Re:Rhetoric around the blockchain hints at problems with tec...
by Scarblac on Monday May 14, 2018 @04:05AM
(#17063696)
I'd be much more afraid of powerful people trying to frame non-corrupt government officials for the betting money.
Re:Rhetoric around the blockchain hints at problems with tec...
by slfnflctd on Monday May 14, 2018 @07:52AM
(#17064651)
Agreed, the problem with any anonymized system which attracts lots of users is, it creates incentives for bad actors to game the system.
Feel free to think up all the rules you want to prevent this, but a motivated entity can always simply pay large numbers of people to act on their behalf. If they're good at it, you won't know until it's too late.
Past a certain point, involving people's actual identities in the nitty gritty real world becomes increasingly necessary to establish trust. There are exceptions, but AFAICT they mostly rely on being uninteresting to would-be attackers.
Sure, when Maersk uses a private blockchain to track shipments, it's hard to see how it improves on an ordinary database.
But let's say you want to build a prediction market for official corruption. The minute you start taking bets on which government officials are taking bribes, you'll have a powerful people trying to take you offline.
It's extremely difficult to build a completely anonymous and decentralized application to do this, but decentralized nodes with anonymous validators that you control is a potential hybrid that's resistant to censorship.