[sub7]

We keep talking about how tech should be used to make a net positive change yet we allow this glorified linked list that has 0 real world benefits after a decade to get a pass because some man children run around promising it's the future.

[ddtaylor]

I think it's censorship resistant and permissionless properties make it pretty impressive.

[bawolff]

I don't think its cencorship resistence is that impressive. The amount of data you can publish is pretty limited, which is a key property of cencorship resistence.

[ddtaylor]

There are other blockchains with more available space than Bitcoin, such as Bitcoin Cash.

[Ekaros]

Is it censorship resistant? Couldn't state easily enough attack it at any sufficiently large point it contacts with real economy? They degree certain wallets being tainted. And then promise to jail anyone who deals with coins from these, receive them and transmit on to anywhere but government controlled wallets and face jail time? For one scenario, or just tell exchanges or like to confiscate any coins coming from certain addresses...

[lugged]

Sanction resistant too.

[mclightning]

"glorified linked list" is a pretty big straw-man, besides being short-sighted.

innovation of blockchain is not entirely the tech, but what it ultimately enables socio-politically.

[chroem-]

That "glorified linked list" solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing. In fact, blockchains are arguably the biggest breakthrough that subfield of computer science has ever seen.

[bawolff]

Meh, bitcoin is an interesting solution to a difficult to solve problem, but "biggest breakthrough" is rediculously hyperbolic. The applications beyond decentralized trustless tradeable tokens have mostly been toy examples.

Examples of bigger breakthroughs in the field of p2p communication: the internet. Distributed hash tables.

[dmitriid]

> solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing.

Can you list ten of these problems if there are a lot of them?

[chroem-]

Sure:

- consensus

- distributed computation

- statefulness

- peer to peer identity

- peer to peer reputation of nodes

- resistance against many classic failure modes (e.g. Sybil attacks)

- peer to peer source of truth (e.g. Namecoin/DNScoin)

- verifiable code execution (smart contracts)

- immutability/ tamper proof

- and (obviously) peer to peer payments

Granted, some of these overlap with each other, but the point still stands. The pearl clutching over cryptocurrency seems extremely inauthentic when you consider the vast sums of energy tech giants expend to target us with ads.

[dmitriid]

> The pearl clutching over cryptocurrency seems extremely inauthentic when you consider the vast sums of energy tech giants expend to target us with ads.

The amount of energy they expend on ads is dwarfed by the amount of energy spent on doing the amount of "distributed computation" that can be run on a Raspberry Pi ten times over.

Most of the problems that this "breakthrough" supposedly solves are solved either extremely poorly, inefficiently, or not at all.

And the reason is simple. Blockchain is a distributed append-only log with an extremely inefficient and expensive way to append logs to it. And that's it. Anything else you ascribe to this breakthrough is wishful thinking.

[byzantinegene]

Excuse me? The only concept blockchain introduced was a distributed ledger. Most of those advantages you listed were already present in distributed computing way before blockchain paper was out, it's what blockchain was based on, not what it brought about. Distributed databases like Cassandra were using those even before bitcoin, please educate yourself before spreading misinformation.

[sub7]

It's a kademlia based app, this shit was around in the 90s. I'd argue the biggest breakthrough was the Turing machine but sure the consensus math is interesting.

[bawolff]

Did i miss something? I didnt think bitcoin used kademlia.

I would consider kademlia (or overlay networks in general) a bigger breakthrough though.

[chroem-]

Kademlia had no consensus mechanism.

>I'd argue the biggest breakthrough was the Turing machine

Witty, but that's not peer to peer computing.

[exporectomy]

Can you identify someone expressed both of those beleifs? Maybe they're separate people, who are obviously entitled to have conflicting opinions.