[maccard]

That's like saying a use for a car is to turn the wheels when you press the accelerator - technically true but meaningless. What problem does

> timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages.

solve? _That_ is the question that people aren't answering.

[tatertots1234]

The engine’s use is to turn energy into mechanical motion, and from that we can build a variety of utility on top.

The chain’s use is to provide a secure layer for signed messages. It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government; it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing house to allow it; it may be a state change that represents the transfer of ownership of a digital asset like a ENS domain name alias; it might be a more complex application like USDC that enables a stable dollar-like currency to compose with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem. These are some use cases already occurring; there are other ways to achieve similar (like using PayPal instead of USDC) but all have different considerations and costs/benefits.

[maccard]

> The engine’s use is to turn energy into mechanical motion, and from that we can build a variety of utility on top. <...> The chain’s use is to provide a secure layer for signed messages.

I'm genuinely beginning to think you're trolling here.

> It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government; it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing house to allow it; it may be a state change that represents the transfer of ownership of a digital asset like a ENS domain name alias; it might be a more complex application like USDC that enables a stable dollar-like currency to compose with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem.

We're over a decade into cryptocurrencies, and years into the web3 world, and we're still talking about "might"? For comparison, kubernetes is a year younger than the term web3, and it is widely used across the world, with well documented solutions to problems.

Further, none of the use cases you mentioned actually work, or if they do they worked without a blockchain underneath them.

> It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government

We've had that for over 30 years [0]. Putting that on a blockchain doesn't actually help.

> it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing house to allow it

I do like this one because it's pretty much the textbook example of what's wrong with web3. This should be it's big selling point except 1) I can trade cash/gold/share certs with someone in person/via mail, 2) it's _way_ too expensive to use for normal transactions meaning that 3) People rely on services like coinbase (for coins) or OpenSEA (for NFTs), which are central clearing houses that you have to trust and abide by the rules of. The first link I found states that Coinbase holds over 11% [1] of the crypto market cap, you're _way_ past the point of "you're holding it wrong" here. If the usage of the solution requires throwing away the primary benefit of the solution, it's not a solution to the problem.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[1]

[tatertots1234]

Over ~13 years into Bitcoin, only ~7 years into Ethereum and less than two years into much of the applied zkp tech that is now driving blockchain scalability and privacy. There’s a variety of ideas in human history that take decades to mature and find market fit.

PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network. A closer analogy is Tor which is secured by about 10 authorized nodes worldwide; so a different design space than crypto which is permissionless and secured by thousands.

All of your complaints are just that: complaints. X crypto thing works but not well enough for your needs and expectations. But your supposed solution Y, like PGP or physical USD cash, only achieves some facets of what people are using X crypto thing for.

The suggestion that sending wads of cash in the mail is somehow better, safer, and less reliant on central intermediaries compared to a crypto transfer is a hilarious statement though.

[maccard]

> PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network

PGP is timestampted and censorship resistant, and of course it isn't on a distributed network. Yet again I'm asking what is the use case for it being on a distributed network. That's also not what you said in your last comment

> All of your complaints are just that: complaints. X crypto thing works but not well enough for your needs and expectations.

That's not true, my complaints are that if you remove crypto from the X crypto thing, it still solves the problem in the same way, meaning there's no use case for the crypto part of crypto X.

[tatertots1234]

PGP is an encryption technique, it doesn’t include any robust and tamper proof timestamping mechanism. To uphold the veracity of a time stamp and to make a PGP message censorship resistant you need either a trusted authority to continue to host and certify it, or a distributed network of validator nodes like Tor (10 validator nodes) or Ethereum (thousands of validator nodes).

If you remove crypto from this equation you are left with a permissioned solution. Which is fine for many uses, but not the same thing.

A practical example would be removing crypto from a USDC or DAI transfer between two people across the globe who wish to send USD-like asset, despite neither of them having access to a US bank account. The proposed solutions are to send cash in the mail, or PayPal, or whatever, and none are the same as a USDC or DAI transfer.