If blockchain kept people honest, Sam Bankman-Fried wouldn’t be in jail.
That logic makes no sense. He IS in jail, and thus it kept the system honest. He’s an individual dishonest shithead and used blockchain technology to scam people. That doesn’t make all blockchain technology a scam.
Care to elaborate?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07421222.2021.1912919
“Blockchain has two distinctive features that make it a potent tool against corruption. First, it provides an unprecedented level of security of the information and the integrity of records it manages, guaranteeing their authenticity. It eliminates opportunities for falsification and the risks associated with having a single point of failure in the management of data. It also helps overcome the data silos in traditional bureaucracies in which public entities are reluctant to share information among themselves.”
So I don’t necessarily disagree but blockchain can be problematic at best. For example how would you offset the environmental issues it brings if all financial transactions would be backed by blockchain? How would day to day payments be done? Regular people transfering money between themselves (grandma giving some money to her grandkid “to buy something nice” for example)?
Read about proof of stake. There doesn’t need to be one single blockchain. Many blockchains can run in tandem to handle massive amounts of transactions.
unpopular opinion more like lukewarm take with no context or defense
True Unpopular opinion, I respect that.
But … eh yes, I just disagree. I know it’s like 2 days after your post but I just need to spill this out.
So I’m not a software architect but I’m interrested in software architecture. And the thing is, very rarely I’ve seen the blockchain being used during a system design. And the reason I’d say is, it doesn’t have that many benefits. Actually I can think of just one - the data ownership. The fact that no one owns the data (i.e. they have no single dedicated storage) is actually nice. But the thing is … this isn’t really needed in vast majority of scenarios. And on the other hand, it introduces several very crucial disadvantages. Like
- The amount of data to synchronize across the nodes is just crazy. I mean it’s sort of bearable for simple data like money transactions but even that can get out of hand. And doesn’t Ether has like terabytes of data to synchronize? I mean holly fuck. And isn’t a lot of that just bullshit data? And bear in mind that there is just relatively small group of people using it, not the entire world. I know there is some way that your wallet contains just subset of those data but to me it kind of defeats the purpose of the chain where only few selected nodes (who can afford it) can synchronize the entire chain.
- The energy consuption is again, just crazy. What is esentially a simple operation consumes ridiculous amount of power. And I admit I only know the Bitcoin way but in that case the power goes to … nothing? The power goes to making Bitcoin exist. Nothing of value was produced. And we need to remind ourselves that this is a very a simple operation and we’re spending ridiculous amount of resources on it. And for what exactly? So no one owns the data?
- The protection from frauds - So someone sends money from A to B. In most of the systems, having an authority, a ‘C’, a 3rd party is actually a desired thing. Someone who can take a look and say “Hmmm this doesn’t sound right, better contact A and B wheter they’re ok with it”. Without it, the system is much more prone to frauds which is exactly what’s happening in cryptocurrency world
- Immutability - some data are immutable, like transaction data. But majority of data are not. Data change. Blockchain by its design is immutable. The result is that you can use blockchain for anything, it just won’t be very efficient. And will produce a lot of bullshit data.
- And probably the most crucial of all - the data publicity. All the data are public. This is something you just do NOT want in vast majority of the systems. And I see that this is what you mean by corruption fighting. But who will agree to this? Sure you might see that this politician took 500k from that business man. But you’ll also see that I ordered something from a sex shop for 350€. Or that I spent 95k on a new car. Really, who’d be ok with that? Also do you think that corupt politicians would be that stupid to use blockchain in that case?
So I take all those arguments and when I hear “Medical records could be on blockchain!” and I’m like who the fuck would want this?! I absolutely do not want that anyone could access my medical records as long as they know my medical record ID. I can imagine that those records could be encrypted by f.e. AES. But at that point I could store those data anywhere. I could store it on server of evil-corporation-101 and even they couldn’t decrypt it.
So that leads me to the conclusion who really needs a blockchain? And what’s the benefit of it against f.e. a huge MongoDB cluster? I mean really, if you’re about data integrity and security, just fork some NOSQL database and add what you need. Or am I completely out of touch here? I’m open to learn and I’m definitely open to better understand the benefits of blockchain because that’s a puzzle for me for years
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there can be multiple blockchains
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read about proof of stake
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this is possible with using an escrow smart contract
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blockchains like bitcoin are immutable, there can be blockchains that are mutable
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read about privacy preserving smart contracts
So that leads me to the conclusion that you wasted your time writing all that with limited knowledge.
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How so? So far all it has given humanity is new scams.
Isn’t a block chain a humongous sequence that depends on previous transactions? Imagine that on a world of trillions of trillions of daily transactions, how would you store that?
Why do you think it would be one blockchain?
Again I nailed it. Downvoted with no comments saying it’s a popular opinion. A true unpopular opinion.
What about a blockchain voting system?
How would Blockchain help in voting?
Yes, that’s included within “blockchain technology”.
If people comprehend what it’s exactly blockchain technology I believe it isn’t an unpopular opinion at all, the problem it’s dumb people relate blockchain to some kind of complicated ponzi scam scheme just because they lost their precious savings buying Bitcoin.
Edit: like getting a crypto wallet at birth as long as your SSN and when you get 18yo it activates, you got an app and in every period of elections you can vote, fast and easy and every representative job like senstury, deputy, president, judges could be elected by popular vote.
