Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Solana has an interesting technology. It's sort of a modernized Ethereum. High transaction rate, low transaction cost, more scalable, and proof of stake. Features Ethereum was supposed to have by now, but still doesn't.

Programs can be stored on the blockchain. They're written in, of all things, Berkeley Packet Filter bytecode. (No, they don't run inside the Linux kernel. I hope.) Programs can be written in Rust and compiled. How secure this will turn out to be for their "smart contracts" is an open question at this time.

So far, I can't find any working applications for Solana that do something outside the crypto space. Like, say, replacing domain registrars. There's some kind of identity service, but it seems to be tied to Twitter. There's The Media Network, but it doesn't work yet. ("The Media Network is an open source, decentralized and censorship-resistant live streaming hosting protocol. More coming soon.")

Not seeing "AirBnB for Solana", or "Uber for Solana", or "offshore realty for Solana", or even "concert ticket scalping for Solana". This is a problem. It doesn't really do anything yet.

Why would you even need Airbnb or Uber for Solana? What problem does either solve?

This remains a fundamental problem with crypto: we're 13 years in and the only practical use cases remain speculation and money laundering. Even DeFi seems to consistent mostly of navel gazing (crypto derivatives etc) and leverage.

Have a look at areas of banking where you have a lot of paper and lot of a actors / intermediaries —- eg trade finance, post-trade asset servicing. Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks.

If it's just a private network, why even call it a blockchain instead of a database? It's not even decentralized.

I agree with your comment. Perhaps the GP is also considering the use of smart contracts (see ref 1 for an example)

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2020/12/02/will-...

Smart contracts are amazing, as long as its a contract between two crypto people doing crypto stuff. But (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong) the oracle problem still stops them from using anything in the real world as an input; I think this is what GP meant by naval gazing.

The example contract in the link I posted doesn't rely on third-party data sources (with the exception, perhaps, of time).

Does the oracle problem still apply?

It would seem that by definition, if you want smart contracts or anything "on the blockchain" to interact with the real world, you will need to find intermediaries you trust. Meaning you're back to square one if you want to cross the crypto-real world membrane.

It can be quite useful for a more complex ledger between multiple banks. Yes it’s not open like Bitcoin but it’s easy to connect multiple partners, provides immutability / transparency, deals with varied levels of trust between actors (banks, shipping companies, importers / exporters, government entities), and allows you to formalise trade finance rules in a smart contract, etc without imposing a central database / solution. It’s an closed network involving complex transactions between a range of parties and therefore blockchain / smart contracts is actually a good solution.

> Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks.

No, it isn’t. There are some pilot projects but more have been abandoned than completed. And you don’t need blockchain for this.

Use cases are the same as with money btw. People use cryptocurrency today to trade and to transfer value. You can try to ignore that, or point to the low adoption, but it is there.

How would a custom Uber on Solana app work differently than the Uber of today adapted to accept a standard cryptocurrency with sufficient throughput?

It would be tRUstLeSs and deCEntRALiseD, duh! Until you get into the car of course.

It wouldn’t. Changing the backbone and how money transit should be transparent to the user.

by "practical use case", GP meant a case that crypto is better for, not just something it can be used for. You can buy coffee with bitcoin, sure, just like you can roller skate on a frozen lake, but most people don't, cuz that's not what it's for.

I think the many decentralized exchanges and services built on top of cryptocurrencies is exactly that. It’s programmable, more interoperable, and more secure (that you won’t be able to see unless you work for a financial institution that uses a cryptocurrency).

Sure, DeFi would be really cool if I wanted to borrow crypto, or lend crypto, or trade crypto options, or take a mortgage out on a bitcoin or whatever. But for people who need to deal with a real world asset, it has very little to offer. It still cannot (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) implement a simple option to buy stock at a certain price, and is not really any closer than it was the day ETH was crowd-funded.

So, for those of us on the outside, DeFi just looks like a bunch of crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other. It's neat and all, but I don't see how it ever really affects the rest of us.

What you’re citing about DeFi is the least interest part of DeFi imo. The most interesting parts are decentralized exchanges, bridges, and cryptocurrencies that bridge other cryptocurrencies (axelar, thorchain, incognito, zklabs, etc.)

The whole point is that you now have interoperability between many projects and their tokens, data, stablecoins, etc.

> interoperability between many projects and their tokens, data, stablecoins, etc

that's pretty much what I meant by

> crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other

Interoprability between cryptos is all DeFi can do. What's the other use case? If I said, "I was going to do X, but thanks to the power of DeFi it makes sense to pay the fees and absorb the volatility risk to do it on a blockchain", what's X?

I’m not sure I get your point. It’s like you’re talking about this new exotic crypto thing when all crypto is is a new way of transfering value. If you see the different crypto projects as different currencies then you realize that this is really simply about transfers between currencies that don’t have to go through dozens of middle men. You might live in a bubble but remittances is a huge thing in the world you live in.

It seems like we're saying the same thing. I complained that all defi can do is trade cryptocurrencies, and you said ah, but it can also trade cryptocurrencies.

I don't know what kind of remittances you think I'm in a bubble for being unaware of. The best way to explain would be to actually answer my question: what's the non-crypto use case that can be solved better with defi than without it?

> People use cryptocurrency today to trade and to transfer value.

Do they though? I recently did the math and people mostly seem to use crypto markets for what you described. Only about 10% of Bitcoin transactions actually have any blockchain involvement, the rest is all handled internally by markets. And that 10% was on a good day, there are many days when that number is much lower.

What does that even mean? All bitcoin transactions use the blockchain. If by chance you mean "trades on exchanges" then the same could be said about nearly any financial instrument. A majority of movement is done by traders, market makers, etc.

> All bitcoin transactions use the blockchain.

Depends on how you define bitcoin transaction. The majority of BTC <> USD transactions (or any other currency) has no involvement of the blockchain at all. They happen purely within the databases of the markets.

> the same could be said about nearly any financial instrument

Well, that's kind of my point. People say that Bitcoin, the technology, is being used for lots of transactions already. However, most BTC, the cryptocurrency, transactions don't use the Bitcoin blockchain at all. They use the same basic technology that traditional banks and markets use. So where's the value add in the blockchain if it isn't being used?

Different exchanges and users use a blockchain to interoperate.

Different banks and financial services use different protocols, some instant some deferred, to interoperate.

Yes, those statements are true, but what are you trying to say with respect to my argument?

It's been far too volatile to use as a store of value so it's about as useful as a moneywire service. I would love to see BTC stabalise at the very least, but it's been demonstrated that all it takes to decimate someone's wallet is a twitter post. That's not something that happens to the USD or the AUD. Not yet anyway.

Have you looked at stablecoins?

Man, I know people keep saying this but like, in 1997 e-commerce was just starting to take hold. The number of people who hold crypto in the world is roughly equivalent to people with internet access in 97. Give it 25 years and watch what happens.

Tons of people said the internet was a fad too and where are we now? It’s ok if you don’t get it, you will, or your kids will. The main point of crypto is that traditional finance is insanely bad ux. It’s just not internet native and never will be because of the entrenched forces.

Crypto is internet native money and we’re not going back.

Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking?

FWIW, I was into crypto during the previous peak, and transferring it around involved copy-pasting strings of gibberish and sacrificing chickens to the gods so I wouldn't mess up and nuke it all. As far as I can tell things have gotten worse, not better, since.

UX has improved a LOT since 2017. I've been using ZapperFi for playing around with DeFi and it's an amazing experience. It's much easier and faster than any other financial trading app I've used (it's on par with Robinhood).

> Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking?

Crypto is a big space and there's a lot of variety, but yes. Not that many banks where I am offer effectively free and quick transfers with the ease of scanning a QR code, which I have done with crypto.

Even better is the experience of using ripple on keybase chat, which is far superior to anything I've seen offered by a bank in my area.

Sure, some cryptocurrencies are more painful, but that's not a necessary characteristic of the whole space, and perhaps even more important - we can innovate in the crypto space more easily than we can innovate in the traditional payments space.

Actually traditional banking has got a lot better at payments recently, and I think it's to some extent because they realize that they need to compete.

In large parts of the world, from Scandinavia to Africa, you can transfer money instantly using only phone-numbers (or QR codes). I use the Danish mobile pay every day and never yet felt that it would improve from "being on the blockchain".

now you have to have a cell phone number, registered with the state, and pay ongoing maintenance for the number’s service in order to take part in commerce. Imagine a world where nobody had to get anyone’s permission to send or receive payments, or pay ongoing fees for a service number, or register that number with the state. Now do you see where cryptocurrency folks are coming from?

1. No, the state doesn’t have to register my phone number. And in countries where this is the case, that’s not a question of technology.

2. In poor countries where monthly phone bills or lack of banking is an issue they often have prepaid.

3. Almost every adult in the world has a phone, you don’t even need a smartphone for some of these payment systems.

4. If you’re a poor Kenyan farmer that has been using your phone to pay anonymously for over a decade, I highly doubt you care that you need “permission” from Safaricom to do it.

So no, I really really don’t see the point. And I am someone that raised (a tiny amount of) seed money for a crypto based money transfer system for Africa in 2012. There could be improvements on the margins but there’s really no disruptive advantage to it being “decentralised”.

I would like to not own a phone, nor a phone number in the future. The way it’s going, the smarter folks will.. not be using consumer tech.

Registering phone numbers with the state is the global standard for a majority of humans, so don’t give me that “I don’t have to register”. Try that in China, Brazil, India, etc. With permissionless systems, as long as I have an internet connection, I can send and receive money.

If you don’t see this value, I’m sorry.

You are arguing for a state run centralized closed system of monetary control, and I am arguing for a non-state open monetary system in which anyone can participate. Do you understand how vastly different these two things are?

While you wrote this, around 1000 people got their first smartphone. We're getting close to 4 billion smartphones in the world, the trend is pretty clear. You are an incredibly rare exception.

I'm not "arguing" for anything, I'm just stating the fact that you can already transfer money peer to peer, and it isn't controlled by "the state" just because in some countries your phone number has to be registered. Or are you saying they also register each transfer?

How would your "permissionless" money transfer system work, do you have any ideas or is it just slogans?

And if you don't want to use a phone, you would presumably need a computer. That seems less inclusive, not more.

State of the art using bitcoin today is Strike, which performs payments over the lightning network. It’s largely behind the adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador.

I know I’m rare in my beliefs and paranoid understanding of geopolitics. Phones and cellular networks are not technologies to liberate the soul, no, far from it.

You'd still need a computer or phone, and a bank account, unless you imagine getting paid in bitcoins. But then the government will definitely start tracking that, or outlaw it if they can't. They are not going to give up their ability to tax the economy.

Yup, just bitcoin. Strike also uses stablecoins so you can send/receive USD without a bank being involved at all. True, peer-to-peer value transfers, nothing like a sms->sms transfer through a 3rd party. This will be my last comment — I beg you to wake up, look around and see what is happening. Janky cell phone centralized payment systems run by banks, telcos and governments suck. They represent control and surveillance. You think these central payment networks are about empowering a Kenyan farmer, no, it is about controlling them, being able to apply financial censorship and have full visibility into their private spending. There is a better world being developed right now. One that needs no gates nor gatekeepers.

Yes it absolutely is for international banking.

I think there is a difference in that there were things you could do with the internet that were immediately useful and so it was demonstrably beneficial. Outside of currency I haven't seen a demonstration of the technology that makes me think it's a requirement for the future to grow.

In 1997 e-commerce was just starting to take hold.

By 2000, E-commerce was huge.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

idk but I keep most of my wealth in stablecoins or cryptocurrency. The yields are better than a bank and I can withdraw more from Coinbase in a day than my bank would let me wire per day anyway, so why not?

Stablecoins without verifiable banking are terrible places to keep wealth. No upside, big potential downside.

DAI is pegged to the US Dollar, stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault. The upside is 20 - 30% APY by providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges. Bank accounts are providing no where near that return on currency.

> stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault

This is a textbook example of a "gray swan".

It's great that there are still people in the world paying you 20% a year for not taking on any risk. Really gives you hope for humanity, doesn't it.

I might if the market cap would be bigger: we still need to see if it can stomach a large scale actual financial crisis. What happens when 99.99% of owners want their USDT converted to USD and sent to their bank to buy bread. Those are things that can bring btc to actual 0: we have not tested this yet as we had no significantly big crisis since 2008. People liken blockchain to the beginning of the web: that beginning had major crash in 2001 which took companies years or decades or never to recover from. And similar sounds: 'things are different now'; the favorite hodler phrase since tulipmania. Nothing goes only up and the MSFT shares and such are not healthy imho. Something must happen and the question is; how far is crypto dragged with it. The promise was that it wouldn't (safe haven in times of inflation and recession) but a little financial crisis like begin 2020 crashed crypto quite hard. So what happens with a large one?

Because those better yields are there for a reason. That reason isn't lack of intermediaries, it's high inherent risks.

Economy has a risk-free rate of return, that of 1-year treasuries, at 0.05% currently. Anything above that involves risk. A rate of return of 7%/year means there's 7%-0.05% chance of the instrument being worthless after one year, ~14% chance of it losing half its value, ~28% chance of it losing a quarter of it's value, etc. There's no free lunch, and there's no financial arbitrage

Two economists are walking down the street and happen upon a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. The first economist says, "Look at that $20 bill." The second says, "That can't really be a $20 bill lying there, because if it were, someone would have picked it up already." So they walk on, leaving the $20 bill undisturbed.

Well a plus is that if it's done in solidity, people can just fork existing stuff on ethereum and push it on to Solana, with the exception of Uniswap and a few others that have explicitly disallowed it in their licenses

I had a little play with Solana to see if it would be appropriate for a game I'm building, to use as an (after)marketplace for players to trade in-game items. It's quite easy to install the Solana command line tools, create a wallet and create your own fungible or non fungible tokens with a few simple commands (and some Sol). The reason I was looking at Solana was because the transaction costs are extremely low (and if the marketing is to be believed, should stay that low even if Solana had the market cap of bitcoin).

However you can't add any metadata to non fungible tokens at present (some dev told me on discord that this feature was coming very soon), which limits its usefulness. Also a reliable and user friendly marketplace for Solana tokens is still lacking (startup opportunity for someone?)

Is there a "Chinese currency control evasion for Solana"? That's generally the most viable use case for most cryptocurrency systems.

To be fair, AirBnB for Solana would be pretty pointless, the interesting thing is if they can come up with something that wasn't possible before crypto.

The disruptive potential of the internet was clear even as we sat on dial-up connections, crypto is way past that point but still hasn't produced anything useful. Making ETH a bit better will not fundamentally change that.

Audius is one such example: https://medium.com/audius/audius-selects-solana-to-scale-com...

That deal was announced last October, but does not seem to be working yet. Or even in test. Searching the Audius API docs returns zero references to Solana.

>Etherium

You mean ethereum right?

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