[GTALUG] Blockchain, the solution to nothing

Thu Aug 27 07:37:45 EDT 2020

Say it aint so...

Are you telling me that your don't believe that the blockchain is the 
solution for everything from climate change to erectile dysfunction.

But seriously.

There are some real uses for blockchain technologies but what we are 
seeing is a repeat of the .com bubble.

Where if you had a wacky idea and stuck the words "on the internet" in 
it somewhere and did your pitch you could get millions in funding.

Hey. Have I told you of my plans to handle garbage disposal "on the 
blockchain"..... The ICO is next week.

People do this kind of thing constantly.
Take a good idea and then push it till it is an amazingly bad idea.

As for Siacoin and Storj I found that they used 100% of my available 
internet bandwidth without using any storage.
Luckily for me I opted for "unlimited bandwidth" but not so lucky for 
Teksavvy.
So doing something like sharing your few free TB could cost you big time 
if you were a Bell or Rogers customer.

I have access to large amounts of excess storage but I have yet to be 
convinced that I could even pay for the power that it takes to spin the 
drives.
The concept is great but the economics does not seem to be there yet.

On 8/26/20 1:59 PM, Mauro Souza via talk wrote:
> It's really funny. It's more the result of "lets use blockchain!" on 
> everything that creates those issues.
>
> And blockchain is hyper-overhyped... It can help in a few specific 
> problems, but not on every single problem without exception. But 
> everyone liked the concept and ran away screaming blockchain all over 
> the place. Blockchain on email. Blockchain to rent a car. 
> Blockchain-powered lettuce salad... that's insanity. I like the 
> technology, I study it and sometimes I answer things on forums, but 
> all the time when people ask me if I believe blockchain would help 
> them, I say NO
>
> The "everybody must have everyone's data" is an issue. As the solution 
> grows, the ledger grows, increasing the storage and processing 
> requirements. With less people connected, you need an intermediary to 
> access the blockchain, and those intermediaries can be attacked and 
> take down the network. And there's few solutions to that.
>
> One solution is the blockchain used by former Raiblocks (now Nano). 
> It's a DAG (directed acyclic graph), so any client will have only his 
> own transactions, and not the entire ledger. That allows one to run a 
> client on an ESP32, for example. there will be special nodes that 
> store the entire ledger (like the Dash supernodes), but the clients 
> don't need that. Who/what would use it? No idea... crypto coins, and 
> not much else.
>
> And the smart contract solution... They aren't smart, they aren't 
> contracts, and they aren't solutions. One mistake and everything 
> crashes down instantly.The Ethereum DAO disaster, the Parity 
> multi-signature contract, and that new DeFi that melted down in a day 
> because people realized they made a mistake on the code, and nobody 
> would ever have enough tokens to decide anything because of an 
> arithmetic mistake. And many more examples.
>
> If the "contract" can be changed after creation, you cannot trust it 
> because it can be useful now (like tokens on a web game that you pay 
> to play), but later the owner changes the contract, pockets all 
> tokens, and takes down the game. If it cannot be changed, any error on 
> the contract is set on stone forever with deadly consequences. There 
> are some countermeasures to that, like proxy contracts: a main 
> contract references secondary contracts with the functions, but the 
> main contract holds the data and the tokens. if a secondary contract 
> is found to have an error, you deploy an amended version, call a 
> function on the main contract to reference the next one, and done. The 
> downside is that it is more expensive to run this contract, and the 
> owner can, you know, replace the secondary contracts and steal 
> everything. You can add multi-signatures, quorum, external oracles, 
> but those only increase the cost and put a little protection against a 
> rogue owner.
>
> There are very few things that blockchain can be useful, and one of 
> them is distributed storage. Siacoin and Storj, for example, let you 
> rent the extra space on that 4tb disk you already have for some coins. 
> It is not profitable enough to make you buy storage just for that 
> purpose, but you already have the space, right? And you can rent some 
> space on the network for backing up things when you will reformat your 
> computer, and want to store your data in case something breaks. It's 
> cheaper than anything else, even cheaper than amazon glacier.
>
> Those supply chain management things are useful too, if you can 
> integrate it correctly (and that's a BIG if). If you own a bakery, for 
> example, you scan all the ingredients you have, store them all on your 
> wallet (or have your purchasing software do that automagically) and 
> any time any of your suppliers have any recall on something you got, 
> you are warned. And everything down the line gets warned that they 
> bought a recalled bread from you. Your customers don't even need to 
> get back to you so you reimburse them, the next time they come to buy 
> something they already have a credit for that contaminated bread you 
> sold to them last week. But to integrate everyone is a nightmare, 
> there are lots of privacy issues, industrial secrets issues... on a 
> limited scale, it can work. Too limited and doesn't solve anything. 
> Too broad and all that privacy issues get into your face.
>
> The fact is that there are very few cases that blockchain can be used 
> that a database cannot. And databases are here since a long time ago, 
> everyone knows how to build them, operate them, backup them, and 
> extend them.
>
> But just wait for the AI-generated, solar-powered, graphene-based 
> multi-cloud stored 6G-capable IPv8-addressing blockchain...
>
> Mauro
> http://mauro.limeiratem.com - registered Linux User: 294521
> Scripture is both history, and a love letter from God.
>
>
> Em qua., 26 de ago. de 2020 às 13:29, Christopher Browne via talk 
> <talk at gtalug.org <mailto:talk at gtalug.org>> escreveu:
>
>     https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/86714927310-8f431cae
>
>     I found it particularly hilarious when the writer of the article
>     asked the maker of the childrens' aid app if he had noticed that
>     the app didn't actually need blockchain at all.
>
>     "That's right."
>
>     But the punch line was even better...
>
>     Isn't it strange that you won all these awards despite not really
>     using blockchain?
>
>     "We keep trying to tell people, but it doesn’t seem to stick.
>     You’re calling me about it again now … ”
>     -- 
>     When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
>     question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
>     ---
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-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.                   ||   Cell:  (416)806-0133
alvin at netvel.net              ||

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