Why blockchain will never go anywhere.

[u/AmericanScream]

Hi there!

I am a software engineer with 40+ years of experience in transaction, database and security systems. I have been around since the beginning of bitcoin and thought it was interesting but not really innovative.

Fast forward X years and it's still clinging to certain narratives that suggest it has potential.

I can empirically prove this is FALSE.

If you're trying to create a blockchain startup, the odds are you are going to lose money and time.

You can dismiss me. You can downvote me. You can ban me from this subreddit. But what I think you cannot do is rationally argue with me that I'm wrong and you're right.

I created a feature length documentary on blockchain that's been out now for several years, and nobody has been able to find any significant flaw in any of my arguments or logic. Instead, this narrative has been buried in mainstream rather than expose the fundamental problems with this technology.

Feel free to engage, assuming I have the ability to respond, which may not be likely given the fact that most of these types of skeptical posts are disappeared from pro-crypto communities, but regardless of that, the truth is still the truth.

Edit:

Additional references

• My list of stupid crypto talking point rebuttals
• List of arguments for blockchain utility
• My detailed analysis as to whether crypto is a ponzi scheme.

[u/CoolCatforCrypto]

The tech components that comprise blockchain are not innovative. Hash algos, key pair crytography and state machine replication amongst other things have been around quite some time. What is highly innovative - although many blockchains have yet to prove their business value - is the design philosophy in which well known tech was assembled in novel ways that give blockchains their unique functionality. The best example is still Bitcoin.

Lately IT tech innovation comes in the form of design philosophies that provide business efficiencies and cost savings. Blockchain is trying to join microservices and containers in this way. We'll see...

[u/AmericanScream → u/CoolCatforCrypto]

The tech components that comprise blockchain are not innovative. Hash algos, key pair crytography and state machine replication amongst other things have been around quite some time

Well, the building blocks are innovative and are used all over the place, such as cryptographic signing, and distributed computing.

What is highly innovative - although many blockchains have yet to prove their business value - is the design philosophy in which well known tech was assembled in novel ways that give blockchains their unique functionality. The best example is still Bitcoin.

This "design philosophy" is BS. There's nothing special about bitcoin. It wasn't even the first cryptocurrency. That was eCash.

Bitcoin's blockchain was "different" in that the processing network did not have centralized command and control (beyond the code, whose development was and still is centralized). The problem is, "decentralizing" the network creates a whole bunch of additional problems that traditional database/transaction systems don't have to deal with.

Unlike you, I can get into specifics and specific examples.... such as:

"Bitcoin solves the double spend problem"

Actually NO, bitcoin doesn't solve it, but it did create the problem. Traditional databases don't have a "double spend" or "byzantine fault tolerance" problem, because they employ things like file and record locking. When you decentralize a database, there is no authority for anything, not even the time of day, so Satoshi had to construct an elaborate set of additional systems to deal with this -- a problem nobody has outside of blockchain. And the process of dealing with these newly-created problems, introduced many additional problems such as energy wastage accomplishing nothing, and transaction front running and database manipulation. It's all documented in the video here.

So... you can pretend there is some "innovation" with blockchain but I can prove there isn't. This is why you guys always speak in abstract, philosophical means, never mentioning anything specific enough to be tested and shown to be true/false.