earlier you said blockchains cannot do these things. now you’re saying that blockchains aren’t the best for these tasks. pick one or the other and stick to it. don’t confuse things by claiming one point and then going on to argue a different point.
Blockchains indeed cannot do that, those things are added on separately, they exist independently of blockchains, and have uses outside of it. If this is hard to understand, let me illustrate with a more clear example. Some blockchains have smart contracts, and you can technically write a game of chess into a smart contract. This does not mean that it is accurate or meaningful to say "blockchains can play chess" or "chess is a feature of blockchains" or something like that. Even if blockchains became totally unpopular for everything else, and were only used to play chess, it would still not be accurate as the idea of a blockchain still would not actually include the ability to play chess. It is about as accurate as saying "chess is a feature of tables". Also, it would be pretty horrible to play that way and blockchain gaming is a total disaster, so I doubt that would happen.
> It is because blockchains cannot actually be used to do any of those cool tech things in any meaningful way.
even in the comment you just wrote, you’re still arguing a different point than what you originally said. this time you’ve shifted from “cannot be used to do” to “cannot do”.
there are interesting discussions to be had (why didn’t we have permission-less privacy-preserving coins before blockchains? what are the better ways of achieving such global systems, and solving double-spend/consensus than blockchain, today?). but it’s impossible to have those discussions if you keep claiming one thing and then arguing the other thing.
>even in the comment you just wrote, you’re still arguing a different point than what you originally said. this time you’ve shifted from “cannot be used to do” to “cannot do”.
I think it is clear enough that I meant the same thing. If that wasn't clear, you can ask for further clarification. There is no need to make this into a pedantic game.
>but it’s impossible to have those discussions if you keep claiming one thing and then arguing the other thing.
No, it is not? Why would it be? In fact I will have those discussions with you now.
>why didn’t we have permission-less privacy-preserving coins before blockchains?
We don't have those with blockchains either. They are not permissionless nor are they privacy preserving except under some very extreme and impractical circumstances. You can have your permission to use a blockchain revoked if all the miners/validators reach consensus on blacklisting your wallet. Also, all public blockchains have no privacy by default as all the data is public.
>what are the better ways of achieving such global systems, and solving double-spend/consensus than blockchain, today?
Basically anything else, because blockchains do not actually "solve" consensus. The "consensus" is done simply by paying off the participants in increasing numbers as an incentive to stop them from bad behavior, it has nothing to do with the actual blockchain itself. They are able to "solve" double spend in a very contrived way, at the expense of being able to solve any other problem that might befall the network. The traditional way to solve double spend is to use good old fashioned accounting, it doesn't have that same constraint.
> We don't have those with blockchains either. They are not permissionless nor are they privacy preserving except under some very extreme and impractical circumstances. You can have your permission to use a blockchain revoked if all the miners/validators reach consensus on blacklisting your wallet.
i assume we’re talking about Monero or zcash, as the better-known privacy coins. i grant you that Monero miners can block you by address. how can you be censored on zcash? it’s cryptographically impossible to link addresses to each other, so you can’t block by address. is it permissioned based on IP address? is that defeatable with trivial means like VPNs or Tor or just going to the neighborhood coffee shop? has censorship of zcash transactions ever been demonstrated?
If integrating a blockchain makes it worse, then I think it's fair to say that you're not "in any meaningful way" using a blockchain to make it happen.
today we have both of the things which GP mentions as being under development 9 years ago, so this part is seemingly false.