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itsmect ,

I think it’s funny how most lemmy users are pro open source, pro privacy, pro digital rights; but once it comes to money all that is thrown out of the window and they happily get on their knees for paypal and the few other large players.

Yes, the current state of crypto is a mess. People are attracted by the promise of the big payout, rather then seeking an alternative payment system, making them ripe for scammers that promise the world, but in the end only rug “investors”. Even “functional” cryptos are often highly centralized, making them as bad as banks in terms of reliability. Almost none implement any privacy features, and if they do, its typically a tacked on afterthought.

But this does not make the original idea invalid. Will it ever live up to the promise of alternative money? Maybe. Maybe not. Only time will tell if the issues that exist right now will be fixed.

UraniumBlazer ,

This is what I learnt on Lemmy. Not all people who agree with your position have arrived there logically. (In my case, this position would be leftist ideals). People who you share the same values with are not exempt from being illogical.

New tech leads to scammers pouncing on it to make a quick buck. However, just because scammers pounce on it doesn’t make the tech bad inherently.

See Lemmy’s hate for AI for instance. The advancements in the field of machine learning are mind boggling. Lemmings unfortunately fail to disassociate the tech from the scammers who talk about this tech. It’s disappointing, but oh well… ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

itsmect ,

AI has the potential to become a tool which strongly favors and benefits the ruling class. Us peasants get the locked down version, while government agencies get to use the full power for cyber warfare and disinformation campaigns, and large corpos get to manipulate (“advertise”) to you in most manipulative way to act in their best interest.

The way I see it good people shy away form using AI, leaving only the assholes wielding their new would powers. Those with ill intentions will find ways to use it, no matter how many laws you put up to prevent it. To defend yourself the best approach would be to learn how to use AI yourself, so that you can detect and react when AI is used against your best interests.

Does this make me pro or con AI? I honestly don’t know. Maybe complex things are never that black and white to begin with.

UraniumBlazer ,

Agreed completely. Usage of AI is a political issue. The tech can be used both for the good and bad. However, just because it can be used for the bad doesn’t make the tech bad.

Development in nuclear science made a bomb that could end civilisation. It also gave us a pathway to solve climate change. How we use the tech should be an issue. The tech itself shouldn’t be.

pancakes ,
@pancakes@sh.itjust.works avatar

You’re either arguing in bad faith or just ignorant if you think those are the actual issues with crypto and AI.

Most people dislike crypto due to the severe negative environmental impact it has on the world. We are literally on the precipice of global warming fucking everything up for us and some greedy motherfuckers decide they need to reinvent something that isn’t broken, and has yet to show a single viable use case that can’t be matched with traditional methods.

As for AI, are you defending the plagiarism machine or the art theft machine? I just fail to see how stealing writer’s and artist’s livelihoods to create a dystopian society where creative expression is replaced by soulless machines is a good thing. There is a world where this isn’t a negative, however in this late-stage capitalism world we live in, artists and writers are being layed off in exchange for AI.

Honestly the real disappointment here is you.

UraniumBlazer ,

Most people dislike crypto due to the severe negative environmental impact it has on the world.

I dislike cryptocurrencies for the same reason. I never said I support them. However, I like the tech behind blockchains. I believe that there are legitimate use cases for blockchains. There are many different implementations of blockchains that circumvent proof of work (the environment damaging thing).

As for AI, are you defending the plagiarism machine or the art theft machine? I just fail to see how stealing writer’s and artist’s livelihoods to create a dystopian society where creative expression is replaced by soulless machines is a good thing. There is a world where this isn’t a negative, however in this late-stage capitalism world we live in, artists and writers are being layed off in exchange for AI.

Again, I agree with you. Capitalism sucks. AI and capitalism combined suck even more. However, this does not make the tech behind AI inherently bad. As you said, there is a world where this isn’t bad. There is a world where advancements in AI can be put to very very good use. I want to see that world. This is why I support (and have contributed to) the development of open sourced AI models. I want public ownership over models. While open sourced doesn’t exactly mean this, it’s the closest that we can get to it.

Honestly the real disappointment here is you.

Sick burn brah… I need some ice for that burn brah

itsmect ,

I don’t use AI to copy other peoples work. I use AI as a better search engine for obscure topics where I don’t know the right keywords. Describe your issue in cleartext, and out comes enough info to migrate to a better search. I’ve also used AI to modify my own works, ie. “blur out the background of this image” or “remove object from image”.

When people argue in favor of traditional banking because they are more “environmental friendly”, I really have to ask who is arguing ion bad faith. Aren’t credit cards a thing because banks know that given the chance people will consume more then they can afford? They are the one complicit in our consumerist culture, which arguably places a much higher burden on the environment. But the calculation is much broader then comparing the power consumption of ATMs with crypto networks, so it’s easy to sweep that part under the rug.

UraniumBlazer ,

Well technically you could also have crypto banks which pull the same shit. The advantage of blockchains is better security and integrity.

itsmect ,

Well their can not be uncapped fractional lending as it is right now. The bank could offer a credit card equivalent, but it would need an equal amount of deposits. The current system works by essentially crediting the merchant an IOU, whose value does not have to be real. With crypto merchants get to choose, would they rather have native crypto, or an IOU with strings and contracts attached? Obviously the latter is more risky, and therefor the seller has to factor it into the price/ transaction fee.

Maybe that can be somehow circumvented too. But it certainly is more difficult then the meddling that happens right now.

UraniumBlazer ,

Yeah I guess u’r right. Fractional lending rn is very important for monetary policy. And monetary policy is VERY IMPORTANT. But I could see a completely digital currency having good monetary policies without interest rates and fractional reserves. Perhaps, a simple gas fee increase/decrease could work. I dunno, I’m too tired rn lol

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

If making payments in crypto back to FIAT was free it would be more popular. For me it’s mostly useless since the fee to spend crypto is more than the (often free) fee for using my credit card.

New needs to be better and cheaper to be picked up.

itsmect ,

In my experience it works extremely well for everything online and digital content. The instance I’m on? 100% crowd funded with microdonations and the hoster directly accepts it without conversion back to fiat. I pay my email and VPN also like this, and on mullvad you even get a 10% discount.

But yes, for everything physical it’s a long way ahead to become widely accepted.

jaemo ,

It would also be popular if the entire crypto landscape wasn’t replete with late stage capitalist-douche tech bros trying to scam literally everyone.

zergtoshi ,

There’s attempts at having payments with 0 fees, that is, if you don’t involve exchanges or payment service providers, who obviously charge a fee for fiat conversion.
Using Nano you have 0 fees for the transaction and ideally as little as 0.25% fee at an exchange for fiat conversion.
It’s not only without fees, it’s very fast (ideallly sub-second confirmation) and eco-friendly (requiring no special hardware, because there is no mining and using very little energy overall).
What’s lacking is places where you can actually pay for things with Nano, but that’s the classic chicken and egg problem.

turmacar ,

Currency is a pretty sound idea, whether it will ever get (back?) to a usable place is it’s own discussion.

A lot of the conversation about blockchain as a technology though involves the ones that store additional information as a distributed database, which comes with problems.

It’s also ‘neat’, but they all depend on trusting the validation method for putting info into the database, which largely defeats the point of having a “trustless” database once the data is in there. There’s the occasional proposed use case that seems vaguely useful, but they mostly boil down to replacing legal contracts with a database that’s distributed “somewhere”.

Honytawk ,

Crypto is a liberterian capitalist’s wet dream.

Tax-free, anonymous, with no accountability. Perfect for white washing corporate gain.

Just because it is “open-source” doesn’t mean it will be used for good.

itsmect ,

Crypto is not anonymous. Even monero, the most private cryptocurrency, has a feature called “view only wallets”, so 3rd party auditing is possible, if not easier then auditing today. Will individuals use it to avoid some taxes? Sure, it gets easier for them. Will corporations avoid more taxes then they already do? Doubtful.

BobGnarley ,

A view only wallet doesn’t trace anything that doesn’t get received directly by that view only wallet. If we had two wallets that didn’t interact with that wallet, it couldn’t do shit to trace or audit my transactions.

itsmect ,

If you are a company and run a webstore, it could be mandatory that all funds must go through a wallet where the tax authorities have a view key. This would be trivial to enforce with penalties whenever for publicly using addresses that point to other wallets. Peer to peer transactions (for eg. used goods or produce from your garden) are already except from taxes in my jurisdiction, so these transactions can be private.

BobGnarley ,

Ahhhh I see what you mean now that’s true but would be dependant on the legislation of the area like you said.

SwingingKoala ,
@SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Wait until you hear about cash! We should outlaw that immediately.

zergtoshi ,

Fixing issues like energy consumption, confirmation time, fees?
Just in case you haven’t heard of Nano, allow me to tell you it’s an attempt at creating a peer-to-peer digital currency with minimal energy consumption, 0 fees, 0 minimum account balance, very fast confirmation (ideally sub-second, sometimes a bit slower) and 0 supply inflation.
It focuses on doing one thing and doing it well: transferring value efficiently, sustsinably and without middlemen.
It’s around since 2015 and still kicking, getting better and better with each release, ironing kinks out.
It might sound too good to be true, but it’s worth a look; make up your own mind.

merc ,

but once it comes to money all that is thrown out of the window and they happily get on their knees for paypal and the few other large players.

I don’t think anybody likes paypal, Visa, Mastercard or any of the other major players. It’s just that blockchain “currencies” are much, much worse.

The idea of “Alternative Money” is a silly idea. Money has always been, and will always be connected to a state. The taxing and spending of the state is what gives money its value.

With cryptocurrencies, the “value” is only “greater fool” value. Someone is willing to pay 70k in dollars for a bitcoin because they think someone else is going to be willing to buy it from them for $71k at some point in the future. If it were a legitimate currency people wouldn’t bother checking its value in dollars because it would be useful in its own right. The only legitimate demand for cryptocurrencies is to pay ransom, and even then, the people who get the ransom immediately transform it back to a useful “fiat” currency.

Lemmy users are knowledgeable about open source, privacy, digital rights and knowledgeable enough to know that cryptocurrencies are a scam.

itsmect ,

The idea that money is tied to the state is silly. Many things have been used as money, way before the concept of a “state” existed. Undeniably the money that lasted best across the passage of time is gold. Up until very recently it was the standard to settle cross country currency exchanges with. The value does not come from the state, but from people willing to exchange it for goods and services. Todays fiat money is created at will by a few select people that are not democratically elected. They get to decide how much they debase your savings for the “greater good”, while the ones that profit the most are those who control the source.

Most people do not care about their open source, privacy and digital rights, so they only hear and care about crypto when the price jumps or when it is used for crime. Everything else is simply not newsworthy. So you end up with a bunch of “investors” looking to make a quick buck and people who believe to solve crime with more laws (requesting ransoms is already illegal, has existed before crypto and currently gift cards are scammers favorite form of payment).

I never mentioned the price nor suggested investing, because quite frankly, I don’t care. What I do care about is giving the few big companies that control the internet as little data and influence as possible, and not processing payments through them is a really important step. So I keep about as much crypto as I keep cash in my wallet, and use it preferably when buying or selling.

merc ,

The idea that money is tied to the state is silly.

No, it’s not. It’s historically accurate. All money is state money, always has been, always will be.

Many things have been used as money, way before the concept of a “state” existed.

Nope. Sorry, that’s wrong.

Undeniably the money that lasted best across the passage of time is gold.

Gold isn’t money. Gold is a commodity. Gold was used for jewelry, and as a bright shiny thing that didn’t tarnish had value because of that. People would sometimes exchange gold or things made of gold, but not gold coins. But, they’d also exchange other useful things: food, tools, cloth, etc. Gold coins were created by various states.

people willing to exchange it for goods and services

Never happened. Sure, there were gifts or donations, but it wasn’t X amount of gold for Y amount of grain. There were debts, but debts weren’t listed as a certain amount of gold, or a certain amount of money. Debts are old, money is new. Trading one thing for a certain “price” didn’t happen until coins existed, and coins didn’t exist until there was a state.

Todays fiat money is created at will by a few select people that are not democratically elected

Oh, blah blah blah. “Fiat money” is the only kind of money that has ever existed or will ever exist. It doesn’t much matter whether the government is “democratically elected” or not, currencies are created by and backed by a state and their ability to obtain a monopoly on the use of force within their area of influence. Most states with currencies are currently democratic, even if the structure of the US federal reserve is confusing to you.

They get to decide how much they debase your savings for the “greater good”, while the ones that profit the most are those who control the source.

More blah blah blah crypto nonsense.

Look, do some research on this stuff. Debt is a good place to start.

itsmect ,

people willing to exchange it for goods and services Never happened.

This is literally what you do every day. You exchange something for goods and services. This something is money based on it’s functional role, not some obscure definitions. To be money, it must be used as money. To be used as money, a group of people must agree that the item is worth exchanging for. This something does need to fulfill additional properties to be useful, notably it must be fungible, durable, portable, recognizable, divisible and have a stable supply. Gold does fit this description, but so does fiat.

What you are describing is a government issued currency, which has some overlap with money, but is not the same thing. Maybe you should research on this stuff.

merc ,

This is literally what you do every day. You exchange something for goods and services

Yes, now that there’s money it’s what happens. Prior to money there were debts, but no exchange of “X” for a set amount of goods or services.

To be money, it must be used as money.

To be money it must meet all the definitions of money. It must be a store of value, it must be a unit of account and a medium of exchange. There was no real money until there were states.

What you are describing is a government issued currency

Government issued currencies are the only real currencies. Everything else is valued by what someone will pay for it in government issued currency.

BobGnarley ,

Gold being a commodity because its shiny and therefore has value is no different than “I want to use this coin to better protect my data and privacy”. Both are values attributed to a commodity. Also, “It may have intrinsic value (commodity money), or be legally exchangeable for something with intrinsic value (representative money), or only have nominal value (fiat money).”

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money

You are wrong that money has always existed as state issued. That isn’t true

merc ,

Gold being a commodity because its shiny and therefore has value is no different than “I want to use this coin to better protect my data and privacy”.

It’s completely different. Gold is a commodity because it is inherently useful in itself. If someone invented a way to create gold out of thin air, people would continue to want gold because it’s pretty and shiny, and because it’s a very good electrical conductor that doesn’t tarnish. Crypto coins are only useful because everyone thinks that a greater fool will come along and pay as much or more. Everyone knows they have no inherent value, but so far there has always been a greater fool.

You are wrong that money has always existed as state issued. That isn’t true

Sure it is.

BobGnarley ,

Hey by the way, after we had that discussion bitcoin surpassed silver to become the 8th most valuable asset by market cap on the entire planet More than coca cola and Pepsi combined.

Also no, money has existed outside of States and Countries before you should look into the Theory of Money and the history behind it

merc ,

It’s not an asset. A bubble doesn’t prove anything. Tulips were once as valuable as houses… until they weren’t.

The theory of money is a theory. The fact is that money has always been associated with a state.

calcopiritus ,

Just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s good. Also not every situation is the same. Using Linux instead of windows has advantages/disadvantages very different than using crypto instead of fiat.

I can think of thousands of reasons to pick Linux, thousands to pick windows and thousands to pick fiat. I’d have to think real hard to even think of a single reason to pick crypto over fiat.

itsmect ,

I prefer free software not for its price, but for the freedom it gives me. Naturally I donate to these causes roughly what I’d have spend on a commercial one. They however do not need to know who I am, so I exclusively use crypto for that. I made one exception for an organization using paypal, and promptly they pulled address and name from that, gave it to a 3rd party which then send a postcard to me. You could see it as a nice gesture, but I think it’s just rude to use data in ways I did not explicitly consented to. Just take your money and leave me in peace.

In a similar manner I like to use it to pay for email, vpn, hosting and other online stuff. In fact this lemmy instance is 100% paid for by microdonations from its users, and because the provider accepts it directly no conversion was needed.

moon ,

Open source has nothing to do with it. All the things you’ve mentioned is made for the good of the people. Crypto is not. Crypto is for the rich to get richer and exploit the poor.

Anonymous payments is not a good thing and throws any sort of fraud protection out the window. It’s just for libertarians trying to avoid taxes, and criminals trying to launder money. It’s not beneficial to hide from the government that you bought a extra fatty pizza.

Also nothing about Crypto is grass roots whatsoever unlike what you listed before. Crypto took off because it was inorganically and heavily pushed by very rich people knowing they can make a large profit.

Your instance is literally an archaic PoW token that causes a tremendous amount of harm to the environment and wastes energy so you can hide buying drugs. That’s not including the fact either that you have to go through exchanges who require identifying information to withdraw into non monopoly money.

Centralization is not always bad, this is libertarian logic.

itsmect ,

Do you what to know the best part about xmr? You can kick and scream and bitch about me using it, but you can’t do jack shit about it. Maybe you can lobby at the side of paypal for more regulations, until the enshittification eventually catches up with you. glhf

moon ,

It’s too late for you. As soon as you want to turn that monero into cash, you’re going to be asked a lot of questions by the exchanges and the tax man.

itsmect ,

But I don’t want to exchange is back to fiat, that’s the entire point.

saigot ,

Blockchain is a nebulous buzzword with a vague meaning. But I have yet to see a sensible definition of a blockchain that doesn’t include git. At the end of the day they are both just Merkle trees.

Git is pretty useful imo.

ElCanut OP ,

Well yes but can you pump and dump git commits ?

jaemo ,

Only non-fungible commits.

QuaternionsRock ,

…kinda

UraniumBlazer ,

Who decides to commit changes though? A human. A human who can be corrupt.

The best use case for blockchains in my opinion is elections. The dude who owns the election server won’t be able to manipulate results in any way.

While manipulating results isn’t impossible in case of a blockchain, it is still very very difficult.

saigot ,

Who decides to commit changes though? A human. A human who can be corrupt

I’m not entirely sure what your getting at here, but git can be run as democratically as a crypto currency where the canonical version of the project is the one with the longest chain. Seems like a bad idea to me though. I think you may be assuming the way most people rely on github/gitlab etc as an inherent part of the system, when it’s really just the most convenient way of doing things.

The best use case for blockchains in my opinion is elections.

I’ll believe it when I see a real implementation. I think the problem is anonymity, I don’t see how we can set a system up such that the results are auditable but also impossible for anyone to tie a specific vote to a specific person.

UraniumBlazer ,

I’m not entirely sure what your getting at here, but git can be run as democratically as a crypto currency where the canonical version of the project is the one with the longest chain.

Which means elections. Which means a dude/committee in charge of a server. See the problem?

I’ll believe it when I see a real implementation. I think the problem is anonymity, I don’t see how we can set a system up such that the results are auditable but also impossible for anyone to tie a specific vote to a specific person.

This is a very very interesting topic that I’ve spent a rlly long time thinking about. I wish I had more energy to go in depth for this. The gist is this:

There will be a tradeoff between anonymity and “vote buying”.

You can have absolute anonymity by implementing a monero like blockchain. Each registered voter address gets one token. The thing that you can cast a vote for is also an address. The voter sends this token to an unknown address (that theoretically belongs to the voter themselves). Then, the voter votes from this address. This way, absolute anonymity is maintained as noone knows who sent the token to the address in the middle. BUT. I could buy votes like this too. I could bribe a voter to send their token to the middle address, which I control.

To prevent voter buying, you can have an open blockchain where all transactions are visible to everyone. However, you get pseudo anonymity here. Every registered voter address gets one token like above. No one except for the election commission knows which address belongs to whom. So while the election commission cannot manipulate votes, it can leak who voted for whom.

Now that being said, normal elections aren’t as theoretically anonymous as well. For ballots, your name is on the envelope. A compromised election commission could leak this info as well. For EVMs, one line of code could leak who you are. The person granting you entry can note down your information. The EVM can ping this person as to which vote was cast while you were in there.

Hence, in my opinion, the second option of the open blockchain is the best one provided that the election commission is under strict regulation (which it generally is in any case).

saigot , (edited )

Which means elections. Which means a dude/committee in charge of a server. See the problem?

No you don’t need a centralized server or a committee.

UraniumBlazer ,

So who conducts elections then?

saigot ,

I don’t know what you are talking about.

UraniumBlazer ,

You said you could democratically manage git, hence bypassing blockchains. Democracy means elections (unless you mean some exotic form of democracy like Athenian democracy). But elections need to be conducted.

I said you would need a central authority (like an election commission) to conduct elections. You said that there was no need for that. So I asked for your method of conducting elections.

faintbeep ,

The dude who owns the election server won’t be able to manipulate results in any way.

Sure he will. He can just ignore votes for one candidate and not add them to the chain. Blockchains are only resistant to manipulation if they’re distributed and people agree on the canonical version. Even then if enough people agree to manipulate them they can, like they did with Ethereum.

UraniumBlazer ,

The integrity of blockchains isn’t immune from malicious activity. It is just way way harder to be manipulated. No blockchain means 1 server needs to be manipulated. Blockchain means more than 1 servers need to be manipulated.

jaemo ,

You actually make a better case for replacing politicians with benevolent AI than for replacing ballots with transactions on a blockchain.

UraniumBlazer ,

How so? AI is not smarter than people.

Even when it becomes smarter than humans in the future, I would still oppose this idea. We humans have seemingly benevolent leaders who become malevolent. At least we can replace them as they are around as smart as us. A malevolent creature that is waaay smarter than us that rules over us? No thanks.

kuberoot ,

Git might not count because you can have branches that then merge? But yeah, git is useful, it’s decentralized and distributed, it could be used P2P…

uis ,

Git might not count because you can have branches that then merge?

AKA referencing to two past states.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Blockchain is pretty well defined.

Git doesn’t have update rules that are only valid if signed by a particular private key.

saigot ,

Please share a source! I can’t find anything as robust as a whitepaper (the bitcoin whitepaper doesn’t use the term).

NIST informally defines it as:

A distributed digital ledger of cryptographically-signed transactions that are grouped into blocks. Each block is cryptographically linked to the previous one (making it tamper evident) after validation and undergoing a consensus decision. As new blocks are added, older blocks become more difficult to modify (creating tamper resistance). New blocks are replicated across copies of the ledger within the network, and any conflicts are resolved automatically using established rules.

Which git certainly meets this.

IBM informally defines it as:

Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network. An asset can be tangible (a house, car, cash, land) or intangible (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, branding).

Which git meets.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Git is hash linked, not cryptographicly linked. Only cryptographicly valid changes are allowed to blockchain state. All data can be modified in git.

Yes. IBMs definition is bad and could equally apply to git. They’ve totally forgotten about the private key aspect.

I’ll see if I can source a better definition online, but make no promises.

Edit: aws.amazon.com/what-is/blockchain/ the last line is not applicable to Git

uis ,

Hash is cryptographic function.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

A hash function doesn’t check if a signature is valid. Neither does git. Blockchain does check.

uis ,

And?

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

lemmy.world/comment/8278003

uis ,

Again, find the difference. Each block(commit object) has its content(blobs and trees) and metadata like parent blocks(commit objects), time(and message). So one commit corresponds only to one history.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

But git can branch in multiple forks and states of the database. Blockchain has mechanisms to ensure there is convergence to one state.

uis ,

Still haven’t found it. You suddenly started talking about consensus protocol. Bitcoin blockchain branches too, but consensus protocol sets last block(HEAD in git) to block with longest history.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Ive not suddenly started talking about consensus protocols. Yes, selecting the next (not necessarily longest) block is part of that consensus, but so is checking that the data contained in a block is cryptographicly sound and is following the rules of that specific blockchain. That second part is not native to GIT.

If you like, you can think of blockchain as a subset of GIT that includes additional constraints.

saigot ,

Oh a 3rd definition, that definitely hurts the case that blockchain is vague ill defined term. If it were a well-defined term, there would be whitepapers defining it like merkle trees or bitcoin. Blockchain is just a marketing term defined by businesses, not scientists or engineers and thus is vague and variable.

I also don’t think your definition is a very good definition. Do you think git fundamentally changes when it moves from sha1 to sha256? Or are you referring to the fact that the payloads of cryptocurrency’s blockchain is required to be signed (just like you can optionally require git commits to be signed)? I don’t think that’s fundamental to blockchain either.

Only cryptographicly valid changes are allowed to blockchain state. All data can be modified in git.

No. You can’t modify the chain in git. Each commit is an immutable snapshot of the repository. To change history you have to create a new hash and then broadcast that to everyone that they should stop using the old one. Depending in how your network is setup you may onky have to convince a centralized server, or you might have to convince 51% of the actors on your network or you may just choose to only form a network that agrees with you. You could alter bitcoin’s blockchain too, but you’d need 51% of the network to agree with you.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Oh a 3rd definition, that definitely hurts the case that blockchain is vague ill defined term.

The phrases used to describe the technology to the public may change, but the technolgical approach doesn’t

If it were a well-defined term, there would be whitepapers defining it like merkle trees or bitcoin.

There are hundreds of blockchain whitepapers, all of which link blocks of data via hash functions and only accept state changes if they are valid and cryptographicaly signed.

Blockchain is just a marketing term defined by businesses, not scientists or engineers and thus is vague and variable.

If we were discussing web3 or Metaverse then you may have a point. But no-one in tech is confused about what blockchain is anymore.

Do you think git fundamentally changes when it moves from sha1 to sha256?

No.

Or are you referring to the fact that the payloads of cryptocurrency’s blockchain is required to be signed

Yes. Exactly this.

(just like you can optionally require git commits to be signed)?

Optionally is the key word. Blockchain transactions must be signed, and they must be accepted as following the blockchain rules by validators.

I don’t think that’s fundamental to blockchain either.

Find me a blockchain that doesn’t require signed transactions to make state changes.

No. You can’t modify the chain in git.

I didn’t say anything about modify the chain.

Each commit is an immutable snapshot of the repository.

A commit can contain any data it likes. A commit to a blockchain is highly restricted. Only cryptographicly valid rule following changes are allowed to blockchain state.

cmhe ,

Optionally is the key word. Blockchain transactions must be signed, and they must be accepted as following the blockchain rules by validators.

But this is just a policy decision, not a property of the technology. You can easily implement a script that checks if every commit from remotes are signed, accepts them if they are and drops them if they aren’t or the signature is invalid.

If you contribute to a project where the majority require signed commits, then you need to sign commits in order for your change to be integrated into the consensus.

That has nothing to do with the technology itself, just with the application.

So if you state that signatures are required to be a blockchain, then you can use git to create a blockchain, by just having that policy.

(IMO I wouldn’t say that signatures are required, just that blockchains usually have them.)

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

You can easily implement a script that checks if every commit from remotes are signed, accepts them if they are and drops them if they aren’t or the signature is invalid.

Now add some logic to check whether the actual data is valid (i.e. bob has enough coins in his account to send to Charlie).

Make some incentive to ensure only the main branch survives and forks are either eliminated or merged.

Automate

Now git replicates blockchain’s functionality.

So if you state that signatures are required to be a blockchain, then you can use git to create a blockchain, by just having that policy.

Yes, but add automatically processing the content of the commit for validity and incentives to reduce the number of forks.

(IMO I wouldn’t say that signatures are required, just that blockchains usually have them.)

Without public key cryptography you just have a hash linked list (like Git).

dev_null ,

How does it “certainly meet it”? There is no consensus mechanism in git, new blocks are not replicated across the network, there is no network at all, git works offline. You can replicate changes with remotes but there is no “git network” in any similar sense. And conflicts are definitely not resolved automatically. And the git hashes are certainly not cryptographic.

That’s 4 ways it doesn’t meet the definition. You could maybe stretch the meaning of a network to make it 3.

HiddenLayer5 ,

While blockchain is well defined, it in itself is not a product but a technology. I think what the other commenter is getting at is that simply saying something “is blockchain” means very little because what the blockchain does depends on the implementation, so when used in marketing it’s just a nebulous buzzword in that it doesn’t actually give you much information about what the product is. Same with terms like cloud, AI, virtual reality, etc.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Yes. There were a lot of companies selling “blockchain base” solutions where blockchain wasn’t really needed in the solution at all.

Then it was Metaverse based solutions. (I would argue VR is well defined)

Now it’s AI solutions.

But I think “cloud” is now post that marketing phase, and blockchain is heading that way.

ace ,
@ace@lemmy.ananace.dev avatar

I think the only project I’ve seen so far where I’ve felt that a blockchain has actually been the correct choice is Alfis, which is a decentralized DNS that uses the blockchain as the public append-only ledger that it is, and it uses proof-of-work to add arbitrary costs to updates - to make spamming or namesquatting expensive.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Amazon has a database project called QLDB that uses blockchain for its audit log.

What do you call an audit log that’s cryptographically verifiable? A blockchain.

ComradeKhoumrag ,
@ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

So why not do the same with a bank ledger?

Honytawk ,

web3isgoinggreat.com

Here is why

ComradeKhoumrag , (edited )
@ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

Web3 is more about smart contracts and alt coins, you didn’t address my point

Edit: you can downvote if you like but your post objectively shows you don’t know the difference between web3 and block chain, and choosing to debate web3 instead of making changes to bank ledgers in my original post is a logical fallacy

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Banks should.

But there is too much technological debt to implement.

bruhduh ,
@bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2e276910-3790-41c6-941a-bdc9521ccfdd.jpeg

neatchee , (edited )

OK but there are actually great uses for blockchain that are completely disconnected from anything you typically see

For example, banks may begin using blockchain for maintaining their internal ledgers. It will help solve a ton of issues around reconciling the transactions from all over the globe

Blockchain has reasonable uses. Really good ones. Crypto and nft bros just completely ruined the image of it

EDIT: I love all the comments demonstrating how little people understand about blockchain. Bitcoin was not the first blockchain, nor is its design the only type of blockchain. Assuming that all blockchain looks like the crypto/nft paradigm is just showing your ignorance.

www.vice.com/en/…/what-was-the-first-blockchain

kameecoding ,

How is the blockchain different from a read only ( write only once to be specific) DB that follows ACID?

some_designer_dude ,

It’s distributed so no single entity can take it down. Among many other possible benefits depending on architecture and infrastructure.

It’s far more complex than coins and NFTs. Blockchain is like a new internet. Coins and NFTs are like those shitty GIFs you used to see everywhere. Evocative of old internet, but not the internet itself.

stockRot ,

Distributed databases have existed for decades. It’s how large healthcare systems maintain electronic health records for their patients across dozens of hospitals in real time.

Klear ,

How is that useful in a bank ledger?

vrighter ,

Simple, it’s not. If it were, they’d have been using them for decades (blockchains were invented in the 70s).

The consensus algorithm, which is not the blockchain itself, was invented later. But banks don’t need to reach concensus with themselves. They all maintain their own data, and heavily guard it. So the only bad actor they could have is themselves. And they banks all keep watch each other.

Klear ,

Preaching to the choir here.

sxan , (edited )
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

This isn’t true: there are not-distributed blockchains.

The definition of a blockchain is a ledger where every entry is cryptographically signed with a hash of the current entry plus a previous entry. There’s no requirement that this be at all distributed. In fact, QLDB uses a non-distributed blockchain as its audit log.

Blockchain are often used in distributed systems because of the verifiability of the records; its a way of providing security of history in a fundamentally insecure environment. But there’s no requirement that they be distributed, and they add value in non-distributed environments as well - in any case you want to be able to review a history of changes and know that someone hasn’t been cooking the books, for instance.

I’ll give a real-world example. One place I worked we had databases that had data constantly streaming in from many different sources. Something that would frequently happen would be some data issue that would break applications; often, this was bad data from sources outside of our control. Ops*, who’s only priority was to get the applications back up and running, would often track down and directly modify records and fix the data. The issue was that some time later, sometime days later, a customer would call and complain about data being incorrect. By then, it was impossible to figure out what had happened: did we get the wrong data from the source? Did one of the import processes mangle the data? Did someone poke around in the database and change the data? We had no way of telling, and investigations would take many hours, often from several senior people, who would frequently in the end have to shrug and say, “we don’t know.” There were lots of things that could have improved this, with varying levels of success, but a global audit log would have been the first step. A verifiable audit log would have been better, because often it’d come down to us being convinced the data a third party was giving us was bad, and it became an our word vs. their word since we shared the same client. If we’d had a blockchain layer through which every transaction was recorded, we could have rolled back in time and figure out exactly how a record came to be what it was and been able to prove it to the client.

Blockchains are awesome. People who say otherwise have their heads up their asses, and are unable to differentiate between blockchain the technology, and the sometimes questionable uses they’re put to. Iron is used to make guns and bombs; that doesn’t make iron bad.

Edit clarification

    • "Ops" as in “operations”
neatchee ,

Thank you for being in this thread. I felt like I was taking crazy pills with all these other replies. So many people think bitcoin was the first blockchain. And that the paradigm used by crypto is the only type of blockchain there is.

I will never forgive tech bros for making blockchain a buzzword tied exclusively to crypto and NFTs. The amount of lost potential is infuriating

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

It’s become one of my pet peeves.

I have a conspiracy theory that a lot of the anti-cryptocoin stuff that gets posted is an organized disinformation campaign run by some governments and central banks who are particularly threatened by crypto, and that it extends to bad-mouthing any technology related to cryptocoins. I also believe that there are a fair number of secondary internet users who read “crypto bad” and have picked up the messaging because (a) they’re kinda pissed they didn’t get in on the ground floor, (b) they lost money playing in the markets, © because, whether they’re self-aware enough to know it or not, people love a good mob mentality, and/or_ © because crypto farms really are shitty wastes of resources and are easily villified. I guarantee, however, that not a single one of those people could describe - in even then most general terms - how a blockchain works. Not even at a programmer level, although the programmers who do this are the worst, because they should know better. And this is what infuriates me: “Blockchain is bad!” “Why?” “Because I read it on the interwebs that it causes global warming and is a pyramid scheme!”

Pet peeve.

brbposting ,

What do you have against bombs?!

Very interesting perspective, thanks :)

Natanael ,

Replication and verifiable timestamps, which you can add to regular databases too BTW

DaleGribble88 ,
@DaleGribble88@programming.dev avatar

How can you trust that the database is really append only? Blockchain provides a way to verify the state of the database and the ordering of the transactions. Beyond that, not much benefit to be had. However, for certain situations, that is a very big benefit!

kameecoding ,

Name fucking one situation

DaleGribble88 , (edited )
@DaleGribble88@programming.dev avatar

Sure! So some students of mine were working on a multiplayer video game that was started by a different group of students the previous semester. The first group of students made a design choice that, to over-simplify, basically tracked achievements and milestones on the client side and then synchronized those achievements to the server. Players could cheat the system by sending malicious packets of achievements to the server. Some achievements could only be completed by a single person in the game, so this was a big problem for the 2nd group of students to overcome. Faced with the choice of rearchitecting the game to be more authoritative on the server and less resilient to frequent disconnections, which affected some aspects of the game, or creating a logical and verifiable sequence of in-game events on the server side. The students went with the latter, and implemented a Lamport clock using a blockchain to verify the authenticity of the events, and prevent a rogue student from updating the game later to give themself a bonus. Basically, along with needing an authoritative sequence of events that is protected from user interference, it also needed to be protected from developer interference.

It was kinda similar to that situation a few years back of the EVE online developers playing the game and giving their guild members certain bonuses and special in-game items. The solution there was to fire the malicious developers, but I can’t exactly fire an entire class of students from an educational project.

EDIT: What seems to be the problem here? I was asked to name a situation where a blockchain would be useful and I did? It’s a computer data structure, there are pros and cons that are context dependent like any other data structure. It I so weird to me to receive downvotes because of the politics surrounding a data structure.

hemmes ,
@hemmes@lemmy.world avatar

To your edit; it was a great example, but if you say anything positive about blockchain (or Apple, or capitalism, etc) you’ll likely be heavily downvoted on Lemmy.

DaleGribble88 , (edited )
@DaleGribble88@programming.dev avatar

Yeah, I think that seems to be the case here. It just feels so weird to me to have a politicized data structure.

“Remember kids, only coke-fiends and meth-heads use Binomial Heaps.”

hemmes ,
@hemmes@lemmy.world avatar

Ha!

But yeah, like others have said in this post, it had a bad light cast on it due to the jpg and gif NFTs. Folks started to realize: “wait… this token just contains a link to a web server hosting a jpg file??”

Well, yes. But also the rights.

“The heck you mean ‘the rights’??”

I mean, your Drunk Monkey in Teal Color Theme artwork is yours to use, you’ve purchased the license in the form of an NFT.

“But it’s just a link that anyone could just copy!”

Well, that would be stealing.

So NFTs in that regard are like any movie or TV show, or video game you rent or purchase. That utility may or may not seem to have any value to any one person, but it is a utility, and a pretty cool one if you ask me. But the usage, its implementation, is what matters. Whatever that usage requirement is for the individual or business, blockchain will do it well. Even if it is used to license junk.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Blockchains add cryptographic signing and limit actions based on those signatures.

kameecoding ,

Big words that mean nothing

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

To you maybe. Maybe other lemmings reading this understand them.

kameecoding ,

They mean nothing in the sense its nothing you cant do with DBs, so like I said, big words that mean nothing

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Cryptography - means that only you can make changes. No database administrator. No hacker. No-one but you.

Limited actions - means the changes you make must follow rules that cannot be altered by anyone.

Both impossible to implement on a normal DB, which is why bitcoin was revolutionary.

kameecoding ,
  1. thats not what cryptography means, and is a huge fucking downside especially for banking which us centrally controlled
  2. It’s called triggers, user roles etc, once again you dont want this to be unalterabale for banking because what if regulations change…

Only thing bitcoin revolutionized was the speed with which scammers can dupe people out of their money.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

thats not what cryptography means,

You didn’t even know what “those big words” meant a second ago.

downside especially for banking which is centrally controlled

Banking doesn’t need to be centrally controlled. It only has been for the past few hundred years.

  1. It’s called triggers, user roles etc,

Why pay and trust a 3rd party control those?

what if regulations change…

You update the smart contracts

The only thing bitcoin revolutionized was the speed with which scammers can dupe people out of their money.

Almost true. Scams are not the only thing revolutionized.

kameecoding ,

Dude, my name literally contains “coding” you made the assumption I didn’t understand it…

Yeah banking needs to be controlled because what if something goes wrong, you can’t be this dense, stolen credit cards, stolen identity wring transaction, what if the validators disagree what is the truth ala bitcoin split?

Blockchain is woefully inadequate to manage finances…

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

you made the assumption I didn’t understand it…

No. You admitted those words mean nothing to you.

what if something goes wrong

You plan for each eventually and ensure all responsibilities are understood.

stolen credit cards, stolen identity wring transaction,

Multisignature, limit controlled wallets

what if the validators disagree what is the truth ala bitcoin split?

Wait for a few blocks before assuming your transaction is confirmed. Don’t be dishonest during a fork event.

Blockchain is woefully inadequate to manage finances…

The general public is woefully uneducated and unsupported for blockchain managed finances, but the technology is fine.

kameecoding ,

I have literally explained to you what I meant, there is nothing to admit, lmao.

This is the issue with cryptobros you just think you are so much smarter than everyone else, and everyone else must be stupid and just not understand how crypto works.

Meanwhile you cant even see the huge flaws with the technology, you think " just wait and don’t be dishonest" while there is a disagreement and unrecoverable split in the network is a viable solution… fucking hell that’s such a childish take

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

When was last time a fork caused an unforseen problem in a popular blockchain?

There are plenty of things about blockchain technology you could have mentioned that are not yet perfect (privacy, scalability, accessibility, governance, regulation, interoperability etc.) but the best attack you have is that cryptography is meaningless.

theneverfox ,

They were saying what it meant in this context

Meaning, in a DB, the admin could change roles and modify anything.

Database triggers can have bugs, and we generally don’t let third parties log into the database directly because it’s a huge attack surface

In blockchain, without a key you’re cryptographically locked out. The only way around that is if the network as a whole changes their code to a version that allows something like that

It’s just a ledger where every entry is signed by a private key. That’s a fantastic structure for certain specific use cases…

Draegur ,

i for one would have liked a media licensing system that operates agnostic of any centralized authority

for instance, irrefutable and independently verifiable proof that you own a valid software, music, or visual art license and are therefore immune to prosecution for piracy.

A registry of licenses like this could shield creators from copyright claims on social media applications such as youtube. Could also automate revenue sharing and royalties for artists whose works are used in derivative media so the people who actually perform the work get paid. Would be nice to cut the publisher middleman out. And there is absolutely no reason there has to be anything like a “proof of work” system burning down entire fucking rainforests’ worth of energy to verify every single gods damned transaction because this sort of system isn’t for trading shit, it’s strictly for proving a valid chain of custody between producers and consumers and you don’t need megawatt-hours to just fucking LOOK SOMETHING UP.

imagine if, for instance, fucking warner brothers couldn’t “takes backsies” content that they SOLD to end users through a distribution network; the license is yours, and anyone can look up the fact that the license was sold to the user id you happen to control.

imagine if, for instance, you buy a video game through a digital distributor like steam but then the store goes out of business and no longer exists to serve you a copy or recognize the sale, but on this massively distributed and decentralized database you can prove that you did indeed compensate the developers of that software and thereby legally acquire entitlement to access it in accordance with the end user license agreement.

imagine if ownership of stuff you bought fair and square can never be taken away from you

THAT’S what we could have had

instead of this fucking bullshit.

aesc ,
@aesc@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Well, if those licenses are entries on the blockchain, they could be transferred on the blockchain. You could sell your game used when you’re bored of playing it. You can’t play it after you sell it but someone else can. Publishers hate resale markets though, when people buy used games they don’t make any money. So they’ll probably never go for this.

hemmes ,
@hemmes@lemmy.world avatar

With smart contracts on blockchain you can do exactly that. Everyone involved in the process can ensure they get their cut.

jdeath ,

yeah on top of that, if your computer breaks or something now you lost all of your keys.

say goodbye to whatever you own on the blockchain when the keys are gone. poof!

this is the biggest problem with any scheme tying private keys (digital) to anything in the real world.

wise_pancake , (edited )

Once my mom threw out all the cases for my computer games and put all the disks into a cd binder to save room.

It was devastating.

brbposting ,

She wanted you to hear some of her favorite chiptunes but she didn’t know how

wise_pancake ,

I don’t know what this means

brbposting ,

Serial key generators would play chiptunes in the background - give a listen!

wise_pancake ,

Now I regret not having this experience

brbposting ,

<3 never been a better time to relive it for the first time

NoiseColor ,

Not really. You backup you keys like a normal human. Or create any of those new account abstraction keys that are tied to another account, or anything else.

NoiseColor ,

Not really. You backup you keys like a normal human. Or create any of those new account abstraction keys that are tied to another account, or anything else.

S410 ,
@S410@kbin.social avatar

You can lose access to regular accounts as easily as to a blockchain. In fact, losing database of your password manager is even worse, because even if you have backups, they're not going to be complete.

With a blockchain all you have to worry is your private key. And you can write it down on a piece of paper, if you want, and put it away in a safe or a bank vault or something. Then, if you use it to restore your access years later, nothing will be lost.

"There are 2 types of people in the world: those who make backups, and those who don't make backups yet."

aesc ,
@aesc@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

As people said, you can backup your private keys to a flash drive. You can put them in a safe deposit box. You can give them to your lawyer or other fiduciary with a legal responsibility to act in your best interests (who also knows how to protect digital property if they keep digital copy). You could write it with lemon juice onto the back of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. You could have a laser thingie that displays it on a wall surgically implanted into your arm. Pretty much all the ways people protect gold or cash in the real world you can do with a piece of paper with your private key.

trashgirlfriend ,

I feel like here you get to the NFT problem of having proof of ownership of something doesn’t mean much when that thing is being hosted on servers you don’t control

so if you have an entry with a licence for a steam game, and steam gets closed, you are out of luck

Draegur ,

it’s that holding a license for a game entitles you to operating a copy of it regardless of where you bought it.

it’s the whole basis for why emulation and ROM images were LEGAL

because you had a right to retain a backup of the software you own through the license.

with an independent licensing infrastructure, if GoG closes you can take your licenses with you, download the game from anywhere, and if anyone tries to charge you for stealing it, you can just present your license: “See, i bought it fair and square.”

if i bought a dryer from SEARS, it didn’t stop being mine when SEARS closed.

BakerBagel ,

NFT’s don’t show you have proof of ownership of anything other than the NFT. Think of all the people who got their metamask account hacked and lost all their apes with zero recourse.

Why would anyone want anything required for daily life attached to something so insecure and irreversible as that?

Tar_alcaran ,

It’s like if losing your wallet automatically burns down your house. Sounds amazing, let’s do it!

Tar_alcaran ,

imagine if, for instance, you buy a video game through a digital distributor like steam but then the store goes out of business and no longer exists to serve you a copy or recognize the sale, but on this massively distributed and decentralized database you can prove that you did indeed compensate the developers of that software and thereby legally acquire entitlement to access it in accordance with the end user license agreement.

What you’re arguing for is forcing the distributor to distribute in perpetuity, which has nothing to do with how you show ownership of your license.

Right now, I can show steam I’ve purchased, say Delistopolis, and they will agree I am indeed perfectly allowed to have and play it. But they are not required to provide me with a copy.

A blockchain system will not solve this.

Draegur ,

no. you’re putting words in my mouth. if the distributor wants to stop distributing they can.

they can take down their servers, they can even cease to be, but it would no longer affect the availability of product they sold.

Tar_alcaran ,

Then I don’t think I understand you. Are you suggesting we put millions of full games on a bloxkchain?

Draegur ,

Only the keys need to be stored cryptographically, really, because the game files themselves are nigh inevitably available on torrenting networks. it’s inevitable that people are going to rip backups of all game files for the delicious delights of datamining and as long as enough of them will seed them (which shouldn’t be a problem as long as there’s any INTEREST in a game existing…) that availability never arises as an issue. And if it’s not popular enough to put there, it’ll probably end up on The Internet Archive.

Would be nice if there were an infrastructural ‘backup of last resort’ such as the library of congress, which is something the LoC already does for other audiovisual media. It’d just be nice if that service were extended to software.

Tar_alcaran ,

So more of a blockchain KMS then? I don’t see how you could construct such a thing.

The requirements of allowing a publisher control of their game for some time (for example, allowing them to retract some keys when violating the EULA, but not all keys when “unpublishing” a game), but also allowing people to resell keys, which are somehow publically accesible but only for the legit owner, and the owner has to allow third-party acces without publically sharing a private key.

This is the age-old identity problem with blockchain. It’s all well and good that Bob’s name is written on a smart contract, but that doesn’t remove the issue with how to identify Bob.

Natanael ,

All such copyright licenses are rooted in local jurisdictional law, so your country’s copyright office should be the authority because anything else means the courts can tell you that your on-chain transactions are invalid

magic_lobster_party ,

Blockchain is only potentially useful if there’s no single entity that can be trusted. If banks can’t even trust themselves to manage their own internal ledgers, they have much bigger problems to deal with.

TragicNotCute ,
@TragicNotCute@lemmy.world avatar

Trustless systems aren’t a bad thing that has to step in when the good thing fails. Trustless systems are inherently better because you don’t have to trust a bank (or anyone for that matter).

Additionally, ledgers can be gamed/corrupted/falsified. This is significantly more complex (bordering on impossible) on the blockchain.

youtu.be/bBC-nXj3Ng4

magic_lobster_party ,

There are often easier, more reliable, and far cheaper ways to achieve the same things without using a blockchain. Some of the principles are even used in normal web browsing to ensure secure untampered connections.

Blockchain just solves a subproblem that only arises when there’s no appointed central entity.

Blaiz0r ,

Blockchains aren’t hard, unreliable or expensive

NoiseColor ,

Cryptocurrency Ledgers can be corrupted?

TragicNotCute ,
@TragicNotCute@lemmy.world avatar

I was hedging against a particularly snarky commenter showing up. You can do a 51% attack and theoretically corrupt it. In practice, that’s much more difficult.

nom345 ,

You dont need 51% attack to corrupt a ledger. Just enter incorrect info and the ledger is wrong. Not a damn thing a blockchain can do about that. Same issue is with any trustless system where you have to trust someone to input the correct info/do the agreed thing/ship the ordered physical item.

QuaternionsRock ,

Just enter incorrect info and the ledger is wrong.

The concept behind cryptocurrency is that the ledger is the info, because you’re right, a half-assed blockchain ledger used for external (e.g. cash) transactions doesn’t really solve the root problem. Proof of work is fucking stupid though, and it has (rightfully) ruined the perception of blockchain technology among those who can see past their own crypto wallet.

hemko ,

That’s the thing, they shouldn’t trust a single source of assumed truth. If the single source is tampered with, there’s nothing to compare to.

Removing the need to trust a single entity is just a great security feature

Lichtblitz ,

You can implement public or semi public ledgers without Blockchain. That’s what banks are doing already by sending huge CSV files internally and externally. Blockchain is not a technology of zero trust. It’s close to the opposite. You trust a few peers and blindly trust everyone they trust. That way you trust a network that you know nothing about and if the network decides on a common truth that you are convinced is incorrect, there is nothing you can do about it. The consensus always wins and there is no single entity to complain to and get it fixed. This is great for making sure that many actors need to be bad actors in order to have the whole system fail. It’s bad if you don’t trust anyone and want to make sure that your standards are always observed. From a technology standpoint I love the concept of Blockchain. But use cases that are not forced are few and far apart. Too few for the amount of hype it receives.

magic_lobster_party ,

If the bank can’t even trust themselves then there’s no point in having the bank at all.

hemko ,

You really don’t get it? Trust is a problem. Anyone, or anything, can and will fail or be compromised.

vrighter ,

so I put my trust in software instead. And by extension its developers. You’re saying of all people, we should trust some programmers above all else. You know, the “move fast and break things” guys.

As a programmer myself, this thought is both terrifying and hilarious.

QuaternionsRock ,

As a fellow programmer: what kind of doomer take is this? I don’t have any opinion on the efficacy of blockchain technology, but all of us put an immeasurable amount of trust in software every single day. And it’s not like current banking practices are different in this regard, either: blockchain tech requires faith in the software implementation, while contemporary banking requires faith in banks and the software they use (including a borderline unmaintainable COBOL stack, from what I’ve heard).

nom345 ,

Banks and firms that uses their services are audited thoug. It is not blind trust. And regadress the tech used there would sitll be audits.

QuaternionsRock ,

Agreed, audits are beneficial in virtually every situation. I just think that, of all the well-formed arguments to be made against cryptocurrencies (especially PoW coins), the fact that it is software isn’t one of them. In my opinion, fueling distrust of software in general is ill-advised.

nom345 ,

The distruss to software is not against all software. Blockchains are usually advertised as trustless, so the argument against that has to be made as you have to trust the devs. The trustless argument is weak on other fronts also, but this is one side of the issue.

vrighter ,

because problems in the bank’s software are the bank’s responsibility. If they lose my money, it’s their responsibility to get it back. Cryptocurrencies are the exact opposite, by design. If you’re fucked, you’ee fucked. unless of course half the participants decide to fork, half don’t and you end up with two “currencies” out of thin air.

Natanael ,

Blockchains is a tool for moving trust around in a decentralized network, not a tool for removing it.

kibiz0r ,

Security starts with trust.

kate ,

guys they are putting micro chips in the cheese and using block chains to track the micro chips businessinsider.com/edible-microchips-on-parmigia…

buried_treasure ,

Blockchain has been around as a technology for nearly two decades. If financial institutions thought it could help them you can bet they would be all-in on it by now. As it is, blockchain has no significant advantages over traditional financial ledger systems, so what incentive is there for them to use it.

It’s not something new or cutting edge any more, just waiting for a bright spark to discover the technology and put it to use.

S410 ,
@S410@kbin.social avatar

Well, why would banks replace the system which allows them to charge fees for every other interaction with their services? A blockain solution would allow multiple different banks (and, possibly, even regular people) to access the data with no middlemen, and, therefore, no fees. Or, well, no fees that directly end up in the bank's pockets as profit, that is.

Getting rid of that is bad for business. So, unless something magical happens and the EU, for example, pass a law requiring the banks to switch to a more de-centralized, more fair system, it's not going to happen.

buried_treasure ,

That’s kind of my point. Blockchain evangelists have been banging the drum for many years saying “This is a perfect fit for the financial industry. Why won’t fintech wake up and recognise that?”

When in fact fintech took a long, hard look at blockchain a long time ago and decided “nope, there’s nothing here that would tempt us” outside of a few very niche applications.

neatchee , (edited )

Yeah I imagine they probably would.

Maybe do a simple Google search next time? They ARE using it. It’s getting a ton of investment from them.

Also it’s over three decades. Bitcoin wasn’t the first. They just popularized a specific type of blockchain

buried_treasure ,

Maybe do a simple Google search next time?

Rather than resorting to that age-old cry of the cult member “do your own research!” can I respectfully suggest that if you’re aiming to change somebody’s mind, the onus is on you to provide the evidence, not on them. By all means take hours out of your day to search google and compile a list of things that you think will convince me. Me, personally, I have better things to do with my life.

neatchee ,

I didn’t ask them to do their own research. I asked that, if they are skeptical of a claim I made, either do a simple Google search to check if it’s very easily verifiable, or ask me directly instead of immediately saying “you’re wrong because I would have heard of it”

Like, I’m happy to provide citations when requested, but lemmy isn’t a scientific journal where I’m expected to provide every source for my information up front

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

If financial institutions thought it could help them you can bet they would be all-in on it by now.

coindesk.com/…/goldman-sachs-bny-mellon-and-other…

NoiseColor ,

How do you see memes like this? Because I see them as lame and sad, especially since we have been seeing them for 10+ years now and they are still the same. But apparently you think blockchain has reasonable uses.

HaywardT ,

Damn! You had my up vote until that last sentence.

NoiseColor ,

Why? He used the same exact words?

HaywardT ,

Because I agree with everything except the last sentence. Even after a decade the thinks the block chain has no uses.

NoiseColor ,

He literally said he thinks it has uses.

I think he is most certainly right. People that think otherwise should go back to their bar order another one and keep ranting about it to their half dead drunkard friends.

HaywardT ,

No, he said “you [meaning in contrast to himself] think it has uses”

NoiseColor ,

No. That’s what I said and did not mean it like that.

neatchee ,

Misguided

NoiseColor ,

Only misguided?

I mean usually they are accompanied by false information and references to stuff like “crypto bros”, “pyramid schemes”,…

neatchee ,

You said “memes like this”. This one I see as misguided. Ones that shit on crypto and nft I generally agree with.

NoiseColor ,

This one is shitting on crypto.

neatchee ,

No, it’s shitting on blockchain too. The only options are “don’t use blockchain” and “stop making crypto” which is misguided. I agree with the sentiment about crypto, not about blockchain

NoiseColor ,

There is no blockchain without crypto.

neatchee ,

This is false. Bitcoin was the first modern and well known implementation of blockchain but it was not the first.

The principles and methodologies behind blockchain have been slowly building for over 30 years

www.vice.com/en/…/what-was-the-first-blockchain

NoiseColor ,

If you nitpick sure. But in practice crypto is the part that makes blockchain work.

There was a trend to try to separate them many years ago, because some people believed that was the way to push the technology forward - to focus on the blockchain part and try to hide the crypto part that has a bad rep after it was abused in the media as what only criminals use. But it failed. We shouldn’t hide the crypto part, but push it forward. That strategy worked! Today we have approved bitcoin etfs which is crazy amazing! And when eth ETF is approved, then all of them will have to be. This is the way.

I have no idea why you are going to the failed arguments from almost 10 years ago.

neatchee ,

You are just simply wrong and I don’t have the energy left to keep digging up the resources to prove it. Go read my other replies elsewhere. There are even people in this thread who have written long comments detailing the same things I’m saying. You do not understand the history of blockchain, only crypto. You do not understand the underlying technology, nor what differentiates the concept of a blockchain from the type of blockchain used in crypto. So I’m done. Too tired of showing people the truth when they refuse to entertain anything but their existing position.

NoiseColor ,

I’m not wrong at all.

You think you are right because you found some niche situations in where your opinion is valid. But you don’t realize, your opinion is still just an opinion and this opinion is weak af.

You don’t need to imagine what I understand and what I don’t understand after our brief exchange. You have no clue who I am, so don’t try.

neatchee ,

Hahaha “niche” is what you call multiple massive financial institutions? And that’s just what I could pull up in 5 minutes off Google.

Your obstinance is genuinely entertaining 🤣

You’re a silly, silly person. Thank you for the laugh. So long, chief

NoiseColor ,

You are completely missing the point. Which is normal if you had to pull stuff from Google to find a small example where in some abstract sense you might be right. Attacking me, a person you know nothing about, is weak.

Weak af.

Blue_Morpho ,

Why would you want the computational power of a bank system have anything to do with whether it’s ledger is correct?

UraniumBlazer ,

Banks/hackers can manipulate data if they want to. Manipulating data on blockchains is way waaaaay harder.

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

Using a blockchain to maintain their internal ledgers means they have complete control over that blockchain, so they can manipulate it all they want. Blockchains aren’t magic.

UraniumBlazer ,

Oh, didn’t see the “internal”. Yea, that’s stupid then.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Who are “they” in the above message?

If you trust all your employees then an internal blockchain is useless, but do banks really totally trust their employees?

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

A blockchain won’t solve incorrect transaction information any more than an audit log in this case. This is an entirely internal process controlled by the bank and access would be restricted, so they couldn’t just edit audit logs. How do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this?

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

The actions that an employee could perform would be limited by their private key’s abilities. Blockchain can be preventative. It’s not only for retrospective analysis.

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

The actions that an employee could perform in any database would be limited by their account permissions. Blockchain doesn’t change this. I pointed out a retrospective mechanism because a completely internal blockchain wouldn’t prevent tampering either.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

You end up with a very complex database account management.

I agree in general. Fully internal databases should not be blockchains.

But if external access is required at any point then there may be a blockchain use case.

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not complicated at all. It’s basic database access management and it’s been a thing for decades without issue. If external access is required then those parties are given restricted access appropriate for their job and their actions are logged in the audit log in case any inappropriate actions were taken by them and need to be reviewed/reversed. These are solved problems and blockchain adds nothing there. The only case that blockchain helps is in a system where you have a large number of random participants and you want transactions to be enforced by work done/computing power or stake. This is why cryptocurrency has been the only practical use case for blockchain, with the word “practical” doing a lot of work, hence the diagram in the post we’re all discussing.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

If external access is required then those parties are given restricted access

So a human needs to get involved.

inappropriate actions were taken by them and need to be reviewed/reversed.

Lack of finality slows processes.

These are solved problems and blockchain adds nothing there.

Two improvements/use cases given above.

The only case that blockchain helps is in a system where you have a large number of random participants

I.e. Access without human authorisation

and you want transactions to be enforced

Finality.

This is why cryptocurrency has been the only practical use case for blockchain,

Supply chain tracking

Royalty payments

Renewable energy tracking

Ticketing

Etc.

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

A human only needs to get involved for manual database changes. The vast majority of database transactions are carried out by code. The same would be true for blockchain. Again, it’s not magical. I will ask you once again: how do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this? The blockchain as used by bitcoin allows everyone the same access, but uses compute power as a consensus mechanism in the hopes that statistically most participants would be running the same code to keep things legitimate.

How do you propose a bank does this internally? You’ve yet to answer this question I asked a few posts before and instead opted to list proposed use cases like a brochure advertising blockchain. This is what I usually see with blockchain evangelists, repeating talking points that they themselves don’t understand. Like seriously, what is “renewable energy tracking” supposed to mean?

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

human only needs to get involved for manual database changes.

So how would you on-board a new user?

The vast majority of database transactions are carried out by code.

Transactions yes. Access no.

how do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this?

Access is controlled by public key and security is self administered. No central authority chooses who can join.

The blockchain as used by bitcoin allows everyone the same access

Exactly. The power of public/private key cryptography.

uses compute power as a consensus mechanism

Compute power is not required for blockchain and has nothing to do with private keys.

How do you propose a bank does this internally?

Issue private key management software to all employees. Get them to generate public keys. Use a protocol that doesn’t require PoW.

What is “renewable energy tracking” supposed to mean?

www.energyweb.org

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

“Security is self-administered” through magic, huh? No central authority chooses who can join, which is an aspect that I’m sure a bank would love for their private internal database (this is sarcasm by the way)… “the power of public-private key cryptography” is something you clearly don’t understand. Are you aware that you used “the power of public-private key cryptography” to visit this site over HTTPS and that it had nothing to do with blockchain? Public/private key cryptography is a tool used for many different purposes and by itself has nothing to do with access.

Compute power is what bitcoin still uses and how it regulates transactions. I didn’t say it’s required by blockchain, I gave it as an example of how consensus is reached. The other common method is proof of stake, but that still doesn’t make sense in the context of a completely internal database. Who is staking, what are they staking, and how does that prevent fraudulent transactions in a bank’s internal database?

I looked at the energyweb site and it’s marketing fluff. When it comes to tracking things on blockchain, once you cross the physical-digital barrier, you end up having to use trust. So you want to verify that the electricity you got is renewable? Well you have to trust the entity that gave you that electricity because the blockchain will only verify that you made a transaction with them and that they made transactions with others (e.g. suppliers), but it will not verify the good/service itself (in this case, electricity). I can send electricity your way which was generated by a gas generator, but how could you tell this from the blockchain? The answer is that you can’t, you can only tell that I have made a transaction with you. The smart contract will include a trusted entity which tracked the electricity being sent which the smart contract can look up that the value matches the agreed-upon value. Again, none of this verifies that the electricity is renewable, you are relying on plain old trust.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

No central authority chooses who can join, which is an aspect that I’m sure a bank would love for their private internal database (this is sarcasm by the way)…

Anyone can join the blockchain, not anyone can join the Bank. I’m assume you are being deliberately obtuse rather than the alternative.

Public/private key cryptography is a tool used for many different purposes and by itself has nothing to do with access.

Yes, but combined with blockchain it is used for access.

proof of stake, doesn’t make sense in the context of a completely internal database.

Yes it does. You can use a public blockchain protocol for completely internal data, then interface at a later time with that public protocol.

Who is staking,

The validators

what are they staking,

Usually the network token

and how does that prevent fraudulent transactions in a bank’s internal database?

Because internal transactions are validated and can be confirmed by external stakeholders (investors, depositors, regulators etc.) on a real time basis. No more Lehman Brothers.

I looked at the energyweb site and it’s marketing fluff.

It’s real explorer.energyweb.org

When it comes to tracking things on blockchain, once you cross the physical-digital barrier, you end up having to use trust.

Energy Certificates are about transparency more than trust.

So you want to verify that the electricity you got is renewable?

More that you want to prove to everyone that you are buying renewable.

blockchain will only verify that you made a transaction

IoT devices provide trust in the data. TSOs confirm the official values at a later date.

I can send electricity your way which was generated by a gas generator, but how could you tell this from the blockchain?

Because the IoT device reporting to the blockchain is built into a solar panel, not a gad generator.

Also neighboring sources of energy will display similar data. Anyone running a gas generator to replicate a solar profile will be losing money hand over fist.

The answer is that you can’t,

The answer is you can.

vrighter ,

blockchains do not do jack shit with reconciliating records.

UraniumBlazer ,

Please go and attempt understanding the thing you are talking about before talking about it.

Fedop ,

Walmart seems to have had success here, and logistics is their whole thing.

hbr.org/…/how-walmart-canada-uses-blockchain-to-s…

Empricorn , (edited )

I love how you can’t provide even a single example of useful Blockchain functionality. Doesn’t mean it *doesn’t exist, but says something… And no, “banking” and “internal ledgers” is not detailed enough to be a sufficient example.

neatchee ,

Try again

Empricorn ,

You just… linked your own comment. I mean, most of us are nerds, but can you just… use language? What benefit does it provide?

neatchee ,

I linked you to my other comment where I provide FIVE links to the thing you said I “can’t provide”. I had literally already provided it elsewhere. So that’s where I sent you. Excuse me for not retyping the same thing for every single person.

I don’t owe you my time. I provided a one-click path to what you asked for but you couldn’t even be assed to ponder why I linked you that comment.

Done with you now.

Supermariofan67 ,

How about Git?

NoiseColor ,

Haha crypto sux. So funny.

ElCanut OP ,

Did you take the decision to comment my meme by yourself or did you have to ask 1000+ strangers to run complicated computations before ?

holycrap ,

It’s a brand new shitcoin that uses PoG or Proof of Gullibility. Throw money at the “miners” who do… something then issue you a token that proves you were gullible enough to believe you would make money.

Vilian ,

lmao that was good

NoiseColor ,

Did you come up with such a lame joke by yourself or… yes all by yourself, other people would let you embarrass yourself so much.

Honytawk ,

The only reason the joke might be lame is because it may count as bullying the mentally handicapped at this point

NoiseColor ,

Omg yes, poor mentally handicapped people of crypto lol! With all their money and mathematical equations, inventions, memes,… You really shouldn’t make fun of them or they will cry so much because of you! Oh no! Please don’t make any more jpegs that uncover the worms in your brain. Please no!

Honytawk ,

Yes, those poor mentally handicapped, whom have such poor social understanding that they do not care about any other being except themselves and their money.

NoiseColor ,

That doesn’t make any sense. You got nothing boy.

Bye.

rustyfish ,

Yes 😎

null ,

Just don’t ask them to explain why.

NoiseColor ,

Last time I asked, someone explained to me that bitcoin uses more and more power depending on how long the ledger is :)

These pathetic crypto jokes are popular. People adore them. They don’t adore knowledge about even what the basics of crypto are.

BobGnarley ,

Just read an article that said that restrictions in windows 11 will send an estimated 240million PCs to the landfill this year. I bet a lot of people are quick to comment on their Windows PC about how energy intensive and bad bitcoin and other crypto is, though. At least one is doing something that’s never been done before (crypto). I also wonder how much energy it took us to get to the moon? I guess we should have never done that because of the energy it took to accomplish. I wonder if people were like this about vehicles when they were first mass produced and available to everyone.

NoiseColor ,

I don’t even care if someone doesn’t like crypto, I have friends that don’t care for it, but they don’t try to rationalize it with some lame ass arguments that can be debunked by a child. I don’t understand why lemmy is full of these folks.

BobGnarley ,

Lol I know I hate making money on something and protecting my privacy and data at the same time! How could the “cryptobros” do this to us??

NoiseColor ,

No! It’s all scams and it’s a pyramid scheme! It’s pointless and bad for environment and cryptobros and it can’t work because it’s getting more expensive (literally an argument I heard).

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