this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Is an astronomically terrible idea. It:
Relative point to point
You could say the Linux kernel is an astronomically terrible idea because it doesn't do anything...but it is just the platform, the good comes from what people build on top of it that add all these quality of life features you miss
Buy ydy
Just to elaborate here. You are describing one implementation of a blockchain that provides a cryptocurrency. Blockchain is literally just another form of a database. It’s just that it can contain traits that would allow the database to be shared and distributed unlike typical databases. Currently there are some companies that are utilizing blockchain for their inventory systems. They aren’t using any more energy than they would with a typical system. They are just doing it to keep an unchanging record of past transactions which helps with fraud and loss prevention.
P.S. Money laundering using a system that is publicly distributed and has every transaction involving usd paired with an ID, social security number and enough pictures of your face to make a 3D model is genuinely idiotic.
Not necessarily. You could have a federated system, where only big players like banks participate in larger blockchain, like banks already do with forex and wire transfers and pay ridiculous fees to clearing agencies, and clear out local transfers locally, possibly inside their own smaller and much faster blockchain.
You seem to have conflated blockchain technology with cryptocurrency. Most cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology, but that's not it's only use case. Literally every problem you have listed relates to crypto and not blockchain itself. Blockchain is just a ledger of transactions. A private company using it to say, keep track of their inventory, or track their payments, or use it for document control, can implement it however they want.
Ok so firstly you're not the OP I was replying to, so neither of us know for certain whether they were talking about replacing the banking system with a decentralised currency vs keeping the existing centralised private banks and just having them use a blockchain as their database. I assumed the former because of their wording ("replace the banking system"), and because the latter offers no advantages that I know of.
Secondly if you think a blockchain would offer some advantages over other more efficient write only databases, I'd be interested to know what those are, because to me if you're not running a decentralised system then you're only getting the downsides of blockchain (such as it being single threaded, slow, and space inefficient) without any of the upsides.
For some background, I'm well aware of how both blockchains and crypto work, having been obsessed with them for a little while in 5 or 6 years ago like many of us were before becoming disillusioned. I've also got professional experience as a developer on both immutable databases and banking ledgers.
All your points are about an obsolete idea of Bitcoin, a PoW public blockchain. A PoS private blockchain with private keys not handled by the users would invalidate your entire list.
You mean PoS, which feature is literally that the more you have, the more you can stake, and the more you can earn in return? So basically the system that has built-in wealth concentration?
Yes, but if we are talking about a private permissioned blockchain, there's no need to obtain returns from staking. It can be even a Proof of Authority tokenless network for what banking care.
Banks are already paying for servers to process and store information. A few validators or collators (quite cheap for a private network) provided by several banks would cost a fraction of what they pay now and they'll keep owning the data, they could reverse transactions, be covered by several layers of public encryption, guard the user's wallet/login, etc.
Don't mix blockchain with the speculative world built on top of it. That's only an unfortunate use of the technology.
Yes
How? They'd be doing extra compute work for no reason (validating already valid transactions), and storing extra data (lots of hashes) for no reason, so it can only make infra costs more expensive. Plus the added complexity meaning you have to hire an extra team just to understand it.
That speculative world as shitty as it is, is the only proven use case of the technology, if you take that away then blockchains are even less useful
PoS centralizes the authority to whoever is richest. That’s literally worse than how paper currency with semi corrupt government works.
The PoS option was to highlight that power consumption doesn't have to be an issue. Of course, PoS has its own issues.
The network can use any other type of proof, like Proof of Authority where only a buch of validators owned by the banking system can process the transactions. The network can be even tokenless, no profit or incentives from it, just the secure architecture.
All my points? That's a bit rich
You make a good point that PoS would solve one of the issues I raised which is electricity usage.
In theory it could also increase throughput and reduce costs, but: a) in practice that hasn't happened yet despite years of development, b) it's never going to be as efficient as a centralised system because of the extra overheads necessary to decentralise it, so that point still stands
All my other points still stand as well, plus the additional problems PoS creates to do with centralisation of power
The keyword is "private." The redundant system all the banks maintain can be reduced to a private, permissioned blockchain, creating a network for the banking system to handle their own transactions in addition to a seamless inter-bank communication.
I doubt a network for just one bank can be that useful compared to the current situation.
Also, I'd say that every bank has (had?) a team researching the blockchain.
Bitcoin only consumes the energy people put in it. It literaly would adjust to only consume 20W if that's what was available. But that also means it can absord an infinite amount of excess energy if necessary