Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

rysiek@szmer.info · 3 years ago

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

wazowski · edit-2 3 years ago

my main point was partially lost in the increasingly lengthy quotation trees caused by the git tangent, which in turn resulted from my improper definition of the word blockchain, causing it to include technically correct variants of blockchain (like git), but ultimately not related to my point

by using the term blockchain i refer to copies of series of cryptographically linked pieces of data, continually (with exceptions of contingencies, but still near 100%) and publicly hosted by multiple peers, containing a (deliberately designed and publicly known) mechanism by which entity A would be able to append a piece of data to existing series of pieces of data (following the rules of said mechanism), given that A has made an investment of some sort (money, time, computing power, space or similar, but necessarily fungible resource), and have this change propagated to all nodes, who host said copies of series of pieces of data of their own volition

this list of parameters constituting the definition of blockchain is something no other technology i’m aware of can provide

in my opinion, any other combination of technologies emulates this set of parameters imperfectly and with compromises which i wouldn’t want to accept, even despite all of the legitimate drawbacks you mentioned

edit: at this point i can only propose to agree to disagree, because after spending like an hour trying to write up a meticulously crafted comment to leave no room for interpretation i did not intend for (and erasing that comment afterward), i think that there’s no objective way to quantify the overall benefits/drawbacks of any set of technologies in order to definitely prove that one set of said technologies is better/worse than another

rysiek@szmer.info · edit-2 3 years ago

by using the term blockchain (…)

Sure. That’s what I refer to as distributed consensus blockchains.

this list of parameters constituting the definition of blockchain is something no other technology i’m aware of can provide

I would agree. What I question is if this particular set of parameters is actually useful in most contexts that this technology is pushed in.

in my opinion, any other combination of technologies emulates this set of parameters imperfectly and with compromises which i wouldn’t want to accept, even despite all of the legitimate drawbacks you mentioned

It’s not about emulating these specific parameters. It’s about asking if this combination of parameters is actually useful for something. And so far, from watching the scene for quite a while (and myself being quite excited about that tech initially), I cannot say I see how it is.

Every problem I have seen distributed consensus blockchains have been so far used for seems to have a solution that does not require such blockchains, which doesn’t have drawbacks associated with such blockchains.

Incidentally, the reason I do find Nano coin interesting is specifically because there is no single global distributed consensus blockchain in it. So there is no mining. There is, however, a proof-of-stake-ish solution to solving edge cases or malicious attempts at double spending, and that’s where I expect serious problems to eventually be found.

Please don’t read this as endorsement of Nano. I am merely giving an example of a system (that happens to use blockchains, but not globally distributed consensus blockchains) that solves a problem (sending money outside of the banking system, globally), without relying on the same set of parameters you mentioned, and thus avoiding many of the problems.

There is a world where we could focus on such projects. But there’s too much money already pumped into all the stuff on globally distributed consensus blockchains already, and too much bullshit peddling and shilling noise that crowds these out. Which is yet another reason why I am very critical of the whole crypto scene.

wazowski · 3 years ago

Every problem I have seen distributed consensus blockchains have been so far used for seems to have a solution that does not require such blockchains, which doesn’t have drawbacks associated with such blockchains.

a solution which doesn’t have some problems associated with blockchains, but introduce their own problems, which do not exist with blockchain space

for example, you mentioned federated code hosting or social media platforms (like lemme), in this case, you eliminate certain problems exclusive to blockchains, but simultaneously introduce other problems, like more centralisation and potential for censorship (instances in the fediverse are controller by individual ppl, who have virtually complete control over that instance, and these instances are accessed using http and dns, the former of which having little resistance to censorship and the latter being mostly very centralised), which are problems already solved by blockchains

so once again, it’s a question of what you value more and what’s you’re ready to sacrifice

rysiek@szmer.info · 3 years ago

for example, you mentioned federated code hosting or social media platforms (like lemme), in this case, you eliminate certain problems exclusive to blockchains, but simultaneously introduce other problems, like more centralisation and potential for censorship (instances in the fediverse are controller by individual ppl, who have virtually complete control over that instance, and these instances are accessed using http and dns, the former of which having little resistance to censorship and the latter being mostly very centralised), which are problems already solved by blockchains

These problems are not solved by blockchains.

Between developers pushing updates that users might not necessarily even be aware of or understand the consequences of, proof-of-stake blockchains being open to abuse due to concentration of ownership and thus voting power, proof-of-work blockchains experiencing mining pooling which concentrates effective power in the hands of people who control the pools - centralization of power effectively still remains a problem. It happens differently, on a different level, but it’s far from “solved”.

And federated solutions might even be more resilient to such secondary centralization simply by virtue of operating on the level of communities built around specific instances instead of the whole network.

The basic unit of sustainable human life is a village, not a singular human being. That is still surprisingly valid in the digital world. That’s what blockchain people seem to get wrong.