[throwme_123]

For my part, I stopped reading at the free bashing of blockchain•.

Reminded me of the angst and negativity of these original "Web3" people, already bashing everything that was not in their mood back then.

• The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great

[ashkankiani]

As someone who stopped getting involved in blockchain "tech" 12 years ago because of the prevalence of scams and bad actors and lack of interesting tech beyond the merkle tree, what's great about it?

FWIW I am genuinely asking. I don't know anything about the current tech. There's something about "zero knowledge proofs" but I don't understand how much of that is used in practice for real blockchain things vs just being research.

As far as I know, the throughput of blockchain transactions at scale is miserably slow and expensive and their usual solution is some kind of side channel that skips the full validation.

Distributed computation on the blockchain isn't really used for anything other than converting between currencies and minting new ones mostly AFAIK as well.

What is the great tech that we got from the blockchain revolution?

[throwme_123]

Scams and bad actors haven't changed sadly.

But zk-based really decentralized consensus now does 400 tps and it's extraordinary when you think about it and all the safety and security properties it brings.

And that's with proof-of-stake of course with decentralized sequencers for L2.

But I get that people here prefer centralized databases, managed by admins and censorship-empowering platforms. Your bank stack looks like it's designed for fraud too. Manual operations and months-long audits with errors, but that is by design. Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

[dspillett]

> But I get that people here prefer

For many of us it isn't that we think the status quo is the RightWay™ - we just aren't convinced that crypto as it currently is presents a better answer. It fixes some problems, but adds a number of its own that many of us don't think are currently worth the compromise for our needs.

As you said yourself:

> The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great

That but is not enough for me to want to take part. Yes the tech is useful, heck I use it for other things (blockchains existed as auditing mechanisms long before crypto-currencies), but I'm not going to encourage others to take part in an ecosystem that is as shady as crypto is.

> Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto, more likely because you basically said “you know that article you are all discussing?, well I think you'll want to know that I didn't bother to read it”, then without a hint of irony made assertions of “angst and negativity”.

And if I might make a mental health suggestion: caring about online downvotes is seldom part of a path to happiness :)

[nottorp]

The main problem with blockchain is identical to the one with LLMs. When snake oil salesmen try to apply the same solution to every problem, you stop wasting your time with those salesmen.

Both can be useful now and then, but the legit uses are lost in the noise.

And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency. But we've had decentralized currency before in the physical world. Until the past few hundred years. Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

[dspillett]

> And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency.

Cryptocurrencies were launched with that promise.

They are but one use¹ of block-chains / merkle-trees, which existed long before them².

----

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Uses

[2] 1982 for blockchains/trees as part of a distributed protocol as people generally mean when they use the words now³, hash chains/trees themselves go back at least as far as 1979 when Ralph Merkle patented the idea

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#History

[nottorp]

But if you put it that way neural networks were defined in the 70s too :)

[everforward]

Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

> Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

The global economy practically requires a centralized currency, because the value of your currency vs other countries becomes extremely important for trading in a global economy (importers want high value currency, exporters want low).

It’s also a requirement to do financial meddling like what the US has been doing with interest rates to curb inflation. None of that is possible on the blockchain without a central authority.

[nottorp]

> Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

Even precious metal coins became endorsed by one authority or another (the cities/banks/little kingdoms stamping the coins). Because you as a normal person don't have the resources to validate every single piece of gold/silver you are paid with.

There has also been a short period when every 3rd bank had its own paper currency. That seems to be gone too. Perhaps because as a normal person maintaining a list of banks you could trust was too much.

[throwme_123]

> The main problem with blockchain is identical to the one with LLMs. When snake oil salesmen try to apply the same solution to every problem, you stop wasting your time with those salesmen.

+100

Rule in blockchain: Whenever there is money beyond paying for services/infra like AWS, there is a problem.

[throwme_123]

> I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto

Still, every of my post that is more or less supportive of crypto gets downvoted. And I am the first to tell the ecosystem is one of the worst in tech so that's always mild support.

But yes, you're right it's probably sem web people overreacting to _my_ rant :)