Say it aint so...
Are you telling me that your don't believe that the blockchain is the
solution for everything from climate change to erectile dysfunction.
But seriously.
There are some real uses for blockchain technologies but what we are
seeing is a repeat of the .com bubble.
Where if you had a wacky idea and stuck the words "on the internet" in
it somewhere and did your pitch you could get millions in funding.
Hey. Have I told you of my plans to handle garbage disposal "on the
blockchain"..... The ICO is next week.
People do this kind of thing constantly.
Take a good idea and then push it till it is an amazingly bad idea.
As for Siacoin and Storj I found that they used 100% of my available
internet bandwidth without using any storage.
Luckily for me I opted for "unlimited bandwidth" but not so lucky for
Teksavvy.
So doing something like sharing your few free TB could cost you big time
if you were a Bell or Rogers customer.
I have access to large amounts of excess storage but I have yet to be
convinced that I could even pay for the power that it takes to spin the
drives.
The concept is great but the economics does not seem to be there yet.
On 8/26/20 1:59 PM, Mauro Souza via talk wrote:
It's really funny. It's more the result of "lets use blockchain!" on
everything that creates those issues.
And blockchain is hyper-overhyped... It can help in a few specific
problems, but not on every single problem without exception. But
everyone liked the concept and ran away screaming blockchain all over
the place. Blockchain on email. Blockchain to rent a car.
Blockchain-powered lettuce salad... that's insanity. I like the
technology, I study it and sometimes I answer things on forums, but
all the time when people ask me if I believe blockchain would help
them, I say NO
The "everybody must have everyone's data" is an issue. As the solution
grows, the ledger grows, increasing the storage and processing
requirements. With less people connected, you need an intermediary to
access the blockchain, and those intermediaries can be attacked and
take down the network. And there's few solutions to that.
One solution is the blockchain used by former Raiblocks (now Nano).
It's a DAG (directed acyclic graph), so any client will have only his
own transactions, and not the entire ledger. That allows one to run a
client on an ESP32, for example. there will be special nodes that
store the entire ledger (like the Dash supernodes), but the clients
don't need that. Who/what would use it? No idea... crypto coins, and
not much else.
And the smart contract solution... They aren't smart, they aren't
contracts, and they aren't solutions. One mistake and everything
crashes down instantly.The Ethereum DAO disaster, the Parity
multi-signature contract, and that new DeFi that melted down in a day
because people realized they made a mistake on the code, and nobody
would ever have enough tokens to decide anything because of an
arithmetic mistake. And many more examples.
If the "contract" can be changed after creation, you cannot trust it
because it can be useful now (like tokens on a web game that you pay
to play), but later the owner changes the contract, pockets all
tokens, and takes down the game. If it cannot be changed, any error on
the contract is set on stone forever with deadly consequences. There
are some countermeasures to that, like proxy contracts: a main
contract references secondary contracts with the functions, but the
main contract holds the data and the tokens. if a secondary contract
is found to have an error, you deploy an amended version, call a
function on the main contract to reference the next one, and done. The
downside is that it is more expensive to run this contract, and the
owner can, you know, replace the secondary contracts and steal
everything. You can add multi-signatures, quorum, external oracles,
but those only increase the cost and put a little protection against a
rogue owner.
There are very few things that blockchain can be useful, and one of
them is distributed storage. Siacoin and Storj, for example, let you
rent the extra space on that 4tb disk you already have for some coins.
It is not profitable enough to make you buy storage just for that
purpose, but you already have the space, right? And you can rent some
space on the network for backing up things when you will reformat your
computer, and want to store your data in case something breaks. It's
cheaper than anything else, even cheaper than amazon glacier.
Those supply chain management things are useful too, if you can
integrate it correctly (and that's a BIG if). If you own a bakery, for
example, you scan all the ingredients you have, store them all on your
wallet (or have your purchasing software do that automagically) and
any time any of your suppliers have any recall on something you got,
you are warned. And everything down the line gets warned that they
bought a recalled bread from you. Your customers don't even need to
get back to you so you reimburse them, the next time they come to buy
something they already have a credit for that contaminated bread you
sold to them last week. But to integrate everyone is a nightmare,
there are lots of privacy issues, industrial secrets issues... on a
limited scale, it can work. Too limited and doesn't solve anything.
Too broad and all that privacy issues get into your face.
The fact is that there are very few cases that blockchain can be used
that a database cannot. And databases are here since a long time ago,
everyone knows how to build them, operate them, backup them, and
extend them.
But just wait for the AI-generated, solar-powered, graphene-based
multi-cloud stored 6G-capable IPv8-addressing blockchain...
Mauro
http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521
Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God.
Em qua., 26 de ago. de 2020 às 13:29, Christopher Browne via talk
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> escreveu:
https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/86714927310-8f431cae
I found it particularly hilarious when the writer of the article
asked the maker of the childrens' aid app if he had noticed that
the app didn't actually need blockchain at all.
"That's right."
But the punch line was even better...
Isn't it strange that you won all these awards despite not really
using blockchain?
"We keep trying to tell people, but it doesn’t seem to stick.
You’re calling me about it again now … ”
--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
---
Post to this mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Unsubscribe from this mailing list
https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
---
Post to this mailing list [email protected]
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
--
Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133
[email protected] ||
---
Post to this mailing list [email protected]
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
