The only thing worse than a useless blockchain project is a useless article that doesn't provide any value but just parrot what other people say, in the most distracting an attention seeking way possible.
If you want to make a point about why blockchain is unnecessary, write an intelligent article about it. This "article" provides 0 value and it's so obvious that they just want to get traffic.
I actually thought the plantoids example was pretty cool.
I’m pretty cautious about blockchain technology in general, but I think using it to keep a record of digital art and collectibles (including plants and pets) is a great idea.
Look at digital pets. They’re kind of a dumb waste of money, but people love them. Now imagine some website dealing in digital pets that has a limited edition pet. It’s kind of pricey, but there’s only 100 of them. So, people go for it.
Here’s thing though, as things currently stand you really have no way of knowing that there are 100 of these things in existence unless all the owners formed a special club and realized there were more than 100 members. This gets harder to do once if the limited edition pet becomes a little less limited and 1000 are issued instead.
Now, despite all the ills of the blockchain, it’s a perfect fix for this problem by virtue of being a public ledger. What’s more, you could trade your limited edition pet with someone else, possibly for cold, hard cash. In general, centralized platforms don’t let you do that. You’re still wasting tremendous amounts of energy on some very non-tangible items, but Neopets at it’s peak must have certainly burned a lot of coal to keep the servers running.
When you think about it, the only real difference between a cryptocurrency and a crypto-collectible is that the latter just has more fun, meaningless attributes associated. Such as how red it is.
I get where the author is coming from. I know a guy trying to launch an ICO. He has to be one of the 10 most annoying people I’ve ever met. Still, this article feels like a strange broad-stroke dismissal against all applications of blockchain...except currency. Currency is spared with no good explanation as to why. I would take this article a little more seriously if the author included currency as well, but then again bitcoin is doing really well so I guess we’ll call it a success. Everything else is obviously dumb though.
The way I see it, there are at least four criteria for using a blockchain.
1. The goods are permanent, otherwise you don't need the history of the blockchain.
2. The goods are valuable, otherwise they aren't worth tracking.
3. The goods are identifiable, otherwise you can't tell that the good you received was the one on the blockchain.
4. The goods came from a trusted third party, otherwise they can receive non-compliant goods and pass them off as their own.
Tracking food on the blockchain fails at all four criteria.
Cryptocurrency passes all four tests. It is permanent, valuable, identifiable, and the third party producer of the coin is trusted because they pass a mathematical test.
Diamonds might also pass the tests, as long as there are trusted third parties in the diamond industry who won't receive bad diamonds.
One of the biggest advantages of a blockchain is it's ability to trust the entries written on a distributed ledger and actions that are automatcally executed when certain criteria is met regarding those entries(This statement ignores the fact that it's still possible to take over a blockchain if you control enough of it) There are a lot of industry specific business cases where the elimination of a 3rd party trust authority would save a lot of money. Remember that not only physical goods can be stored on a blockchain. Consider a contract where multiple participants are required to execute actions in a pre defined order. In theory there are a gazillion use cases for a data structure with that kind of behaviour. In reality it most of the time comes down to the scaling ability of transactions executed/s, which is horrible at the moment.
The case of eliminating 3rd parties in transactions brings to mind a further qualifier for blockchain use cases: The application has to tolerate irrevocable transactions.
Funny. For more articles on why blockchains and bitcoins are overhyped, see the Bits & Blocks Press Bookshelf collection e.g. Best of Bitcoin Maximalist - Scammers, Morons, Clowns, Shills & BagHODLers - Inside The New New Crypto Ponzi Economics [1] or Crypto Facts - Decentralize Payments - Efficient, Low Cost, Fair, Clean - True or False? [2] Happy Blockchaining.
Yes and no. In the examples given it's wrong, since it's not a topic where blockchain applies. But the moment you order any of these products, having a blockchain that includes buyer and seller might be nice, since you can lock-in the agreement of sale with neither side being able to take it back, and without a third party needed for proof. So it's totally possible to use it for something else besides coins.
The agreement of sale itself is such a very small part of the potential sources of disputes (not even disputes, necessarily, sometimes just glitches) between buyer and seller, though. I'd rather have a single system that can handle all the potential problems, as well as most redress in the event that something goes wrong.
Since the usual redress when something goes wrong on either the buyer's or the seller's end, in my experience, consists of nullifying the agreement of sale, it seems to me like blockchain's solution consists of grossly misinterpreting the needs and motives of both parties (By starting from an assumption of zero trust, which is just silly, why on earth would I buy from a retailer in whom I have zero trust?) and then hyper-optimizing for that misinterpretation. It's classic solution-in-search-of-problem behavior.
The only thing worse than a useless blockchain project is a useless article that doesn't provide any value but just parrot what other people say, in the most distracting an attention seeking way possible.
If you want to make a point about why blockchain is unnecessary, write an intelligent article about it. This "article" provides 0 value and it's so obvious that they just want to get traffic.
Now what about a useless comment attached to such an article?
is turtles all the way down?
On the plus side, OPs comment made me not read the article, so time was saved, thus value was added.
HNBUX: A new blockchain-based currency using HackerNews comments.
I actually thought the plantoids example was pretty cool.
I’m pretty cautious about blockchain technology in general, but I think using it to keep a record of digital art and collectibles (including plants and pets) is a great idea.
Look at digital pets. They’re kind of a dumb waste of money, but people love them. Now imagine some website dealing in digital pets that has a limited edition pet. It’s kind of pricey, but there’s only 100 of them. So, people go for it.
Here’s thing though, as things currently stand you really have no way of knowing that there are 100 of these things in existence unless all the owners formed a special club and realized there were more than 100 members. This gets harder to do once if the limited edition pet becomes a little less limited and 1000 are issued instead.
Now, despite all the ills of the blockchain, it’s a perfect fix for this problem by virtue of being a public ledger. What’s more, you could trade your limited edition pet with someone else, possibly for cold, hard cash. In general, centralized platforms don’t let you do that. You’re still wasting tremendous amounts of energy on some very non-tangible items, but Neopets at it’s peak must have certainly burned a lot of coal to keep the servers running.
When you think about it, the only real difference between a cryptocurrency and a crypto-collectible is that the latter just has more fun, meaningless attributes associated. Such as how red it is.
I get where the author is coming from. I know a guy trying to launch an ICO. He has to be one of the 10 most annoying people I’ve ever met. Still, this article feels like a strange broad-stroke dismissal against all applications of blockchain...except currency. Currency is spared with no good explanation as to why. I would take this article a little more seriously if the author included currency as well, but then again bitcoin is doing really well so I guess we’ll call it a success. Everything else is obviously dumb though.
The way I see it, there are at least four criteria for using a blockchain.
1. The goods are permanent, otherwise you don't need the history of the blockchain.
2. The goods are valuable, otherwise they aren't worth tracking.
3. The goods are identifiable, otherwise you can't tell that the good you received was the one on the blockchain.
4. The goods came from a trusted third party, otherwise they can receive non-compliant goods and pass them off as their own.
Tracking food on the blockchain fails at all four criteria.
Cryptocurrency passes all four tests. It is permanent, valuable, identifiable, and the third party producer of the coin is trusted because they pass a mathematical test.
Diamonds might also pass the tests, as long as there are trusted third parties in the diamond industry who won't receive bad diamonds.
One of the biggest advantages of a blockchain is it's ability to trust the entries written on a distributed ledger and actions that are automatcally executed when certain criteria is met regarding those entries(This statement ignores the fact that it's still possible to take over a blockchain if you control enough of it) There are a lot of industry specific business cases where the elimination of a 3rd party trust authority would save a lot of money. Remember that not only physical goods can be stored on a blockchain. Consider a contract where multiple participants are required to execute actions in a pre defined order. In theory there are a gazillion use cases for a data structure with that kind of behaviour. In reality it most of the time comes down to the scaling ability of transactions executed/s, which is horrible at the moment.
The case of eliminating 3rd parties in transactions brings to mind a further qualifier for blockchain use cases: The application has to tolerate irrevocable transactions.
While "permanent" covers one aspect of this requirement, I would add that "You can't or shouldn't trust a database to an otherwise trusted authority."
Funny. For more articles on why blockchains and bitcoins are overhyped, see the Bits & Blocks Press Bookshelf collection e.g. Best of Bitcoin Maximalist - Scammers, Morons, Clowns, Shills & BagHODLers - Inside The New New Crypto Ponzi Economics [1] or Crypto Facts - Decentralize Payments - Efficient, Low Cost, Fair, Clean - True or False? [2] Happy Blockchaining.
[1]: https://bitsblocks.github.io/bitcoin-maximalist [2]: https://bitsblocks.github.io/crypto-facts
Yes and no. In the examples given it's wrong, since it's not a topic where blockchain applies. But the moment you order any of these products, having a blockchain that includes buyer and seller might be nice, since you can lock-in the agreement of sale with neither side being able to take it back, and without a third party needed for proof. So it's totally possible to use it for something else besides coins.
The agreement of sale itself is such a very small part of the potential sources of disputes (not even disputes, necessarily, sometimes just glitches) between buyer and seller, though. I'd rather have a single system that can handle all the potential problems, as well as most redress in the event that something goes wrong.
Since the usual redress when something goes wrong on either the buyer's or the seller's end, in my experience, consists of nullifying the agreement of sale, it seems to me like blockchain's solution consists of grossly misinterpreting the needs and motives of both parties (By starting from an assumption of zero trust, which is just silly, why on earth would I buy from a retailer in whom I have zero trust?) and then hyper-optimizing for that misinterpretation. It's classic solution-in-search-of-problem behavior.
> If it’s not a decentralized currency...Maybe don’t use a blockchain?
It seems people slowly arriving at this conclusion. Another good read with a similar conclusion:
https://medium.com/@jimmysong/why-blockchain-is-hard-60416ea...
It's good to see Topolsky's new site gain attention. I really enjoy the work he's done the past decade.
Any clear text version? IT looks like deep fried power point with pointless gifs.
And the list go on here https://www.coingecko.com/en/ico
The scroll behaviour on that page makes me angry. Can't read.