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Damn... maybe crypto/blockchain isn't so bad (self.chat)

submitted 1 year ago by metaltoilet to c/chat

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I'm going to keep this short but I just fell down the rabbithole of crypto again and maybe it isn't as bad as I thought. Many of their ideas are very similar to the fediverse's. The idea of decentralized finance using a stablecoin sounds awesome to me. (though i'd much prefer to live in a world where money isn't needed) Maybe the technology is actually good but the techbros and scammers ruin it with their false promises and complicated words. Hopefully, in a few years after the rest of those scammers have moved on to scamming with AI this tech could be truly used for meaningful purposes.

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[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In my opinion, the idea of crypto/blockchain is fairly naïve unfortunately.

Crypto/blockchain is not truly decentralized; the developers of the chain and its protocol retain total control over it in a similar manner to governments over their own currencies. They can invalidate old coins, issue new ones, debase the currency -- whatever they want.

What is decentralized is the ledger itself, in that the database of the chain is distributed across many computing nodes. This is in fact bad because it results in:

Slowness in processing. This is why BTC transactions take so long to settle.
Potential foreign control of the database. An attacker who exploits a flaw in the protocol, or a miner that has a majority of the blockchain under their processing power, can rewrite the ledger however they want. They can double spend coins, revoke transactions, or ... well, anything.
Automated contract resolution. This is bad because contracts are (and have been) exploited on every blockchain to drain legitimate wallets of funds -- either because the contracts themselves are badly written, or the software they're implemented in is easily-exploitable.

Overall a centralized ledger would be a far better idea for most blockchains than a distributed one... controlled by a trusted entity, rather than a bunch of crypto devs... with human oversight instead of automated contract resolution...

And we've just invented actual currencies.

[–] amotoohno 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. Blockchains will only remain as decentralized as their underlying incentive structure. In the case of Bitcoin, it turns out that form of “proof-of-work” was subject to Capitalism Attack. That is, there was someone with enough capital to commission the design and manufacture of highly specialized silicon, and their resulting competitive advantage led to the network consolidation we see today: specialized machines competing for who can burn the most electricity.

Ethereum fucked up in a different way. They did learn from Bitcoin’s weakness, and switched from an “open” proof-of-work blockchain to a “closed” proof-of-stake system …

… once again facilitating Capital Attack. Because who can buy the biggest stake? Yeah.

Once again, market forces (combined with extremely dubious design choices in their smart contract API) led to the centralized garbage we see today.

But it is possible to redirect the Capital Attack, judo style, and render it impotent. Look into “proof of space and time” if you’re interested in learning more. Carefully aligned incentives and weaponized Scaling Challenges can give the little guy a chance and send the Big Capital Gang back to their dirty-tricks drawing board.

[–] Foidi 1 points 1 year ago

But what would be the trusted entity

[–] haltowork@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You sound like you wouldn't like rust.

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 6 points 1 year ago

The programming language? I like it just fine, I prefer Go but Rust is great too.