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by gh1
2997 days ago
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A lot of valid points here, but ultimately very short sighted. Firstly, the author does not mention many of the highly plausible use cases for trustless and permissionless services such as replacing rent seeking P2P marketplaces like eBay (where the advantage is cost reduction) or online Poker sites (where the advantage is manipulation resistance). He does not mention DAOS, where strangers can trustlessly enter into contractual obligation to create e.g. a crowdsourced Venture fund. He does not mention the potential to provide financial services to the 2 billion unbanked people in the world. He does not see the potential for innovative and completely new financial products coming out because of the permissionless nature of public blockchains. The use cases that he sites include buying an e-book using a smart contract or its use in the supply chain or voting. The e-book example is slightly misguided, because this is not an use case where decentralization provides much value. So the entire discussion about auditing smart contracts is rather unnecessary. But it is nonetheless an important objection that may become important in DAOs. But it's short sighted to think that this problem won't be solved. Some companies are already starting to tackle the smart contract to natural language translations (e.g. Iolite). Supply chain is yet another use case where it is unclear whether blockchains will add value. Perhaps cost saving. But note that the blockchains used in supply chains will most likely be private, therefore permissioned. It's unfair to put private and public blockchains in the same basket, because they are very different beasts. Finally the use case of voting. The author thinks that whoever is in power might distribute a few additional addresses to their cronies to manipulate the system. He is missing the point that all data is public in public blockchains. So anyone can audit the voting results later if they want and discover that those addresses do not belong to any real people (assuming there is a KYC type identification system built-in). Voting is an use case where blockchains are sorely required. All we need is for the knowledge to reach public consciousness and for the people to tell their governments that they want it. |
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Both of those claims are severely in need of support before you can attack the author for not mentioning them. eBay doesn’t cost what it does because there’s no other way to send money online – it’s things like discovery, fraud protection, etc. which are necessary either way. It’s similarly non-obvious how magic blockchain pixie dust could address the challenges which online gambling actually has.