The most obvious stupid scam ever conceived and they actually managed to hook a bunch of actual corporations

Square Enix, Nickelodeon, Coke, KFC, and more fell for this shit while regular people were laughing about how obvious a con it was.

Really puts into question the capitalist myth of the genius entrepreneur and the idea that these corporate types are rich because they are smart or deserving in some way.

  • ennemi [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The real kicker is that there are plenty of good theoretical applications for blockchain technology and all we get are shitty investment commodities and grifts

    The technology never gets employed to a productive end because the entrepreneurs are in charge of deploying it

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      1 year ago

      there are plenty of good theoretical applications for blockchain technology

      This is not true. Distributed ledgers allow for consensus without trust. That is it. Every other application of them is just a slower database. So pretty much all they are good for is digital money, but digital money with a hard throughput limit and no backing from any government. The rush to use them for anything and everything violates the most basic principles of good computer engineering, and there's a very good reason no one has created anything worthwhile with them besides money that can be used for crime.

      • ennemi [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Distributed ledgers allow for consensus without trust. That is it.

        That's like saying asymmetric cryptography only allows for trust irrespective of medium. We still deployed it everywhere because it turns out that's useful in countless ways. Blockchains are also not necessarily public, and generally most of the shit they get from leftists has more to do with stupid wasteful consensus mechanisms than anything to do with the principle of a fancy networked Merkle tree itself.

        In the end it's just another mathematical guarantee and we can do better than "concept is related to bad people and is therefore bad"

        edit : Also worth noting that PKI was a huge gold rush when it started and still to this day lots of companies make utter bank on the sole basis that their certificate chains are trusted by default in your browser

        • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
          ·
          1 year ago

          No, I think crime money is good. But every time someone tries to come up with another use for them it's like, demonstrably worse than what already exists. It just sets off my bullshit sensors.

          • ennemi [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Completely fair. I'm mostly interested in what it can do for distributed computing and inter-organizational trust and most of that is being done outside flashy VC circles and not getting much media coverage. Naturally anything that allows organizing outside of bougie government institutions is good up to and including crime money

      • captcha [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        git is a blockchain without a consensus model. Once you remove the artificial scarcity component of blockchains the are extremely useful.

        • fox [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Eh. Blockchains and git both use merckle trees, but boats and cars both have engines.

          • captcha [any]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Distributed Merkel trees are blockchains. Git is distributed. Git commits are blocks.

      • Owl [he/him]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Even this is overselling blockchains, to be honest. There are a variety of far cheaper ways to do distributed trustless consensus, for example CRDTs. You can even run a CRDT-based ledger if you're willing for people to have negative balance. The only thing a blockchain adds is an incredibly expensive clock mechanism to slow the transactions down enough that they can prevent double-spend and enforce positive balances.

    • UlyssesT
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      edit-2
      2 days ago

      deleted by creator

      • ennemi [he/him]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Man what the fuck am I doing on hexbear. Even the most inconsequential disagreements turn into this sort of bullshit, without fail

        • UlyssesT
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          edit-2
          2 days ago

          deleted by creator

          • ennemi [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            No that's pretty much on the money, but it's also a problem with proof-of-work consensus algorithms specifically

            I don't know I guess it's just exhausting how everybody has to have a crazy out-there opinion about every fucking thing in or outside their spheres of competence and just loads up that shit with twitter irony like it's free salad at a salad bar

            • UlyssesT
              ·
              edit-2
              2 days ago

              deleted by creator

              • ennemi [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                Sure let me meaningfully engage with "dae le drugs amirite stop-posting-amogus"

    • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      name a single application of "blockchain technology" that cannot be done the same or better by other tech

      • UlyssesT
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        deleted by creator