
How blockchain will revolutionise far more than money - jonbaer
https://aeon.co/essays/how-blockchain-will-revolutionise-far-more-than-money
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TazeTSchnitzel
Why is there this hype around “blockchains”? What does this even mean?

Bitcoin has a proof-of-work chain which, through wasting superlative amounts
of energy and destroying the atmosphere, establishes consensus about
transactions as a distributed system. It is clear what a “blockchain” is
there, and in Bitcoin clones and forks.

But outside Bitcoin, what does it refer to? Peer-to-peer? Distributed systems?
Global warming? It feels like a meaningless buzzword. How, exactly, does
having a Bitcoin-esque distributed consensus system – if that's even what you
mean – actually solve some given X? It never seems to be explained, it's just
“blockchain will solve X”.

I think “blockchain” might be the new “.com”.

~~~
apeace
> through wasting superlative amounts of energy and destroying the atmosphere

It's true, Bitcoin does spend a lot of energy to provide proof-of-work, the
underpinning of distributed trust in the blockchain.

But you might find proof-of-stake[1] interesting. It requires far less energy
--no repetitive hashing. It could also provide stronger protection against
sybil attacks, requiring the attacker to spend far more in real terms in order
to obtain a 51% stake.

The Ethereum blockchain is planning a move to proof-of-stake[2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-
stake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake)

[2] [http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9/why-does-
ether...](http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9/why-does-ethereum-
plan-to-move-to-proof-of-stake)

EDIT: Formatting

~~~
brighton36
Proof of stake has been around for decades in some form or another (Quorum
based consensus was what it was originally called) Andrew Poelstra has
compiled a pretty decent list of reasons why it's an uninteresting idea:
[https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf)
(He's created other documents on the subject)

------
zby
All these articles completely disregard the cost of the system - and this is
not a trivial problem. The bitcoin blockchain is subsidized by the
speculators.

Eventually I think that the solution will kind of relax the 'permisionless'
aspect of the system and have some cheap but slightly more centralized
timestamping. Just like the PrivaTegrity proposal by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum)
(I can't find the source for this - but Google finds many articles about it:
[https://www.google.pl/search?q=privategrity](https://www.google.pl/search?q=privategrity)).

The timestamper does not need to know what it is timestamping and additionally
timestamping might be distributed across many jurisdictions - so the damage of
a rogue timestamper can be limited. And it is only timestamping that requires
that wasteful proof-of-work.

~~~
statoshi
You are correct - permissionless blockchains have a completely different
threat model that results in a high cost to secure the blockchain from attack.
The vast majority of new blockchain systems we're seeing developed are
private, permissioned systems. This offers a different security model that is
still useful for a variety of situations, such as in existing financial
network where there is already a fair amount of trust between the actors.

~~~
zby
It is kind of confusing to use the terminology from bitcoin on solutions
unrelated to the element that was the technological breakthrough in bitcoin.

~~~
brighton36
It's fraudulent, even. Many of these "blockchain" companies are just writing
weird crud apps, and marketing it as something else.

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Kristine1975
_> But you will soon be able to vote from your mobile phone in a way that is
10 times more secure than the current US or UK systems, at a fraction of the
cost and fraud-free._

Malware on the phone: No need to attack the block chain if there's a weaker
part of the system.

Also only those who really understand the technology and math behind the block
chain as well as the voting software's source code are able to verify the
votes. All others have to trust the technology/math/software.

Not so with voting on paper: It doesn't require special knowledge to check
that votes have been counted correctly. In Germany everybody has the right to
observe the voting process, including the votes being counted.

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Tharkun
What a load of crock. I work in fintech. And every week or so, someone will
mention 'blockchain' completely out of context, presumably because they think
it makes them sound intelligent.

Blockchain won't solve anything. Sure, it's interesting as a distributed
ledger, but that's as far as it goes. You think financial institutions care
about innovation? Think again. They'll gladly talk about the latest buzzword
if they think it can make them any money, but no one is working on anything
credible using blockchain in fintech.

Banks are scared of decentralized services, and they will gladly pander FUD at
governments who are willing to listen.

~~~
sbardle
Financial institutions won't be making the decision as to whether the
technology is widely adopted or not in the long term. If there is another
financial crisis, then people will eventually work out the existing financial
system (esp the role of central banks) is fundamentally f#cked. Alternative
currencies may then boom in popularity. It's a high risk area for startup
investing, but someone, somewhere is going to make a ton of Bitcoins (?) out
of this.

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serge2k
> All the information in the record is permanent – it cannot be changed – and
> each of the computers keeps a copy of the record to ensure this. If you
> wanted to hack the system, you would have to hack every computer on the
> network – and this has so far proved impossible, despite many trying,
> including the US National Security Agency’s finest. The collective power of
> all these computers is greater than the world’s top 500 supercomputers
> combined.

Isn't this totally incorrect?

Not buying the hype.

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huksley
Slow? I was under impression that adding records to blockchain is fairly
slow...

Was it improved in recent projects to make blockchain more multi-purpose
solution?

~~~
steveeq1
Yes, ethereum: [https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

confirmation times are much, much quicker than bitcoin. Plus you can make the
blockchain "programmable" because it adds a turing-complete programming
language. It's getting a lot of momentum right now and could (in my opinion)
take over the market cap of bitcoin.

~~~
brighton36
No one needs turing complete smart contracts. The overhead of this unnecessary
feature will likely sink this project.

------
Confusion
When? We've been hearing this for at least 4 years now. Where's the
revolution? Did I miss it?

