this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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The real kicker is that there are plenty of good theoretical applications for blockchain technology and all we get are shitty investment commodities and grifts
The technology never gets employed to a productive end because the entrepreneurs are in charge of deploying it
This is not true. Distributed ledgers allow for consensus without trust. That is it. Every other application of them is just a slower database. So pretty much all they are good for is digital money, but digital money with a hard throughput limit and no backing from any government. The rush to use them for anything and everything violates the most basic principles of good computer engineering, and there's a very good reason no one has created anything worthwhile with them besides money that can be used for crime.
I🖤crime. The Revolution will be funded by and implemented by criminals.
oh worm?
That's like saying asymmetric cryptography only allows for trust irrespective of medium. We still deployed it everywhere because it turns out that's useful in countless ways. Blockchains are also not necessarily public, and generally most of the shit they get from leftists has more to do with stupid wasteful consensus mechanisms than anything to do with the principle of a fancy networked Merkle tree itself.
In the end it's just another mathematical guarantee and we can do better than "concept is related to bad people and is therefore bad"
edit : Also worth noting that PKI was a huge gold rush when it started and still to this day lots of companies make utter bank on the sole basis that their certificate chains are trusted by default in your browser
No, I think crime money is good. But every time someone tries to come up with another use for them it's like, demonstrably worse than what already exists. It just sets off my bullshit sensors.
Completely fair. I'm mostly interested in what it can do for distributed computing and inter-organizational trust and most of that is being done outside flashy VC circles and not getting much media coverage. Naturally anything that allows organizing outside of bougie government institutions is good up to and including crime money
gitis a blockchain without a consensus model. Once you remove the artificial scarcity component of blockchains the are extremely useful.a blockchain without a consensus model is just a linked list
Distributed Merkel trees aren't linked lists.
no but they are also a data structure that has been around since the 80s
Eh. Blockchains and git both use merckle trees, but boats and cars both have engines.
Distributed Merkel trees are blockchains. Git is distributed. Git commits are blocks.
Even this is overselling blockchains, to be honest. There are a variety of far cheaper ways to do distributed trustless consensus, for example CRDTs. You can even run a CRDT-based ledger if you're willing for people to have negative balance. The only thing a blockchain adds is an incredibly expensive clock mechanism to slow the transactions down enough that they can prevent double-spend and enforce positive balances.
Most supposed use cases besides crime money involve needlessly spreading out a calculation (of a picture of a monkey or whatever) so many more computers have to verify the same calculation as a stupidly unnecessary waste of electricity that also dumps more carbon in the air. And the crime money also does that but dae le drugs amirite
Man what the fuck am I doing on hexbear. Even the most inconsequential disagreements turn into this sort of bullshit, without fail
The sort of bullshit like pointing out that blockchain technology has a massive carbon footprint and drastically increases the electricity costs of whatever it ostensibly replaced?
No that's pretty much on the money, but it's also a problem with proof-of-work consensus algorithms specifically
I don't know I guess it's just exhausting how everybody has to have a crazy out-there opinion about every fucking thing in or outside their spheres of competence and just loads up that shit with twitter irony like it's free salad at a salad bar
That isn't a generous reading of easily found and irrefutable information about the consequences of blockchain technology.
Sure let me meaningfully engage with "dae le drugs amirite
"
Yes, you can. Is there another use case outside of that? You may not like the way I phrased it, but it was a valid point, not "bullshit crazy out there opinion loaded with twitter irony" as you put it. If you can say your opinion that way I can certainly say mine my way.
You are posting cringe. It's annoying
I don't think so. Not this time, anyway. If you really want to go to bat for blockchain bullshit, that might be cringe though.
I think you're right, you just need to chill
Telling people "you need to chill" works like 5% of the time or less even when people need to chill. It's just hostile and obnoxious in context most of the time. It may feel good for you to say that, but that's all it is to me.
you might be a tad high-strung
i say 5 vodkas down lol
At least there was some flavor to your version. All right, sure, as soon as the crypto peddler in this thread fucks off I'll take a little walk.
lol, fair
There is no crypto peddler in this thread
Get off the trampoline you are not landing those dunks
There is no crypto peddler anymore because that person's comments were removed by moderators.
Get off the trampoline because stanning for the crypto peddler makes your personal petty dunks at me kind of lonely and sad here.
name a single application of "blockchain technology" that cannot be done the same or better by other tech
If you want to burn the planet down faster, doing computations on a blockchain multiples the electricity costs and the carbon dumping!