<story><title>Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain</title><url>https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gtrubetskoy</author><text>The problem that proof-of-work blockchain solves is widely misunderstood. It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique. Prior to the publication of Satoshi&amp;#x27;s paper we did not have a solution to this problem and for that reason it is a significant advance in technology. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call it crappy, it&amp;#x27;s actually quite brilliant.&lt;p&gt;For a detailed description see this: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;grisha.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;explaining-proof-of-work&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;grisha.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;explaining-proof-of-work&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simias</author><text>&amp;gt; I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call it crappy, it&amp;#x27;s actually quite brilliant.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you, I always thought that the Bitcoin algorithm was very clever and &amp;quot;mind opening&amp;quot; in a way. It&amp;#x27;s one of these things I&amp;#x27;d never have thought about but almost seems obvious in hindsight. What&amp;#x27;s even more interesting is that basically all of it is pre-existing technology: HashCash, ECC, Merkle trees etc... Just combined together in a clever way to create something that&amp;#x27;s more than the sum of their parts.&lt;p&gt;Now where I become a naysayer is when we switch from the realm of intellectual curiosity and into the world of cryptocurrencies today. Being clever and innovative doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean useful or valuable. We have plenty of clever ideas out there that don&amp;#x27;t have much of a practical use (or used to have one but are now obsolete). Duff&amp;#x27;s Device, sleep sort, the fast inverse square root, one instruction set computers, code golf and 4KB demos ...&lt;p&gt;I think I do understand the technological value of Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s PoW blockchain, I just think that its only practical use is for a tiny niche. It&amp;#x27;s the Prolog of consensus algorithms, I&amp;#x27;m sure it&amp;#x27;ll be useful to some but I doubt it&amp;#x27;s going to be the new C++. You say that &amp;quot;It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique&amp;quot; and it&amp;#x27;s true but how useful or valuable is that? Is it such a huge problem in our modern society to agree on a sequence of events? Do you often program something and think &amp;quot;man, I wish that there was a way to establish a consensus over points in time which are universally unique&amp;quot; and 1&amp;#x2F; there&amp;#x27;s no other simpler solution to achieve that and 2&amp;#x2F; a blockchain could actually solve it? There&amp;#x27;s only a tiny gap between these two propositions.&lt;p&gt;But I think at this point talk is cheap and all that needs to be said about the blockchain has been said long ago and multiple times. How many billion of dollars has been poured into &amp;quot;blockchain&amp;quot; technology these past few years, in the form of pre-mined coins or ICOs? How many hundreds of engineers are working on those killer blockchain applications? How many high profile companies have boldly announced blockchain-related tech investments lately? So.... where are the results? How long do we wait for them until we decide that maybe it&amp;#x27;s not that revolutionary?</text></comment>
<story><title>Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain</title><url>https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gtrubetskoy</author><text>The problem that proof-of-work blockchain solves is widely misunderstood. It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique. Prior to the publication of Satoshi&amp;#x27;s paper we did not have a solution to this problem and for that reason it is a significant advance in technology. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t call it crappy, it&amp;#x27;s actually quite brilliant.&lt;p&gt;For a detailed description see this: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;grisha.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;explaining-proof-of-work&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;grisha.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;23&amp;#x2F;explaining-proof-of-work&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragontamer</author><text>&amp;gt; It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique.&lt;p&gt;Did we really?&lt;p&gt;BTC vs BCH, Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic. Sigwitx2.&lt;p&gt;These hardforks technically break established consensus and rely upon social means (hey everyone: switch algorithms right now!!) to stay in order. At the end of the day, it seems to me that the &amp;quot;blockchain&amp;quot; is only as strong as the community&amp;#x27;s resolve to work together.&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, Bitcoin is turning into a governance structure. The current power players are the devs, who most people trust (and I see no reason not to trust them). And the social structure is organized on Github and forums.</text></comment>