Blockchain Solutionism

https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain-solutionism-lecture/

by mfbx9da4 • 4 years ago

14 22 4 years ago

blog.mollywhite.net

colesantiago• 4 years ago

I still even today have never seen any legitimate use case for crypto at all.

it does seem it is a solution looking for a problem.

constantcrying• 4 years ago

Crypto currencies solve a legitimately interesting problem, which makes it a fascinating technology. My professor called it the "nuclear science" of computer science.

What is striking to me is that most people do not even understand what cryptocurrencies are. I sampled some of my (not so technical) friends about how anonymous bitcoin/etherium are, none of them knew that it essentially publishes the bank records of everyone as a fundamental part of how it works...

A blockchain essentially is just a database. And so many times I have heard people proposing a "novel technology" where they just replaced a regular database with a blockchain, e.g. "why not track logistics through a blockchain". The trouble is that in every case using the blockchain made things worse. In what application do you have to defend against mallicious attack and can not rely on a central authority? In how many cases do you even want to not have a central authority? Money is basically the only semi-plausible use cases where just replacing the blockchain with a normal database doesn't improve the system.

mattdesl5• 4 years ago

- preventing double spend in a distributed ledger

- creating a secure timestamped append only log of signed messages

- apps like multisig wallets, privacy preserving rollups, cross-site attestations

- creating a global namespace registry for social networks[1]

- building other things on top of these primitives, like disintermediated collectibles for games, art, web communities..

[1] https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decent...

dogweather3• 4 years ago

Those are definitely blockchain features or benefits. But crypto(currency)? I'm not sure.

exelib4• 4 years ago

Why do you need a blockchain for that? Some of points are pretty artificial.

dogweather3• 4 years ago

I think I found an actual legitimate, real use of crypto, albeit a small one: A way for an adult to give a gift to a minor. Here in the US it used to be possible to buy "savings bonds" printed on paper. These were very common for gift giving on special life occasions: they matured (were usable) after e.g. 7 years.

But now in the modern era, I couldn't find those or a way to create a long-term savings account for a minor.

But I was able to create a crypto wallet with a small portfolio of Bitcoin and Eth. It was easy to give to her and her family: just tell them the secret 12 words and explain how to install a crypto wallet.

Comevius2• 4 years ago

I'm so bothered by the decadence of the tech industry adopting something so trivially useless, just because it can used to exploit people, either by appealing to their greed or need to be a part of something.

Meanwhile India revolutionized digital payment without any fanfare, by making something that can be used by billions of people today. With zero hype. It just works, and it's boosting the country's GDP by at least 1%.

Meanwhile meanwhile the ghouls of Silicon Valley are busy promoting inefficient solutions that don't work at all. It's like those hundreds of thousands of empty houses in China. It's all a ghost town, but we can't stop hearing how great it is. Can barely buy a pizza with cryptocurrencies, but it's the future. We reinvented music with Web3, but we have 600 users, because our tone-deaf service is unintelligible to normal people, and we are too far up on our asses to make something people want.

People don't want Web3, they want to eat, watch TV, work to get paid, talk to each other, sleep, marry and fuck. Your service should address pain points in these normal activities, not make up new problems. Oh gosh darn it, the site I use to Netflix and chill with my girlfriend is not decentramalized, take all my money, I never knew it needed to be decentrifugalized while it's playing in the background. Said no one ever.

dietmtnview• 4 years ago

Americans fundamentally do not believe that the government can be used to make your life convenient. Average people believe technologies like the Internet and GPS were invented by private industry rather than government.

scottiebarnes4• 4 years ago

Your mistake is thinking blockchains are a service. They aren't, they're protocols for building things on, like tcp/ip. It happens to be that a decentralized public ledger is the highest value use for it at the moment.

What you're also missing out is on how the current monetary system and monetary base work, and why central banking is problematic. You've lost probably more than 10% of your own buying power over the last year at no fault of your own, and you never questioned it. The housing market is now impossible for average people to enter (especially in cities), as easy, low interest money has inflated home values and the house price to income ratio has gone steadily up and to the right. These are signals of broken money; this is what blockchains are looking to solve.

Centigonal• 4 years ago

You've lost probably more than 10% of your own buying power over the last year at no fault of your own, and you never questioned it. The housing market is now impossible for average people to enter (especially in cities), as easy, low interest money has inflated home values and the house price to income ratio has gone steadily up and to the right.

These are real pain points, and part of why I was very excited about crypto circa 2017-2018. It's been five years now, and the builders in the web3 community seem to have stagnated on this, taking a wide tangent into digital art, online clout, and ponzi schemes. The currencies themselves are limited on transaction throughput and trade like traditional risk assets, level 2 networks haven't lived up to their initial hype, and we have come to find that decentralized, immutable currencies are problematic to work with in many situations.

From my viewpoint, it doesn't look like crypto's going to break us out of the local maximum that is central banking/MMT

exelib4• 4 years ago

What you're also missing out is on how the current monetary system and monetary base work, and why central banking is problematic.

And why central banking is problematic?

You've lost probably more than 10% of your own buying power over the last year at no fault of your own, and you never questioned it.

And how the blockchain resolves this issue?

this is what blockchains are looking to solve.

... how?

dogweather3• 4 years ago

I've seen an aspect of this firsthand, working in crypto. There are now generations of college graduates with degrees / concrentrations in "blockchain" in one way or another. They nominally have computer science or software engineering degrees, but readily admit that they are bad programmers and don't like programming.

So we have a growing cohort of people who are emotionally all-in on blockchain. They've planned and built their careers and reputations around it.

Blockchain Solutionism

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