HN is very anti-blockchain which is surprising. I’m not agreeing with the twitter user saying Wiki should be on a blockchain but projects like Visa B2B Connect, which wants to use a DTL for interbank transactions, or multi-party supply chains are valid use cases. They’re also technically interesting.
They have specific use cases sure, and some people who made a load of money in 2017 do chat a lot of rubbish, but it has become a bit of a meme topic around here which is a shame.
I don’t feel I could post a genuinely interesting paper on decentralised consensus without it being downvoted because blockchains won’t work as the data store of some web app.
> HN is very anti-blockchain which is surprising. I’m not agreeing with the twitter user saying Wiki should be on a blockchain but projects like Visa B2B Connect, which wants to use a DTL for interbank transactions, or multi-party supply chains are valid use cases. They’re also technically interesting.
The context for the blockchain is distributed public log allowing anyone to replay and revalidate transactions from the inception at any given time with no need for approval of any other parties. As soon as any of those characteristics ( distributed, public, revalidatable) are not met ( !distributed, has access controls, not revalidatable from inception ) it became a weird ass database. Probably a rather lousy database.
Visa B2B Connect is a database, which is why Visa is needed and which is why customers need to be onboarded. Blockchain there is a marketing gimmick.
Completely disagree. Any discussion about the technical limitations or economic limitations of blockchain or cryptocurrency is immediately downvoted.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency have a high amount of hype and irrational believers who see any form of criticism as a direct attack. The technologies (and economics) are much more limited than the irrational believers realize, and they (irrational believers) shoot the messenger instead of taking the time to learn basic economics and distributed computing.
It's a direct reaction to the hype. The Twitter thread posted is a perfect example of why: people are sick of receiving pitches that are utterly irrelevant to what they do, promoting blockchain just because.
Look: if blockchain is as good as its proponents say it is then negativity on HN isn't about to stop it (remember the initial comments on Dropbox when it was posted on here?). But if blockchain can't withstand even mild scrutiny from a community of online grouches then maybe there actually is a problem?
HN adopted an anti-blockchain stance for the same reason it adopted a stance against memes, political ideologues trying to "red pill" people, culture war flame wars, etc.: to save itself. If it hadn't it would have devolved during the 2017 cryptocurrency mania into one of those abandoned forums full of nothing but spammy looking posts shilling cOinZ.
This is still a somewhat interesting place because topics that attract hordes of spammers and shills and low-effort memers are either outright banned or downvoted instantly to oblivion.
> which wants to use a DTL for interbank transactions, or multi-party supply chains are valid use cases.
I've been hearing about these use-cases for blockchain for years now ... and still waiting for actual production use.
I'm also skeptical that a regular server-based approach wouldn't be better to solve those issues. If banks and suppliers can get together and agree to use blockchain to track their transactions, they can get together and set up a centralized server to do the same.
Blockchain is a 'technically interesting' architecture in search of a problem to solve.
> I've been hearing about these use-cases for blockchain for years now ... and still waiting for actual production use.
Preserving the integrity of log files and other records is a very obvious and huge use case. Enterprise products have been on the market for years and have been put into use by companies like Ericsson and Lockheed Martin.
Distributed consensus is not as special as blockchain enthusiasts like to say. Blockchain solves distributed consensus in exactly the same way that Ancient Athenians did: pick a random person to decide [what truth will be/what the state will do] for a period of time.
Blockchains don't "work" for anything except cryptocurrencies. Private blockchains are a grift, if you have a central authority dictating who has read and write access to the chain then the entire endeavor is moot since you've already established a central authority.
What did you expect from a substance-free rant? Try posting a thoughtful comment or that hypothetical paper, talking about a real solution to a problem. I guarantee you’ll get a better discussion than complaining about downvotes.
It was commentary on the fact a tweet about someone (probably) uneducated in that area of tech suggesting someone else should use it and being told no had reached front page.
You should really read the thread again and note how singularly incapable the blockchain salesguys were of explaining any tangible benefits from adoption. When proponents can’t support it, it’s not the target’s job to do their homework - and it’s pretty obvious that Wales understands it better than they do.
They have specific use cases sure, and some people who made a load of money in 2017 do chat a lot of rubbish, but it has become a bit of a meme topic around here which is a shame.
I don’t feel I could post a genuinely interesting paper on decentralised consensus without it being downvoted because blockchains won’t work as the data store of some web app.