[HN Gopher] What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me
___________________________________________________________________
What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me
Author : anonu
Score : 298 points
Date : 2022-12-06 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vitalik.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (vitalik.ca)
| mattlondon wrote:
| I don't see how privacy can ever be solved with blockchain. By
| design, everything you ever do is permanently out in the open for
| ever and ever for anyone to not only see what you did, but
| _mathematically prove_ that it was you (well, your key at least)
| that did it.
|
| Sure you can be "anonymous" when using your wallet etc, but as we
| all know it is usually trivial to de-anonymize large data sets.
| Likewise, being anonymous when using a wallet then removes a lot
| of the perceived value of using it for identity verification
| (e.g. sign-ins, proof of humanity etc).
| xrd wrote:
| Look at this code:
|
| https://docs.zama.ai/concrete/getting-started/quick_start
|
| This is a rust based Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
| example.
|
| That is to say, you can encrypt two numbers, do a mathematical
| calculation on them without decrypting them, and then, only the
| person with the private key can decrypt the result to get the
| value.
|
| If you add something like FHE to blockchains (it's coming) then
| you can get anonymous transactions on the blockchain directly.
|
| By the way, Zero knowledge proofs are not what is needed to get
| anonymous transactions. When you use ZK, you are issuing the
| proof AND have knowledge of the inputs. The prover needs to
| know the inputs, but does not need to reveal them to the
| verifier (which happens on chain). This means the transaction
| can assert that the mathematical operation occurred without
| doubt, but when you need to get at the numbers, you are back to
| a transparent value on the chain.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Given the high complexity of FHE, surely there be limits to
| FHE based transactions?
| xrd wrote:
| Definitely. And, the founder of Zama says there are new
| chips which will optimize these types of calculations and
| make them more mainstream.
|
| For the record, no clue how true that assertion is, but
| seems like now that the calculations are possible, Moore's
| law will solve that problem one way or another.
|
| FHE is going to make things interesting and it seems like
| it is only a matter of time before they are workable on
| existing blockchains.
|
| Plus, these types of calculations are not susceptible to
| side-chain attacks, since no private keys are used in the
| calculations.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| FHE computations are hundreds of thousands of times
| slower than non-encrypted computations, and are non-
| parallelizable, and Moore's law is long since dead for
| single-core performance.
| xrd wrote:
| I didn't know that. I'm interested in understanding why
| they aren't parallelizable? I'm surprised that is the
| case. It's a good point you make, and makes me wonder
| whether a combination of zk proofs where the inputs to
| the zk proof are the encrypted inputs of the FHE
| conjuration. If so, that could be used against a verifier
| to move the computation off chain. Seems like a
| complicated circuit you would need to make but if you
| could do it, you wouldn't need to worry about the
| computational cost on chain. Thanks for that information,
| very thought provoking.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| krackers wrote:
| >When you use ZK, you are issuing the proof AND have
| knowledge of the inputs. The prover needs to know the inputs,
| but does not need to reveal them to the verifier (which
| happens on chain).
|
| Can you elaborate more on this? What is this a ZKP proof for?
| That the transaction is valid?
|
| Also from all the ZKP examples I've seen in crypto[graphy]
| class, soundness relies on the ability to repeat the process
| again and again. How does this work for the blockchain case
| where it seems like there's only one round of communication
| between prover/verifier?
| leashless wrote:
| See https://docs.zksync.io/zkevm/#what-is-zkevm-and-why-is-
| this-...
|
| Basically you can make transactions anonymous using much the
| same kind of protection as you have between public and private
| keys. There is a proof the transaction is valid but that is
| basically all you can see.
| qazxcvbnm wrote:
| I confess I possess only a shallow understanding of ZK
| rollups - can anyone explain how you can have an opaque proof
| that transactions are valid and still solve double-spending
| problems?
| conradev wrote:
| This thread might be helpful:
| https://twitter.com/LuozhuZhang/status/1538171370814570497
|
| Essentially, zkEVMs map EVM bytecode to equivalent zero-
| knowledge circuits (containing the logic of what is and
| isn't valid, i.e. double-spending) so that the entire
| execution can generate a proof. It is a lot of math.
| qazxcvbnm wrote:
| Thanks for the link. I've glanced at it, and so far my
| understanding of it says that the ZK proof allows
| verification that the results of each individual
| transaction is exactly as what is given, so that the
| resultant state provided by the ZK commitment can be
| trusted.
|
| My original confusion was more about how consistency of
| state can be maintained across completely opaque
| commitments of transaction validity.
|
| Now that I think of it, it seems that my original concern
| was a matter more trivially dismissed than what you've
| explained - my doubts were more about how state could
| possibly be consistently yet opaquely maintained, but the
| blockchain state machine, and I gather the ZK
| commitments, are simply not opaque with respect to the VM
| state - the opaqueness provided by ZK commitments is
| opaqueness in the intermediate transaction state
| (essentially irrelevant information - perfect candidate
| to be optimised away). The problem of double-spending is
| never relevant within a single chain of block
| commitments, as any second-spending of resources is
| simply an invalid transaction and is rejected, given the
| (necessarily public) hitherto state reached by consensus
| (- the problem of which, is precisely what the blockchain
| mechanism was designed to solve).
|
| Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about with
| respect to ZK, and may be completely wrong.
| krackers wrote:
| > more about how consistency of state can be maintained
| across completely opaque commitments of transaction
| validity.
|
| I have the same confusion as you, and I'm not sure I
| understood your last paragraph. The prover (person
| submitting a new transaction) can provide a ZKP that the
| transaction he is making is valid, and the blockchain
| will adopt it if indeed it's a valid proof. So then the
| onus of preventing the double-spend here effectively on
| the prover: he can only provide a valid ZKP for a valid
| transaction, and a double-spend would not be a valid
| transaction.
|
| But then at the end of the day, seems like the underlying
| balance needs to be accessed somehow (otherwise how would
| the prover even know if he has enough funds avaliable?).
| I guess the prover (and only the prover) can do this
| because he presumably has access to the right private
| keys?
| czxtm wrote:
| it's similar to how you can hash passwords to know that
| the user knows it without knowing the password. so you
| don't know the amounts you just know that, for example,
| the output (debit) is affordable by the sender (in the
| case of a payment). the sort of "magic" of zk systems
| lies in the part where you can turn complex programs into
| something similar by converting them into polynomials. it
| turns out that pretty much any program can be represented
| as polynomial math and the second magical part is that
| although the proofs might be expensive to compute, they
| can be verified in constant time (in the case of a SNARK
| at least).
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| zk rollups do not inherently provide any privacy, but there
| are different ways to use zero knowledge proofs to provide
| privacy on a blockchain. See for example the Zerocash
| paper, the currency Zcash started off the back of the
| paper, and various follow up systems.
| JofArnold wrote:
| Sounds like a good idea. Until, like Tornado, the tech gets
| sanctioned.
| camgunz wrote:
| I feel like your downvotes are undeserved. From an
| engineering perspective, all Tornado did was add
| anonymity/plausible deniability to the blockchain--which is
| all that ZK will do. Maybe there's a question as to whether
| OFEC will also see ZK as money laundering, but my guess is
| they won't until it gets to a certain scale and then they
| will--exactly like Tornado. That limit was ~$7 billion,
| which is < 1 FTX, and far smaller than the current market
| cap of Ethereum.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| My bet is that a zero knowledge algorithm is what is hinted at.
|
| You can prove that you have the keys to sign. Without having to
| produce the key.
|
| Or something of that effect. Cryptocurrencies are bunker. Zero
| Knowledge is a big deal.
| swalsh wrote:
| A reply you got already mentioned zk functions, which is the
| best answer (cool tidbit, Avalanche's custom VM allows you to
| build these functions and anything else you want as precompiled
| code. More gas efficient.)
|
| My second reply would be a hybrid system. I've been tossing
| around this idea in my head for what I call a decentralized
| PBM. At first I struggled with the privacy idea. Then I had the
| realization that it was unnecessary to bring PHI on chain. I
| could accomplish all the stuff that would benefit from a chain
| without it.
|
| You can realize a lot of value from blockchains even if you're
| not purely decentralized.
| kirevmaco wrote:
| There is a solution called DECO:
| https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=zWTx1iQOCDM
|
| Backup video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTx1iQOCDM
|
| Original paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.00938
| hanniabu wrote:
| https://github.com/EYBlockchain/nightfall_3
| lawn wrote:
| You should look up how Monero and ZCash work.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Can those be built onto eth?
| lawn wrote:
| Monero can't for the simple reason that for privacy to work
| well it needs to be on by default, not opt-in like ZCash
| does it.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| The opt-in nature of Zcashs privacy mechanism is not
| inherent. You can just flip a switch and disallow private
| transactions.
| rahen wrote:
| However Monero has shortcomings, the main one being its
| auditability.
|
| Some Monero developers have created a new project which
| tries to solve those issues, and add zero knowledge proof
| to the mix: https://pirate.black
| lawn wrote:
| You can audit Moneros math and source code, therefore you
| can audit the supply. It's more work than with Bitcoin to
| be sure, but it's still possible.
|
| Monero already uses zero knowledge proofs, but in a
| different way than eg ZCash.
| flotzam wrote:
| Aztec already is: https://zk.money/
|
| It's like the Zcash shielded pool, but as an Ethereum L2.
| tiluha wrote:
| No. Privacy has to exist at the base layer.
| baby wrote:
| Not true
| baby wrote:
| Check zero-knowledge proof based blockchains. They provide ways
| to build privacy-enhanced applications with smart contracts
| (called zkapps). I wrote about it a bit here:
| https://www.cryptologie.net/article/575/whats-the-deal-with-...
| lavventura wrote:
| Only thing that drives Ethereum application ecosystem to allow
| people to gain and ofcourse to lose money. If Ethereum was not
| attached to financial interest the project would not grow. I
| believe the ecosystem and everything, it's all a scam. The
| platform, new emerging projects, all ads are serving exchanges to
| liquadate people and gain money and destroy their lives.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| The traditional financial system also allow people to gain and
| lose money, even the U.S. central bank prints money out of air
| to support wars and loan money to banks.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Hybrid apps: voting, govt registries, corporate accounting,
| supply chain apps, tracking access auth.
|
| Yeah, no. Literally none of these benefit from blockchains.
| Moreover, blockchains make many of these things _worse_. This was
| already described eloquently, and with examples, 4 years ago:
| https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...
| Why are these crypto maximalists still pretending it's a thing?
| meowkit wrote:
| That author is a dismissive ass - makes it hard to take his
| points seriously.
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Like most anti-crypto authors he still misses the forest for
| the trees.
|
| Trusting software is better than trusting humans because if the
| software is immutable you only have to trust it _once_! I don
| 't know why so many people don't get this. When you trust human
| systems you have to keep trusting them forever, because humans
| are fickle and could decide to screw you at any time.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| For starters, people have figured out how to run pretty solid
| and stable elections for while without needing anything but
| most basic technology. Also, if you have a society where no-
| one trust anyone, no amount of software will fix that. People
| can then just not accept the result of software and do what
| they please. Immutability is totally irrelevant at that
| point.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Like most anti-crypto authors he still misses the forest
| for the trees.
|
| Like most crypto-maximalists you've missed the point, the
| article, the trees, the forest, and the entire planet Earth
|
| > Trusting software is better than trusting humans because if
| the software is immutable you only have to trust it once!
|
| No. You don't trust it only once. You trust it every time you
| use it. And software doesn't magically appear, or grow on
| trees. It's created by the people who "are fickle and decide
| to screw you at any time".
|
| It is very clearly described in the article that you missed.
| Technology does not make human systems obsolete.
| cle wrote:
| > This was already described eloquently, and with examples, 4
| years ago: https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-
| and-trustle... Why are these crypto maximalists still
| pretending it's a thing?
|
| Because they don't agree with those conclusions.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| nailer wrote:
| > 3. The identity ecosystem: ENS
|
| SNS / ENS etc aren't identity, they're naming. Much like DNS,
| many names correspond to someone different than what most people
| would associate with that name.
|
| Disclaimer: I work in the identity so may be biased.
| ryan29 wrote:
| Domains are a type of identity. For example, a domain can be
| the identity of a company brand, which is valuable, without it
| being a specific person.
|
| > When I log on to Blockscan chat, I sign in with Ethereum.
| This means that I am immediately visible as vitalik.eth (my ENS
| name) to anyone I chat with. In the future, to fight spam,
| Blockscan chat could "verify" accounts by looking at on-chain
| activity or POAPs.
|
| Imagine that same idea, but with traditional domains and
| support on major platforms. I've wanted domain
| validated/verified identities for as long as I can remember.
| Imagine being able to use your domain name as a handle, with
| instant reputation/recognition, on all major platforms:
| twitter.com/@example.net youtube.com/@example.net
|
| If you decentralize identity and reputation by tying it to a
| domain name rather than an identity provider like Facebook or
| Google, it creates opportunities around all of the things he
| mentions in the article. Attestations are the most interesting
| in my opinion.
| bo1024 wrote:
| If you're interested in the details, you should read the
| section of the blog post related to this.
| cypress66 wrote:
| If you have nailer@gmail.com, then that can be your online
| identity that you use to authenticate across multiple services.
|
| The same can happen with nailer.eth (you authenticate via
| signing a message).
| nailer wrote:
| Someone else can register `nailer.eth` and promote that
| address as being associated with me too. Also personally,
| people that send me money (using the first example of utility
| from the article) want to send it to Mike MacCana.
| college_physics wrote:
| ether was a popular concept before Einstein and special
| relativity but we have discovered since that is actually not
| needed. just saying :-p
| Proven wrote:
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| Holy crap, Augur is still going!
|
| Amazing, they are an OG of the first wave of ICO token..good to
| see them still operating.
|
| I've stayed out of it the last few years and just maintained a
| high view of the market.
|
| It seemed obvious to me this was all going to blow up, sad about
| BlockFi but once I saw them ink the FTX deal I knew they were
| done.
|
| Too soon for that play... The story of Crypto!
| negamax wrote:
| They took a lion's share of money and Augur creator now runs an
| investment fund. They weren't successfully in the sense, people
| successfully gamed the outcome
| spir wrote:
| this is true. Augur is not a success story. It's a story of
| mismanagement, legal "embezzlement" of tens of millions of
| dollars due to lack of legal safeguards, and squandering of
| the opportunity to build a truly great prediction market
| platform.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It is not a very impressive list of future technologies for the
| year 2022, unfortunately. I don't mean this as shade: I just mean
| that most of these are older ideas that have either been deployed
| or attempted (with limited success.)
|
| Clearly money and DeFi are already real and well-established
| things, whether they're "going great" is in the eye of the
| beholder. DAOs have been around for a while, and the main
| examples Vitalik lists are basically DeFi apps that call
| themselves DAOs. General-purpose DAOs that have real-world
| influence remain questionable things, mostly because they have
| too many human and legal dependencies. On-chain identity might be
| exciting. NFTs might eventually prove to have exciting real
| applications beyond apes. Blockchain voting remains an old idea
| that doesn't have much real benefit outside of DeFi project
| governance.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| > cash-like respect for personal privacy.
|
| This is false. If I go out on a date and my date sends me money
| on chain, I now know their public key and can look up every past
| and future transaction they make.
|
| If they send me cash there's no way the cash will help me do
| that.
|
| Heck, even Venmo has protections against that.
| dagmx wrote:
| Yes, I think many crypto fans conflate anonymity and privacy.
|
| however like any anonymous system, once your identity has been
| associated externally, you lose the privacy garnered by it.
|
| The argument would be then to create many burner wallets but
| that's also not exactly scalable unless you're transferring
| between them off the chain to avoid gas fees.
| DennisP wrote:
| There's a system on Ethereum that does protect against that,
| but US regulators just sanctioned it.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| This is not how things HAVE to be, it's just the default of a
| public ledger.
|
| I'm actually working on making private payments on public
| blockchain with zk right now, and it's nowhere impossible, just
| technically complex. Should be live on peanut.to in early Jan.
|
| Venmo is a centralized provider that doesn't _work_ in non US
| countries. That's not good.
| capableweb wrote:
| You would have been able to use something like Tornado Cash
| outside of the US in order to conceal previous/future
| transactions from people you interact with. The US has decided
| that's illegal. Not sure what Ethereum could do about that.
|
| zCash and similar cryptocurrencies take a different stand where
| transactions can be "shielded" and anonymous.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| Surprise, surprise! Money laundering is illegal!
| capableweb wrote:
| If you think wanting to hide previous/future transactions
| from other private entities is money laundering and
| illegal, I think you need to re-educate yourself on how
| that stuff works.
|
| Money laundering is trying to hide the source or nature of
| illegal activities. Privacy in itself is not illegal nor
| money laundering.
| [deleted]
| hiq wrote:
| > many new applications have limited use today due to limitations
| in tech
|
| The Ethereum foundation has been focusing on technical problems
| since its inception, and your conclusion has always been the
| official motto: once we solve the "technical problems", users
| will come. But there will always be technical problems, and as
| each year passes with still no meaningful democratization of this
| tech, it's becoming doubtful that these limitations are the real
| issue.
|
| Applications such as decentralized finance are only as
| interesting as the tokens they allow users to trade, but in turn
| these tokens are either shady (the world of FTT, USDT, etc.) or
| legal (requiring KYC, AML, etc.) so just like traditional
| finance. Once the former have fallen enough in disgrace, it's
| unclear what benefit there is to trade the latter (centralized
| tokens) on decentralized platforms.
|
| It's easy to stack layers of abstractions, thinking the next one
| will be the one gathering users, and focusing on what we think is
| the last technical hurdle before mass adoption. After the 3rd or
| 4th iteration, one could start asking: what makes you think it'll
| make a difference this time?
|
| Not much has changed since ICOs: same kind of ambitious claims
| with very little to show for it years after.
| redox99 wrote:
| > and as each year passes with still no meaningful
| democratization of this tech, it's becoming doubtful that these
| limitations are the real issue.
|
| I think it's pretty easy to see that each transaction costing a
| few bucks (or tens of bucks at it's peak) is a huge issue if
| you want more adoption.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Gas prices (determine costs of transactions) haven't been too
| high lately, though there can still be spikes when
| transaction volume surges. Gas prices will become less
| sensitive to such surges once the mainnet is sharded (plus
| L2s) because the chain will be able to handle a much higher
| max volume of transactions at any given time.
|
| https://www.gasprice.io/
| hanniabu wrote:
| A lot of the past few years has been spent on research.
|
| The move to PoS is now complete and rollups are under active
| development.
|
| For a lot of use cases scaling is a prerequisite and that's
| coming soon, likely 2-3 years of progressive improvements.
|
| Transactions on rollups are as low as 2 cents and EIP 4488 is
| expected to bring that down about 100x.
|
| You should really take a look at the roadmap:
| https://notes.ethereum.org/@domothy/roadmap
| dang wrote:
| (This comment was originally a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878419. Hence the "your
| conclusion".)
| kybernetikos wrote:
| One example of things that have changed is zero knowledge roll
| ups. When I first used ethereum, transacting with it was free
| and fairly quick. The QR code approach meant that it was
| easier, faster, cheaper and safer to transfer money with it
| than with my bank account. That changed dramatically for the
| worse once the systems started getting popular (and traditional
| banks upped their game too). With L2 systems like zksync, we're
| back to cheap and fast, and we don't have to give up the
| central security properties.
|
| Another example of something that has changed for ethereum is
| Proof Of Stake. Some years ago, I worked for a large financial
| organisation, and we had a use case that would have saved a lot
| of internal work to move onto a public blockchain. Given the
| organisations eco aspirations, using a POW based system was
| never going to be acceptable. Now that ethereum is on Proof Of
| Stake, it's actually conceivable that these kinds of
| applications could be deployed by large financial institutions.
| spir wrote:
| The argument that use cases aren't developing is quite brittle
| when you dig into it a bit.
|
| Take the use case of global stablecoin transfers. The ability
| to send cash point-to-point anywhere in the world is obviously
| valuable and novel.
|
| But for global stablecoin transfers to be generally useful 1)
| everybody needs crypto wallets, 2) crypto wallets need to be
| increasingly safe and easy to use, 3) transaction fees need to
| be sufficiently low, 4) stablecoin on/off-ramps to integration
| with the traditional financial system must be widely available,
| and 5) stablecoins in a variety of popular global currencies
| must be available and liquid.
|
| The industry has made progress in all five of the above areas
| in the past few years, and so good progress has been made on
| the greater goal of generally available point-to-point global
| cash transfers. Saying crypto "has no use cases" is lazy,
| uncurious, and intellectually bankrupt.
| hiq wrote:
| > Take the use case of global stablecoin transfers. The
| ability to send cash point-to-point anywhere in the world is
| obviously valuable and novel.
|
| You're not sending "cash" though, you're most likely sending
| USDT or some other centralized stablecoin backed by a shady
| company ("stablecoin" is a very misleading term in this
| context given the counterparty risk). That's one point about
| trust being moved instead of removed, you need to trust the
| issuer to some extent. To this day I still haven't heard of a
| centralized stablecoin being fully audited, you merely get
| attestations, meaning that you can't treat them as "cash",
| you have a big risk just holding them.
|
| Transferring / converting currencies from most countries to
| most other countries is easy and way cheaper via centralized
| means, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_(company) has
| been around for 11 years and was probably not first, and the
| fees are lower than what a blockchain transaction on BTC/ETH
| would cost. This is not even an apple to apple comparison,
| since in most cases you still need to convert your USDT back
| to USD to actually use them, incurring more fees in the
| process.
|
| What ETH does allow you to do which you can't do with Wise
| and others is sending USDT without censorship. That's
| probably the best way to bypass US regulations if you want to
| send USD where the US government doesn't want you to. And
| some people suggest that this is how things should be, which
| is an interesting point. Whether you agree or disagree about
| the morals of it, it'll remain marginal compared with the
| amounts transferred via centralized entities for reasons
| listed above. In particular, this is incompatible with your
| 4.:
|
| > 4) stablecoin on/off-ramps to integration with the
| traditional financial system must be widely available, and 5)
| stablecoins in a variety of popular global currencies must be
| available and liquid.
|
| As soon as you integrate with the traditional financial
| system, you have the same legal requirements. But as
| explained above, skirting regulations is actually the only
| one thing that you could do more easily with Ethereum. Once
| you've accepted to deal with the law, you're better off using
| centralized platforms all the way. If I have EUR and want to
| send you USD legally, why would I go through USDT or whatever
| blockchain token and pay higher fees?
|
| In this space, there's still very little in terms of products
| with actual impact, to the point that it's hard to tell what
| will be left once (if ever) the noise from the blockchain-
| related scams disappears.
|
| I was debating these points 5 years ago already. The
| fundamental problems I'm mentioning now were already there
| (the decentralization of a blockchain-based system breaking
| at its boundaries with the real-world, the oracle problem).
| The hype has evolved, but retains the same fundamental flaws.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| USDC is not nearly as shady. Nothing forcing you to use
| USDT.
|
| Friends in Turkey were turning their savings into USDC and
| DAI to save themselves from their country's near 100%
| inflation.
|
| Crypto critiques need to take off the first-world Goggles.
| XajniN wrote:
| Maybe your friends, but most people were buying the
| ordinary US dollars.
| kobasa wrote:
| And store it in a local bank with the economy on the
| verge of collapse and the government being what it is?
| You have no idea wtf you're talking about sir.
| XajniN wrote:
| No, just keep the cash.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Worst advice.
| XajniN wrote:
| The second worst at least.
| Salgat wrote:
| The problem is that Ethereum continues to be used almost
| exclusively for speculation of ethereum, followed by creation
| of literally hundreds of thousands of ERC20 cryptocurrencies,
| followed by anonymous lotteries/gambling (and for a brief
| time NFTs which themselves were a form of speculation,
| although that's mostly collapsed). At what point will that
| change? How much more do they have to do before Ethereum is
| mainly used for real-world applications? Ethereum is a
| solution shoe-horned into a trustless blockchain to an
| already solved problem.
| psychlops wrote:
| While I'd certainly agree that Ethereum has problems, the
| problems you list aren't Eth problems. They are legal
| issues in some geographic jurisdiction.
| leashless wrote:
| We're building on Ethereum. Live projects for customers for 18
| months.
|
| The product is an NFT which gives you legal ownership of an
| underlying physical object when you buy it. An individually
| numbered bar of gold in a vault. A scarce collectible. Real
| estate.
|
| The real estate thing is interesting: transfer time goes down
| from around 4 months in the UK to a couple of days. The only
| delay is the KYCAMLCTFPEPOFACT checking: if that's done as a pre-
| clearing step the transfer of real estate will be instantaneous.
| It took several years to build this capability.
|
| The blockchain is not done. http://mattereum.com/land
| freejazz wrote:
| What?1 You can't transact real estate in the US without
| recording the deed in your local county clerk's office...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Buying an NFT cannot legally give me land. That's reality. The
| NFT and crypto provides 0 value over just a normal contract. In
| fact, if the system worked the way you pretend it does, that
| would be even worse. If you defrauded me by lying about the
| realities of the property, I would have no recourse to be made
| whole.
| Nursie wrote:
| On the one hand, reducing the time it takes to buy or sell a
| house is a great thing.
|
| But on the other, there's a lot of due diligence that is
| appropriate to carry out as a purchaser that doesn't seem
| covered _and_ it's unclear that the NFT or blockchain adds
| anything to the picture - the value-add here is in having done
| the searches ahead of time.
| leashless wrote:
| And making a properly binding handling of the liabity is
| absolutely key to being able to do those searches ahead of
| time. And that requires record keeping, proofs of payment,
| lots of document handling, simultaneous execution of a pile
| of different contracts, and so on.
|
| It's actually a pretty good use case for the blockchain. It
| solves real problems here. Obviously it's not as
| sophisticated as systems that have been in use for 10 years,
| but it's a lot better than some of the archaic systems which
| still cleave to norms which have been in place for centuries.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| As I don't know how it works in the UK: is there no registry
| where ownership of land is being held or can that already be
| edited/updated in real time to transfer real estate?
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| Yes, there is:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/land-registry
| leashless wrote:
| The issue is the conveyancing process _as a whole_. It 's
| extremely slow and expensive.
| inigo wrote:
| The property you are selling is a piece of beach land in
| Milford on Sea on the south coast:
| https://passport.mattereum.com/West.London.Lets.01/
|
| "The NFT is listed on the NFT marketplace OpenSea for offers
| over PS1.9M"
|
| That piece of land was last sold for PS7000 on 20th October
| 2021.
|
| https://search-property-information.service.gov.uk/search/su...
|
| I know inflation is bad, but PS7000 to PS1.9M is an impressive
| increase in value, for a piece of scrubby beach that looks
| impossible to get planning permission for.
| leashless wrote:
| If you think coastal land costs PS7000 in the UK, I have a
| bridge I'd like to sell you!
| leashless wrote:
| (which is to say it's a records issue, not the real value
| of the land)
| phphphphp wrote:
| The fact that you're so willing to lie so brazenly when
| you're dealing with an unproven and high-risk legal process
| is, well, I don't know, it undermines your trustworthiness
| somewhat -- and proves correct all the cynicism about
| blockchain being an industry full of frauds.
|
| Either the land price was misreported in order to evade
| taxes _or_ you 're lying. Given there's a website showing
| that the land was for sale for PS7,000 1 year ago, I'm
| going with you're lying -- although either option is bad!
|
| https://www.cliveemson.co.uk/properties/228/71/
|
| I guess the third option is that you've been taken for a
| fool by whoever owns the land. Do you have an independent
| valuation showing the land is worth more than PS7k?
|
| You can also look up the supposed seller and see that their
| assets are worth... well, nowhere near a million:
| https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/c...
|
| If you can show that land is worth more than PS1,000,000 I
| will happily buy any bridges you have for sale!
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| The buyer is a one person company with PS14k in cash and
| PS16k in debts as of the last year https://find-and-
| update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
|
| They have an empty cookie cutter website
| https://westlondoncitylets.co.uk/our-work.html and its
| owner has an empty linkedin
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/idris-anjary-24000b171/
|
| The same guy owns Tokenized Properties Ltd which is an
| empty husk of a company https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/o... and shares its address
| with West London City Lets Ltd
|
| However, they do have another cookie cutter website
| selling that "development opportunity" https://tokenized-
| properties.com/ and repeating the $1.25m price tag
|
| According to the title (and corroborated by the entry on
| mattereum) the only land in it is the one I marked in red
| https://imgur.com/a/5h6c8Zi -- it's literally a cliff,
| plus the title talks about right of way on the paths
| marked there for the next twenty years, so it's
| impossible to build on
|
| This right here just perfectly encapsulates everything
| wrong with the crypto industry, I'm very disappointed to
| see Vinay openly defending this sham
| leashless wrote:
| 1) the PS7000 payment was a _transaction fee_ on the
| transfer of the land.
|
| 2) we have an independent valuation on file for the land
| at >1M. I wanted to reconfirm this with a member of my
| team before replying with specifics here, which you read
| as "he's being evasive." I was waiting for data.
|
| The full documentation stack for the land is in the Asset
| Passport linked from the OpenSea listing.
|
| If you want access to the documents email me and I'll see
| about getting you an NDA and putting you in touch with
| the seller - they may or may not choose to satisfy your
| curiosity.
|
| Thank you for your diligence.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Either you're a fraud or a fool.
|
| The land registry does not list "transaction fees" and
| neither do auction houses. If the land was indeed
| purchased for a large amount of money, the buyer (who is
| now the seller) would need to have purchased it... either
| in cash, or with a mortgage. There's no mortgages
| outstanding for the company (per companies house) and the
| company has no money.
|
| I'll be charitable and assume you're just a fool: you've
| been played by your property agency partners, and the
| "member of your team" is of course, I'm sure, the person
| who provided the valuation from their "independent"
| valuer (because they're the property expert after all).
|
| You can go on rightmove or an auction website right now
| and see comparable land available for <PS100k. The basis
| of your defence was that _of course the land is worth a
| lot because land in the UK is worth a lot_ but that 's
| just not true, the only place where parking spaces sell
| for more than PS7,000 is in London: in 75%+ of the
| country, you could buy 1 acre of land for PS7,000.
|
| The value of unused land for sale is a function of the
| amount of realisable value, for example, if there is a
| piece of land with planning permission for a 5 bedroom
| house in an area where a 5 bedroom house sells for
| PS1,000,000, the price of the land would be something
| like PS1m - (cost of building a house) - (some adjustment
| for the risk borne by the builder which becomes their
| profit), e.g: PS500k.
|
| If your 1.72 acres of beach front land is worth close to
| PS2,000,000 that would mean there is much more than
| PS2,000,000 realisable value for an owner of the land.
| Please, think through how you could conceivably realise
| millions of pounds of value from a piece of land that you
| are unable to build on.
|
| Land in the UK is plentiful, the reason that a small
| proportion of land here is expensive is because only a
| small proportion of land is suitable for development and
| has permission for development. You could buy acres and
| acres of land anywhere in the UK for the price of 1
| months rent in London... because the land is
| undevelopable, because you'll never get permission to
| develop.
|
| The idea that an acre of beachfront is worth millions,
| when it has much less than a million worth of realisable
| value, is absurd. You're a business man, write a business
| case for this land.
|
| If PS7,000 was a "transaction fee" then is this other
| auction, with a listed sold price of PS130,750, a
| transaction fee of PS130k for this piece of land? And if
| so, is this land worth (130,750 / 7000) * 1,900,000 =
| PS35 million?
|
| https://www.cliveemson.co.uk/properties/237/15/
| leashless wrote:
| Eh. I'm sorry, I know you feel like you've got relevant
| expertise here and you're doing some kind of public
| service here fighting with those evil blockchain people.
|
| But you're out of your depth and making very week
| assertions to cover the gaps in your data.
|
| If you want to NDA and talk directly to the sellers of
| the land about the commercials of the deal, that can
| probably be arranged. But your speculation is based on
| weak data not access to the facts, and is not really
| going to replace things like an independent valuation and
| the opinions of the experienced real estate lawyers who
| papered this deal.
|
| Yes, it's a novel way to buy land, but the underlying
| deal mechanics are pretty conservative. There is nothing
| up anybody's sleeves, and we encourage full diligence
| from any prospective buyers - they're going to need to
| bring their own legal counsel to assess the purchase
| mechanisms and the NFT binding arrangements anyway.
|
| This is not some deal to retail: we expect the sale to be
| to a real estate developer.
|
| I don't think there's anything else I can do to convince
| you of your error.
|
| Thanks for your interest in our work.
| leashless wrote:
| Also this "close to the sea front" land you have posted
| appears to be "close to the sea front" in the sense of
| "being in the middle of a housing estate somewhere near
| the sea" not _an actual beach_.
|
| And that's valued at 130,000?
|
| I'm just sayin' 7000 does not buy very much land in the
| UK. Not anywhere.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Oh, so you acknowledge that the listed price of PS130,000
| is the value? Thank you, so by extension you acknowledge
| that PS7,000 was the sale price of the piece of beach.
|
| I'd also suggest you re-read my comment: land has value
| when it has planning permission. The PS130,000 piece of
| land is valuable because it has planning permission that
| would allow a developer to sell a house for ~>PS250k on
| it. The size and location of land is immaterial to the
| value of land unless the size and location increase the
| amount of money that can be extracted from the land --
| typically through development. The entire point of my
| comment is that the desirability of land is not based on
| how cute it is (a slice of beach) but rather what it can
| be used for (even if it's in the middle of a housing
| estate).
|
| I'll stop commenting now because I'm just beating a dead
| horse (...or donkey, I guess your land could be used to
| offer beach front donkey rides, so that's something...).
| I wish you luck, it's clear you've been taken advantage
| of and that's unfortunate: if you come to your senses,
| there's lots of land all over the UK that is actually
| valuable, and once you cut off your current partners and
| partner with some legitimate property industry people
| instead, I am sure you can make a much better go of NFT
| property sales :) Good luck!
| leashless wrote:
| As noted the 7000 was a transaction fee. The land was
| part of a more complex deal.
|
| As for the rest of this: land gets planning permission
| when plans are presented - which is what property
| developers do for a living.
|
| I would not expect somebody to plank down >1m on an asset
| they had no idea how to utilise: the expectation is the
| land will sell to a developer who is ready to go through
| that process.
|
| What else would anybody do with it?
| phphphphp wrote:
| Nobody is going to buy it for >PS1m because it's
| worthless. That's the point. Although at this point I am
| not sure what your story is, if I understand it
| correctly, you're saying West London Lets bought it for
| >PS1m with no idea what to do with it...? Except they
| didn't, are you finally going to give up that charade
| given that you can see the purchase price on your own
| website? Here, read this: https://passport.mattereum.com/
| West.London.Lets.01/01_Identi...
|
| "Title absolute 1 (28.02.2022) PROPRIETOR: WEST LONDON
| CITY LETS LIMITED (Co. Regn. No. 09214284) of 68 High
| Worple, Harrow HA2 9SZ. 2 (28.02.2022) The price stated
| to have been paid on 20 October 2021 was PS7,000. 3
| (28.02.2022) The Transfer to the proprietor contains a
| covenant to observe and perform the covenants contained
| within the registers of the..."
|
| If you're going to lie, at least make sure your own
| website doesn't betray you :) Or, going back to the
| original point about stamp duty, the alternative is that
| your partners engaged in fraudulent reporting to evade
| stamp duty and your comments here are exposing them.
| rideontime wrote:
| Those websites aren't on The Blockchain, so they aren't
| trustworthy. Rando crypto HN commentor is extremely
| trustworthy, though.
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| That's not a rando, that's Vinay Gupta
| https://twitter.com/leashless/
|
| Edit: staying more factual
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That doesn't make them any more trustworthy. They openly
| have a huge stake in this system being way more valuable.
| rideontime wrote:
| Even worse!
| leashless wrote:
| Do you have any idea how much land costs in the UK?
|
| Like... any idea?
|
| You can't buy a parking space in this country for PS7000.
| inigo wrote:
| I do have a general idea of how much land costs in the
| UK, and also, I've been to Milford On Sea several times,
| and I've walked and run across the land in question. It's
| not on the nice area of the beach: that's a few hundred
| metres further down the coast, and that's where there are
| things like beach huts. It's a good piece of land for dog
| walkers, though - and there's a footpath running through
| it. I don't think you could realistically build anything
| there, hence the low price.
|
| If you are visiting it, I can highly recommend Verveine,
| a really good fish restaurant about half a mile away, on
| the High Street. A great tasting menu - 8 courses with
| matched wines, for PS130 - much cheaper than London, just
| like the land prices. Excellent desserts.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The neighbor comment to you shows the actual plot of
| land, using publicly available government records, and
| it's a tiny sliver of a cliff that has pre-existing right
| of way claims and basically impossible to develop on.
| Indeed, it WAS purchased for 7000 pounds, so you should
| probably stop lying.
| leashless wrote:
| As noted, the 7000 was a transaction fee on the land
| transfer.
|
| We have an independent valuation on file at >1M.
|
| Please show some common sense here. You can't just
| purchase chunks of English coastline for 7000. If you
| could, half of the middle class people in London would
| own their own stretch of beach!
|
| I'm shocked at how badly people want to twist the facts
| to suit their own prejudices.
|
| Stop mucking around.
| phphphphp wrote:
| The reason you cannot "just" purchase "chunks" of the
| English coastline is because most of our coastline
| belongs to either local authorities or the crown estate.
| There is no sane business case for owning an acre of
| beach because a local authority will never grant planning
| permission to build anything worthwhile on it, so you
| would "own" a chunk of beach for no reason other than to
| inherit the burden of managing a piece of land (and who
| knows what that entails when councils often have very
| expensive shoreline protection projects to fund!). There
| is no financial sense in local authorities carving up
| beaches into chunks and selling them to Londoners for a
| few grand, it's a patently absurd suggestion. The reason
| this is a rare opportunity is the same reason it sold for
| so little: it's pointless, for both buyer and seller.
| It's not much different from owning a piece of the moon,
| or a square of land in Scotland so you can pretend to be
| a "Lord".
| rideontime wrote:
| If this is how you're going to respond to very specific
| questions that provide evidence, you can't complain if
| nobody believes you.
| leashless wrote:
| See neighbouring comments. Docs are on file, deal is
| solid.
| phphphphp wrote:
| this is an international website, there's lots of people
| on this website from all over the world... I am from the
| UK. I am writing this comment from the UK. I have
| extensive knowledge of land and property prices in the
| UK, but that's not particularly important, because
| anybody can operate Google from anywhere in the world.
|
| For example, a quick Google search will show that you can
| buy coastal land _with houses on it_ for less than PS1.7m
| so PS1.7m for land that you cannot develop is an absurd
| suggestion. You can buy a 4 bedroom apartment moments
| from your piece of land... for PS650k:
| https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/127693028
|
| You're being intentionally evasive, given you've been
| shown both land registry records (which, fyi, if are
| wrong, then the seller has avoided _hundreds of thousands
| of pounds_ in stamp duty and HMRC will not look kindly on
| that when they receive my email) and an auction website
| where the land was sold (for the same price listed with
| the land registry).
|
| I will literally buy that piece of land from you, right
| now, for the list price, if you can show any evidence it
| is worth that amount. You can buy parking spaces all over
| the UK for PS7k, you can even buy houses in the north of
| England for ~PS7k! The idea that a small piece of beach
| the size of my house that cannot be built on is worth
| more a _parking space in London_ is ridiculous -- let
| alone worth more than a mansion down the road from the
| beach. You could buy 1.72 acres in London for less than
| PS1.7m.
| leashless wrote:
| If you are a really serious about this, I don't see why
| the sellers of the land would not be happy to take you up
| on the offer.
|
| As noted in the other comment, we do have an independent
| valuation on file.
|
| The deal is legitimate. If you feel like following
| through, do feel free to drop me an email.
| likeabbas wrote:
| I bet the "seller" made the sale to another wallet they
| control to make it look like the purchase price was 7000
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Having bought and sold property in the UK and comparing it to
| Sweden, for example, then I can only say that the UK process is
| archaic and incredibly cumbersome. So this is a very
| interesting place to improve the process. If you can get the
| legal process to stick and not end up with some edgecase
| situations where people end up losing their right to the
| property, this I think could be of real value to the UK.
|
| Disclosure: I have known @leashless since way before Ethereum.
| leashless wrote:
| Hey Thomas.
|
| Yes! The key here is the failover to English Common Law: if
| something breaks the failover is binding arbitration with a
| technically sophisticated arbitrator who will come in, figure
| out who owns what, make the awards, job done. Obviously
| that's minimal protection if (for example) somebody has their
| cryptocurrency stolen and it's just _gone_ - but ownership of
| the physical property isn 't subject to those kinds of
| misfortunes. It's 100% under law, as you would expect!
| propertea wrote:
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Unless you sign a real contract in the real world moving the
| ownership of said gold bar from you to me, all your NFT is is a
| very expensive piece of paper that says "pinky promise it's
| yours" while the bank holding it has it filed under
| "Mattereum", and it's all that matters. I can't go there and
| pull it out of the vault, without you being there.
|
| NFTs are worthless, unless you have official ownership of the
| thing. And if that's the case, then why the hell would I use an
| NFT ?
| leashless wrote:
| Of course! Everything we do involves the creation and
| execution of binding legal contracts under UK law.
|
| The blockchain is being used as a transactional technology
| here, not as a jurisdiction!
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| So... you give me a contract (that you made me sign, right
| ? You don't consider the existence of the NFT the
| signature?).
|
| At what part do I need a blockchain to prove that I did,
| indeed sign the contract that we both have a copy of and
| that will be the only thing that matters in case of a legal
| disagreement ?
| leashless wrote:
| https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M... this is from the most
| senior civil judge in the UK
|
| Have a read, I think it will clarify the matter for you.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Blockchain is an awful technological choice to serve that
| purpose.
| leashless wrote:
| That's not our experience. It's pretty hard to do an
| instantaneous transfer of very large sums of money, with
| atomic transactions of some complexity, using any other
| system we are aware of.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| With all due respect, these attributes you've described
| are irrelevant:
|
| - Large sums of money. Ok? Standard-issue transactional
| databases can transact in large numbers just fine. No
| problem there...
|
| - Atomic transactions of some complexity. How does
| blockchain help here? It doesn't. There are other systems
| doing some checks, after which a transaction is
| committed. That very same system could just as easily use
| a centralized transactional database
|
| The _only_ advantage a blockchain has is allowing
| arbitrary untrusted writers to the database. Exceedingly
| few situations require this, and you pay a very hefty
| price for that feature. Acknowledging that there 's an
| authority in your system (the legal system) means you do
| not need this feature of blockchains.
| leashless wrote:
| Transactional databases have to settle later. We do not
| want settling later, we want an atomic swap: cash for
| real estate. And we don't want to be holding either the
| cash or the real estate on behalf of these third parties.
|
| It sounds to me like you haven't understood the way we
| are using an atomic transaction to execute multiple legal
| contracts in a single event?
|
| Anyway, we built it, it works. If you are confident a
| centralised database is better, you could always build a
| service to do this thing that we do without all these
| blockchain overheads.
|
| Have fun!
| the_gastropod wrote:
| You're just deferring the settlement! Someone still must
| settle the ETH to their preferred actual currency.
| doliveira wrote:
| People go through these long legal routes because they're,
| well, legally binding. Are your NFTs proven to be legally
| binding?
| leashless wrote:
| Proven is always a strong word. But they're
| https://lawtechuk.io/explore/ukjt-digital-disputes-rules
| integrated into legal contracts using this rule set and
| that's well understood. There's no real problem with smart
| contracts under English law: there's clear evidence of intent
| to form an agreement, a payment is made etc. It's pretty
| uncontroversial.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > transfer time goes down from around 4 months in the UK to a
| couple of days
|
| I've got no idea what the fuck they are doing in the UK, but
| when I bought a house in the US my deed transfer was processed
| by the county in about six hours.
| Nursie wrote:
| The actual official government registry part of the process
| is negligible.
|
| What takes the time is lawyers talking to each other about
| god knows what, for months on end, for no apparent reason. My
| last house sale in the UK took about 4 months to go through.
| I am glad I don't live there any more.
| grumpymouse wrote:
| I'd love it to be faster, but (when I bought in the UK) a
| lot of the things my solicitor checked were things that I'd
| definitely want to know before handing over money:
|
| Whether the seller actually owns the property or lease, if
| there are other people who would have a valid claim on the
| land/building (or historical covenants that would prevent
| the construction of the building there etc). For leasehold,
| verify how long is remaining and so on.
|
| Environmental information (whether the property is built on
| land that regularly floods, whether the site has a history
| of subsidence that could cause a significant risk to the
| building etc).
|
| Also, if you're buying with a mortgage, the mortgage
| company are going to want to have a look at the property to
| know that they're going to get their money back if you
| default on the mortgage and they have to sell it
| themselves.
| leashless wrote:
| Have a look over this: https://passport.mattereum.com/Wes
| t.London.Lets.01/#01_Ident... I think you'll find all
| that information is there, with a very strong legal
| framework around it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > The real estate thing is interesting: transfer time goes down
| from around 4 months in the UK to a couple of days. The only
| delay is the KYCAMLCTFPEPOFACT checking: if that's done as a
| pre-clearing step the transfer of real estate will be
| instantaneous. It took several years to build this capability.
|
| So. The delay is still there, you still need KYC and other
| checks. The speed up is due to transfering paper records to a
| digital system, and has nothing to do with blockchain.
|
| But sure. "NFTs and Blockchain" something something.
|
| Good grief. In a backwards country of Moldova (where I'm from)
| property transfers (and other transfers like changing car
| ownership etc.) are instantaneous and don't need NFTs,
| blockchains or Ethereum. Go figure, must be happening by magic.
| leashless wrote:
| Sure. But in vast tracts of the world - UK, US, many other
| jurisdictions in the G20, and even more in poorer countries -
| land registers are a mess and transfers are _hard_.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Yes. And the solution to that is simplifying and digitising
| them. Blockchains are not required. I mean, if Moldova
| figured it out, so can "many other jurisdictions".
| leashless wrote:
| In the UK that could be 50 years.
|
| Easily.
| leashless wrote:
| In America the land registers are not even state by
| state, they're _county by county_.
|
| It's going to take a while.
|
| The turning circle of these entities is much larger than
| that of Moldova.
| hiq wrote:
| 1. What happens if a user loses their private key linked to an
| NFT, and this NFT is then transferred to another private key?
| Who owns the property then?
|
| 2. Why does this need a blockchain?
| leashless wrote:
| 2. first: simultaneous atomic execution of a stack of legal
| contracts (six is the most we have done) as a single atomic
| unit, with payment and proof of signing as part of the
| system.
|
| Also there's no other way of doing an e-commerce style
| purchase for something which is too expensive to pay for
| using a credit card. You can't buy land using Apple Pay.
|
| 1. See the above answer about somebody dying and leaving the
| NFT behind. Basically the NFT is stripped of its legal
| meaning, and then a clean NFT is reissued. You need a legal
| dispute raised before this can be ordered by a court, and
| that's the only situation under which it occurs.
| hiq wrote:
| 1. What's the point of using a public blockchain[0] if this
| decentralized NFT can actually be rendered moot by the
| legal system and a new one replace it at will?
|
| 2. Atomicity is a common property of database transactions,
| not something unique to Ethereum, so I'm not sure I follow
| the blockchain requirement for this.
|
| You mention e-commerce style purchases but the legal side
| of things seem to imply that it's still more complicated
| than buying something on Amazon: the NFT only has the
| meaning you're willing to give it; if someone sends me an
| NFT you issued, I still need to check that you didn't
| revoke it and that it represents what the seller says.
|
| Your website also mentions a "Mattereum Asset Passport"
| which indicates that the NFT doesn't stand on its own.
| Overall I find it hard to see what the NFT actually brings,
| especially given your other comment mentioning legal
| disputes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879695).
|
| I don't see why you couldn't replace all of that with:
|
| * a database you control
|
| * certificates you issue yourself, signed with your own key
|
| * provide an interface (web or API) facilitating the
| transaction of these certificates between users
|
| [0]: public blockchain as defined there: https://www.schnei
| er.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...
| leashless wrote:
| That's fine - I understand that you don't see why we're
| doing it this way.
|
| But if you actually try to _implement_ a system that does
| what we do, you 'll pretty quickly discover why we do it
| this way.
|
| A lot of your questions here seem to make fundamental
| assumptions which aren't true: if you're interested in
| how our tech works, see http://mattereum.com/lp which is
| a paper from a few years ago which outlines the
| legal/technical strategy in a bit more detail.
|
| With that noted:
|
| (1) the NFT is a faster, cheaper, easier way of doing the
| transaction.
|
| (2) executing legal contracts in an atomic way is harder
| than updating databases in an atomic way. Believe me on
| this.
|
| The NFT purchase triggers a set of legal contracts to be
| executed, and identifies the buyer. Without the legals
| the NFT does nothing. But with the legals alone you're
| looking at months of legal paperwork to transfer a
| property, rather than a single purchase on a site like
| OpenSea.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hiq wrote:
| > (2) executing legal contracts in an atomic way is
| harder than updating databases in an atomic way. Believe
| me on this.
|
| I believe you, but Ethereum doesn't help you for the
| legal part, it can only help you with the database part,
| so it's still unclear why you're using it if you're
| talking about some legal atomicity, whatever that means.
|
| > The NFT purchase triggers a set of legal contracts to
| be executed, and identifies the buyer. Without the legals
| the NFT does nothing. But with the legals alone you're
| looking at months of legal paperwork to transfer a
| property, rather than a single purchase on a site like
| OpenSea.
|
| If the NFT purchase only "triggers" these legal
| contracts, what prevents you from triggering it anywhere
| else?
|
| I don't understand how "triggering" these legal contracts
| the traditional way _requires_ months of paperwork but
| "triggering" from an NFT wouldn't.
| leashless wrote:
| The SPV can, in theory, commit fraud and transfer
| ownership of the asset out from under the SPV owner.
|
| If it does that, the directors are in Deep Shit.
|
| The transactional architecture is basically: paperwork is
| prepared as a set of legal warranties. NFT purchase also
| pays for all of those warranties giving a very strong set
| of legal protections to the NFT purchaser.
|
| The key is simultaneous execution of all the contracts as
| a single atomic transaction without any chance of mis
| execution or somebody changing their mind half way
| through.
|
| Think of it as a vending machine for legal obligations.
| Automated obligation.
|
| Smart contract.
|
| Everything is a Turing machine in the end. Everything can
| be done on paper. All that really changes is defect rate
| and transaction cost.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I'm still struggling to understand it. The blockchain in
| this case _doesn't_ provide a single source of truth. As
| you yourself said, it can be invalidated or a legal
| system can override it. So I can't just "check the
| blockchain" and know the actual ownership. So aren't we
| just back to where we were but with an extra step of
| enriching some miners/stakers?
| leashless wrote:
| What we're moving around on the blockchain,
| _fundamentally_ is liability. The blockchain is an
| accurate register of who's holding precisely which bag if
| something goes wrong. When money changes hands and the
| NFT moves, the risks move around - a new person is being
| protected, the new owner of the NFT.
|
| There's a lot more to transacting property than title -
| condition of the place, planning permission, 50 other
| factors. All of that is being represented as claims, and
| liability if those claims are inaccurate.
|
| Does that make it clearer?
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > I don't see why you couldn't replace all of that with:
|
| > * a database you control
|
| > * certificates you issue yourself, signed with your own
| key
|
| > * provide an interface (web or API) facilitating the
| transaction of these certificates between users
|
| To me this is like saying 'why do we need a network and a
| browser? you could just get them to send you a disk with
| the file you want to look at and install it on your local
| machine.'
|
| You absolutely could do this on a database with a single
| trusted owner, but the real value is in the ecosystem. A
| blockchain allows you to _atomically_ transact across
| multiple instruments and parties. This is not something
| that can reasonably be done on tradfi, which is why there
| are products like flashloans that don 't exist outside of
| these systems.
| hiq wrote:
| > To me this is like saying 'why do we need a network and
| a browser? you could just get them to send you a disk
| with the file you want to look at and install it on your
| local machine.'
|
| I think we disagree of the relative complexity: operating
| smart contracts is way harder and less proven than what I
| described, I think the smart contract vulnerabilities
| described on https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ show that well
| enough.
|
| > A blockchain allows you to atomically transact across
| multiple instruments and parties. This is not something
| that can reasonably be done on tradfi
|
| I've mostly heard of flash-loans to exploit arbitrage
| opportunities that shouldn't be there (e.g. oracle bug)
| or scale up attacks (instead of emptying an address using
| several transactions, one could be enough). Are you sure
| there's no equivalent in HFT?
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > I think we disagree of the relative complexity:
| operating smart contracts is way harder and less proven
| than what I described, I think the smart contract
| vulnerabilities described on
| https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ show that well enough.
|
| It's not really about the complexity, it's about the fact
| that finance is about ecosystems. How things integrate.
| Just like it might not seem that hooking computers
| together is going to get you that much, in fact it does.
|
| By the way, the majority of crypto horror stories at the
| moment are straightforward fraud and corruption, of
| exactly the kind of thing that goes on in tradfi the
| whole time. There are very few that are genuinely about
| bugs in smart contracts.
|
| Flash loans are zero counterparty risk, zero credit risk
| for the lender - because if the transaction succeeds then
| the loan was returned, if it wasn't returned then the
| transaction didn't happen. This would be possible in a
| closed ecosystem (but much less valuable - limiting what
| you could do with the borrowed money), but the number of
| institutions you'd have to get to agree to support a
| cross institutional transactional API means that it's not
| practically possible for tradfi to offer an equivalent
| kind of product.
| lgreiv wrote:
| As much as I always liked the idea of a more frictionless
| system for the transfer of asset ownership, I still have too
| many open questions on the integration with the legal system of
| the participants.
|
| Say you have the NFT that claims ownership of a house. Now the
| local court allocates half of the house to your ex-husband whom
| you've just divorced. How is this (exemplary) case handled on
| the chain? How is any repossession through local legal system?
| Who gets to own the house should the private key be lost?
|
| The answer to most of these questions is usually (I do not know
| your solution) some centralized entity that is introduced
| somewhere in the chain.
|
| This may have come of as an attack, but be assured that I am
| genuinely curious whether a solution has been found that I am
| not aware of.
| leashless wrote:
| On the legal side of this, let me quote Sir Geoffrey Vos who
| is the head of civil justice in the UK.
| https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M...
|
| 7. The blockchain is now at a stage in its development
| equivalent to where the internet was in or around 1995. The
| internet was unstoppable in 1995 and blockchain technology is
| unstoppable now. It will become ubiquitous in all major
| industrial and financial sectors, simply because it allows
| for the immutable recording of data, thereby reducing
| friction in commercial and consumer transactions and
| obliterating the scope for dispute as to what has occurred.
|
| 8. As the Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice in
| England and Wales, I hold an office that pre-dates modern
| trade in derivatives and reinsurance, even steam engines,
| powered flight, and certainly the internet. I am particularly
| and obviously concerned about the reputation and development
| of English law and the jurisdiction of England and Wales.
|
| 9. Many people do not realise that English law governs
| trading in EUR600 trillion of OTC derivatives annually, in
| EUR11.6 trillion in metals trading, in PS250 billion in M&A
| deals, and in PS80 billion in insurance contracts every year
| - just to take a few examples. My hope is that English law
| will prove to be the law of choice for borderless blockchain
| technology as its take up grows exponentially in the months
| and years to come.
|
| (quote ends)
|
| Point being none of this is happening outside of the
| framework of law: _transfer of ownership_ is the objective of
| the system. If you 're legal owner of the house and a court
| takes half of it off you, the legal package around the NFT
| kicks in, breaks the tie between the NFT and the land (yes,
| there's an authoritative way of indicating this) and you then
| figure out what to do with the remaining property rights.
|
| When dealing with land, the legal system is always primary.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| > The blockchain is now at a stage in its development
| equivalent to where the internet was in or around 1995.
|
| You might be able to get away to comapring it to p2p file
| sharing services like napster but not the internet
| lottin wrote:
| So the NFT part is entirely redundant?
| leashless wrote:
| The transfer of the NFT, and the associated payments to
| multiple counterparts, are the method by which the
| underlying legal contracts are executed.
|
| This _is_ "Code is Law" in the real world. That's why it
| works.
| lottin wrote:
| The underlying contract stipulates a change of ownership.
| For this change of ownership to have legal effects (iow,
| to _actually happen_ ), it needs to be registered at the
| Land Registry. Transferring an NFT does not magically
| result in a change of ownership being registered at the
| LR, so it's unclear what it actually accomplishes.
| leashless wrote:
| What's exchanged on chain is an option agreement. When
| the option is exercised, the SPV which actually owns the
| land transfers the title on the national register.
|
| There's a liability framework in place to make sure they
| do, and stamp duty etc. are paid when the NFT is
| transferred: that's where the interest is transferred.
| snapcaster wrote:
| But then why does any of this require an NFT? Not even
| require, how does an NFT improve this system in any way?
| rideontime wrote:
| It hypes the sale of one worthless piece of property so
| this guy can make a million dollar profit on it,
| apparently.
| leashless wrote:
| Means you can close on the piece of property in the time
| it takes to do a KYC check, instead of the four months it
| takes on average in the UK.
|
| There are other benefits too but that's the biggie.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No it can't. That four months is the time it takes the UK
| government to update its records and acknowledge a
| transfer of ownership. You can't subvert that, because
| for the UK to recognize you as the rightful owner of the
| land, they need to update their records. The government
| will look at their own records in the court of law, not
| your NFT.
| leashless wrote:
| If you'd like to inspect the contracts do please take a
| look at the Asset Passport linked from the NFT.
|
| They explain exactly how the transfer is effected, and
| how and when the government land register is updated.
|
| Anybody familiar with UK real estate law will find the
| mechanisms reasonably familiar from any property deal
| involving SPVs. (Special purpose vehicles)
|
| The docs are all there for the reading.
| lgreiv wrote:
| Thank you for the answer, I appreciate the time you took to
| write it.
|
| As I understand it, there is a legal vehicle which performs
| the actual transfer and the NFT transfer acts as a signal
| of interest for both parties. In that case, I see the
| benefit that neither party is bound to a certain
| platform/software to initiate the transfer. But overall, I
| admit that I still do not see why this requires zero trust
| and decentralization as primitives in the solution, which
| come with hefty caveats each.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| Thank you for the short summary (assuming you understand
| it correctly); I was having trouble following the legal
| rights and obligations of the different parties.
|
| I also share your confusion: if a central body is trusted
| in this scenario, then why can't the atomic transactions
| be equivalently performed on a public Merkel tree with a
| centralized source of truth?
| lgreiv wrote:
| Actually, immutability may probably not even
| required/desired given the surrounding legal construct
| and the described processes.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the previous post is my
| understanding of the described as a layman. I am pretty
| firm on the technical concepts surrounding blockchain
| solutions, though.
| sgtfrankieboy wrote:
| How do you deal with the physical object being sold without
| anyone caring about the NFT attached to it, and thus not
| transferring it?
| leashless wrote:
| The physical objects are protected from this by being held by
| independent custodians (for vaulted assets like gold) or SPVs
| (for things like land) generally speaking.
|
| If we can't figure out how to prevent this for a given asset,
| we don't touch that asset.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| So you are actually selling SPVs (or share of ownership in
| those) and not land directly then?
| leashless wrote:
| No, the land is being transferred, but it's a two-part
| transaction: an obligation, and then the later fulfilment
| of the obligation by updating the national land registry.
|
| But part one can be done many times before part two has
| to be done.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| So there is ownership in an SPV and the land? Sorry, I
| don't quite get the structure. Does the SPV "encumber"
| the land to make a direct transfer not possible then? If
| I directly own the land, what role has the SPV?
| leashless wrote:
| The NFT imposes an obligation on the SPV. This obligation
| can move around many times.
|
| The NFT owner can then, at their option, pull the land
| out of the SPV (and the NFT is burned in the process!) to
| take ownership via the land register being updated.
|
| The NFT purchase is still the transfer of the interest in
| the land, and the point where stamp duty is paid to the
| UK government. That's where the value transfer happens.
| snapcaster wrote:
| This comment helped me, was missing the NFT being burned
| part and seeing this is like an options contract
| leashless wrote:
| Like a warehouse receipt, or several other things - this
| pattern repeats in many different areas of trade, and
| what people call it and how precisely they do the legal
| paperwork varies.
|
| But yes: you have the token, you have the right to the
| thing, and the supporting legals implement consequences
| in the real world _or on chain via escrows_ if that right
| is not met.
|
| https://medium.com/union-finance-updates-ideas/union-
| partner... for example.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Thanks, I see. The NFT purchase gives ownership of SPV
| and directly putting the name in the land register burns
| the NFT, i.e., NFT does not give direct land ownership
| immediately? Unless, of course, direct ownership in the
| UK is possible without being named in the land register
| (interest/tax is different) - don't know the specifics
| there.
|
| In other countries this could be similar to signing a
| contract to purchase land which creates interest and tax
| liability prior to entry in registry, but final source of
| who owns it in the end is a registry.
| leashless wrote:
| Yes I think that's pretty much exactly it. We operate in
| a way which works in 170 countries (or a few less, there
| are some exceptions for real estate because it's very
| very localised). Getting down to the legal fundamentals
| really helps: "who is paying who for what?" and as long
| as the underlying transaction is clean, clear and well-
| understood, there is pretty much always a way to make it
| work legally.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| That takes a day in The Netherlands.
|
| Source: experience buying houses and I worked on one of the
| systems for a year at the Land Registry (years ago, before
| Ethereum was a thing).
|
| Fees are very low too.
| leashless wrote:
| The overhaul to get the Netherlands to that point took about
| 10 years, if I recall - I saw a talk by a team from your Land
| Registry talking about scanning goat hide parchments in Old
| Dutch into the property rights database!
|
| It's a pretty impressive system overall:
| https://www.elra.eu/enriching-the-data-from-the-cadastre-
| and... and in jurisdictions with this kind of sophistication
| obviously there's less need for alternative solutions.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Yeah, I worked on a system where they wanted to make this
| accessible - until someone realised that yeah, OCR doesn't
| work on 300 year old documents :)
| runako wrote:
| Since other people are asking similar questions, I will follow
| up with some specific questions rooted in my ignorance of the
| UK property system (I am in the USA).
|
| Are you saying that in the UK it takes 4 months to transfer
| ownership of a gold bar or a collectible item? Do real estate
| transactions really take 4 months in the UK? Do you know if
| there are many other countries where ownership transfer is
| similarly cumbersome?
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| It can take many months to do a real estate transfer in many
| countries: in the UK it can be anywhere from a couple of
| months to a year.
|
| Its not a fast system, basically the seller and the buyers
| lawyers have to mutually verify the sale is legal etc etc
| (that the seller actually can sell the property, that its not
| encumbered by a mortgage or such, etc). Buyer needs proof of
| funds, etc.
|
| Pre-clearing the property and potential buyers can cut this
| time to days or hours.
| leashless wrote:
| For gold the issue isn't speed of transfer - you can buy
| and sell gold as an e-commerce type transaction for smaller
| quantities. But when you get up to 400 oz "Good Delivery"
| bars things start to change, as you would expect with
| higher value transfers.
|
| Having a very hard proof of title on a gold bar, which is
| automatically updated if there's any change of
| circumstances, opens up a lot of useful functionality for
| gold owners.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I've bought smaller amounts of gold before (up to a
| couple ounces), and yeah, its just normal ecommerce. Some
| try enforce KYC, most don't.
|
| Interestingly, most gold I've seen above an ounce come
| with a cert and a serial number.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Has this actually been tested legally?
|
| What would happen if somebody used any kind of exploit to
| obtain the NFT? Could I as the new owner of the NFT just go to
| the local police, show the NFT in my wallet, and demand for the
| previous owner to be removed from it?
|
| What happens if the person who owns the NFT dies without
| passing on the access to their wallet to anybody? Is the idea
| that this chunk of land is now eternally owned by a dead
| person? Would you expect the local law to comply with that?
| leashless wrote:
| In all these instances, the answer is litigation under the
| terms of service which are associated with the NFT or the
| warranty contracts which guarantee the status of the
| property.
|
| You bring a case under those terms: "I am the legal owner of
| this land and I want the NFT which was owned by the deceased
| to be reissued to me". The legal binding on the original NFT
| is broken, and a new NFT is issued.
|
| There's also provision under the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce
| digital dispute resolution rules
| https://lawtechuk.io/explore/ukjt-digital-disputes-rules to
| have an arbitrator use a judicial back door in the NFT
| contract to transfer ownership of the NFT if the contract has
| those affordances.
|
| We feel that's very powerful.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > In all these instances, the answer is litigation under
| the terms of service which are associated with the NFT or
| the warranty contracts which guarantee the status of the
| property.
|
| Terms of what service? Who's providing it? Why would
| anybody downstream from the first buyer be held to them?
|
| What if a third party uses an exploit to transfer the NFT
| from the original owner to me, a randomly picked and non-
| participating address? How can I be bound to any terms of
| service or contract by just receiving a random NFT?
|
| > You bring a case under those terms: "I am the legal owner
| of this land and I want the NFT which was owned by the
| deceased to be reissued to me". The legal binding on the
| original NFT is broken, and a new NFT is issued.
|
| What if the issuer no longer exists?
|
| > We feel that's very powerful.
|
| I take this message is an implicit "No, it hasn't been
| tested legally". You might hope it works, but who in their
| right mind would spent more than a million to find out for
| sure?
| leashless wrote:
| Terms of service and legal warranties are executed _on
| each transfer of the NFT_ otherwise the NFT buyer has
| only statutory legal rights. Those people are being paid
| by the new buyer of the NFT specifically to give them
| some real confidence in what they are buying, because the
| Certifiers are putting their assets on the line to back
| the promises made to the NFT purchaser.
|
| If the issuer no longer exists you wind up in court
| claiming title to the land by virtue of having paid for
| it - and you'd be dealing (likely) with receivers or
| other people involved in bankruptcy proceedings. These
| are anticipated contingencies in the contracts we use.
|
| Tested only occurs when a litigation happens. If the
| system is smooth and reliable, we could see 200
| transactions before litigation. However, good lawyers
| read the contracts, make a risk assessment, and decide
| whether or not to proceed.
|
| The contracts we use do pass review with good lawyers.
| These systems are fit for purpose, and a close legal
| review will satisfy most prospective purchasers of that
| fact.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > The legal binding on the original NFT is broken, and a
| new NFT is issued.
|
| oooooooof. Centralization removes what modest benefits
| there were in the first place.
| leashless wrote:
| Not from where we are standing.
|
| For us, the critical features of the blockchain are:
|
| 1) simultaneous execution of a substantial number of
| legal contracts between different counter-parties as a
| single atomic transaction
|
| 2) non-repudiatable payments going to all of those
| contract counter-parties
|
| 3) single source of truth on a publicly visible resource
| so all parties can see what's going on at all times
|
| 4) "litigation-ready" record keeping about who did what
| when
|
| And so on: it's a _better way of doing certain legal
| processes_ not some kind of magic pixie dust.
|
| That's a pretty different take from the general
| blockchain rhetoric, but this represents the UK legal
| consensus on the blockchain. It's a tool, not a
| jurisdiction.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's not a single fucking source of truth since you need
| an oracle to go between the blockchain and the actual
| legal authorities to register ownership. You just have an
| entry in a ledger that says "X owns Y" with zero legal
| backing. I can take your money and give you a receipt but
| that doesn't mean _anything_ if I don 't have the
| authority to sell the thing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's a company with some REAL contracts to pretend that
| the stupid database is authoritative, as if judges love
| stupid law games like that.
|
| A blockchain adds nothing to this, as it is merely an
| extremely stupid and expensive database.
|
| The point is to cash in on crypto hype.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is just being an escrow company. No blockchain
| necessary.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| It is hard to read this list objectively and not conclude
| immediately that while "limited use" "don't scale" "slow" and
| "privacy issues" are hypothetically solvable(?),
|
| the divergence between investment and expectation and reality is
| exactly as great as critics assert,
|
| and that it is indeed entirely the energy and momentum of greed
| and grift that keeps this from collapsing back to its natural
| state,
|
| one I was close to prior to the grift, when the technological
| challenges and approaches were collectively known as "the
| decentralized internet" and there was not dirty, funny, fake, and
| stolen money fueling a narcissistic crime carnival.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Vitalik is a clearly a smart guy but I don't get this "All
| solvable problems" mindset of him and others. Saying stuff like
| "supply chain apps" is a key application at the same time global
| supply chain apps on the blockchain are getting shutdown. The
| _only_ use case of blockchain is coins and those are merely
| unregulated pump-and-dump. Bitcoin was an interesting thought
| experiment but the probably is that you need it to be profitable
| for individual miners (minus pools) to drive _true_
| decentralization and as soon as that is true, economies of scale
| will win and there will be a drive to centralization.
| haakonhr wrote:
| He actually links to the recent Maersk/IBM supply chain
| blockchain shutdown in the introduction, even though he
| mentions supply chains again later on
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| You'd be hard-pressed to find a coffee shop around here that
| accepts ETH. I'm sure there's a significant number of individuals
| that would know how to accept a crypto payment, but shops, small
| businesses, that have accounting requirements... I'm skeptical.
|
| Disclaimer: I hold ETH.
| yunohn wrote:
| Haven't you heard? According to my deep crypto friends, ETH is
| not meant for transactions. It's the security and trust of ETH
| as an L1 that matters, and you should be using <random> L2 coin
| with ZK rollups instead!
| DennisP wrote:
| Totally possible to move ETH on zkrollups.
| everfree wrote:
| L1 coins like ETH are natively compatible with L2s such as
| ZK-rollups. You don't need to use "L2 coins".
| cypress66 wrote:
| Eth isn't scalable (thus cheap) enough to work for a coffee
| shop transaction yet.
|
| Transferring stablecoins is already a better experience than
| SWIFT though.
| michaelgrosner2 wrote:
| I too love remembering to file a 8949 for all my coffee
| purchases
| [deleted]
| conorcleary wrote:
| Shopify has crypto-accepting methods of payments
| giantrobot wrote:
| Awesome. Now my coffee is available at a random cost. If I
| just forgo the coffee it's cloth in crypto tomorrow might be
| able to buy me a PS5. What a wonderful system!
| csisnett wrote:
| When you pay with crypto you get a price in crypto and a
| time to pay it. Is not a random cost you know how much you
| have to pay
| giantrobot wrote:
| The dollar value of that crypto price is variable. Even
| if the price in crypto constantly updates, the cost to
| you in dollars is always in flux. For no discernible
| reason a cryptocoin can fluctuate in value.
|
| Today one coin will buy a coffee while tomorrow one coin
| will buy a PS5. There's no incentive to transact with
| crypto if there's any assumption the value of that crypto
| will go up tomorrow.
|
| For a seller they can get wiped out if they accepted
| payment for coffee in crypto and then the value of that
| coin tanks.
|
| Knowing the crypto price is immaterial. You can never
| know what the _value_ of the item will be. It 's like
| paying for everything with lottery tickets.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nevermind that most crypto systems are purposely
| deflating, because the whole point is to reward the
| people who were there first. So ANY purchase of coffee
| with crypto is self defeating. Your money is ALWAYS more
| valuable tomorrow. Actually smart people have known for a
| hundred years that's a stupid way to run an economy and
| people respond to it by hoarding and it basically
| eliminates economic activity from happening at all.
| everfree wrote:
| Any purchase of anything for any reason is self-defeating
| by this logic, due to the opportunity cost of forgoing
| investment.
| skilled wrote:
| Is Vitalik like the one sane guy in crypto that doesn't actually
| try to be a _bro_ and simply has an idea of his destiny and is
| living through it? I don 't follow crypto almost at all, and
| HN/Twitter are probably the only two places where I will ever
| hear about it.
|
| I don't know him personally but from what I have seen - Vitalik
| has a lot of great qualities as a person (even outside of crypto,
| he makes good points on society), and when he does share his
| thoughts on crypto, it comes off as non-invasive, just ideas and
| plans that make sense and could be implemented in a way that
| doesn't push people around.
|
| Who else in crypto does this?
| chrischattin wrote:
| > Is Vitalik like the one sane guy in crypto that doesn't
| actually try to be a bro
|
| > I don't follow crypto almost at all
|
| Well, that would explain it :).
|
| There are tons of brilliant people working in the space. It is
| the most exciting frontier in tech with the greatest potential
| to positively impact humanity, imo.
| skilled wrote:
| Hence, my question. Who else does this? I was being curios.
| chrischattin wrote:
| Basically everyone who posted in the original P2P Forums
| with Satoshi back in the day is smart and interesting, imo.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > greatest potential to positively impact humanity
|
| That's a bold claim. So far, I haven't seen much sign of
| anything even remotely like "positive impact".
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| I think there are some things that can be seen as having a
| "remotely" positive impact.
|
| Here's one possible example:
| https://docs.klimadao.finance/blogs/carbon-faq
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > Is Vitalik like the one sane guy in crypto that doesn't
| actually try to be a bro and simply has an idea of his destiny
| and is living through it?
|
| They are the same picture.
| 127 wrote:
| neals wrote:
| We do, but we're not visible at all. Just grinding along while
| everybody is bro-ing.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Lefteris who now develops rotki but was part of the white hat
| DAO team, Justin bons on twitter, @cobie in his own chaotic
| good way, and Laura Shin with her podcast and and Bennett
| Tomlin and Cas Piancey at the Crypto Skeptic podcast.
|
| Mostly Everyone else is indeed some level of full of shit.
| mypastself wrote:
| I feel it's almost a shame he isn't utilizing his intellect and
| thoughtfulness in a domain more obviously useful for humanity,
| but he might have just gone to sell ads for a FAANG if he
| weren't a crypto pioneer.
|
| Also, even as someone who's dabbled in the space and found it
| lacking in many areas, I can't say with any degree of certainty
| that there's _no_ future in his particular flavor of the
| blockchain technology.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I really think cryptographic proof of identity tied to a
| wallet will become crypto's killer app in the post-AI era.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why would I want all of my logins on one easily hackable,
| publicly available 24/7 by tech requirement, deeply
| connected system? It's an advertiser's dream to have one ID
| that will track me through all of the internet. Fuck that.
| greyman wrote:
| What are those obviously more useful domains AND one tech
| person can have a very big impact in them?
| mypastself wrote:
| Whatever Elon Musk's shortcomings might be, he applied his
| intellect and skills to self-evidently useful domains such
| as EVs and space travel. It seems Vitalik is convinced his
| tech is beneficial to a similar extent, but I don't share
| his enthusiasm, at least not at this point.
| DennisP wrote:
| But before doing all that, Elon Musk built an online
| payment system.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| And before that, he and his brother built an early
| precursor to Google Maps.
| mypastself wrote:
| To my understanding, he was less individually influential
| in that particular company, which is the reason why I
| omitted it in my examples. Because in my view, developing
| an online payment system in 2000 is a far more important
| project than developing a Proof-of-Stake blockchain with
| Turing-complete smart contracts in 2022.
|
| But your point stands: he may well go on to do much
| better things.
| bmitc wrote:
| He was kicked out of if not fired from PayPal is why you
| left it out.
| mypastself wrote:
| Not sure what you're getting at.
|
| If you think I'm trying to hide Elon Musk's failures, I'm
| disappointed.
|
| There are numerous message boards where Musk is presented
| as either an unassailable genius whose every word is
| gold, or an evil Apartheid profiteer who lucked and
| bullied his way into any success.
|
| I expect slightly more nuanced takes from this board. You
| evidently do not.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Whatever Elon Musk's shortcomings might be, he applied
| his intellect and skills to self-evidently useful domains
| such as EVs and space travel.
|
| The self-evidence of such is unknown to me.
| Errancer wrote:
| Genuine question but how is space travel self-evidently
| useful?
| sergiosgc wrote:
| A couple non contestable points:
|
| 1. It has been useful so far as a challenge for
| technological development that finds other uses on the
| ground, and this is certainly not about to change;
|
| 2. It has been useful so far, in direct applications, and
| there are still direct uses to be covered (dangerous
| asteroid avoidance, as an example);
|
| 3. It tackles the SPOF we have as a species: living on a
| single planet;
|
| But the more important one, for me, is one that is
| contestable. Space faring provides humans with an
| aspirational goal. Without a long term goal, we are
| reduced to either an hedonist life, or a never-ending
| struggle against entropy. We are better, as individuals
| and as a society, when there is something to long for in
| the horizon.
| bgitarts wrote:
| The first two points can be said about cryptography
| mypastself wrote:
| Preservation of species, provided you accept that as an
| axiom. Also more immediate benefits such as reusable
| rockets, affordable satellite Internet etc.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| NASA Spinoff Technologies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
|
| 20 Inventions We Wouldn't Have Without Space Travel
| (actual post from NASA themselves):
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-
| would...
| pessimizer wrote:
| Those are evidence that unrestrained spending on
| scientists will generate incidental, largely unrelated
| discoveries. If we had poured as much money over as much
| time into the study of ghosts and psychic phenomena, we'd
| be able to make a similar list.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Your statements do not follow, much less is your initial
| premise demonstrably true as a generalized statement
| about all scientists.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| "Space travel" not so much at present. But reduced cost
| access to space, for sure.
|
| - geolocation (GPS, GLONASS, etc.) - communications
| (Starlink, Iridium, etc.) - earth sensing (weather,
| climate, etc.)
|
| All of these are multibillion $ activities that benefit
| from lowered launch costs.
| spir wrote:
| Let me gently point out the irony of you acknowledging
| Vitalik's intellect while simultaneously assuming that
| Vitalik, as such a smart person, hasn't puzzled through why
| the crypto industry will end up being obviously useful for
| humanity.
|
| Do you think it's more likely that Vitalik is mistaken that
| crypto is obviously useful for humanity, or that he knows it
| isn't and doesn't care, or that your assessment of crypto
| being useless is incorrect?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Do you think it's more likely that Vitalik is mistaken
| that crypto is obviously useful for humanity, or that he
| knows it isn't and doesn't care, or that your assessment of
| crypto being useless is incorrect?
|
| I find it funny that you think this is an answerable or
| useful question, rather than an appeal to authority.
| mypastself wrote:
| My original claim was about his particular flavor of the
| tech, not crypto in general.
|
| But in any case, there's a difference between good
| judgement and intellect, and a difference between an idea
| and its execution. If he's truly puzzled through Ethereum's
| usefulness, he hasn't offered an argument that's convincing
| enough to me. However, I can still admire the thought and
| skill that went into its implementation.
|
| It is of course entirely possible that I'm thoroughly
| mistaken.
| freejazz wrote:
| Why do people ask serious questions like this predicated
| upon some judgment of the guy's character. It's like a
| spooky kind of hero worship. As if only one of them could
| be right or wrong
| sophrocyne wrote:
| This.
|
| Vitalik has demonstrated an exhaustively thoughtful
| approach to building technology, is exceptionally humble,
| and seems to deeply contemplate the fifth-order
| implications of decisions being made.
|
| It seems absurd to me that people think someone like this
| has not sufficiently thought through the societal value of
| their life's work.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It seems absurd to me that people think someone like
| this has not sufficiently thought through the societal
| value of their life's work.
|
| Is this a friend of yours? Because you have more
| confidence in him than I have with people I know
| personally. Sounds parasocial.
| sophrocyne wrote:
| pessimizer writes: > Is this a friend of yours? Because
| you have more confidence in him than I have with people I
| know personally. Sounds parasocial.
|
| If only! Given you've tied your identity to pessimism,
| which I assume implied you see it as a virtue, I think
| you might be somewhat more inclined to misanthropy than
| me. And that's ok. :)
| robocat wrote:
| > pessimizer
|
| I'm guessing there's an intentional link with
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessary (from Latin
| Pessarium) as well as the computing term pessimal (same
| root as pessimism, from French pessimisme, from Latin
| pessimus "worst") and optimizer.
| zpthree wrote:
| Here is a blog post where he claims the halting problem
| is not undecidable:
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/04/01/cantor.html "patent
| pending on this research"
|
| He has a dangerous combination of self-delusion +
| intelligence
| sthomer wrote:
| This is an April Fool's Day joke...
| mxwsn wrote:
| That was posted on April fools. That's not the only one
| he's done, either.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Ha, what irony? "I am smart in one area so I am therefore
| smart in everything" is the original sin of crypto (and,
| frankly, tech in general).
|
| Go back through HN threads on the countless crypto failures
| and frauds and count how many times some variation of "I
| don't understand, they were so smart!" comes up. Or the
| threads leading up to those failures where the defenders
| invariably trot out "there are a lot of smart people
| involved in this, you seriously think you know better?"
| kirevmaco wrote:
| Sergey Nazarov. Here's a recent talk he gave:
| https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=lMHaQGB1Wdc
|
| In case the above doesn't work:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMHaQGB1Wdc
| ignoramous wrote:
| snopyta.org doesn't load for me. Here's a (low-res) mirror:
| https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/lMHaQGB1Wdc
| kirevmaco wrote:
| There are many Invidious mirrors other than snopyta.org,
| here you can get the video link for any of them:
| https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=lMHaQGB1Wdc
|
| I posted a youtube.com link as well.
| Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote:
| Everyone is free to indulge in naivety all day long, believing
| the legend that Vitalik is just a nice independent guy who does
| all of this for the greater good and does not care about money,
| but the entities behind him are quite notorious for exactly the
| opposite:
|
| _By May 2017, the nonprofit organization (Enterprise Ethereum
| Alliance) had 116 enterprise members, including ConsenSys, CME
| Group, Cornell University 's research group, Toyota Research
| Institute, Samsung SDS, Microsoft, Intel, J. P. Morgan, Cooley
| LLP, Merck KGaA, DTCC, Deloitte, Accenture, Banco Santander,
| BNY Mellon, ING, and National Bank of Canada. By July 2017,
| there were over 150 members in the alliance, including
| MasterCard, Cisco Systems, Sberbank, and Scotiabank._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's easy to paint conspiracy theories and it's hard to
| actually do the work. Vitalik is not in any way attached to
| the EEA - he's just some guy doing work because he thinks it
| will lead to good things. I think relative to most of the
| cryptosphere, or most of _tech_ even the guy is practically a
| saint. Remember these are actual people behind the screens
| when you spew comments like these.
| Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote:
| It's easy to gag opponents with "conspiracy theories" when
| you don't cut through the actual message. Academician
| Andrey Sakharov also did his work thinking it will lead to
| good things. Later in his life he had the gut to admit he
| was wrong. A researcher's good intentions and the actual
| use of his product when it falls into the hands of those
| who sponsored the work are orthogonal.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| It was mainly "sponsored" by the ICO, i.e. crowd funded.
| I see your criticism as generally valid but the facts are
| upside down in that comment. Ethereum was neither founded
| nor supported by evil corporations, on the contrary for
| years the established mainstream lobbied against
| cryptocurrencies until one by one they flipped when they
| realized what smart contracts could be used for. Take
| someone like Warren Buffett, he's still doing it even
| now.
|
| Ethereum and the crypto space are at a crossroads for
| sure. You have chains like Monero on the one side, many
| in the Ethereum community walking a tight rope trying to
| balance grassroots free software development with mass
| adoption, and on the opposite end of the spectrum you get
| stuff like Solana, the venture capital bro chain.
| DennisP wrote:
| Vitalik's organization is the Ethereum Foundation. The EEA is
| a separate organization founded later by other people.
|
| (Personally though I don't see anything wrong with
| corporations using the technology.)
| [deleted]
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I think he's more likely to end up with ,,suicide" than like
| SFB
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| That organization doesn't have anything to do with Ethereum's
| decision making infrastructure.
|
| I can make a "Linux Enterprise Alliance" with those companies
| and it wouldn't necessarily have any influence on Linux or
| Linus.
| Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote:
| True that, and I am pretty sure that humble, modest and
| good-intentioned guys working on a project that attracts
| the biggest sharks in the business can certainly fight
| against trillion dollar assets of the latter with their
| bare scientific rigor and austerity to defend their work
| from any possible overtake.
|
| I hope everyone else also shares this belief, this is how
| we create belief systems that outlive their subjects and
| may go on to float freely among platonic solids and
| spherical cows in vacuum, forever.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| As much as I would like to argue against it, things do
| degrade over time. It is very much unknown how much
| Linus' passing will change linux ecosystem as a whole (
| and one could argue some of his original vision was
| distorted already ). It is a king problem. Even if you
| find one good king among all men, what are the odds
| whoever follows will be at least as good? Usually not
| great.
|
| And ethereum is very much new. While I personally think
| it will exist for a little longer, because there is now
| real money behind it, I think you are right on that
| generic point ( if I understood your argument correctly
| ).
| Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote:
| You parsed my sarcasm right.
|
| It's apt that you bring up another leader, whose
| ostensible independence from big-money-driven agendas
| went up in smoke with his initial refusal, then
| embarrassed acceptance of the CoC that was peremptorily
| imposed on the Linux project.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| >Is Vitalik like the one sane guy in crypto
|
| In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King
| nyolfen wrote:
| https://dark.fi/
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Most of the OG's are like this, because they are more
| interested in decentralized technology than money. You'd
| probably like the writings / videos from these people:
|
| Andreas Antonopoulos, Polynya, Erik Voorhees, Chris Burniske,
| Kevin Owocki, Chris Dixon
| qabqabaca wrote:
| Chris Dixon has no business on this list. He is A16z's chief
| crypto shill on Twitter and blocks anyone who even remotely
| questions crypto/web3/blockchain.
|
| To say he is more interested in decentralized technology than
| money is laughable given his complete inability to engage in
| any sort of healthy discussion about it. He is bad for the
| space.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| His love of decentralised technology explains the 75% premine
| of etherium right
| metadat wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16183700 (2018)
| DennisP wrote:
| Most of which was sold to the general public. The sale was
| open for six weeks, widely known in the crypto community,
| and even reported in mainstream press after its first
| couple days made it one of the largest crowdsales to date.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| It sounds very similar to how Russian privatization was
| done. Perhaps vitalik took inspiration from the oligarchs
| back home
| DennisP wrote:
| It sounds more like western IPOs. Russian privatization
| distributed free ownership vouchers to the Russian
| population, who mostly weren't interested and sold them
| to the enterprise managers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia#Vou
| che...
| andrepd wrote:
| ~weren't interested~ Were busy trying not to starve to
| death and sold anything they had for whatever price
| somebody would offer. Ftfy
| DennisP wrote:
| Valid point...and even less like Ethereum's presale.
| jdhn wrote:
| Andreas Antonopoulos is one of the best (if not the best)
| Bitcoin proponents out there today. Very informative guy.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| For crypto newbies like most on HN are, maybe. To be fair to
| him he does a decent job explaining Bitcoin so that non-nerds
| can understand the basics. But beyond that if you get more
| into it you'll find he's a controversial figure like most are
| in Bitcoin. There aren't really any leaders and either way
| leader following is the exact opposite of what cryptocurrency
| is about anyway. The vast majority of the crypto OGs come
| from the cypherpunk sphere and are skeptical of centralized
| power/authorities.
|
| Ironically one common criticism Bitcoin hardcore fanatics
| have is that Antonopoulos is not a Bitcoin maximalist, he's
| Ethereum friendlyand wrote an entire book on that together
| with Gavin Wood.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| Sounds eerily similar to SBF.
| skilled wrote:
| Has SBF ever written a line of code?
| freejazz wrote:
| What's that have to do with it?
| skilled wrote:
| Literally, everything.
| freejazz wrote:
| I certainly don't think anyone is particularly less
| likely to partake in fraud because they did or didn't
| program, but I guess you have a really compelling reason
| why?
| skilled wrote:
| What are you even saying? If you have some personal
| vendetta against Vitalik maybe you should go hash it out
| with him instead of putting it on other people?
| freejazz wrote:
| What have I said that's even remotely personal about him?
| You seem to be really confused. I was replying to a
| thread where somebody asked if SBF had ever programmed,
| as if that had anything to do with SBF's perchance for
| fraud... What point are _you_ making when you say that
| programming is the entire point?
| skilled wrote:
| I'm sorry I think we're just both on completely different
| wavelengths on this issue.
|
| A few things:
|
| - Contemplate why I made my rebuttal in the first place.
|
| - Look up how many open source contributions either of
| these guys have made in the last 7 years.
|
| - And when you're done, ask yourself, "What does code
| have to do with the argument at hand that I am being
| challenged with but incapable of comprehending?".
| freejazz wrote:
| >- Contemplate why I made my rebuttal in the first place.
|
| You can feel free to clearly express yourself at any
| point during this conversation. consider that insisting
| that people read your mind is why you are having this
| issue right now.
|
| >- Look up how many open source contributions either of
| these guys have made in the last 7 years.
|
| who cares? what does it have to do with anything. _that_
| was the question... you insist it is relevant but
| apparently cannot express why
|
| >- And when you're done, ask yourself, "What does code
| have to do with the argument at hand that I am being
| challenged with but incapable of comprehending?".
|
| You are hands-down the worst conversant I've chatted with
| here.
| [deleted]
| DogLover_ wrote:
| If you are just looking for brilliant people, then there is
| Silvio Micali founder of Algorand. He has Turing Award.
| fukthat wrote:
| [deleted]
| kevinak wrote:
| I wonder if people around here know that Vitalik tried scamming
| people with a "quantum computer simulation mining" thing back in
| 2013? Amazing that more people aren't more vary of him.
|
| 1. https://medium.com/bitcoinerrorlog/vitaliks-quantum-
| quest-9e...
|
| 2. https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1273353652447608834
|
| 3. YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUpZkeqhF4
| samkon wrote:
| Considering that he was 19 at the time, and that he dropped
| that project soon after, I think a more charitable reading is
| that a teenager with some big ideas did something unwise.
| bilsbie wrote:
| As a casual observer I never got an update on PoS. How's that
| going?
| v64 wrote:
| The transition to proof of stake occurred in September [1].
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/15/ethereum-switches-to-
| proof...
| Nursie wrote:
| But IIRC there are issues with un-staking?
|
| Definitely a big leap forward in terms of reducing energy
| use.
| v64 wrote:
| EIP-4895 [1] will enable beacon chain withdrawals and will
| be included in the next Ethereum upgrade scheduled for next
| year. No actual release date has been decided yet [2].
|
| [1] https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4895
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/12/01/when-will-
| ethereum-sta...
| meowkit wrote:
| Issues has a negative connotation. Staking withdrawals were
| >intentionally< not enabled to give the system more
| stability in the short term. Unstaking, in a FIFO manner,
| has a roadmap you can read about with a quick web search.
| Nursie wrote:
| OK but AFAICT there has been some upset about how long
| it's taking, and the withdrawal of the timetable for
| this?
|
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/ether-staking-withdrawal-
| sche...
|
| Perhaps I'm wrong and it's all been sorted out now. As a
| die-hard crypto sceptic I'm not always the best informed,
| but I am happy that the energy usage has been addressed.
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Just bagholders of other coins (all the tweets linked in
| this article seem to be Cardano people, sometimes it's
| Bitcoin Maxis) trying to spread FUD. I've yet to see
| anyone who's actually staking Ethereum care.
| jules-jules wrote:
| It will allow restaking and help LSDs trading at a
| discount to NAV close the gap, but other than that, I
| agree noone in the staking community is particularly
| worried about withdrawal activation timelines. Best guess
| based on the latest dev calls is sometime in Q2 2023.
| [deleted]
| didibus wrote:
| The fundamental idea of implementing a cash-like currency
| digitally still makes sense to me.
|
| We've digitized almost everything, doing so with currency makes
| sense.
|
| But the benefits of digitization are normally that it offers
| something better, generally higher scale, lower cost, easier use,
| less hassle, faster, better analytics, or other benefits over
| it's analog version.
|
| The truth is, crypto hasn't done so yet, so the tech just isn't
| there quite yet.
|
| There are some benefits over analog, mostly anonymity and lesser
| scrutiny. And I guess you could include investment bubble as a
| weird benefit right now. Maybe also easy to use for scams and
| Ponzi schemes.
|
| The thing is, those on their own aren't able to attract a large
| user base, it'll attract people who specifically want these
| properties, which is not most people.
|
| Eventually, I hope the tech improves, and when that happens and
| digital currency is truly cheaper and more convenient to use,
| while retaining all the benefit of analog currencies, like
| decentralization, point to point transactions, anonymity, etc.
| And also maybe adding a global non government tied currency to
| the mix. That's when I think it'll truly be impactful and you'll
| see crypto adopted by everyone.
| lovvtide wrote:
| All the speculation stuff is a very wasteful distraction in my
| opinion. In my opinion, the goal should be a currency that is:
|
| 1) Privacy preserving
|
| 2) Scaleable (to billions of transactions per second)
|
| 3) Permissionless (global and free from government
| interference)
|
| 4) Stable (can function as a unit of account, not an investment
| vehicle)
|
| The last one seems like the hardest because it's not just an
| engineering problem, it's also a political problem.
| baby wrote:
| > But the benefits of digitization are normally that it offers
| something better, generally higher scale, lower cost, easier
| use, less hassle, faster, better analytics, or other benefits
| over it's analog version.
|
| > The truth is, crypto hasn't done so yet, so the tech just
| isn't there quite yet.
|
| How do you know this BTW? What are your criterias? If you're
| considering integration of money, the way your bank issues you
| a debit/credit card, and allows you to pay at point of sale
| throughout the world, you're talking about something else:
| integration. This takes a lot of time and money.
|
| If you're talking about running a central bank that's covering
| the entire world, is easy to interoperate with (anyone can
| connect to the network and use it), is easy to build on top
| with (via smart contracts), and costs an infinitely smaller
| percentage of what it costs to run the financial world today to
| run? Then I would say that Ethereum and other state-of-the-art
| blockchains are already winning.
|
| The issue is that if someone doesn't work in the financial
| world, their metrics are not good to understand how to judge
| and compare different financial backbones.
| fergie wrote:
| I'm not sure if I totally believe that this article was
| organically promoted to the front page of HN.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| The other articles making the front page were not "organically"
| promoted either. Everyone games the system.
| flooow wrote:
| I believe there is a small but persistent contingent who would
| very much like HN to care about cryptocurrency, because HN is
| very influential among developers and would lend them much-
| needed credibility. They may or may not be co-ordinating but I
| don't think that would be necessary to get this onto the front
| page.
|
| What I have noticed is, when crypto has one of its periodic
| disasters (e.g. collapse of FTX) the comments are generally
| highly sceptical of the technology, in keeping with the general
| tone of HN. But occasionally 'good news' articles like this one
| get boosted and then the top comments are of notably different
| tone. For example, comments praising Vitalik, a presumed
| billionaire with unknown motives, dubious achievements and a
| unspeakably enormous environmental toll against his name, would
| be very unusual in any other thread.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I'm one of the HN users who upvotes (some) cryptocurrency-
| related topics. I work in the industry, and enjoy reading
| about technical things that I find interesting. I upvote many
| other topics, and crypto-related submissions are definitely a
| minority.
|
| But I upvote what I find interesting, much like you or any
| other user would upvote what you find interesting. Obviously,
| there are many people on HN who don't find crypto-related
| topics interesting (or who only enjoy submissions about
| crypto-related businesses and projects blowing up, of which
| there is no shortage).
|
| I don't think there is a conspiracy here; if anything, I
| think you underestimate the number of developers who are
| primarily interested in the technical aspects of blockchain
| tech.
|
| Also, the things Vitalik posts about are often interesting
| even to people who generally dislike or aren't interested in
| cryptocurrency.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "All solvable problems."
|
| Let us know when they have been solved.
|
| Having been on the web since it went public, there has always
| been a disproportionate amount of prophetic messaging and
| discourse, not to mention advertising, focused on computers. More
| often than not, the predictions are wrong.
|
| Of course, sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the discussion is
| "hype" and serves a commercial purpose. One can expect those
| spreading computer hype will keep trying even when it has a low
| success rate. The www is an inexpensive medium for advertising
| and spreading hype.
| anonu wrote:
| My summary on Vitalik's ETH application ecosystem outlook. 5 key
| application categories:
|
| 1. Money. Post-merge transactions are now faster. bigger push
| towards on-chain transactions thanks to FTX. 3 types of
| stablecoins: centralized, DAO-governed, and governance-minimized.
|
| 2. DEFI: success today in prediction markets like Augur,
| Metaculus, Polymarket. Synthetic assets like replicating stocks.
| Glue layer to trade between assets.
|
| 3. The identity ecosystem: ENS, SIWE (Sign in With Ethereum), PoH
| (Proof of Humanity), POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocol), SBTs.
| 3 main uses: Basic Auth, Attestations, Proof of personhood.
| Privacy is the biggest challenge.
|
| 4. DAOs. Broad term today referring to both governance structure
| (protecting against inside attacks) and implementation
| (protecting against outside attacks). Decentralization is for
| robustness, efficiency, interoperability. New governance
| mechanisms like quadratic voting, futarchy, liquid democracy can
| be valuable for both robustness and efficiency.
|
| 5. Hybrid apps: voting, govt registries, corporate accounting,
| supply chain apps, tracking access auth.
|
| In conclusion: many new applications have limited use today due
| to limitations in tech. Blockchains don't scale and transactions
| are slow. Privacy issues will remain a hurdle. All solvable
| problems. Most important apps will be non-financial and not have
| a token which will make them slow to grow - but will bring
| lasting value to users.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Was this summary brought to us by ChatGPT?
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| So once again, there are no problems crypto claims to solve that
| haven't already been solved already.
| leashless wrote:
| Here is a Boston Consulting Group report which suggests that
| tokenised real assets - various kinds of equity, mostly -
| transacted on chain will amount to $16 trillion a year of
| transactions by 2030.
|
| https://web-assets.bcg.com/1e/a2/5b5f2b7e42dfad2cb3113a29122...
|
| Recognition of on-chain tokenization by monetary authorities: The
| Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)22 recently launched Project
| Guardian, a blockchain-based asset tokenization pilot, in
| collaboration with financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase,
| DBS Bank and Marketnode (SGX joint venture for bonds). The
| project will involve MAS investigating DeFi applications in
| wholesale funding markets by creating a liquidity pool of
| tokenized bonds and deposits to execute borrowing and lending on
| a public blockchain- based network. In wholesale banking
| activities, DBS and JP Morgan have both developed digital assets
| and blockchain technology. Lessons from this project would serve
| as foundation for informing policy markets on the regulatory
| guardrails required to use DeFi while also limiting its risks.
|
| (quote ends)
| rippercushions wrote:
| That report predates the Singapore state investment fund
| Temasek realizing their investment of $275M into FTX had been
| lit on fire and burned to ashes, an event that has resulted in
| awkward questions being asked even in Singapore's pliable
| Parliament. MAS has been bearish on crypto for a while and you
| can rest assured this has not improved their outlook.
| leashless wrote:
| Real World Assets _over_ crypto are not the same as crypto.
| Not at all.
|
| https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/at-the-
| turning...
| senttoschool wrote:
| In blockchain, choose 2/3: security, performance,
| decentralization.
|
| BTC = security, decentralization
|
| ETH PoW = security, decentralization
|
| ETH PoS = security, performance
|
| It also applies to real world tech. For example, Visa is
| performance and security.
|
| This means if Bitcoin or ETH ever wants to process as many
| transactions as Visa, it'll slowly morph into a centralized
| Oracle database.
| rglullis wrote:
| Let's forget "ETH PoW" as it is completely irrelevant. All of
| the community has moved on to PoS, all the relevant projects
| were kept on the fork, etc. To talk about "ETH PoW" on the same
| footing as ETH or BTC shows that you are basing your arguments
| on ideology and not objective truth.
|
| Besides that, your breakdown has other problems:
|
| - None of these three criteria you presented are binary
| attributes. _How_ decentralized and secure are BTC vs ETH? How
| performant is ETH vs BTC?
|
| - One could easily argue that PoS is _more_ decentralized than
| BTC ever will. The capital and resources to start a viable node
| on Ethereum is a lot lower than it is to get a sustaninable
| /profitable BTC miner.
| DSingularity wrote:
| BTC is centralized -- power lies with the miners.
|
| ETH is centralized -- power lies with the large coin holders.
| rglullis wrote:
| > power lies with the large coin holders.
|
| That is not true. This shows a terrible misunderstanding of
| how PoS works.
|
| Stakers are only rewarded in proportion to their stake.
| "Power" in PoS comes from being a validator node, which
| requires the minimum stake of 32 ETH. Having more ETH on a
| node does not give them any power. Yeah, whales could try
| to create many nodes, but they would need 66% of the nodes
| to even consider the possibility of blocking a transaction
| or making a double spend.
| DSingularity wrote:
| So you are saying that by some crypto-magic it is
| technically impossible for groups which collectively own
| more than 2/3 the coins to create enough nodes to
| dominate the protocol?
|
| Because that would be news to me and if so I would be
| misunderstanding things.
|
| But my bet is that you are dismissing the threat of
| whales splitting their holdings to maximize their
| influence. Don't know why though.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Wrong.
| nailer wrote:
| Solana is the busiest blockchain by active wallets and now has
| a higher Nakamoto coefficient (decentralisation score,
| currently about 31) than most of the Eth L2s.
|
| > because the stake amount remained stable while validator
| count increased, it improved to 27 in Q2 and 31 in Q3. The
| improvement continues to put Solana above the industry average
| compared to other L1 networks.
|
| https://messari.io/report/state-of-solana-q3-2022
|
| Way more at:
|
| https://youtu.be/5NDs3Il2J3Q?t=303
|
| Re: Visa, Sol's hit peaks above Visa's global average of 7,500
| TPS recently too.
|
| Not boosting Sol, but if you're going to build, you should
| seriously consider it.
| senttoschool wrote:
| It sacrifices decentralization and it has poor reliability.
| nailer wrote:
| The post you're replying to discusses and measures
| centralisation.
|
| I'm happy to discuss reliability but it doesn't appear
| we're having a conversation.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I have no horse in this game but the Wikipedia page [1]
| doesn't line up with the story you're painting:
|
| > On 30 April and 1 May, 2022, Solana experienced major
| outages due to being taken offline by bots.[18] On 1
| June, 2022 Solana reportedly[19] suffered another outage
| due to a bug in how the blockchain processes offline
| transactions. On 1 October, 2022, the Solana network went
| down for 6 hours due to a single misconfigured node.
|
| In a properly decentralized system, how does 1
| misconfigured node take down the entire system? That
| looks like a single point of failure to me, something
| decentralized systems aren't supposed to have. Can you
| elaborate how your distinguishing reliability and
| centralization in the context of single node failures?
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solana_(blockchain_p
| latform)
| nailer wrote:
| Sure - it's a bug, it's been fixed. The issue occurred on
| 30 Sep and there's a discussion here:
|
| https://solana.com/news/09-30-22-solana-mainnet-beta-
| outage-...
|
| And the fix: https://github.com/solana-
| labs/solana/pull/28172
|
| That's how software works. Things break. They
| particularly break at scale. Nobody's done this before.
| If Eth was as busy it would break too.
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| Ethereum and Bitcoin don't break because they thought
| about "What happens if we get DDOS'd" and added a fee
| market, something Solana _still_ hasn 't properly
| addressed which is why it still falls over when attacked
| by spam.
|
| A network falling over because of high usage or (in this
| case) one validator had a misconfigured node is extremely
| bad.
| nailer wrote:
| Eth and Bitcoin don't have high usage. And the issue with
| the single validator mentioned, as you'll be aware from
| reading https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/pull/28172,
| wasn't a design failure, but a software issue. Bitcoin
| and Eth have those too.
| kayamon wrote:
| They have done it before -- Bitcoin existed first, and
| has kept clearing transactions every ten minutes since,
| and will continue to do so once Solana is long dead.
| nailer wrote:
| Bitcoin and Eth have nowhere near the usage of Solana.
| snapcaster wrote:
| and Solana has way less usage than the average postgres
| DB running webapp xyz
| nailer wrote:
| Nope: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33879077
| snapcaster wrote:
| I don't see how your link disputes my claim
| nailer wrote:
| ok
| spir wrote:
| There's a lot to like about Solana, but one thing to dislike
| is the ongoing claim by the Solana community that Solana is
| actually fairly decentralized.
|
| In reality, Solana is a highly centralized blockchain. Solana
| has zero protocol specs (the code is the spec), one
| production client, one main development organization (Solana
| Labs), limited exposure to the academic research community,
| and the entire network only runs in data centers due to
| extreme hardware & bandwidth requirements.
|
| If we wanted to boil down decentralization into a narrow
| metric (we shouldn't want this, but if we did), that metric
| might be "how many guns to how many heads to force an invalid
| state transition?" And Solana scores very poorly on this
| metric.
| nailer wrote:
| These are good things to be concerned about. There's a
| second client and a second validator in the works, there's
| some stats on datacenter decentralisation in the youtube
| link above
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NDs3Il2J3Q&t=303s - 230
| datacenters, 9% in a single data center. But yes lots of
| work to be done - I don't want to pretend there isn't - but
| also don't want to pretend that a network with far less
| activity has has already done it.
| solumunus wrote:
| You choose security and decentralization for the main chain and
| then use layer 2 for performance. This is the clear path
| forward, pretty well established by now.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| How is that any different than old school banking and
| finance? Using layer 2 for performance requires essentially
| opening an account with a trusted party.
|
| I don't understand what we've gained here.
| ogogmad wrote:
| I don't know about rollups stuff, but Lightning Network-type
| 2nd-layers are prone to flood and loot attacks. I don't see a
| way to make them secure. I'm happy to be enlightened.
| TimJRobinson wrote:
| The lightning network is not a good example of an L2, it's
| extremely basic state channels and won't scale because of
| routing / liquidity issues.
|
| Look into Optimism and Arbitrum for current technology, or
| zkSync, Starknet, Polygon zkEVM for next gen L2's coming
| soon. There's a big list of all the current L2's and their
| tradeoffs at https://l2beat.com
| hanniabu wrote:
| Lightning is more of a sidechain than an L2. And it's
| definitely not a rollup.
| lawn wrote:
| It's only established by Bitcoin maxis. You need performance
| on layer 1 too, the world isn't black or white.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| So you can securely prove that your centralized and insecure
| layer 2 has indeed transfered all of your money away to them?
| Great plan.
| miracle2k wrote:
| No, the layer 2 inherits the trust-assumptions and security
| of the L1.
| lawn wrote:
| This is ridiculos and false.
|
| For instance, with LN you have to be online to secure
| your funds, otherwise you might lose them.
|
| L2 only inherits the security of L1 when it settles,
| which by definition is not that often (that's the whole
| point!).
| everfree wrote:
| Some types of L2, like roll-ups, settle to L1 every
| block.
|
| The "whole point" of L2 is to reduce the amount of
| resources used to settle its transactions on L1. Some
| L2s, like Lightning Network, achieve this by settling
| infrequently. But other L2s, like roll-ups, achieve it by
| batching transactions in clever ways so that less L1
| resources are used on a per-transaction basis.
| DennisP wrote:
| LN's shortcomings are not issues for zkrollups on
| Ethereum. Transactions are stored on chain, just in
| compressed form. A contract checks the validity of all
| transactions before storing them. The proofs are
| expensive to generate, but so cheap to verify that a
| contract can do it on chain.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| If your L2 has the same security and decentralization of
| the L1, then it's another L1. Since it has the
| performance part of things, it can only have either
| security (but then it's centralized, so it could fully
| securely write bullshit, which then gets written to L1),
| or decentralization (and then you get to write unsecure
| bullshit, which has no reason to either be trusted or
| true, and you can write that to your L1).
|
| It could write to L1 immediately, but your writes can
| still not be trusted or right.
| miracle2k wrote:
| The trilemma is not a law of mathematics with binary
| outcomes. It's an attempt to describe certain tensions
| inherent in building blockchains. A great deal of work as
| been done on Ethereum to balance these tensions. Rollups
| increase throughput because they move execution off L1,
| while requiring proof on L1 that L2 executed correctly.
|
| https://www.paradigm.xyz/2021/01/almost-everything-you-
| need-...
| conorcleary wrote:
| See loopring.io
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Aren't they just a failed product at this point? They were
| building an application specific L2 and then full general
| purpose L2s have beat them to market. I know they are
| trying desperately to pivot but they have to be years
| behind at this point.
| janandonly wrote:
| > In blockchain, choose 2/3: security, performance,
| decentralization.
|
| > BTC = security, decentralization
|
| The brilliant thing is that you can stack. In other words, why
| would I want every transaction to be on the blockchain? I could
| just as easily use one of the more than 50 2nd-layer
| "Lightning" wallets and seldom touch the layer 1 blockchain.
|
| So with very little risk you get:
|
| BTC = security, performance, decentralization.
| derivagral wrote:
| > why would I want every transaction to be on the blockchain
|
| I think some of the recent events around FTX and similar are
| exactly why you would want on-chain records, fees or not.
| Actors in this space are (imo) not fully trustworthy.
|
| How does the second layer handle this?
| DennisP wrote:
| In the case of Ethereum's zkrollups, all transactions are
| on-chain in compressed form and fully validated. You're not
| trusting anyone to custody your funds.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| No, with layer 2 you get
|
| Layer 2 = security, performance
|
| Layer 1 = security, decentralization
|
| Just because you added a horse to a cart doesn't make the
| cart neigh nor the horse to have wheels.
| DennisP wrote:
| Some other PoS systems are focused on high performance on
| chain, but ETH PoS is security and decentralization. There are
| over 400,000 nodes staking and validating, and the protocol
| supports quite a bit more.
|
| It doesn't have that much of a performance advantage over PoW,
| but that's what rollups and danksharding are for. Combined,
| they should support 100K tx/sec, while inheriting base-layer
| security properties.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| ETH PoS is more decentralized than ETH PoW was, and more
| decentralized than BTC PoW currently is.
| shudza wrote:
| ETH PoS = security, performance and security (as in finance)
| wittyusername wrote:
| I like the guy, he seems like a genuine technologist / hacker. I
| wish him well.
|
| None of the things he has worked on are any good so far.
| Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff. My definition:
| nobody would choose this stuff at arms length from a financial
| interest in pretending it is the correct technological + business
| choice.
| golergka wrote:
| > Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.
|
| Spoken with a privilege of a first-country citizen with a
| working banking system. I personally know dozens of people who
| use crypto for their main purpose: to transact. Without it,
| they wouldn't have been able to earn their living or have any
| access to their money.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Ah yes here comes the privilege argument to derail legitimate
| discourse. You love to see it.
|
| Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency account.
|
| Where Wise doesn't work the only thing that makes any sense
| are stablecoins from a proper issuer, like USDC (definitely
| _not_ USDT). These are of course issued and controlled by
| centralized entities, making them antithetical to the very
| principles of crypto. They may as well be private scrip
| CBDCs.
|
| Any decentralized/floating-rate coins are utter garbage for
| folks without access to meaningful banking systems in so-
| called third-world countries due to the volatility, embedded
| systemic leverage, high fees and potential long transaction
| times. These folks are the least able to stomach the 90%
| drawdowns (and 100% rug-pulls) we've seen market-wide.
| Frankly, I think the Turkish Lira has outperformed every
| major cryptocurrency for the last year.
|
| What these people need are actual privacy-preserving CBDCs,
| of which there are exactly zero in the market.
|
| Please put away the faux privilege defense. Folks of any
| level of privilege are able to comment meaningfully on the
| fitness of a technical system for purpose. Allow their
| arguments to stand on their own merits.
| [deleted]
| michaelscott wrote:
| Although I agree that the expression that OP made maybe
| wasn't the best, they do have a point.
|
| > _Your first approach should be a Wise multi-currency
| account._
|
| Excellent example; Wise is not available for account setup
| in the vast majority of developing countries, so if that's
| your solution it's already a failure. But why? For the most
| part it seems to come down to banking and currency
| regulations, which is exactly what cryptocurrency (at least
| Bitcoin) was designed to circumvent. I'm not even talking
| about countries that are essentially kleptocracies and have
| moulded their regulations to fit that structure, or
| remittances that have become such a large industry they
| practically power the GDP of a number of extremely poor
| countries.
|
| > _Any decentralized /floating-rate coins are utter garbage
| for folks without access to meaningful banking systems in
| so-called third-world countries due to the volatility,
| embedded systemic leverage, high fees and potential long
| transaction times._
|
| I'm not sure this argument still holds with all the defi
| options today, but if this is an improvement on the status
| quo I guarantee people in third world countries will use it
| in spite of its deficiencies. A central bank that throttles
| access to alternative currency options will practically
| shut down the use of existing banking infrastructure,
| whether it's good or not.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| > Wise is not available for account setup in the vast
| majority of developing countries, so if that's your
| solution it's already a failure.
|
| Do you have a source for this? The closest thing I can
| find is this list of countries where it isn't allowed
| [0], which includes several developing countries but
| certainly not the vast majority of them.
|
| [0] https://wise.com/help/articles/2978049/which-
| countries-can-i...
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Wise is not available for account setup in the vast
| majority of developing countries, so if that's your
| solution it's already a failure.
|
| I was ranking options from worst to best. Best would be
| something like Wise. Second-best would be a stable coin
| from an issuer that isn't an outright fraud. And last
| would be any floating-rate coin.
|
| Last year Bitcoin literally hit transaction fees of 20%
| of the GDP per capita of the worst-off countries and then
| fell 75% in value. I wouldn't wish a system like that on
| my worst enemies let alone of people I claim to be trying
| to help. It was massively outperformed by the Lira. I
| can't even find one that wasn't outperformed by the Lira.
| It may have been designed to meet this need but it
| utterly failed by any measure.
|
| USDC is a strictly better option. And better than that
| would be a USDC like system that preserves privacy issued
| by a central bank.
|
| > I'm not sure this argument still holds with all the
| defi options today.
|
| Literally 10% of the entire TVL of DeFi was lost last
| year to hacks and shows somehow no sign of slowing down.
|
| The real privilege is believing that poor folks are as
| risk tolerant as you are in a first-world country and
| that this is somehow a better solution than a nice home-
| grown payment network like M-PESA.
|
| It's like a cocaine-powered ruined fresco of the
| financial system.
| moritonal wrote:
| Neat, in what kind of industry/countries have you seen this?
| golergka wrote:
| Russia, Ukraine and refugees from these countries all
| around the globe.
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| Russia doesn't have refugees, it has a tiny number of
| people seeking asylum after protesting against the
| regime. Middle class Russians fleeing conscription are
| not exactly comparable with people _seeking refuge_ from
| Russian bombs, are they?
| michaelscott wrote:
| Uptake in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and a number of other African
| countries has been climbing
| dayve wrote:
| I am based in Nigeria, a 'third-world country', I work
| remotely for a company domiciled in the US and get paid in
| Stablecoins (USDC & USDT). Crypto has been a life saver for
| me. Before that, one alternative was to get a USD account in
| a local bank & get paid via Western Union. The challenges are
| numerous. To setup a USD account locally takes a long time &
| multiple requirements. Assuming that hurdle is crossed, the
| more challenging issue is how restrictive Central bank
| policies are. In an economy with high inflation & parallel
| market rates for USD, there's an incentive for the government
| to retain as much USD in the economy due to poor trade
| policies preventing $ revenues from coming in. Withdrawal
| limits have been reduced over the last 2 years alone, & the
| flexibility to make $ payments is hindered by low transaction
| limits with a USD card ($15 per transaction). To navigate
| this, I tried creating a virtual USD bank account with a
| local Fintech, with which to receive salaries. However these
| virtual accounts can only receive payments from US accounts
| (via ACH transfers) so can be restrictive. The most seamless
| solution to my problem has been to setup a crypto wallet. In
| minutes I receive my salary and can spend any amount,
| whenever I like. Plus, it makes it easier to save in USD,
| avoiding the local currency devaluation (The Naira has fallen
| 52% in the last 7 years under the current regime). So
| speaking as a 'third-country citizen', crypto provide a far
| more effective banking system.
| simiones wrote:
| I am very curious of two things:
|
| 1. Are you actually transacting with others directly in
| USDC/USDT? I.e. are there shops where you actually buy
| things through your crypto wallet, or are you converting to
| USD/Naira and using that?
|
| 2. Are you self-hosting that wallet, or is it actually an
| account on some exchange?
|
| Either way, I doubt that working remotely as an employee of
| US companies is a very common way of life in your country,
| so I don't think this supports the GP's point as much as it
| appears.
| dayve wrote:
| 1. I transact with others in Naira, crypto is hardly a
| payment option in shops here.
|
| 2. I use an exchange to receive USDC, which mean I don't
| need to worry about gas fees while self hosting
|
| To get Naira, I convert from the exchange in a P2P
| marketplace where I can get competitive black market
| rates from other individuals.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > The Naira has fallen 52% in the last 7 years under the
| current regime
|
| How much has crypto grown in Nigeria? Is it possible that
| the migration to crypto / loss of faith in the local
| currency in lieu of USD is what's actually behind the
| collapse vs government policies themselves?
| lottin wrote:
| It's usually a combination of both. When the local
| currency is unreliable, as a result of bad government
| policies, the locals will try get hold of a stronger
| foreign currency. They will sell the local currency to
| buy the foreign currency, which will contribute to the
| depreciation of the local currency, which in turn will
| make it even less attractive, prompting more people to
| sell, and so on so forth.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I'm not questioning your experience but this is very
| strange to me.
|
| I've worked with contractors based in Brazil, Turkey, and
| other countries likely categorized as "developing" and the
| payment process doesn't look any different than when I work
| with international contractors in places like Germany.
|
| Many of them use Wise (formerly TransferWise) and looking
| at the pricing for Nigeria it looks completely reasonable -
| sending money has a 0.41% fee and receiving it is free.
| This fee includes reasonable things like a website non-
| crypto enthusiasts can actually use, customer support,
| fraud protections, etc. For countries with unstable
| currencies, massive inflation, etc Wise allows you to hold
| it in over 50 fiat currencies (including USD).
|
| Given that I've had an interest in crypto for many years at
| this point I've seen online descriptions like yours so I've
| asked the contractors I've worked with "Why not crypto?".
| They all tell the same story - that services like Wise are
| perfectly usable and with extremely reasonable pricing all
| things considered. Wise even provides the sending of
| invoices that I (as the client) receive via e-mail and can
| pay in a few clicks. The most important thing to people is
| actually getting paid and it's a well known fact that
| reducing friction around payments is the best thing you can
| do (I've been a contractor as well).
|
| Note this is technical/development contract work. I can't
| imagine people in non-technical fields getting an invoice
| asking for payment in crypto stablecoin and them spending
| the time, energy, and resources to wander through that maze
| to pay a contractor, service, etc instead of running their
| business. Frankly I'd use a different contractor and I'm
| very crypto literate.
| dayve wrote:
| Wise used to be a great option to transact in, 2-3 years
| ago. The main challenge with Wise however was the
| exchange rate used to convert USD received to the local
| fiat currency. In Nigeria there are two exchange rates -
| the first at an official rate used by banks, & the second
| a parallel rate used by the black market (including
| Bureau de Change operators).
|
| Today if you Google the 'official' exchange rate for the
| dollar to Naira, you'll see a ~445 Naira to 1 USD. As an
| individual there isn't anywhere I can buy dollar at this
| rate, because it is exclusive to banks, select licensed
| money operators & politically connected high-net worth
| individuals. However money services like Wise convert my
| dollar at this official rate. Considering that the
| parallel market rate today is 745 naira to 1USD, I will
| be losing a huge amount of money by receiving money with
| Wise. The only workaround will be to get a virtual
| account on Wise & send USD to a local money merchant, who
| then exchanged at this parallel rate. But such virtual
| accounts aren't accessible to people in Nigeria, due to
| regulation. [1] For context, the Central bank of Nigeria
| released a circular a while back explicitly stating Wise
| as a non-licensed entity.
|
| There are other options apart from Wise. But the trade
| off is loss of money, as compared to what's available on
| the parallel/black market.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-money-
| idAFL1N2IX1BM
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed education of the issues
| specific to Nigeria! But I'm still curious - can you
| explain how crypto transfers aren't subject to the same
| issues getting to Naira, the traditional banking system,
| etc? Getting solid data on the adoption of crypto for
| real day-to-day payments in Nigeria (or anywhere) is
| pretty difficult.
|
| Genuinely curious.
| dayve wrote:
| Crypto transfers aren't subject to these issues because
| they aren't regulated. For instance, cards (Visa,
| Mastercard & Verve) can't be used to deposit on these
| exchanges because they'll have to be processed by a fiat
| operator, which usually requires a license. Because the
| government has banned the use of crypto, any entity
| caught wanting will have their accounts frozen. This also
| makes it really hard to deposit money into these entities
| by anyone. They can easily be blacklisted because they
| have accounts in their names. I used to work for one of
| such entities. I've also had my bank account frozen by
| the Central Bank of Nigeria for withdrawing naira that
| was sent from said 'blacklisted' entities.
|
| Because these crypto exchanges are P2P based (e.g.
| Binance P2P), I can exchange my USDC for Naira that's
| deposited directly to my account. Because these are
| individuals, it's hard for the government to isolate bank
| transfers that are made for the purpose of crypto. For
| caution, people making such transfers tell each other not
| to add a description with a crypto-related word to these
| transactions.
|
| Adoption for real day-to-day payments in low-volumes
| (like paying for groceries at a shop) is quite low, but
| high among high-volume merchants who import/export goods
| and are in dire need of USD liquidity and ease of payment
| across countries. Tough Central Bank policies give them
| an incentive to find the best rates & transact with
| lesser barriers. There are no official figures/solid
| data, because all that activity happens in informal
| channels (like P2P).
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| I don't understand though how do you explain those
| transaction to your tax authorities and pay taxes. Surely
| it can only be so long that you can get massive (by local
| standards) and fairly constant salary month to month and
| not get them interested in the source of funds?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I have family in developing countries but not Nigeria.
| Usually there's massive tax fraud that happens all the
| time regardless. Prevailing tax rates are punitive enough
| that nobody follows them and they're rarely enforced so
| there's elaborate reporting schemes that large portions
| of the moneyed population follow and is essentially
| accepted practice.
| valcron1000 wrote:
| As someone in Argentina, let me explain my situation:
|
| As you pointed out, not many employers are willing to pay
| directly in crypto, that's why a lot of contractors -
| myself included - are willing to use platforms like
| Payoneer, Wise, even Paypal if there is no other option.
|
| The missing part of the story here is how contractors in
| a developing country with currency controls, high
| inflation, poor banking infrastructure get the money
| -out- of those platforms. Most of the time you just
| cannot do it legally, so you end up "selling" your
| Wise/Payoneer/Paypal balance for the equivalent in the
| local currency. This is usually against their ToS and
| which can result in your account getting banned, losing
| access to your money (that's why it's advised to -not-
| leave any significant amount of money on these kind of
| platforms).
|
| With crypto I also need to deal with black markets (which
| are always growing down here) and some business are
| starting to accept crypto directly (mostly tech-related
| busines). But, unlike these platforms, I actually have
| control over my money (it cannot be "confiscated" by my
| wallet unlike my Wise balance), fees are usually lower
| (ex. Payoneer results in a ~3.5% fee, Paypal ~10%, Wise
| ~1%, while in crypto - lets say BUSD - fees are mostly
| flat at around 1/2 USD at most), and market liquidity is
| higher (it's -a lot- easier to sell USDT/USDC/BUSD/DAI
| than your Paypal balance).
| tgv wrote:
| Strange. How did anybody live there before 2015?
| freejazz wrote:
| Maybe people should be clear that they meant it'd only be
| useful in the context of living in the "third world"?
| Wata2 wrote:
| overtonwhy wrote:
| The son of a Russian computer scientist who cloned Bitcoin as a
| teenager definitely all by himself?
| cypress66 wrote:
| > Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.
|
| Objectively this is trivial to disprove.
| DennisP wrote:
| Yep, just Uniswap alone has transaction volume comparable to
| major centralized exchanges.
|
| https://decrypt.co/114665/uniswap-overtakes-coinbase-
| second-...
| dereg wrote:
| This is incorrect/misleading on many fronts:
|
| 1. This is an outdated article citing a single point in
| time
|
| 2. The source tweet is comparing Uniswap's volume on _all_
| x:ETH pairs against only ETHUSDT volume on centralized
| exchanges. [0]
|
| 3. The date of comparison is an outlier day - when FTX's
| "hacker" decided to move huge sums of tokens uneconomically
| on chain.
|
| 4. Volume across CEXs have collapsed, a sign of the
| ecosystem's weakness, not strength.
|
| 5. Even then, Uniswap doesn't hold a candle to Binance.
| ($600m volume vs $10b volume, past 24 hours on spot pairs)
|
| 6. Liquidity is horrible right now. If you try to execute a
| trade of reasonable size on a non-major coin you will face
| a lot of slippage.
|
| [0]: The tweeter, Alex Svanevik is the founder of Nansen, a
| chain analytics company. It doesn't make sense that he
| would make such a simple mistake unless he was deliberately
| trying to bullpost.
|
| See for yourself:
|
| https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/uniswap#statistics
|
| https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance#statistics
|
| https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/coinbase#statistics
| lambdadmitry wrote:
| Between bots, wash trading, and algo traders it doesn't say
| much about real world adoption.
| DennisP wrote:
| Regarding wash trading at least, it's easier on central
| exchanges, since they can do it without cost. Nobody can
| avoid Uniswap's transaction fees.
| iskander wrote:
| fwiw, I use USDC transfers on Ethereum in preference over wire
| transfers (which for me seem to require a physical bank visit
| to clear) or Zelle (which has very low max limit per day).
|
| I actually don't know of any robust alternatives in the US.
| dylkil wrote:
| >Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff
|
| Stay tuned for major central banks deploying CDBCs on ethereum.
| Swiss, EU and Singapore are launching a pilot program.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| You can't claim something that large without a source. And
| why should governments pick Ethereum to enrich the bagholders
| with tax money?
| karaterobot wrote:
| _He starts the article with an example of someone using
| Ethereum in their store_
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| So what's the next hackernews? Anyone have a link?
|
| Reason I ask is comments like this are objectively wrong yet
| continue to be the norm here.
| legulere wrote:
| Playing with new technology and research is an important thing,
| but you have to be open that you are doing that and don't
| pretend you are developing a usable product.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > Objectively nobody actually uses this stuff.
|
| Why did you use the word objectively here? It seems like people
| objectively _do_ use this stuff, though you possibly don 't
| think that they're actually getting value out of it. Ethereum
| likely has more users than anything either of us will ever
| build.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| No meaningful percentage of the global population uses crypto
| and a large majority that do are bad actors, either in their
| use or their motivations for marketing it's "uses". Maybe
| "relatively" would have been better but the point is the
| same.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Is this the goalpost now? That a "meaningful percentage of
| the global population" uses your creation? That's a high
| bar.
| danans wrote:
| For a currency that is not issued by a sovereign state
| and purports to be useful for day to day transactions and
| a hedge against inflation, that's not a high bar.
|
| It would be a high bar for a currency whose purpose is to
| facilitate dark or illicit transactions, though.
|
| Unfortunately the valuations seem to have been predicated
| on the former use case, not the latter
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm assuming
| "your" means eth, which I'm not directly talking about in
| my response. I'm talking about the failure of crypto
| adoption that's original purpose was a fast, cheap and
| decentralized currency - none of which has come to
| fruition and by the looks of it, never will.
| thefounder wrote:
| I thought ICOs had a chance to help small projects but
| unfortunately they became the worst of crypto. I don't blame
| the technology though. It's the "investors/ponzi hungers" that
| blew it.
| lottin wrote:
| It's inseparable from the technology. The technology is about
| issuing and transferring, and exchanging virtual tokens. This
| is all it does. And what can you do with virtual tokens? Not
| much, other than trying to sell them for money. I think
| Ponzis will always be one of the main use cases, if not the
| main use case.
| madelyn-goodman wrote:
| "The identity ecosystem" he describes is most exciting to me.
| There is so much that can be attached to our on-chain identity
| beyond just our net worth and jpegs. This year the first house
| was sold on-chain, and I believe that's just the beginning of
| these immutable irl transactions.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| Decentralization is super hard to achieve in anything other than
| a toy universe. "Proof of humanity" in theory is cool, but humans
| can be bought. Power will always tend to centralization when
| money exists. It's obvious when the decentralization key is
| computing power, as money buys more computers and results in
| centralized control. Even if unique brain patterns becomes the
| decentralization key, nothing stops two unique people from
| colluding and voting in the same direction. Nothing stops one
| person from purchasing the voting power of another person.
|
| I think Vitalik even said once that the only reason for small
| fish to buy governance tokens is in expectation of the price
| going up, and hoping they can be sold later to a larger fish,
| where the actual network is governed by a few. I don't see how
| "proof of humanity" is any different than this, since nothing
| stops collusion or other vectors for "vote buying".
| Centralization infects the very roots of decentralization. This
| is not an easy problem, and Bitcoin doesn't solve it, and no
| token out there currently solves it. There might not be any
| solution in the real world, where humans can communicate freely.
| remorses wrote:
| Can't someone just make a MasterCard/Visa alternative
| sufficiently decentralized and costing 1 cent per transaction?
|
| All this blockchain stuff didn't solve any actual problem, we are
| still paying fees to a duopoly for basically all global payments
|
| We really need something better, in Italy for example the gov
| removed sanctions for people not accepting credit cards, one
| reason being Visa fees, if there was an actual alternative we
| would use it
| species9606 wrote:
| That would be terrific, certainly. MC and Visa fees in the US
| are outrageous, though Congress seems to finally be taking a
| look at this.
|
| I wonder, though, if there's an inevitable tradeoff between
| efficiency and decentralization? The credit card companies are
| highly centralized, but their services are so efficient and
| reliable that they're practically invisible.
| senttoschool wrote:
| Yes. Explained here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878216#33878459
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| At this point it isn't a technology problem but a business
| problem. The tech exists, but how do you get everyone to adopt
| it? I genuinely wish I knew!
| kkielhofner wrote:
| What happens to transaction cost when (if) any of these
| irreversible decentralized crypto based payment methods hit the
| real world at any anything approaching mass adoption for things
| other than a darknet marketplace where the transactions are
| typically illegal in the first place and obviously don't have
| any concept of "fraud protection"?
|
| What I'm getting at here is the reality of the real world -
| fraud. Visa, MC, etc have had zero liability for fraudulent
| transactions since forever at this point. I understand that
| chargebacks can be an issue for sellers but the fact remains
| that most of the fraud in the space is by sellers, stolen
| cards/credentials, etc. Consumer fraud liability was initially
| legislated by the US and capped at $50 (max) way back in 1978.
| Consumers (who have significantly more exposure, numbers,
| political capital, sway, etc) have benefited from these
| protections for decades and they simply won't accept going back
| to the days of "sorry the merchant ripped you off, sorry your
| card/credentials/etc were stolen, etc - you're SOL, your money
| is gone, and you have no recourse". On twitter, crypto forums,
| etc (the only place to go when these realities hit with crypto)
| these victims get a very helpful "hope you learned your
| lesson"!
|
| These costs are baked in to the merchant fees, transaction
| fees, etc. For merchants, the occasional chargeback (valid or
| not) is also baked into the "cost of doing business" just like
| all other forms of shrinkage (employee theft/fraud, shoplifting
| at physical locations, etc). Many of them (like Amazon, I
| believe) have terms that essentially say "Ok we're bound by
| law/Visa/MC/etc and you can do a chargeback but we have an
| internal process for these kinds of things and if you bring the
| hammer of a chargeback we'll ban you from our marketplace". The
| (potential) issues surrounding that approach are left for
| another discussion...
|
| I'm not advocating for Visa, MC, etc and there absolutely are
| very real problems with them. However, this goes back to an
| observed issue with crypto - that the crypto ecosystem is
| running towards replacing our current imperfect system with one
| (that appears) to be even worse right out of the gates.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I can see how you might layer that stuff on top (e.g. using
| smart contracts). It's not clear to me whether such a system
| still has some advantages though. Maybe the open nature of
| the platform?
| DennisP wrote:
| Part of what all that infrastructure addresses is the
| inherent insecurity of credit cards online. After trying out
| crypto, it kinda boggles my mind that we mostly do online
| purchases by giving merchants all the information they need
| to take whatever amount of money they want. If that
| information gets loose, we have no choice but to cancel the
| card and start over. That's a sad state of affairs, given
| that's it's been _half a century_ since public key crypto was
| invented.
|
| There are of course other issues that would still need to be
| addressed, like merchants sending fraudulent goods, but if we
| could build stuff to handle that on top of a foundation
| that's actually secure, we might be better off.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| 'Global reach', yeah in Argentina which is the most economically
| dysfunctional country in Capitalist history. That's like saying
| you are proud of the global reach of synthetic drugs at a
| nightclub in Bristol - it's there because the people there need
| it to have a good time.
|
| People in the rich, developed world don't need crypto - you won't
| find as many synthetic drugs at an insurance agents office,
| because the people there don't need them in their daily lives.
| unboxingelf wrote:
| If his number one focus is solving money he should start
| promoting Bitcoin and Lightning.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _the stablecoins that are most successful today are the
| centralized ones, mostly USDC, USDT and BUSD._
|
| The current crypto market proves one thing --- decentralization
| is a fantasy, a myth that has yet to be successfully implemented.
|
| Remember the golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
| In the crypto market, the rulers are the *centralized* exchanges.
|
| Centralized exchanges (CEX) have tremendous influence and control
| over the crypto market just like a central bank. They achieve
| this by the sheer weight of their trading volume --- and their
| unrestricted ability to mint stable coins and use them to
| manipulate the market as they see fit --- just like a central
| bank with one big difference --- without any transparency or
| oversight.
|
| The more things change, the more they stay the same. In real
| world practice, even so-called decentralized peer to peer
| exchanges still follow the trading prices set by the centralized
| exchanges.
|
| Don't take my word for it --- just try buying or selling coins on
| a DEX for a price that differs significantly from the current CEX
| rate. It may be possible in theory but in reality, it's highly
| unlikely. Most reasonable people won't surrender value just for
| the sake of decentralization.
| KrakenEng wrote:
| > their unrestricted ability to mint stable coins and use them
| to manipulate the market as they see fit
|
| What stable coins do Coinbase or Kraken mint?
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Coinbase has USDC.
|
| Kraken doesn't have one that I am aware of.
|
| Is this supposed to make them immune to external market
| manipulation and influence?
|
| Does Kraken ever "front run" customer orders? How can we
| verify your answer?
| halpmeh wrote:
| Why would you expect the price on a DEX to differ from the
| price on a CEX? Any substantial price difference would
| immediately be closed by arbitrage.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Exactly my point. There is nothing really "decentralized"
| about DEXs --- in reality, they follow CEXs more or less in
| lockstep. CEXs exercise control over them in the same way
| they control the rest of the marketplace.
| halpmeh wrote:
| That doesn't prove your point at all. The CEX isn't setting
| the price. The price is set by people trading. If the price
| on an exchange, centralized or otherwise, is too high, no
| one will buy. If the price is too low, no one will sell.
| That has nothing to do with whether or not the exchange is
| centralized or decentralized.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _The price is set by people trading._
|
| That's the idea but follow along with me now --- what if
| one of these "people" trading is the CEX itself. And
| unlike most "people", what if they have an unlimited
| supply of money (stable coins they can just mint at will)
| to trade with.
|
| This would be like combining the NY Stock Exchange with
| the Federal Reserve --- no real conflict of interest
| there, right?
|
| As you still convinced the CEXs aren't setting or
| manipulating or influencing the price that you pay?
| andruby wrote:
| The different CEXs would have to coordinate such price
| swinging. When the price swings in a direction on one
| exchange, arbitrage bots will put a pressure on the price
| to converge back with the other exchanges.
|
| It'll get really expensive, and you'll be paying a lot to
| the arbitragers
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _The different CEXs would have to coordinate such price
| swinging._
|
| No they wouldn't.
|
| All they would have to do is "loan" tethers to their
| "whale" friends with the understanding that they will
| invest it in bitcoin and hold until they are told to
| sell. See article from wsj referenced below.
|
| It's easy to time the market when you're manipulating the
| timing.
|
| _you 'll be paying a lot to the arbitragers_
|
| Exchanges don't pay arbitragers anything. People who sell
| their crypto too cheap do.
| halpmeh wrote:
| I'm not saying no one has ever tried to manipulate the
| price of a cryptocurrency before. But the scheme you
| describe is not sustainable for a long period of time.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| As the saying goes - markets can remain irrational longer
| than you can remain solvent.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _not sustainable for a long period of time._
|
| Really? What will stop it? Regulation maybe?
|
| Remember --- they have an *unlimited* supply of money ---
| they just print/mint the stuff at will. Nothing currently
| in place to stop them.
|
| Over the course of 8 years, Tether has gone from $0 to
| over $65 trillion --- all minted out of recycled
| electrons. $65 trillion is a lot of marketplace influence
| --- and there is plenty more where that came from.
| halpmeh wrote:
| For starters, I believe the number is 75 billion in USDT,
| not 65 trillion.
|
| And Tether doesn't have an unlimited supply of money.
| Tether allows USDT to be redeemed for USD. If Tether was
| minting unbacked USDT, then Tether would eventually be
| shown to be insolvent.
|
| Second, if you're manipulating the price upward, it
| becomes more and more expensive to maintain the price.
| Like let's say Tether issued USDT to pump the price of
| BTC. If they wanted to maintain that long-term, they'd
| need to print more and more USDT to maintain the price,
| which gets us back to insolvency.
|
| Third, the CEX would need a reason to pump the price.
| Usually, people pump prices to execute a "pump and dump"
| where low-value assets are dumped on unsuspecting
| consumers at a high price. It's possible, of course, but
| executing a pump and dump scheme is a lot of work and
| very risky for very little reward with such expensive,
| highly traded asset like BTC.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Tether allows USDT to be redeemed for USD._
|
| It is only allowed for _verified_ customers --- those
| with $100,000 or more to redeem. This severely limits any
| exposure to a bank run.
|
| _If Tether was minting unbacked USDT, then Tether would
| eventually be shown to be insolvent._
|
| By whom? Lots of people think it's always been insolvent.
| Can you prove it's not?
|
| _executing a pump and dump scheme is a lot of work and
| very risky for very little reward with such expensive,
| highly traded asset like BTC._
|
| When you have control and influence over both the pump
| and the dump, it's easy. And price is pretty irrelevant
| when you can just mint money and "loan" it to select
| others (aka "whales") so they can participate.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-tether-loans-add-
| risk-to... The company behind the tether
| stablecoin has increasingly been lending its own
| coins to customers rather than selling them for hard
| currency upfront.
| Zanfa wrote:
| > If Tether was minting unbacked USDT, then Tether would
| eventually be shown to be insolvent.
|
| Tether's has been shown to be technically insolvent every
| time they've been forced to open their books.
|
| > Second, if you're manipulating the price upward, it
| becomes more and more expensive to maintain the price.
| Like let's say Tether issued USDT to pump the price of
| BTC. If they wanted to maintain that long-term, they'd
| need to print more and more USDT to maintain the price,
| which gets us back to insolvency.
|
| This is literally what they seemed to have done though.
| Tether's market cap hovered around a few billion for a
| few years and then suddenly shot up to almost 80B.
| silasdavis wrote:
| An exchange doesn't have the ability to mint unlimited
| token and to expect it hold it's value any more than a
| central bank doew.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| An exchange can keep minting as long as people believe,
| and people still believe in tether.
| yunohn wrote:
| I actually know a few crypto enthusiasts who claim to use
| DEXes. When pressed further, you realise that it's to avoid
| KYC/AML and taxes, not for decentralization principles...
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| In other words, "decentralization" is just a talking/selling
| point that evaporates on closer inspection down where the
| rubber really meets the road in the crypto market.
|
| By going all crypto, you're rejecting fiat central bankers
| with some transparency and oversight in favor of crypto
| central bankers who have none.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| For crypto people, the problem with 2008 wasn't that big
| banks got bailed out on tax payer's dime, the problem is
| that _they as individuals weren 't the ones getting the
| bailout_
| DennisP wrote:
| Avoiding centralized custody might get a little more popular
| in the wake of FTX.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Holding your own crypto wallet doesn't eliminate the
| influence CEXs have over the value of it's contents.
| galfarragem wrote:
| Ethereum's main competitive advantage is having a leader like
| Vitalik.
|
| Another leader but an order of magnitude less known is Andre
| Cronje from Fantom. It worths a read (so much transparency in a
| crypto company is unusual):
| https://andrecronje.medium.com/fantom-an-inside-financial-pe...
| dylkil wrote:
| Andre is pretty much hated now. He created a shit ton of
| useless tokens in 2020 and 2021, made multiple millions off
| them, disappeared, and now has come back to preach to word of
| regulation to prevent others doing what he got away it.
| practice9 wrote:
| While Cronje may be a good developer, he is also close to SBF
| level of scam (and he's more clever). He also knowingly
| associated with Omar Dhanani / 0xSifu / Michael Patryn, who
| is another scammer who served time in US prison
| anonporridge wrote:
| But also, one of Ethereum's biggest risks is having a leader.
|
| Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation are a dangerous point of
| centralization that at least expose it to risk of harsher
| regulation in the near future for years operating as an
| unregistered security. The SEC has already hinted at this,
| while the CFTC has indicated that only bitcoin is likely to be
| regulated as a commodity.
|
| Beyond the governmental risk of Ethereum having a clear head
| with a throat to choke, there's the simple "hit by a bus" risk.
| Vitalik is just a single human, and his unexpected death could
| lead to a massive collapse of confidence from both investors
| and developers who have other options. It wouldn't completely
| die with him, but it would be a _major_ setback, because the
| cult of Vitalik is a not insignificant part of Ethereum.
| DennisP wrote:
| Vitalik isn't actually Ethereum's "leader" anymore. He's one
| researcher among many. He's still a very _productive_
| researcher but he 's not a decision-maker. Anyone who wants
| to see how decisions are actually made can listen to the
| biweekly dev calls, where people from all the various
| independent client teams get together to coordinate changes.
|
| Also, the CFTC chair actually indicated that both BTC and ETH
| are commodities: https://cryptopotato.com/cftc-chair-
| reiterates-bitcoin-and-e...
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > The SEC has already hinted at this, while the CFTC has
| indicated that only bitcoin is likely to be regulated as a
| commodity.
|
| I think any token that gains enough prominence in the market
| is going to eventually fall under government purview. Why?
| Because when financial crime happens, victims want the
| government to go after the criminals and recover their lost
| funds. Crypto fans can't have it both ways: if their goal is
| to create a financial system that lives entirely outside of
| government control, then they shouldn't reasonably rely on
| the government to go after the criminals bringing the entire
| crypto space down.
|
| The reason that the government winds up stepping in is
| because the chaos and instability created by this completely
| unregulated side-chain financial system winds up threatening
| the Federally backed system as well. Market contagion is real
| and collapses in one sector or market often reverberate
| across the entire system.
|
| We're seeing it happen in banking right now: a bunch of banks
| made small business loans to miners that are now underwater
| because the price of crypto tanked and the GPU market cooled,
| so their revenue and equipment value has tanked at the same
| time.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| What I think is funny is that in light of recent events people
| seem to have entirely forgotten that Ethereum seems to have made
| the transition to proof-of-stake successfully.
|
| This removes one major objection people have to crypto (it
| doesn't necessarily bake the planet anymore) but still leaves a
| network that performs like a "TRS-80 with a coin slot attached".
| DennisP wrote:
| Scaling is the next major effort. It's not an _easy_ problem
| but probably easier than proof-of-stake was.
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