Can someone tell me how decentralized money became the enemy? It is decentralized currency that is like everything we stand for literally using mastodon protocol here.
it’s not the creators fault that the first thing the userbase did was centralize it onto these marketplaces lol. I’m reminding people that this is conceptually great but terrible implementation, across the board.
git is a blockchain, just without PoW
I’ll likely get downvoted but Polestar, the EV automaker that used to build performance variants for Volvo, uses blockchain to track minerals used in their EV’s.
Circulor Circulor’s blockchain technology enables tracing of extracted raw materials, particularly those with significant impact to communities and the environment.
I like that they use blockchain to ensure the minerals they use aren’t coming from negative sources but I’m sure someone will argue and say it’s stupid or that SQL can do the same.
Polestar uses contracts and audits to ethically source materials, not blockchain. It uses blockchain as a shitty append-only SQL database to (apparently) tell you where the materials came from. Let me quote from Circulor’s website:
data can be fed seamlessly to the blockchain via system integration using RESTful Web Service APIs with security and authentication protocols
So the chain is private and accessible only through a centralized, authenticated REST API. This is a traditional web application. A centralized append-only ledger is not even a blockchain.
So you’re saying Polestar is lying about using blockchain?
https://media.polestar.com/global/en/media/pressreleases/500098
Polestar enters strategic partnership with blockchain provider Circulor
Collaboration targets blockchain traceability and CO2e tracking
Progressive in scope and ambition, partnership enables unprecedented supply chain transparency
Well, I’m saying Circulor is most likely lying about their “blockchain” actually being a blockchain, or that they’ve pointlessly set up extra nodes to perform redundant work in order to avoid technically lying.
Blockchain is completely pointless without 3rd parties being part of the network. It’s like me saying I run a personal social network for just myself.
You could do literally the same thing with a series of private key signed envelopes containing the prior chain of signed content. Boom, verifiable chain of custody without any rainforests being burned down.
No, because it would be trivial to make a change and regenerate the entire chain.
Yeah, you would only need to have every single private key for all nodes that follow you in the supply chain. Super trivial.
I’m hoping you’re being hyperbolic about burning rainforests because not every blockchain is power hungry like Bitcoin or the old the POW Ethereum.
Besides, the rainforest is being burned down to make way for more cattle to provide more beef. Not sure why you chose the rainforest as example of intense computational power.
It’s somewhat hyperbolic, but in relative terms, it is pretty wasteful to implement it with a blockchain over what I just suggested. Cryptographic consensus doesn’t solve anything for the given example that the verifiable chain of custody in my proposed alternative does not and there’s zero way it’s less expensive than a bunch of asymmetric signatures that can be verified offline on demand. If anything, it’s better than a blockchain since it would only require a majority of parties to be complicit in a lie to rewrite history in a blockchain full of parties that have no business with any given transaction other than to enforce immutability whereas it would require every single node in the chain of custody before you to be complicit in my proposal.
And I’m surprised that the rainforest thing confuses you. It and burning tires are the go-to colloquialisms for complaining about things that are unnecessarily environmentally hostile, particularly when talking about crypto crap. But yeah, blockchains are a solution in search of a problem, so the derision is intentional. There’s no legitimate problem that can be solved with blockchain that can’t be solved in a better way. Cryptocurrency only in theory and this supply chain problem are the closest it gets to blockchain making sense and it still fails to be better than non-blockchain alternatives.
we need the blockchainsaw
I’m kinda amazed I haven’t seen anyone mention the biggest upcoming use case for block chain here. In a world where anyone can create any media with Ai we are going to need robust systems of cryptographic proof of origin and history that anyone can access and that is not controlled by anyone who may wish to manipulate information. The exact strength of block chain.
As for cryptocurrency I’m seeing a lot of confusion here in how people think it works. While scaling has been an issue its not an insolvable one and multiple solutions exist. The issue with crypto is its image not the tech in general. And thats a combination of people using it to scam and governments/banks doing their best to discredit it.
That is not a use for blockchain.
Say I want to say that I created an image. I could post that image’s hash to a block chain, and point to it as something anyone can check.
But you already have to trust me for that to be valuable. So I can just host that hash in any of a myriad of conventional methods that are simpler, more performant, and less wasteful.
Your missing the history part. Obviously any signature in isolation is only as good as your knowlage of that person. Thats how cryptography has worked classically. A block chain is not just a hosting service. Of course that could be done cheaper. The point is to have imutable history of what information is provided. This allows a reputation system as well as the ability for parties to endorce or rebuke information in a way that can not be covered up later.
Trust requires reputation. No anonymous person in isolation can be trusted. The point is to allow collaborative verification with proof. And that can not be done by a centralized host or authority without giving that authority control over what is “true”.
The only thing a malicious host can do is to omit information, which can be mitigated simply by using more than one host, which is still cheaper than using a blockchain. You could have each signature include the previous one, which will allow anybody to verify that they have a complete prefix of the history. Host them on, say Imgur and Imgchest, and it would even be free, whereas hosting it on say the ethereum blockchain would cost about 10$ per image (Based on this: https://etherscan.io/gastracker#costTxAction. I’m lowballing my estimate. If its too high, please tell me by how much, and how you arrived at your number.)
In other words, even in the best case scenario, using the blockchain would only provide negligible benefits compared to much cheaper alternatives.
This does not need blockchain, this is exactly what NFTs were about, and it completly failed
It failed because owning digital collectables is dumb or because block chain failed to create immutable cryptographic proofs and history that could be read by anyone? I think your missing the forest for the trees. Confusing a demo case for the tech that made it possible.
It failed because an “immutable cryptographic proof” that the information being represented is valid is about as useful as a handwritten certificate that says you own Sagittarius.
Cryptography cannot verify your ownership of Sagittarius; it is not an authority. It cannot prevent you from claiming you do, either: anybody can enter whatever they want into the system.
And funny enough, this cryptographic lock and key isn’t even undisputable. If you have a dated record from 2020, and someone else wants it, they can just verify theirs on a different chain. Who is to say which chain is “more correct”? The dates? Dates don’t matter. If you were unlucky enough not to publish your work before someone else does, you don’t cryptographically own your work. If you were lucky and you had published, someone else can just lie that they weren’t ready and you stole it from them. So, even with all of our fancy math, we’re still back to he-said, she-said.
Worse, most blockchain records I know of are way too small for images, let alone video, so all they do is cryptographically “verify” URLs to the work. What exactly is the point of this? Can the files served by these URLs not simply be… changed?
I know they can be changed because C2PA has this very same, exact problem.
The blockchain is, at best, a database. The fact that it’s public doesn’t mean anything—it might be worse, even.
Why bother reinventing all of this? We have institutions already that keep records. What social good is bought from having the most public of all records?
