Technology

37712 readers

275 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

A decentralized, blockchain-based messaging network for safer communications (techxplore.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Researchers from several institutes worldwide recently developed Quarks, a new, decentralized messaging network based on blockchain technology. Their proposed system could overcome the limitations of most commonly used messaging platforms, allowing users to retain control over their personal data and other information they share online.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (39 children)

Eh, I wouldn't go as far as calling distributed ledger tech a scam. Sure, 99% of the current ecosystem is at best digital tulip trading if not an outright scam, but that doesn't mean everything blockchain-related is a scam.

There's valid use cases for what's essentially a distributed database with immutable history (or a "smart contract" system which is essentially a distributed singleton VM with immutable state history), but NFTs etc ain't it. Fintech will probably incorporate some of the stuff that came out of the blockchain craze, but I figure that at best it'll be like Linux; most people who use the internet interact with Linux systems pretty much all the time, and of course Android is a Linux-based phone OS, but very few actually run Linux or even care about the whole concept. It's just part of the infrastructure, which in my assumption some kinds of blockchain-ish technologies might be. Probably just not the public networks people associate with it now, but private / internal ones with limited validator sets etc

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (37 children)

People keep saying there’s a valid use case for this but what is it? Basically any distributed ledger would actually perform better, be more secure, and be easier to use as a centralized database.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Electronic voting, maybe? But for most cases a transparently ran centralized ledger should work better.