Not sure blockchain fits the way PG defined "hacker." Blockchain needs to be more rigorous in implementation due to being in finance and its target preference with malicious hackers.
"It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones.
Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also connected. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. And there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (using duct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breaking that is brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space)."
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms are nothing if not rule-breaking and brilliantly imaginative. They're trying to rewrite the entire financial system as code on the blockchain. Can you think of a more brilliant hack than that? Satoshi created the idea of digital scarcity. And the crypto world is running with it. That's clever as hell.
Except they really aren't that break through and imaginative. We had Merkel Trees, distributed algos, and consensus mechanisms beforehand. All the Satoshi paper did was to really solve the double spend problem by making people solve trival problems over and over. Hackers see this as wasteful as tech and as a societal contribution. We can build better systems that aren't as wasteful using proven methods. Keep in mind, here is not proof that staking will actually work, only proof of work has a proof.
Taking a small quote from the article that aligns with what you want to be cool doesn't make it so. In the end, for most people, blockchain will be like ACH or some internal system that a bank wrote. The entire financial system is not going on the blockchain, it's not replacing the dollar. Wait to see how the Digital Yuan plays out.
Keep pumping the fantasy tho, my diamond hands can hodl quite a bit.
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From Paul's article
Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other.
This attitude is sometimes affected. Sometimes young programmers notice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own in order to seem smarter. The fake version is not merely annoying; the prickly attitude of these posers can actually slow the process of innovation.
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Maybe pause to think about why HN has changed their attitude on blockchain from 2017. Pause, listen, and think
"It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones.
Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also connected. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. And there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (using duct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breaking that is brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space)."
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms are nothing if not rule-breaking and brilliantly imaginative. They're trying to rewrite the entire financial system as code on the blockchain. Can you think of a more brilliant hack than that? Satoshi created the idea of digital scarcity. And the crypto world is running with it. That's clever as hell.