Comment by canoebuilder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by canoebuilder | Hacker News Reader

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gall_(author)#Gall.27s_la...

People like analogizing blockchain development to the development of the world wide web.

Tim Berners-Lee launched the first website in Dec 1990, Google launched in Sept 1998. And in between there were many companies founded that did things that lots of people liked. These companies found widespread use and patronage.

Satoshi Nakamoto launched bitcoin/and the blockchain idea in Jan 2009, it's currently Oct 2017.

What besides trading cryptocurrencies, and endless(half-bakedly) pontificating on, are people doing with blockchains?

What simple, functional, useful blockchain systems are people actually using today that have potential to grow into more useful and complex systems later?

Multisignature funds are used by almost all blockchain project organizations and companies. That's a simple system that's extremely useful.

So blockchains give you the ability to open a secure account of valuable digital assets and authorize spending via cryptographic signatures and business logic.

You couldn't do that before blockchains, and it's not hard to imagine interesting variations on the theme: for example the Colony project that's on the top of HN right now.

Can you break down into the simplest language, what that actually means?

How is it superior to existing systems? For what applications?

It's a checkings account for cryptocurrency with spending conditions of the type "4 out of 6 members agree and the weekly spending limit is not exceeded."

Since blockchains are open source and programmable, that also means it's a checkings account that you can script in any way you want.

It's superior in that it doesn't require a bank. It's also an extremely transparent system, since blockchain transactions are visible to and auditable by everyone, and it has some strong security properties because of decentralization.

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