Comments
ChiggaOG t1_iydobwz wrote
On the commercial scale. Blockchain for tracking stuff in real-time competes with other solutions that already exist for manufacturing with the use of a QR code in a database pegged to a month and year. It's just an expense added to a solution that was already working.
beef-o-lipso t1_iyeucke wrote
Exactly. And the cost to change is very high so there better be big upside for all the stakeholders to switch technologies. "Because it's better" isn't good enough.
dungone t1_iyewnth wrote
It doesn't matter any more than a tulip bulb inside of cryptocurrency, either.
ThomasMacVoy t1_iyddwec wrote
*outside of bitcoin
squeevey t1_iyde58x wrote
An decentralized ledger can matter, especially for systems that are inherently distrustful.
The issue is that people are quick to trust. The problem is that TRUST is what got us a lot of issues in 2008. We trusted banks were doing their due diligence. So then blockchain comes along to be decentralized ledger of transactions to be verified independently.
The blockchain is sound, even Etheruem smart contracts have value. The GIANT GLARING PROBLEM - people did not VERIFY the different contracts to make sure the were doing the CORRECT thing. It needs code review.
Fundamentally, sure there's no need for blockchain if you're keen on trusting systems – and for private companies like IBM, yeah I trust em enough so there's no need for this to be on chain.
Here is a FANTASTIC article about the state of crypto in general and how it relates to the current finance system. Warning it is 40K words. But man is it good.
homezlice t1_iydjf1j wrote
But if you can't trust the government you are screwed anyhow. And by trust I mean that they will uphold your transactions and show up if someone steals from you. The idea that you don't need government to do these things is fantasy. And they are only going to do these things for currency they have a cut of and print.
Trust in economic systems is enforced by threat of force if trust is violated by bad actors.
phdoofus t1_iye3k0p wrote
Even the most ardent libertarians recognize the need for the courts and strong financial laws and systems and the means of contract enforcement.
DHFranklin t1_iyebrfa wrote
I don't think you've met the most ardent. Plenty I have spoken with don't beleive in third party arbitration, full stop.
phdoofus t1_iyeekpa wrote
There's a fair chance that you're right that I haven't.
psychopythonmetrist t1_iyed10r wrote
I love when libertarians talk about having a bunch of corporate controlled courts. Like those courts would ever rule in favor of a regular person lmao.
squeevey t1_iydllo5 wrote
Is that force a slap on the wrist? Because that's what it seems like these days.
homezlice t1_iydnxe2 wrote
No I mean force as in someone steals from you a cop will take the case and the judicial system will prosecute.
squeevey t1_iyedymt wrote
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Have you ever heard of civil forfeiture? Look it up. The government can and does take money from citizens. I understand your trying to say we do have to trust the government, but the point is decentralized systems to avoid having to trust.
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A blockchain is a decentralized verified ledger. That's it. Policy creation, execution, and enforcement are different.
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There are so many ways you cannot trust the government. If someone steals from you, and you call the police? They often say good luck, here's the police report you can file with your insurance.
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If you DISTRUST the smart contracts on a blockchain, then you would seek verification of them before you run the "contract". Caveat Emptor.
homezlice t1_iyege3o wrote
So...can you explain why the government would ever allow a decentralized currency? What problem does this solve for the government? And why would having money that is decentralized change the equation of ultimately having to have the government as part of the deciding factor in whether something is going to be allowed or not? Last I checked governments had ALL the power in the world, and the chance of them giving up that power (much of which is derived from controlling currency), is 0.
The government in the US via the FDIC does protect customers from corrupt banks (to a certain extent, but most people don't have millions in savings anyhow) - and overall, the government does act on our behalf in keeping bad actors like FTX from pretending to be banks etc with the currency they control. Yeah I know...there are a lot of "whatabouts" you could come up with here, I could spend all day coming up with them also. And yeah, I know all about civil forfeiture, and the global financial crisis, and fiat currency, the whole thing being made up to serve elites, etc...none of that matters to the point I am making:
my point is NOT that the government does this WELL or better than a hypothetical system might, but rather that they control the system through currency now and are not going to relinquish that power, ever. So it doesn't matter even if blockchain solves some edge-case problems of validation and trust for individual citizens or businesses, it will never be adopted as a primary means of exchange exactly because it dis-intermediates our governments.
Unless of course they decide to make their own crypto currency and control it themselves, which of course gets us back to square one.
squeevey t1_iyejdv7 wrote
I'm picking up what you're laying down. You make some good arguments. I dig it.
> So...can you explain why the government would ever allow a decentralized currency?
Because other countries allow it. If they don't get in the game, then there's money left on the table. Rich gotta be Rich.
If you play ONLY in crypto - it's a bit shadier in the sense that the IRS can't exactly keep track of your income (it's a LOT harder). So then they trust you're reporting your income correctly so they can tax you accordingly. Same with state governments. Government wants taxes. Since this is a digital game, you gotta play to even stay in the game, otherwise money is left on the table.
USDC is exactly that: https://www.investopedia.com/usd-coin-5210435 it's a "stablecoin". The article talks about those too.
Really good article that really makes you think about the current financial system and the future.
Kenny_McCormick001 t1_iydn2ty wrote
You’re prescribing the problem as the solution. You’re correct that people are quick to trust (aka lazy), but then proposed that EVERYONE should verify every single details in a decentralized ledger. How’s that even remotely possible based on human nature?
squeevey t1_iyea4uo wrote
I'm proposing that the creators need to put their codes out there, and elaborate them more so the joe & jane anyperson can do reasonable read through.
I'm technologically adept, yet, crypto is fuckin MURKY.
So until a group can demonstrate to the lay person how their project is validated and not just a money grab, these projects won't gain the ubiquity needed.
koreth t1_iydpze9 wrote
> people did not VERIFY the different contracts to make sure the were doing the CORRECT thing. It needs code review.
Professional programmers often suck at code review and miss glaring bugs even when they're reviewing actual code. What were the chances of this ever leading to bug-free contracts?
squeevey t1_iye9d61 wrote
isn't that the argument for open source? Deprecate contracts and create a new one?
undeleted_username t1_iydpho4 wrote
>An decentralized ledger can matter, especially for systems that are inherently distrustful.
The key here is "can"... yes, the technology behind the blockchain is solid and full of possibilities; but, right now, the reality is that it has no practical use.
Blackadder_ t1_iydn46k wrote
Let me ask you this: can blockchain offer say, Twitter verified account and thus create trust that any tweet from this account is legit?
squeevey t1_iyeawr4 wrote
I'd encourage you to read the article. It and its pros and cons are discussed.
Blackadder_ t1_iyebj0g wrote
The article addresses currency related. That’s not my question. This is why rest of the world cannot get behind blockchain when it’s always about it’s decentralized so it’s always good without offering meaningful use cases or when asked if blockchain could solve trust issue on a specific topic that is not some made up currency
squeevey t1_iyehwrl wrote
Is social trust not a form of currency?
For your twitter example: You register your "domain" on the ethereum name service (ENS). (you would have known that had you read the article). Then use the ENS as part of your twitter. Then in your public digital actions (and even in real life), you share your ENS domain. Done. You are linked to that. Because famous people have loud voices.
How about joe average? How would he get verified? He'd submit his ID, right? Then it has to go through the credit bureau (talk about a closed black box system). So you have private companies managing your social credit.
sexygodzilla t1_iyev9n3 wrote
> The problem is that TRUST is what got us a lot of issues in 2008.
How does a decentralized ledger prevent a bunch of corrupt bankers with already poor oversight bundling high risk home mortgages? I feel like you're just taking a generalized view of 2008 and vaguely waving blockchain at it like it's a solution.
squeevey t1_iyezl2i wrote
I'm not sure if you're taking the piss or what.
But my argument is that a decentralized ledger is verified by many parties openly. That's the first part.
The second part is about verification - to ACCEPT a decentralized system where we don't have to TRUST the banks are doing it right, we need to verify.
The 2008 example is about the corruption, the trust, and lack of verification that screwed over many people.
The same shit happens now on blockchains because people need to (but don't) VERIFY. So when a new "on-chain" company starts whatever "crypto" company I'm saying THEY NEED to show people how to independently verify the mechanics of their code.
If I - a stranger - gave you an executable file and said "hey, pay me money, and run this file, and it will deposit money to you" - would you do it? NO! I would hope you wouldn't.
However, if I -a stranger- said "hey, here is this cool program I made that takes in X tokens and gives Y tokens over time based on Z events, and here is how to look at that code - here and here and here. This is what this does here. If you go to here and see this, this is why it works." You may be skeptical, but you would you would also be more likely to dig in and verify it.
So my point is that ALL the experts leading up to the mortgage crisis didn't do their due diligence. The people taking on variable rate mortgages didn't do their due diligence. Basically anybody that fucked around - found out. There were even regular people who thought they were getting a "regular" mortgage to find out they too got fucked.
All because they trusted without verifying.
somegridplayer t1_iydbcls wrote
>$25 per container per journey
Well that's part of the problem.
Loki-L OP t1_iydby6a wrote
Considering that the cost of actually shipping a container can be in the thousands, I don't think that that was the main problem.
Supermichael777 t1_iydcy9o wrote
When the competing solution costs a penny it's a bit of a price hike.
somegridplayer t1_iydcdmk wrote
Now multiply that by thousands of containers per trip. Yes, it's part of the problem. There's a bit more than "Oh it costs $4000 to put a container on a ship". You also need to factor in what the container is carrying and what the revenue is for shipping that container. Also this is not some ground breaking change in how containers are tracked. Increasing the cost isn't going to show dramatic reduction in cost.
>I don't think that that was the main problem.
Good to know because nobody stated that.
Loki-L OP t1_iyd7ghg wrote
It turns out even it situations where blockchain might actually be able to address a problem (other than I want to use blockchain for something) and with industry giants spending real money to make it work, it still fails.
Maze_of_Ith7 t1_iydggfs wrote
Egh, usually I think blockchain is a big pile of vaporware but (1) this project was also trying to standardize the industry around Maersk, a competitor, and (2) involved technology innovation and IBM, oil and water.
JerryNicklebag t1_iydvhv3 wrote
IBM products are completely awful. I’ve worked in IT for nearly 30 years and have never seen a fully functional IBM product that does what it’s supposed to. Which is why they’ve turned to buying other successful companies and driving them into the ground.
fearswe t1_iyeuvi1 wrote
My experience as well. A larger company I worked at signed contract with IBM worth millions for them to develop some software. IBMs plan ways to make it into a product and sell it. It was absolute garbage, and after a few failed launch attempts it was completely scrapped all together. I have never had any positive experience from any software made by IBM.
home_planet_Allbran t1_iyfekph wrote
We looked at some application performance tools from IBM. They were so bad, the demonstrator couldn't even use them in the demo and other IBM tech guys started shouting at each other.
Some very clever people work there but, it would seem, no product owners or user researchers.
We didn't buy it.
ElvisDumbledore t1_iyd7tvh wrote
Yeah, it was too good. Shippers want the ability to fudge the ledger when they need to.
Deathwatch050 t1_iydlmcu wrote
They could have fudged the ledger anyway. The blockchain doesn't know what's real or true, only what's put into it. Garbage in, garbage out, blockchain or no.
ResearchFew9041 t1_iydpdm0 wrote
TLDR: IBM and Maersk have announced the closure of their blockchain-based trading platform, TradeLens, due to a lack of industry collaboration. TradeLens had been developed to digitize and simplify global supply chains, but had not achieved the commercial viability needed to continue operating. IBM and Maersk had sought to streamline global supply chains by digitizing the exchange of information in the shipping industry, but had struggled to attract other carriers. Despite its closure, Maersk intends to continue efforts to digitize the supply chain and increase industry innovation.
WhatTheZuck420 t1_iyekms8 wrote
feel sorry for the suckers customers that bought in to this.
[deleted] t1_iydpc32 wrote
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letsgetrandy t1_iyd7oyg wrote
I'm waiting for the day when someone finally proves that blockchain matters at all, outside of cryptocurrency. For all the talk of how important the new technology was, and all the excitement around it, the only thing it's ever succeeded at producing is environment-killing fad investments, and $200,000 GIFs.