I then find it difficult to believe that you cannot think of productive applications of cryptocurrencies.
As someone who researches self organizing systems, especially in the network space, I have seen numerous applications of mesh network organization based on a blockchain-like decentralized ledger that adds a new dimension after well over a decade long plateau in development. Semi-centralized blockchains utilizing proof-of-stake and other methods seem to be valuable ways to add transparency to certain government functions (such as voting), publishing trade records, and clearing transactions over an ACH-like network (which is currently monitored manually by the Fed and is a growing vulnerability in the global financial network). To dismiss the whole space is to lack vision, or perhaps to be dejected about not being in the financial position you could have been in given the early opportunity.
- Can you show me one of these blockchain-based mesh networks in production? How many users do they have?
- As for voting and trade records, how do you deal with the fact that developers can fork the chain and invalidate past transactions like they did with Bitcoin in 2010 and 2013, or like they did with Ethereum in 2016? Why do you trust the developers more than your own government? And if you live in an oppressive regime, what makes you think your government will allow your blockchain to be used for voting?
- If your government wants transparency, why don't they simply expose a read-only API to their database?
I'm working on a blockchain-based mesh project. We currently have around 6 users on a test network in Oregon, but the product isn't completely done yet and no real payments work yet. Our goal is to create a system where individuals and businesses can participate in a decentralized ISP with the routers "peering" automatically and routing along the cheapest, best paths in the network.
What blockchain gives us is a very low overhead payment system (payment channels), along with decentralized management of IP addresses and networks.
This could all in principle be managed by a centralized server but blockchain gives our systems a more-or-less neutral venue in which people can interact with predetermined rules, whereas a centralized server would put us in the position of arbiter of all interactions on the system.
On your blockchain, if a new consensus rule is being disputed or if a bug in the consensus rules causes a fork, who has the final say, the developers or the miners?
We will likely use Cosmos which uses proof of stake validators instead of miners although we are prototyping on Ethereum. In any case, the miners/validators would decide, as they always have and always will. If there was a big divide between users and validators, the users could choose to leave and use a different fork (although they would have to modify their router firmware). The only power that the developers have is thought leadership, and the ability to claim that something is an "official" binary. This is also how the Ethereum DAO hardfork went down.
> Can you show me one of these blockchain-based mesh networks in production? How many users do they have?
Why does it need to be in production? The technology is 10 years old, and it has been widely known by researchers for less than half that time. Just trying to find any hole you can pick? This is by a respected researcher who has recently shifted his focus to blockchain with the potential it has for IoT and mesh networks: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324005919_SENATE_A_...
> As for voting and trade records, how do you deal with the fact that developers can fork the chain and invalidate past transactions like they did with Bitcoin in 2010 and 2013, or like they did with Ethereum in 2016? Why do you trust the developers more than your own government? And if you live in an oppressive regime, what makes you think your government will allow your blockchain to be used for voting?
The credentials you tried showing off made it sound like you would have a good understanding of the various blockchain technologies in play... You should know that proof-of-stake and master nodes allow a semi-centralized network to be created where the transactions are still public and verifiable, but important parties (i.e. the government, in the case of some of the examples I provided) have a significantly stronger influence on the outcomes of the network. Sure, any developers can fork the blockchain or create invalid blocks, but why would you switch your software to use that chain?
> If your government wants transparency, why don't they simply expose a read-only API to their database?
They probably don't want transparency but that's a separate issue. Let's use the example of voting -- an election running on a public blockchain protocol with all of the votes can be verified and summed, and by knowing your private key you can see how your vote was counted without decrypting that vote to anyone else (even the government). With an API and a database, you could authenticate and get the value they stored for how you voted, but obviously it's a violation of privacy to see how everyone else voted so you can't verify the system as a whole. Most prominent example in this space: https://followmyvote.com/online-voting-technology/blockchain...
These are pretty basic examples to be honest and you are allegedly quite involved in the space, so I assume you just don't want it to be true.
The hard problem with voting systems isn’t counting the votes, but insuring that each eligible person casts at most one vote.
Blockchain based voting systems might help prevent the rare case of multiple voting, but AFACT, do nothing to protect an unscrupulous government from stuffing the ballot box with fabricated votes. Ultimately, like the other issues GP raised, the technology seems to do little to solve the underlying social problems.
I am not sure how the popular implementations address this, but generally speaking you can add arbitrary additional plaintext to each transaction in the block, and contribute that extra data to the signature with the private key. For example, full name or social security number (not applicable in the US since socials are private info, but feasible in asymmetric key ID systems such as Estonia's. Which brings up another potential application of blockchain: identity verification and management).
As someone who researches self organizing systems, especially in the network space, I have seen numerous applications of mesh network organization based on a blockchain-like decentralized ledger that adds a new dimension after well over a decade long plateau in development. Semi-centralized blockchains utilizing proof-of-stake and other methods seem to be valuable ways to add transparency to certain government functions (such as voting), publishing trade records, and clearing transactions over an ACH-like network (which is currently monitored manually by the Fed and is a growing vulnerability in the global financial network). To dismiss the whole space is to lack vision, or perhaps to be dejected about not being in the financial position you could have been in given the early opportunity.