[rglullis]

Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it.

Tell me how someone living in a country with heavy capital controls can participate in the global economy on equal footing with someone from a more developed country without blockchain, and you might be a candidate for a Nobel Prize.

Or tell me simply how someone can make a living with work that threatens the status quo without worrying about being ostracized.

If you want to have any kind of hedge against the continuous, systemic institutional failures, you can not simply try to build another system that puts another institution at the top.

[espadrine]

> Tell me how to solve decentralized consensus without having a blockchain, and I'll be the first to drop all my work with it.

I doubt you will, but you asked, so: byzantine Paxos.

The point of the person you are responding to is that solving decentralized consensus is only an academic exercise. If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can; the only recourse is political.

[rglullis]

> byzantine Paxos.

Okay, I should've added "permissionless" to the list of desired properties. If you can a priori choose who gets to participate you´d have a point.

> If your country wants to prevent your from participating in an economy, it can

I think that the eternally losing "War on Drugs" should be a lesson that shows this is simply not true. Also, consider how Black Markets are a thing in authoritarian places, not free ones.

So, no, as much as a country can make it difficult for others, they can not outright stop anyone without significant cost to themselves.