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Comment by vvpan | Hacker News Reader

I know a lot of people will use this to say that blockchain bad, and that is up to you. But really biometrics collection has little to do with blockchain. Worldcoin is firstly a company that collects biometrics and secondly they decided to use an immutable ledger to record the data (although they claim that it is only hashes).

That aside if I wanted to record a bunch of hashes for perpetuity blockchain would actually be the right technology - does not go out of business and take down the servers with it.

The article makes me laugh and sad at the same time though. This Altman guy...

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Blockchain would not be the right tech if you don't need decentralised trust.

Write once media on a server is what you want.

>Write once media on a server is what you want

How does that solve this problem:

>[company will] go out of business and take down the servers with it

distributed public key, and a private-signed hash of the dataset.

How do you know that the dataset is the most up to date version?

Maybe some sort of globally distributed time-stamping mechanism? Oh hey look, it's a blockchain.

Or... the source of record can publish an xml file or something when there's updates to the signed diff... rss. No slow consensus model needed.

If you aren't in an adversarial context with multiple publishers, you don't need blockchain.

> source of record

How is this published? On a single server somewhere? What country would you put it in? A friendly one I hope. Also one that won't block access to other countries that it might have petty disagreements with in the future. It might be a good idea for it to be replicated across a number of servers across the internet. We call those "nodes" in the blockchain space.

> We call those "nodes" in the blockchain space.

Mirrors existed long before blockchain.

Blockchain, the new uber-tech-hammer.. everyone gets nailed.

Open-source it, publish it somewhere or make it a bittorrent. Using blockchain as a hosting solution feels like a misuse.

Or even a signed hash against a confirmed/known/distributed public key.

Blockchain is only useful in a decentralized + adversarial context where there is a need to remove one-another's ability to game a given system. And even then, it doesn't imply a perfect security around it. Since it won't stop theft, breach, scams or other vectors.

Are there any frameworks/platforms for this?

have you heard of txt files?

If you want to proof you didn't temper with the historic data, publish a daily hash in some newspapers.

Actually I would say that that is exactly what blockchain does, except as a protocol and relying on a network rather than a newspaper. Actually I might use this to explain blockchain to people on a base level.

So you're suggesting that publishing a hash in a newspaper every day is a better solution than a digital ledger? This is peak buttcoiner logic. That actually used to be done [1], because Blockchain are valuable, but not anymore because digital versions are more scalable, efficient, reliable, global, trustless etc. Etc.

1. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/bitcoin/first-instance-of-block...

Git?

> Write once media ...

Like publishing merkle tree hash in a few daily newspapers.

you forgot the shitcoinery - there is a token, with a premine, unfairly distributed. the VCs that invested (SBF, a16z,etc) will benefit disproportionately.

it’s a scam.

I cannot argue with bad token, premine - I have not researched but I believe it. "VC coins" in general have these issues it seems. Just trying to say that not every shitcoin is trying to get people to give them their biometrics, that is a separate issue in my opinion.

it’s the worst of both worlds.

There are legitimate reasons to premine, and creating a token with the intention of using it as a channel for UBI (literally giving money away) doesn't really scream "scam" to me considering the people backing it

why should Scam Altcoin control a centralized UBI system?

sounds like a scam to me.

Backers [0] like a16z [1], Coinbase [2], Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) [3], Three Arrows Capital (3AC) [4], Digital Currency Group (DCG) [5]?

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20211021160923/https://worldcoin...

[1]: https://twitter.com/KyleSGibson/status/1511065326624063501

[2]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-102

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried#Arrest_and_c...

[4]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-11/three-arr...

[5]: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-g...

much wow, very legit

maybe worldcoin is just another unregistered security offering, launched on dubious exchanges like Binance, to ensure the backers can pump and dump their shitcoins on retail to meet liquidity issues elsewhere?

shhhhhhh

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