[breakfastduck]

Anything that includes bloatware is untrustable. No question.

Why even bother? You can't seriously run a project like this, add a load of bloatware, and expect to be trusted.

Even that misjudgment is enough to understand that the people running this have no genuine interest in user privacy. Talk about undercutting your own reason for existing.

[im_down_w_otp]

I think you might be misattributing their reason for existing.

[testbjjl]

Hook, line and sinker. Why would anyone take offering seriously?

[smaudet]

Because they are targeting people who know nothing and are scared, common tactic for fraudsters, cults, etc.

Of course real solutions exist but the lay person can't easily discern.

[fmajid]

Anything referencing blockchain or cryptocurrencies is a scam. That also applies to the original Signal.

[aaaaaaaaata]

As opposed to what?

If referring to Session, nobody refers to it as "the other Signal", lol

[therealcamino]

The subject of the article is a modified version of Signal called ClearSignal, so most likely that.

[fmajid]

Signal's tie-in with cryptocurrency MobileCoin:

https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-cryptocurrency...

[manuelabeledo]

I would say that there are scenarios where blockchains are legitimately useful.

[maccard]

Such as?

[manuelabeledo]

They are out there, and they aren't necessarily related to crypto [1] [2]

Seriously though, blockchain is an interesting technology. It's a shame it has got such a bad rap because of its ties to cryptocurrency.

[1] https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/use-cases/

[2] https://www.hyperledger.org/learn/case-studies

[maccard]

I had a skim of both links (sorry but just dumping a list isnt exactly proof), and taking the first example [0], I really dont see what a blockchain brings you over a database. When you have a private blockchain, or a managed blockchain by an entity, you inherently have centralisation. What happens in the automotive case if the blockchain is forked? Which chain do I trust?

Every single use case (I have yet to see a single one, and I am) has been a use case for an append only ledger, not a decentralised ledger, and in every one of those use cases the problems that a blockchain actually solved and the advantages of a blockchain are immaterial. Can you provide one example in the two lists (which you've claimed are good examples) where the properties of a blockchain are wanted, not the properties of an append only ledger? Because if you want an append only ledger, a SQL database (or even a nosql database) is a simpler solution that will perform orders of magnitude better than 500 transactions per second.

[0] https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/renault/

[dmitriid]

None of the "research" and use cases linked need blockchains or are made better by blockchains. These are quite transparent cash grabs while hype is strong.

[manuelabeledo]

> None of the "research" and use cases linked need blockchains or are made better by blockchains.

You can read at a speed I could only wish. Kudos.

And of course they don't "need" them. We don't necessarily "need" the cloud, Docker, or web frameworks either, yet here we are. Yes, there could be a new, completely open, distributed database that let multiple users monitor and inspect all historical changes, while allowing some others to make modifications in it.

We could just use Cassandra and build the whole distributed identity and storage infrastructure based on it.