I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.
I also hate blockchain but I can say exactly why. Someone came up with a hard problem and created an overly complex and inefficient solution to it. So I have two issues with it. 1) I don't buy that the original problem it sought to solve, which I believe is currency related, but let's say it's trust in a distributed system where trust does not exist. I don't believe that is an actual problem that should be solved with a general solution like blockchain. 2) the solution doesn't scale well and is overly complex. It is overkill. I think that much simpler solutions would be sufficient and should be purpose built. I also wish it would die soon.
> I don't believe that is an actual problem that should be solved with a general solution like blockchain
AFAIK this was a well-known problem for digital currencies. I think it was "eCash" that went the furthest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash ), with "blind signatures" to prevent transactions being linked to the same user, but couldn't solve the centralised trust problem.
BitCoin's "solution" is to share a ledger, pick the longest in case of forks, prevent spam using Hashcash and keep the hashcash barrier high by turning mining into a lottery.
This is a pretty cool hack, since it addresses not only technical security concerns, but also economic and social aspects. Yet I see it as a pathological, brute-force edge-case: technically a solution, but less "this problem is now solved" and more "ha, I hadn't thought of that; we'll need to specify the problem better".
If you strip away the application as a cryptocurrency, blockchain is just another hammer looking for a nail. Heck, even as a currency you're right in that it's an overly-complex hammer for a nail that already has a dozen hammers.
I agree though that further discussion would be necessary to find that nail for blockchain, but the elephant in the room (Bitcoin) has people who are personally and financially invested, leading to incessant noise being constantly generated around anything related to blockchain.
> I think that much simpler solutions would be sufficient and should be purpose built. I also wish it would die soon.
100% agree. If you look at all of the current blockchain "use-cases" you will find that many of them (e.g. Ripple and Corda) are simply centralized/semi-centralized solutions that have been around for years (in the distributed-systems literature) masquerading a blockchain solutions.
In a sense the blockchain craze is good as it's getting institutions such as banks to modernize their systems and make it so that a regional bank doesn't need to wait 5-7 days to transfer money, but examples like this are few and far between and for the most part people are using the idea to drain money from undereducated/uncritical people.
What "problem" do you feel like the Internet itself "solved" ?
The mentality that you need to have a problem to solve in order to justify your company has some real value to it. However, somehow this has expanded into the notion that every piece of tech that doesn't solve an explicit problem has no value. The existence of the gaming industry shows that this is not the case.
We do not like blockchains because it was something nasty / fraud-y marketers stole from us, and went ahead to make huge sums of money. From something that actually had tech potential, but wasn't ready yet.
It was a quick introduction to 'how the world works' for a lot of us.
Adding insult to injury, some of us joined the marketers for the scraps and gave them undue legitimacy. This was on HN a few weeks ago, explains the whole phenomenon based on three types: Geeks, Mops, Sociopaths. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths (And we're mostly all 'geeks' here, by his definition.)
And this is not sour grapes — I first heard of Bitcoin in 2010, when it was 3 cents. I didn't make any money out of it, but I've not 'missed out' in any real sense.
I like the tech but can't stand the hype. It's become impossible to follow or engage in any discussions around the topic since the shills have taken over this space.
I also like quicksort and fibonacci numbers but would I try to start a business based on this? Probably not. I want to see legit tech being built that uses blockchains but as soon as it ends up being on a business plan or mentioned in marketing material my gagging reflex sets in.
I don't think it will die, newer blockchain protocols like MimbleWimble are highly interesting and pure math and cryptography. The ICO shillers are disappointing, I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea.
For example, the recent BitTorrent ICO disappointed me, although it pumped 10x from ICO price in the past week which will keep the speculators interested, thanks to Binance supporting it.
I wasn't there during the dot-com era, but from what I read it was the same situation: lots of scammers and cool kids raising millions from investors driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), and lots of money ending up in the wrong hands.
> I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea
The big difference is that with dot-coms the scams and shady characters were in a minority, whereas with blockchain they are the vast majority (so much so that it is hard to separate the signal, if there is indeed any, from the noise). Don't think anyone would debate that point. Another (albeit more debatable) difference is that dot-coms were pretty focussed on users, while blockchain development seems to put very little genuine thought into how ordinary people would benefit from any of it - it is mostly about "building out the ecosystem" (which sounds suspiciously like "recruiting new members to our multi-level marketing scheme"). In my view these differences are because the dot-coms were driven primarily by the technology and the exciting new things you could do with it, while blockchain development is driven primarily by money (to make matters worse, psuedo anonymised money which was originally used almost exclusively for illicit purposes) hence bringing out the worst elements of human nature.
Nobody deserves anything. You get whatever life gives you and it's all about luck. I have as much respect for a lottery winner as a self-made business person.
As a human being, I would prefer the lottery winner though because they don't have as many false ideas about what kind of person they are and what kind of world we live in.
Try focusing on the technology, its merits and its potential (or lack thereof, depending which side you lean). I find that works for me, although sifting through the rancor and the mindless shilling all so prevalent in the crypto communities is rather saddening.
it's happened before that the people / community / culture of a thing had more to do with its success / failure than the technology itself.
VHS/betamax, for instance.
imo, blockchain as we know it today can't survive the wilding of these platforms, the stories around the cretins and thieves involved.
it'll have to evolve to something that doesn't resemble "blockchain" as we talk about it today (cloud versus devops versus sysadmins, etc).
a new keystone of this technology will have to carry it far away and make it kind of different for this to be the thing we're still talking about 10 years from now.
I hate blockchain because I care about trying to stave off the worst effects of climate change, and these morons are stomping on the gas pedal driving us off the cliff in the name of their get-rich-quick scam.
I don't fully understand the concept of sea lioning. Basically asking any question at all is "sea lioning", if the person being asked doesn't want to answer? OP made one statement, I asked one question, and it is sea lioning?
Is that some kind of hyper progressive safe space thing?
"Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility." (wikipedia)
Seems that accusing people of sea lioning is also a good way to dodge addressing a serious question. Someone will have to make another animal based metaphor for that some time.
The people who are the most enthusiastic about cryptocurrency are typically the least informed.
"You know nothing, your opinion is invalid" is a classic "crypto" talking point.
"You don't understand Bitcoin," they shriek while failing to comprehend the precarious position their beloved asset is in. "Bitcoin can't have bubbles, it's mathematically impossible," yell their cheerleaders.
All the OP said is "I don't like Bitcoin people", without giving any reasons (even saying he can't give reasons). Why should people assume he made an informed decision, based on merely that? Also, many comments really show that people don't properly understand it - can you blame people for noticing and dismissing those comments?
And I question your claim about enthusiastic people being the least informed. I'd say the people who work on it and dedicate their lives to improving the infrastructure are both enthusiastic and informed. Of course there are also enthusiastic people who are misinformed.
I h#$@ it and I didn't miss out. A month's salary turned into 16 months of freedom and a bit of money to start a non-crypto company.
Reason being the ignorant hype, even greater inequality, and the support of criminals, terrorists, and bad actors built into the very nature of public blockchain.
Private blockchain is a different story, but I see that more like a choice between SQL and NoSQL. Just need to wait a decade or so for the tech to mature.
While it does have a shared, immutable ledger and chaincode, what is really interesting is the coordination and integration of business entities and processes. This is something a database does not facilitate like a blockchain.
I wasn't looking for it, but we did talk about how the internet would be a great place to spread the idea.
We don't go around preaching, rather bring it up when someone uses the "H-word." It's far more interesting IRL because it almost always sparks an inspiring conversation.
