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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

Why is there always a highly up-voted comment in every thread that expresses befuddlement at the utility of the blockchain? I thought HN was all about forward thinking and experimental ideas, instead of throwing up hands in ignorance.

Admittedly, the article is light on technical details, but if you understand how blockchain technology works, you could easily deduce that a likely use case for this would be a service for connecting drivers to passengers without a middleman and without the regulatory burden that often prevents these services from proliferating in certain markets. A more fleshed out general case of a decentralized marketplace is OpenBazaar, which creates a marketplace with no middleman that can't be taken down.

There is no reason a blockchain based app couldn't be implemented. Whether this guy is actually on the right path or not is hard to say based on the article.

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> There is no reason a blockchain based app couldn't be implemented.

I don't think anyone is doubting this bit. It's the overwhelming current trend of forcing everything onto the blockchain, whether it improves the application or not. The interesting questions (frequently not answered) revolve around why one should do this.

To me, the supposed benefit of using blockchain was so obvious as not to require stating: Removal of any central authority over connecting customers to service providers. And you might not want Uber tracking your travels, for example.

There are good arguments for centralization, too. Not saying the blockchain argument win out. Just saying, the benefits are the same as for every other blockchain application, and well understood.

> And you might not want Uber tracking your travels, for example.

Surely a blockchain would only change that to anybody being able to track your travels, though?

The whole system wouldn't have to sit on the blockchain - only the parts that are needed to put out a request. The only part that would need some thought is the initial location. One option would be to put out a general location, within 10 miles, then only give exact location to those who request it and have a proven record of being good drivers. That's another problem as well - how do you create a ratings system on the blockchain that can't be manipulated? Perhaps a page-rank style algorithm could do that.

No more or less than anybody can track my bitcoin transactions, right? If I want to be anonymous, I use a new bitcoin address for each transaction.

The presence of both "so obvious as not to require stating" and "Not saying the blockchain argument win out" suggests that it's probably not as obvious as it seems. :)

Decentralized uber is a great idea, and I optimistically look forward to a viable implementation...maybe in the next 20 years. I'm not sure that we necessarily need bitcoin or similar software to do this, however. There would need to be some PGP-based identity system and a way to associate driver and passenger reviews with those identities, as well. Ideally identities could be registered in a distributed filesystem -- maybe ethereum works for that, but I also see no reason this couldn't be done in a less costly way. Drivers and passengers could confirm payment and publish reviews based on PGP-signed receipts. Payment could be handled in the usual manner, and I see relatively small benefits to making that verifiable through bitcoin.

We may not need bitcoin or ethereum to create a decentralized system, but do you have suggestions for better alternatives? Until then, we've got the blockchain as our tool for exploring generalized decentralized computing.

The key elements of decentralized uber are:

1) open source hailing app or dispatcher 2) rating system with identities

For the hailing or dispatcher, we don't need bitcoin but it may be useful if there is abuse to impose some cost on hails (e.g., uber employees generating fake hails, haha).

For the rating and identity, we can use a GPG web of trust.

How do you prevent a local government from shutting down whomever is running this open source hailing system? What happens when this person no longer wants to spend money running a hailing server?

The key is that the taxi drivers are running the hailing system, it is a tool for an already-licensed driver. There is no company coordinating the activities of "independent contractors". If someone tries to own this network, and exploit rent from it as a business opportunity, then they could run into the same regulatory issues as Uber.

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