[msutherl]

This reads like a rhetorical question – 'what could possibly be the application for something this deliberately bad?'

I won't speak for what "blockchain" can or will become, but you might see the hype more clearly by considering the ideology inherent in asking specifically for the "proper application." You imply that you or someone in a position you understand might "apply blockchain" to a "problem," as you commonly understand it.

I see "blockchain" more as a movement, which completely evades "application" in the common sense. People building these technologies, and organizations around them, live in a separate world that makes little reference to the broader world of which most of us are a part. They start with distinct priors, which rule out most existing solutions on the grounds that they demand political centralization (see: https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...).

You can summarize this ideology as: 'if there's a sysadmin, the system is broken.'

It may very well be the case that they are creating a new world that will be marginalized and outcompeted by incumbent systems and organizations, but that's how I understand what's 'actually going on'.

[KirinDave]

I think a world where multiple, visible sysadmins compete is much better than a world that pretends to have none when in fact their technology enables invisible, undetectable but exceptionally powerful groups to form out of self interest. Wouldn't you agree?

[polyomino]

Are you referring to miners? They are neither undetectable, nor exceptionally powerful. They do have an environmental impact, but the bitcoin community believes the juice is worth the squeeze.

[ubershmekel]

I think the reference was to invisible powers controlling your news, search, social, legislative, and economic institutions.

[KirinDave]

No. It is possible for miners to collude and get unfair advantages, without even close to 1/3 the hashpower, and without being easily detectable.

[foepys]

I don't know why this is getting downvoted. The current assumption that colluding miners are detectable is absolutely false. There is no way of knowing whether a block comes from a specific mining farm/network as all information about that is forgable by the creator of the block.

If you try to mitigate this by controlling who has access, you just eliminated the advantage of being trustless and thus made blockchain an expensive database.

[KirinDave]

Please go read the selfish mining paper.

[Yizahi]

I prefer a world where some Giancarlo Devacini guy, living and working in offshore country, can issue billions of "dollars" out of thin air and being literally unaccountable. /s

[pjc50]

I admire the principles of decentralization, but I think it's rather like "serverless" - it moves the functionality around in order to pretend. All the cryptocurrencies have pretty "centralized" dev teams; as with Etherum they can fork to decide what history is and most miners will go with that. History is written by whoever has the github.

[KirinDave]

Consensus forking should always exist as an option. The problem with PoW blockchains is not the visible governance options. Those are a very positive feature.

The problem is the invisible governance patterns that an unreliable consensus algorithm creates.

[gruez]

>History is written by whoever has the github.

Not really, just because a change is pushed to the github repo, doesn't mean the network (and its participants) will automatically accept it. Those unhappy with the changes can always fork the network if they want.

[richardknop]

But that never in reality happens. All the forks of Bitcoin or Ethereum are mostly irrelevant. The majority will blindly follow core devs in both cases as have been proven by a long series of forks that became irrelevant very quickly as most people stay with the core version (Bitcoin or Ethereum Core Devs).

[gruez]

that wasn't the case with the segwit rollout on bitcoin. despite the feature being merged and released, miners were able to hold up adoption for months

[__s]

As seen in their very example: ETC exists distinct from ETH

[spookthesunset]

Or perhaps they are all just blinded by greed and have invested far more than they had to lose... probably much simpler explanation

[hndamien]

Or perhaps they won't be outcompeted. But I think you are right, these are world views in competition.

[redog]

> 'if there's a sysadmin, the system is broken.'

Am sysadmin, is this best practice or just us being reciprocally lazy again?

> It may very well be the case that they are creating a new world that will be marginalized and outcompeted by incumbent systems and organizations, but that's how I understand what's 'actually going on'.

I keep telling people exactly this! Just because X makes sense or is the best doesn't mean the crowd will agree with it's application. See also all politics ever as an example. I feel like I can say it because I identify as one but, It's just another libertarian fantasy.