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Comment by andreskytt | Hacker News Reader

Anything blockchain-based requires every user not only to trust, that their identity is private, but that it will remain so indefinitely. With all the nodes having access to all the data, you must assume nobody is ever going to find a way to use the data against you. Which in the modern world requires extraordinary optimism.

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When you make online transactions sitting in a cafe you feel safe in sending websites your credit card. This admittedly requires _some_ optimism but it would be surprising if someone in that cafe could break TLS.

Systems like zcash and monero are similar: if you don't trust the cryptography then they're not useful, but it seems like a strange objection to say somebody could do unsavory things if they could break the cryptography, that's what it's for!

I think OP's claim is that even if someone breaks TLS, they only get the data from that cafe session. Finding an exploit in the not-yet-battle-hardened implementation of the cryptographic systems in popular blockchains could reveal private information that is recorded in a ledger "forever."

I don't think we need to break any cryptography here. Someone with enough ether can post private data or offense on blockchain already, and it'd be forever available to anyone.

I feel safe because my bank is responsible for that transaction.

If the cafe, thief or anyone steals my money for whatever reason other than me physically giving someone my card/PIN then the bank or credit card company is legally responsible. And they will refund you the money.

Look forward to Web3 without a similar safety net in place.

> When you make online transactions sitting in a cafe you feel safe in sending websites your credit card. This admittedly requires _some_ optimism but it would be surprising if someone in that cafe could break TLS.

The worry wouldn't be about someone breaking TLS, but someone MitM your connection with your card processor in a way you don't notice. One is much more likely than the other.

This isn't the case with (long-standing, extremely well tested) ZK technology like Monero, and future applications like privacy-focused ZK rollups. In these chains there's no feasible way to track even single transactions.

If there's no way to track a transaction, would you even consider this a blockchain given that traceability is such a key ideal to decentralized trust? Interesting perspective from Bankless blog: "What if the real threat is the separation of crypto from crypto values?What if the real threat is the separation of crypto from crypto values?"(https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-best-argument-agains...)

Sigh.

Generally what happens is that: - Everyone is able to prove a transaction's correctness; - There's no way for a third party to track the contents of a transaction adversarialy; - there are ways for first and second parties to prove them if they so wish.

I feel like some of these comments are autogenerated from some GPT3 running in the cloud.

Cryptography ensures that transaction amounts, sender, receiver are encrypted. There is no way to decrypt the data. You can verify the encrypted data without decrypting it. Everything works similar to Bitcoin but now you and others have no way of figuring out anything valuable by looking at the blockchain, because everything on the blockchain is just encrypted bytes.

Even the node that is the first one to receive all bytes has no idea who is sending, receiving and the amount. Everything is always encrypted.

When I create a transaction that includes my wallet address and the address that receiver gave me, once the transaction is made, the receiver cannot see the original address of my wallet, the 3rd party cannot see the amounts or addresses in the transaction and the receiver can move the money to a different address and I would have no way of figuring out that happened. Similarly, receiver can send me back the amount and I would have no idea from which wallet address it came.

How does this work with stuff like fraud prevention or tracking? For example, if you get defrauded, who do you sue?

We may joke all we want about it, but there are still laws in place and we need to respect them.

As usual, poorly informed article and poorly informed comments, eager to bash on Web3 without knowledge of the full picture and the ongoing developments.

Example: https://oasisprotocol.org/

Also, the fact that it's possible to interact with dapps without going through centralized servers it means that it's much harder to get metadata (ex. IP) about who performed a specific action.

It’s possible to interact with dapps without going through a centralized server, for certain types of client hardware. Definitely not for mobile devices.

You can use any Ethereum node, or run your own. MetaMask supports arbitrary RPC servers for this very purpose, so you can use Flashbots, for instance.

This would require more than just a mobile device, however. Perhaps a rooted Android device could self-host an Ethereum node, although your battery life may take a hit.

I think there are other chains and wallets that are designed around mobile use cases, which make it easier than on Ethereum to sync the whole chain, or use technical means to mediate the need to do so.

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/ru...

https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-protect/rpc/quick-start...

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