[contingencies]

The answer, I suspect, is that it potentially wholly and fundamentally disempowers existing centralized authorities - as asset issuers, regulators, reputation police, debt collectors, and border-guards - and promises to outlive them, with relative guarantees of high availability and no SPOFs.

[nickpsecurity]

You mean it claims to. In reality, these will be centralized things under management or control of companies with an ecosystem interacting with them. Regulators and lawyers will step in to do their thing. The result is... another set of authorities giving us problems. That's what future it's looking like will happen.

Of course, the problems on authorities' side might be better or worse with the new models. Nonetheless, my argument is that these blockchains are essentially a combination of specific tech, ledgers, distributed verification, cooperation, and incentives on infrastructure side. You can do all that without blockchains using simple, dumb tech with different organizational structure & participation rules.

[contingencies]

Decentralized systems are demonstrably less centralized than conventional capitalistic private sector/bank/gov/licensing hierarchies and the monopolies they foster. As you point out, it's the human factor that's generally the problem. I doubt we'll ever see a better illustration there than the current situation with Bitcoin. Historically, we've seen the well chronicled growth of government and commercial interests on the internet. Both are good examples of decentralized systems that fail or are weakened through human causes. I suppose these are the same areas in which offensive security research is focused.

We should be smart enough now not to put all of our trust in to one system, and instead to foster a biological-style heterogeneity of systems, all of which we can opt in/out of on a dynamic basis based upon their various objective properties and our risk model versus requirements (==motives).

[nickpsecurity]

"As you point out, it's the human factor that's generally the problem. I doubt we'll ever see a better illustration there than the current situation with Bitcoin. "

BOOM! Now you're seeing what I'm talking about. Regardless of the tech, it ends up coming down to the people controlling key companies, organizations, or code. Plus the legal system. So, I prefer just fixing that angle on a centralized system run by mutually-suspicious parties with open verification and incentives aligned right way.

"instead to foster a biological-style heterogeneity of systems, all of which we can opt in/out of on a dynamic basis based upon their various objective properties and our risk model versus requirements (==motives)."

That's a good idea. I'd push several good ones if they were available. Preferably they'd be really different from one another to maximize the diversity benefit. Another angle on that is to derive the currency value from a set of high-value or stable commodities. That was what high-assurance engineer Clive Robinson pushed for as an alternative to either gold or our currency. Turns out, there's an altcoin company doing exactly that. Can't recall the name.

[contingencies]

When we founded Kraken, I did a lot of research and reach-out in the alternate financial systems space. The 'basket of commodities' suggestion is very well promoted by theorists in that area, though of course it doesn't remove the problem of manipulation: whether static or dynamic in composition, it has the same problem as setting central bank interest rates today - prior knowledge of manual change to the system becomes profitable, and corruption ensues. Some also suggest emphasizing particular qualities in the selected commodities.