<story><title>AWS and Blockchain</title><url>https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Blockchain</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TimJRobinson</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re still missing the forest for the trees. All of this was created in the last 2-3 years and already it&amp;#x27;s replicated most of what&amp;#x27;s in traditional finance. It&amp;#x27;s the rate of innovation that is important, not the current y-intercept.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore this is a global system that anyone can contribute to. How hard do you think it is for I as an Australian to build a financial firm that interfaces with Bank of America or the NYSE? It&amp;#x27;s almost impossible. In DeFi I can spin up my own app in days.&lt;p&gt;Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don&amp;#x27;t have to sell, this isn&amp;#x27;t a service any bank offers. You can also just deposit your assets and earn interest on them.&lt;p&gt;In 2009 most of my colleagues similarly dismissed AWS &amp;quot;Oh it&amp;#x27;s just some easy storage with a way to spin up servers, big deal. Bare metal is cheaper and easier&amp;quot;. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until most business components were automated that it became an obvious choice.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine you&amp;#x27;re starting a new financial firm and want to offer an exchange, options, perpetuals, savings accounts, loans etc. You &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; build all these pieces yourself for a few million dollars and a few years work. Or you could use DeFi protocols, build a nice easy to use front-end and be up and running in a few months.</text></item><item><author>super256</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added&lt;p&gt;But... I have yet to see a service which really &lt;i&gt;adds value&lt;/i&gt;. All I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far are:&lt;p&gt;A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money.&lt;p&gt;B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants&amp;#x27; stops&amp;#x2F;liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap, which the hunted takes a loss (this is not different from tradfi).&lt;p&gt;I am looking at Aave right now, and all I see is a speculation platform with tokens instead of currencies. So basically, you guys are re-inventing what tradfi had years ago, just with worthless(?) tokens instead of debt backed assets. I am assuming they are worthless because every project you have mentioned is optimized for USD cash inflow, as you have &amp;quot;buy crypto with fiat&amp;quot;-buttons on almost every project[1][2][3], but no way to cash out to fiat. Furthermore, the staking feature from AAVE seems to only artificially decrease supply, so prices rise. What&amp;#x27;s the value proposition here?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don&amp;#x27;t really think that this stuff is even remotely comparable to AWS.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.aave.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.aave.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (press &amp;quot;more&amp;quot; on the nav bar)&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zerion.io&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zerion.io&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (FAQ &amp;gt; &amp;quot;just tap the blue button in the center of your screen, select ‘Buy’, and you will be taken to the dialogue window where you can buy crypto with a credit or debit card.&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.1inch.io&amp;#x2F;transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integrated-into-the-1inch-wallet-19934e710506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.1inch.io&amp;#x2F;transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integ...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>TimJRobinson</author><text>I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I&amp;#x27;ve realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why enterprise block chains make little sense.&lt;p&gt;Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API&amp;#x27;s and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve never had this before, and it&amp;#x27;s incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it. I work for a platform (Balancer) that has had over 20 different companies (Aave, Element, CopperLaunch, Gyro, Aura, Hidden Hand) build financial applications on top of our tech stack in the last 2 years.&lt;p&gt;Then there are different wallets (Metamask, Rainbow, Ledger), aggregators (1inch, Matcha, 0x), portfolio management tools (Zapper, Zerion, DeFi Saver).&lt;p&gt;All of these work with each other mostly out of the box and without any formal partnerships between anyone. This is a radical new way of building finance and it&amp;#x27;s the fastest paced  industry I&amp;#x27;ve ever been a part of.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added - but the entire world can contribute to it. Like AWS people didn&amp;#x27;t understand the value initially, but over time they realized how big of a deal it was as more and more components were added.</text></item><item><author>runeks</author><text>Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the &amp;quot;double spend problem&amp;quot;, ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipients (and so they conflict and cannot both be included in the canonical list of transactions). A double spend is the result of the sender either (a) making a mistake, or (b) attempting fraud. In both cases the important property is that as long as only a single of these conflicting transactions is included, the systems works.&lt;p&gt;Only if your problem exhibits the above property (&lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;s a distributed system) does using a blockchain make sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>markdestouches</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; You&amp;#x27;re still missing the forest for the trees. All of this was created in the last 2-3 years and already it&amp;#x27;s replicated most of what&amp;#x27;s in traditional finance.&lt;p&gt;Making a copy of an existing technology while repeating every historical mistake on the way is not innovation but rather poor learning ability. It&amp;#x27;s been 13 years since the advent of blockchain and we are yet to see anything actually useful. Yet all we see is smuggling, money laundering and fraud. With stories like FTX we also see incredible ineptitude, incompetence and ignorance. I am so tired of seeing these same groundless arguments over and over again, especially now, once money got dear and all of the crypto started crashing down.</text></comment>
<story><title>AWS and Blockchain</title><url>https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Blockchain</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TimJRobinson</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re still missing the forest for the trees. All of this was created in the last 2-3 years and already it&amp;#x27;s replicated most of what&amp;#x27;s in traditional finance. It&amp;#x27;s the rate of innovation that is important, not the current y-intercept.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore this is a global system that anyone can contribute to. How hard do you think it is for I as an Australian to build a financial firm that interfaces with Bank of America or the NYSE? It&amp;#x27;s almost impossible. In DeFi I can spin up my own app in days.&lt;p&gt;Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don&amp;#x27;t have to sell, this isn&amp;#x27;t a service any bank offers. You can also just deposit your assets and earn interest on them.&lt;p&gt;In 2009 most of my colleagues similarly dismissed AWS &amp;quot;Oh it&amp;#x27;s just some easy storage with a way to spin up servers, big deal. Bare metal is cheaper and easier&amp;quot;. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until most business components were automated that it became an obvious choice.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine you&amp;#x27;re starting a new financial firm and want to offer an exchange, options, perpetuals, savings accounts, loans etc. You &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; build all these pieces yourself for a few million dollars and a few years work. Or you could use DeFi protocols, build a nice easy to use front-end and be up and running in a few months.</text></item><item><author>super256</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added&lt;p&gt;But... I have yet to see a service which really &lt;i&gt;adds value&lt;/i&gt;. All I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far are:&lt;p&gt;A) collection games, which are not different from collecting Pokémon for real money.&lt;p&gt;B) liquidity PvP, where users open leveraged bets to hunt other market participants&amp;#x27; stops&amp;#x2F;liquidations, so the hunter can reduce their position for cheap, which the hunted takes a loss (this is not different from tradfi).&lt;p&gt;I am looking at Aave right now, and all I see is a speculation platform with tokens instead of currencies. So basically, you guys are re-inventing what tradfi had years ago, just with worthless(?) tokens instead of debt backed assets. I am assuming they are worthless because every project you have mentioned is optimized for USD cash inflow, as you have &amp;quot;buy crypto with fiat&amp;quot;-buttons on almost every project[1][2][3], but no way to cash out to fiat. Furthermore, the staking feature from AAVE seems to only artificially decrease supply, so prices rise. What&amp;#x27;s the value proposition here?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don&amp;#x27;t really think that this stuff is even remotely comparable to AWS.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.aave.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.aave.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (press &amp;quot;more&amp;quot; on the nav bar)&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zerion.io&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;zerion.io&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (FAQ &amp;gt; &amp;quot;just tap the blue button in the center of your screen, select ‘Buy’, and you will be taken to the dialogue window where you can buy crypto with a credit or debit card.&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.1inch.io&amp;#x2F;transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integrated-into-the-1inch-wallet-19934e710506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.1inch.io&amp;#x2F;transak-fiat-on-ramp-provider-is-integ...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>TimJRobinson</author><text>I used to think this, but working with DeFi on Ethereum for a while I&amp;#x27;ve realized the killer feature is actually permissionless composability. Which is why enterprise block chains make little sense.&lt;p&gt;Having one neutral platform, controlled by no one, with standardized API&amp;#x27;s and immutable open programs that anyone can permissionlessly build on - is amazing.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve never had this before, and it&amp;#x27;s incredible how fast the DeFi space is moving because of it. I work for a platform (Balancer) that has had over 20 different companies (Aave, Element, CopperLaunch, Gyro, Aura, Hidden Hand) build financial applications on top of our tech stack in the last 2 years.&lt;p&gt;Then there are different wallets (Metamask, Rainbow, Ledger), aggregators (1inch, Matcha, 0x), portfolio management tools (Zapper, Zerion, DeFi Saver).&lt;p&gt;All of these work with each other mostly out of the box and without any formal partnerships between anyone. This is a radical new way of building finance and it&amp;#x27;s the fastest paced  industry I&amp;#x27;ve ever been a part of.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s similar to AWS where it got exponentially more valuable as each new service was added - but the entire world can contribute to it. Like AWS people didn&amp;#x27;t understand the value initially, but over time they realized how big of a deal it was as more and more components were added.</text></item><item><author>runeks</author><text>Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the &amp;quot;double spend problem&amp;quot;, ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipients (and so they conflict and cannot both be included in the canonical list of transactions). A double spend is the result of the sender either (a) making a mistake, or (b) attempting fraud. In both cases the important property is that as long as only a single of these conflicting transactions is included, the systems works.&lt;p&gt;Only if your problem exhibits the above property (&lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; it&amp;#x27;s a distributed system) does using a blockchain make sense.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>likeabbas</author><text>&amp;gt; How hard do you think it is for I as an Australian to build a financial firm that interfaces with Bank of America or the NYSE? It&amp;#x27;s almost impossible. In DeFi I can spin up my own app in days&lt;p&gt;This sounds nice in theory, but aren&amp;#x27;t most of the guard rails of the financial institutions for complying with government regulation? If anyone could interface with these companies then it would be too easy for abuse. USG is not going to let that happen, which is why these DeFi applications will be limited to unregulated cryptocurrencies where the user will have to trust the &amp;quot;bank&amp;quot; that has no Federal Reserve backing.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets... You can also just deposit your assets and earn interest on them.&lt;p&gt;Why would any crypto supporter want to hold their decentralized currency in a centralized exchange after the FTX fiasco</text></comment>