? Randall Monroe compares them in the alt text to grappling hooks: something cool that might have uses, but only in very specific niches. https://xkcd.com/2267/
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There is debate over whether a git history is a blockchain or a DAG (Directed Acyclical Graph). I'd say it was the latter.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Who says blockchains cant also form a DAG?
Its a blockchain because each block contains a digest of the previous block(s), which creates a tamper-evident chain of digests for all history.Its just a type of blockchain, just like a subaru is a type of car.
You might have grown up thinking "all cars have 4 wheels", but my subaru has a fifth wheel in the back and its still a car because having exactly 4 wheels it not the defining charcteristic of cars.
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Who says blockchains cant also form a DAG?
Its a blockchain because each block contains a digest of the previous block(s), which creates a tamper-evident chain of digests for all history.Its just a type of blockchain, just like a subaru is a type of car.
You might have grown up thinking "all cars have 4 wheels", but my subaru has a fifth wheel in the back and its still a car because having exactly 4 wheels it not the defining charcteristic of cars.
Personally I'd say the distinction comes with the decentralisation being enforced. Git has it as a feature but each copy of a git repository isn't reliant on every other copy. It's asymmetric.
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It was an innovative way to use a blockchain/Merkle path, too. Even if you'd argue money but made in a different, harder to police way is a bad thing, it was new.
It's really clever. I also think it was unintentional. They did not want to create a money laundering tool but a currency in its own right. That failed.
Also, this scheme only works with money involved. The miners run the system, and they get paid by creating new coins. If they cannot sell the coins to cover their costs, then there is no blockchain.
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It's really clever. I also think it was unintentional. They did not want to create a money laundering tool but a currency in its own right. That failed.
Also, this scheme only works with money involved. The miners run the system, and they get paid by creating new coins. If they cannot sell the coins to cover their costs, then there is no blockchain.
Sort of? Satoshi had anti-government objectives for sure, although you're right that Bitcoin was supposed to be usable for small and everyday transactions as well.
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I would argue against blockchains being a database... its more of a 'signed sequential log' than a database.
Well, Wikipedia describes it sufficiently vague: "a database is an organized collection of data". But is a linked list on its own a database? I'd say the blockchain itself is the data structure but any software using it is most likely a database.
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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.
No way. There are many ways to introduce artificial scarcity to digital goods, and no it is not a new or good use of the tech.... Artificial scarcity is a huge part of all of the world's problems.
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because it means that the majority controls the data and not a centralized authority.
Only until it doesn't. A centralized authority could overwhelm and become the majority. Or more concretely, the US government has the resources to more than double the contribution to Bitcoin, thus giving it complete control.
Nothing is perfect, but once a blockchain network is big enough it becomes near impossible to overtake.
Maybe currently, if the US government really wants to, they could dedicate a few trillion dollars to take over the bitcoin network. But it would make no sense to put that much effort into what would be mostly pointless. And if bitcoin ever reaches a point where it is a full on threat to the dollar then it's network would probably be too big for any nation to overtake alone.
So you are not wrong in theory, but in practice it is near impossible.
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Git doesn’t sign commits, at least not cryptographically.
Yeah, it does...
If you barely know shit about git why wouldnt you at least try googleing before posting?? -
Personally I'd say the distinction comes with the decentralisation being enforced. Git has it as a feature but each copy of a git repository isn't reliant on every other copy. It's asymmetric.
Git uses signed blocks for centralization... you can see that the official linux kernel is signed by linus torvalds... but all of this is irrelevant because blockchains are a datastructure that is indepenant from the concept of centralization. It is just a chain of blocks... proof-of-work and signing are about centralization but they are different concepts.
