I understand the justified criticism of the many dishonest and politically questionable things associated with cryptocurrencies and NFTs. But I don’t remember seeing such a complete dismissal of any tech in this industry before, and I can’t help but feel that’s unjustified
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Sure, there are few use cases, there are many scams, and of course there’s the very questionable energy consumption of the PoW chains. But there are lots of smart folks trying to build legit use cases, using something else than PoW, trying to honestly innovate.
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Many of those orgs are in the same league as your typical ML startup. They may fail, but they’re not all “evil”, and they’re not all stupid. Dismissing everything and everyone uniformly seems just wrong to me.
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Blockchains and smart contracts are technologies with very limited applicability right now. There are good and bad implementations of both platforms and applications. People trying to improve that might succeed, or they might not. (FTR, I’m not one of them.) Time will tell.
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Even the much derided PoW chains have one thing in their favor: They actually work in terms of meeting requirements in terms of not having to trust any single entity, although I’m happy to admit it’s highly questionable whether they do so at a justifiable cost. But they work.

Jan 5, 2022 · 8:00 PM UTC

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Admittedly, it’s much easier to just call everyone an idiot or a scammer, and it’s sure going to get you more applause. With some superficial knowledge of how stuff works, you get bonus points for being a socially responsible, critical tech guru, so if that’s your thing …
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Replying to @stilkov
Nonononono NO This is certainly NOT 'questionable'. ccaf.io/cbeci/index/comparis… The problem at hand is not NP-hard after all. So just pick another solution.
Replying to @stilkov
I have yet to fact check the histical claims, but these arguments look very strong to me. stephendiehl.com/blog/agains…
Replying to @stilkov
Two fundamental problems: - no justifiable cost for PoW (as you mention) - trusting software alone for social/legal/monetary stuff is too risky. you always need option of human authority to step in and fix things or change them as things evolve