Blockchain as it stands still remains primarily an interesting solution looking for a killer problem.
I think what it really needs is to find a problem that it's objectively better than the non-blockchain alternative.
As a store of value, currency or payment network it's yet to be able to prove that.
For more interesting applications, smart contracts etc the networks themselves are still struggling to find ways to keep transactions/operating costs in line with value.
Even those more complex cases aren't yet objectively superior to other technology choices.
I think we will find use-cases for byzantine-proof distributed ledger but nothing has yet been compelling enough to supplant other options.
It's great as a public immutable timestamping service. Make any transaction on a popular blockchain with a low transaction cost, and add a hash into the transaction. Now you can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you knew this hash at that point in time (precise to a couple minutes), and by extension if you produce content that matches that hash it proves that you had that content at that point in time.
You can use that for copyright or trademark matters without revealing the work itself, or you can ensure the integrity of your logs this way. No third parties that have to be trusted or that could be bribed.
Of course that doesn't really work as the primary purpose of a blockchain, to get good trust guarantees you need to piggy-back on a blockchain that does something more valuable, so it's not really a killer problem.
It's a lot like quantum computing. It's hip, and exciting, and easy to raise money for. But the set of algorithms that are better implemented by extant quantum computers than classical systems is, last I checked, the empty set.
A very obvious problem bitcoin solves is Wikileaks getting kicked off the Visa/MasterCard rails, because it published articles the government didn't want published.
The current financial system is perfect for most people in the first world. Once you start going down the path of least resistance though, that system turns out to be a gatekept, permissioned system with very clearly defined borders.
Try using a bank as a rural Honduran and see if you are even allowed on. Attempt a transaction between yourself and a person in Chad and see how many hurdles are presented.
>Try using a bank as a rural Honduran and see if you are even allowed on. Attempt a transaction between yourself and a person in Chad and see how many hurdles are presented.
Ahh, yes, bank the unbanked. We've been hearing about this for a decade and it's yet to actually solve it. Might have something to do with the fact that the minimum hardware requirement to engage with a "trustless, peer-to-peer, global digital cash" system runs in the annual earning of the average unbanked labourer in the Third world. Any attempt to solve the _political_ problem of the distribution of wealth and access to the monetary systems (banks) that starts with a technical system (crypto) is bound to fail because of that mismatch.
Even trying to solve a political problem with a technical solution requires one to first solve the problem of being allow to use the technical solution - which is a political problem!
Indeed. And there are payment systems that successfully tackle the issue of banking the unbanked (M-Pesa, Wave, ...), but they don't touch crypto with a ten-foot-pole.
Some 'defi' approaches do seem to provide things you don't get elsewhere - mainly visible with DEXs where to transact you only have to trust an application for that one operation at that one moment and you can read all the code of the operation and be certain that's what's happening. You genuinely don't get that elsewhere.
I deal with one of these 'killer problems' every day. Hard money, aka inflation, is a very important economic problem.
For example, inflation forces market participant behaviour that they would have otherwise avoided. For example, a pensioner is 'forced' to take on market risk to gain a real return on their savings when they are very risk adverse.
Savers are disincentivized as there is a negative yield on their capital, and this has an impact on capital investment.
I don't think blockchains are the only or even best solutions to fake news, but the ecosystem build around them uses public-key cryptography for everything.
A world where every piece of information is signed, could be a harsh blow for fake news. It's what PGP always wanted to go mainstream. Maybe, the money behind it (reasonable or not) is finally enough to motivate the mainstream.
B) different people will have different criteria definition and Venn diagrams of fake news
C1) many people and organizations start and distribute fake news knowing them to be such
C2) many people and organizations start or propagate fake news while earnestly believing them
Can you help understand how block chain or public key cryptography will help or address anything relating to fake news? Is there an underlying assumption that ascertaining identity will help? Because from my perspective majority of fake news are created and propagated by readily and eagerly identifiable people, whether potus or my cousin on Facebook and anything in between.
In other words, today already I pretty much know who is relating any given piece of news. I may even know where or who originated them. It does not in the least solve the problem that my liberal and conservative, atheist and religious. Rich and poor, immigrant and local, technical and humanities etc neighbours have completely different parameters and selection of trust. Identifying the source helps not a bit with radically different selections of source. And then we get to "disagreeable" topics - how will block chain help those who fundamentally disagree on climate abortion religion economy foreign politics military basic income refugees healthcare rights etc. They will continue to pick and choose whatever our inherent bias is. There is this utopian notion that tech framework will solve a human problem.
This presumes that the reason fake news is a problem is because people are spreading something they claim was said by a reputable person or organization, but is actually edited or completely false.
In my experience, the reason fake news is actually a problem is because supposedly-reputable people and organizations are themselves spreading partially or completely false information. So the information they spread would have a perfectly valid, legitimate signature—and still be just as false.
Blockchain cannot solve the problem of people lying. It cannot differentiate between what is true and what is false in the real world.
Ugh? Yes, fake news is about a trust problem - people trusting sources which spread nefariously incorrect or distorted views. But no, public key cryptography or blockchain does not solve this problem. I am not sure what do you even propose exactly but think for a moment what differentiates a "real news" and "fake news" source from each other, and you are back to square one. People who read fake news already now choose to trust and subscribe to their reporting.
Sorry, do you think that the problem with fake news is that malicious actors impersonate, say, the NYT or Snopes, and "publish" fake articles under the name of a trusted source?
That does not seem to be the problem (and insofar as it is, HTTPS/TLS seems pretty good at fixing it: if you go to https://www.nytimes.com, you can be pretty sure that you get the NYT). I don't see what blockchain could add here?
What about as a store of value for people in countries with sketchy banking systems/government seizures/risk of runaway inflation, etc.? I don't mean to raise a counterpoint - I am genuinely curious if there is a better option in that scenario.
I think what it really needs is to find a problem that it's objectively better than the non-blockchain alternative.
As a store of value, currency or payment network it's yet to be able to prove that.
For more interesting applications, smart contracts etc the networks themselves are still struggling to find ways to keep transactions/operating costs in line with value. Even those more complex cases aren't yet objectively superior to other technology choices.
I think we will find use-cases for byzantine-proof distributed ledger but nothing has yet been compelling enough to supplant other options.