Ask HN: What are some ideal applications of blockchains?
I have heard of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. How do you envision future applications of blockchain?
That being said I think it does have good applicability to digital-only activities which require trust, a good example might be Poker, I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case - where we don’t trust the software created by casinos and bookmakers. So I think generally speaking, right now, gambling is the number 1 use case for Blockchain in my opinion. There’s definitely challenges in this space though, for example building a Poker game on Ethereum would be impossible at the moment, transaction cost for each move would be completely cost prohibitive and there’s still challenges with random number generation, but these problems are solvable.
The other thing I think about with blockchain is generally speaking the view is that they should, in theory, outlast tech companies, as the view is that these public ledgers would be maintained collectively by society, it would be nice to be able to keep certain forever record to pass through generations of families to avoid things getting lost in the digital world, but that’s hope, hope that the blockchain you choose is maintained etc, so that’s just as much of risk as now - but it pains me I don’t know much about my great great grandparents, and would hope future generations don’t have that same problem, I wouldn’t want to rely on tech companies to help with that, it would be much nicer to have a record which is decentralized.
All it takes is one good competitor to highlight that fact. hint hint
There isn't any method possible where you don't have to rely on a trusted third party - and that's the entire problem blockchain is trying to solve.
The main question in the post should be "what information do i want to know without having to trust anyone, because it's verified by a number of 3rd parties before i view it"
E.g. every single finance/share/security transaction, tracking info of humanitarian aid, government spending, sales direct to an artist (tickets etc)
Before you say "but everyone can see", encryption exists for a reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
I think the last one is the biggest success.
Blockchain can be used as a rather expensive and crude database, so one possible application is a key-value database which is guaranteed to always be up.
I suspect that as blockchain technologies improve and better techniques for sharding are developed, this could become quite a common real-world application.
From reading the comments most people here don't have any idea about the research that's currently happening in the blockchain space. They're just making ignorant comments about ponzi schemes and money laundering.
Very exciting research happening in blockchain.
Obviously if a single node has a disk failure or OS crashes, and you are connected to that node, the blockchain is down for you and everybody else connected to that node .... but most of the other nodes are still up and the system as a whole is up.
"Availability" means being able to access the blockchain/system/network and get the data you want, when you want it.
The way most blockchain systems find out which nodes are on the network is usually through a gossip protocol, so typically your app will start off with some "seed nodes", which it contacts, then gets information about other nodes on the network.
Once you have the IPs of say 100 nodes scattered around the world, on different networks, running different OSes, etc. the chances of losing access to all those nodes is virtually zero.
Edit: You seem to be thinking about blockchains in terms of how traditional cloud/web based systems work. That's the wrong way to think about it. Blockchains have fundamentally different architecture. They do not use load balancers.
The project is based on blockchain(though it is federated) technology. In fact multiple blockchain platforms are used to achieve the overall goal. Blockchain for identity, payments, distributed verifiable but ownerless database etc.
Looking for co-developers for the project. My email is in my HN profile.
[0] Details of what the project will look like is outlined here: https://loan-free-ed.neocities.org
Because of the following reasons:
* it has to be distributed and federated
* no one entity should control the data
* it has to be tamper-proof
> You even mention in the writeup that this behavior exists in other countries already - which means it already can be achieved without this technology.
Yes, the system exists. But it does not have the attributes mentioned above because those systems are controlled by single entity.
> Heck, in the US there are already educational institutions that charge a portion of future salary rather than a tuition.
Yes, I know. But I am trying to make this universal, a platform for everyone to use. My vision is that government will start funding education using equity rather than debt. That will promote life-long learning and reskilling without putting students into debt. That is a win-win for everyone.
> You spend a huge amount of time describing the merits of this approach and (as far as I can tell) zero time describing what your software actually does, even when digging into the page that contains additional details.
At the core the platform acts as a ledger that maintains records of monetary and non-monetary transactions between various stakeholders in education. The stakeholders are government, education institutions, students, businesses and policymakers. The non-monetary transaction is education "service" provided by education institution to students. That record is maintained by the platform to connect students to each education institution and its staff. And the monetary transactions are funding and grants received by education institutions from government for providing education per student; this indirect government funding of student education acts as investment in that student which the student pays back as dividend rather than loan-repayments. That way the students are not in debt but are still obliged to payback via auto-deduction from their income. This whole system is automated and handled by the proposed platform. Think of this platform as a distributed ledger that maintains connections between various stakeholders in education, and what those connections are used for. And based on that information the students are funded for education. And when the students start generating income, then a small percentage of that income is autodeducted and distributed automatically to those involved in that students education.
Universities already have accounting software. Money comes in via grants and student payment (in whatever form that is) and pays staff salaries. Nothing about what you describe requires federation. You just simply announce it. Even in your paragraph describing it you just fall back on the description of the "funding with future salary" approach.
Sorry, may be I am bad a explaining.
> Universities already have accounting software.
This is not an accounting software. Though others can build an accounting software on top of the proposed platform. But that is not my project's scope.
> Money comes in via grants and student payment (in whatever form that is) and pays staff salaries.
That money via "student payment" is what I am trying to change. Students are given loans to pay for education. This is a bad idea. Making students debtors even before they start generating income is wrong on so many fronts. I am trying to change education funding from debt-based to equity-based. Students should not be penalised for taking education. But I do think that everyone who has benefited from education should contribute back to whoever helped them in their education(this will also help better the education standards). The platform I am proposing will facilitate that. In the present system students pay first(using loans) and then hope of a better outcome to coverup the cost. This is reverse to how we pay for any other service/product! In real life we get the service/product and then we pay for it. Why do students have to first pay and then cross their fingers in the hope that they will be able to get the income to pay back the loans. Instead, if we treat funding in education as investment in a student, then the repayment should be treated as dividend and not loan. That way students will not suffer bankruptcy!
> Nothing about what you describe requires federation.
It requires federation because it is not controlled by any single entity, but it still has to have some oversight as the data on the platform is about students. It could have been permissionless/non-federated like bitcoin/ethereum blockchain. That is the ideal situation. But as the data held by the platform is sensitive, it has to be federated/permission-oriented.
> You just simply announce it.
It is not that simple. There are many stakeholders in this: the government, education institutions, students, businesses and policymakers. It is a multi-sided platform. It will make a subtle change to education funding, but will be a major disruption to the way education is funded sustainably. There will be some who will not like this change as it will disturb their profit-making carts!
> Even in your paragraph describing it you just fall back on the description of the "funding with future salary" approach.
Yes, that is the aim. But instead of private investors, it will be government(directly) and/or education institutions(backed by government) that will directly invest in the students. And this platform will be available for everyone to participate in. It is a non-profit, open source and blockchain-based for a reason. If I didn't want to change the status quo of education funding and wanted to make profit out of students then I would have just started a private, closed source, profit making platform based on traditional database as other are doing it.
I am just trying to make equity-based funding of education open, transparent, sustainable and universal without penalising students(and tax-payers) and at the same time increase income of education institutions and its staff. All the present solutions that are available do not provide that.
I am using blockchain just as a distributed, federated and tamperproof database. Nothing else.
You could ask "What if cryptocurrencies do not exists tomorrow?" That is a valid question. But that I don't think applies as easily to database technologies.
This is because it’s better to use a database: simpler, faster, more efficient.
You can do crypto signing in a database or flat files if you really need proof that some actor approved something or other. Each actor can keep such signatures in a local db as evidence if needed.
I read a headline that Japan's stock exchange is moving to use blockchain. That is also a good use but I don't know if its an ideal usage.
Let's take game assets for example. I don't see any chance right now to have Steam and Epic build a gaming metaverse since one of them would have to build and own the infrastructure.
A decentralized blockchain would make talks about data transfer and collaboration much easier. I'm not sure about the whole NTF thing as of right now, but I'm still curious for the future.
What is true for game assets can be true for personal data, copyright claims, or anything else. The blockchain might gain adoption because its principles make it interesting as a standard for value transfer.
Not challenging your conclusion, just asking.
While it is certainly true that this should be handled at an international/community level, it often just isn't. Selling the idea of solving indirect (VAT or sales) tax fraud through invoice matching and handling cross border trades while simultaneously not needing one state to trust another (even if that isn't strictly and in all instances true) can be a powerful pitch.
Blockchain based DNS allows people to actually own their domain, instead of the current system where we basically rent domains. It also makes it impossible for domain to be seized.
How is DNS flaky?
Maybe "flaky" is a bit too strong of a term. It generally works I guess.
The main advantage blockchain offers is not really within the realm of getting the right answer to a DNS query, it's more to do with giving the owner of the domain name 100% control of the domain through cryptography and smart contracts. This also makes the process of domain transfer a lot more efficient, cutting out the need for middlemen like Godaddy, etc.
I have a pet idea of electricity meters that cryptographically sign their value and timestamp. We have state employees who come every month and take readings. We can automate these readings without going full IOT.
Tampering happens when your delivery service tries to cover up a freezer outage. Yes they could grab the sensors and throw them in another freezer but you can't solve every problem with one tool. At least they can't try to do anything to alter the history so it makes it harder. Much like I can enter a locked home, but the lock makes it harder. The alarm makes it harder again. But nothing is fool proof.
- zero-trust escrow
- distributed auctions
Otherwise, there is also the concept of "oracles" [0] which are able to look outside the blockchain for information (think weather API, or a city's ledger) that could be your "external source of truth"
Oracles can’t really be trustless.
For a technology that occupies such a big presence in people's minds, and has billions of peoples' money invested in, and hundreds of companies chasing their tails trying to find practical uses for it - it's a really short list.
For the relatively small group that are either (a) happy to be the 'early' guy in an obvious ponzi/pyramid scheme or (b) convinced that despite all the evidence, it isn't in fact a scam, I'm sure it does occupy a big presence in their minds.
14 years in currency trading/quant/FinTech. Regardless of the tech, if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
I think HN generally loathes over hyped technology.
> if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
Nobody asked you to "tell us" anything.
The constant "you just need to get on board" schtick really doesn't help any argument that it's not a scam.
That joke about vegans applies equally well to crypto-'currency' fans:
How do you know someone is a <vegan/crypto fan>?
Don't worry, they'll be sure to fucking tell you.
I stopped heeding the tech elitists here a long time ago and have nothing but benefited from it.