Re:There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
by chriswarbo on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @06:22PM
(#19101207)
> I don't believe that is an actual problem that should be solved with a general solution like blockchain
AFAIK this was a well-known problem for digital currencies. I think it was "eCash" that went the furthest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash ), with "blind signatures" to prevent transactions being linked to the same user, but couldn't solve the centralised trust problem.
BitCoin's "solution" is to share a ledger, pick the longest in case of forks, prevent spam using Hashcash and keep the hashcash barrier high by turning mining into a lottery.
This is a pretty cool hack, since it addresses not only technical security concerns, but also economic and social aspects. Yet I see it as a pathological, brute-force edge-case: technically a solution, but less "this problem is now solved" and more "ha, I hadn't thought of that; we'll need to specify the problem better".
AFAIK this was a well-known problem for digital currencies. I think it was "eCash" that went the furthest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash ), with "blind signatures" to prevent transactions being linked to the same user, but couldn't solve the centralised trust problem.
BitCoin's "solution" is to share a ledger, pick the longest in case of forks, prevent spam using Hashcash and keep the hashcash barrier high by turning mining into a lottery.
This is a pretty cool hack, since it addresses not only technical security concerns, but also economic and social aspects. Yet I see it as a pathological, brute-force edge-case: technically a solution, but less "this problem is now solved" and more "ha, I hadn't thought of that; we'll need to specify the problem better".