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What the Internet lacks is consensus, or a source of truth. It's especially true for assets that evolve over time. There's no place to say "I did X" with my ite

What the Internet lacks is consensus, or a source of truth. It's especially true for assets that evolve over time. There's no place to say "I did X" with my item in a way every other app agrees happened, without relying on a central party, and this is really what Bitcoin solves. Even for static content, servers go down and URLs can't be relied upon, which hinders interopability.

loceng 6y ago
The internet is a neutral platform, you get to decide and determine what sources - providers - you trust or don't trust. You're saying you trust Bitcoin as a source of truth - there certainly are other "sources of truth" but you're not listing them or haven't looked, likely in part because you're financially motivated and vested into Bitcoin? Your example of "servers go down" - this problem has been solved long ago with redundancy on the internet, so isn't that a moot argument point?
- SnowProblem 6y ago
  In order to have stuff that can be passed around, whether digitally or physically, people have to agree on who owns what, in what state, and where it is. In the real world, government and physics basically do this for us. In the digital world, private companies and their apps are usually the ones setting the rules and hosting the services, and as you said, you can trust them or not. But blockchains offer another option - to have logic and assets that exist independently. Yes, we have to agree that Bitcoin or whatever is that thing, but network effects should pull apps together, just like today we are on one Internet and not many intranets. I don't really like theorizing about it though. This just has to be demonstrated, and people have to want to use these apps. Curious to know what you think of Run!
smt88 6y ago
I understand these abstract cases, because crypto enthusiasts bring them up in every conversation about "dApps" or whatever term they're called now. I'm looking for specifics, though. As a typical person, what problem do I have that these solve? And why is that problem large enough that I will go out of my way to find a dApp to solve it? > There's no place to say "I did X" with my item in a way every other app agrees happened, without relying on a central party, and this is really what Bitcoin solves. That doesn't prove that anything happened with X at all, though. It just proves that someone logged it to a blockchain as such. There is no actual evidence that it's true, only that it's being retold to you as it was originally told to the blockchain. Worse, there's no proof that any app is exclusively storing/retrieving data on a blockchain. As a user, I'd need a second app to verify that the first app actually did what it claimed -- logged my data to a public chain.

loceng 6y ago

The internet is a neutral platform, you get to decide and determine what sources - providers - you trust or don't trust. You're saying you trust Bitcoin as a source of truth - there certainly are other "sources of truth" but you're not listing them or haven't looked, likely in part because you're financially motivated and vested into Bitcoin? Your example of "servers go down" - this problem has been solved long ago with redundancy on the internet, so isn't that a moot argument point?

SnowProblem 6y ago
In order to have stuff that can be passed around, whether digitally or physically, people have to agree on who owns what, in what state, and where it is. In the real world, government and physics basically do this for us. In the digital world, private companies and their apps are usually the ones setting the rules and hosting the services, and as you said, you can trust them or not. But blockchains offer another option - to have logic and assets that exist independently. Yes, we have to agree that Bitcoin or whatever is that thing, but network effects should pull apps together, just like today we are on one Internet and not many intranets. I don't really like theorizing about it though. This just has to be demonstrated, and people have to want to use these apps. Curious to know what you think of Run!

smt88 6y ago

I understand these abstract cases, because crypto enthusiasts bring them up in every conversation about "dApps" or whatever term they're called now. I'm looking for specifics, though. As a typical person, what problem do I have that these solve? And why is that problem large enough that I will go out of my way to find a dApp to solve it? > There's no place to say "I did X" with my item in a way every other app agrees happened, without relying on a central party, and this is really what Bitcoin solves. That doesn't prove that anything happened with X at all, though. It just proves that someone logged it to a blockchain as such. There is no actual evidence that it's true, only that it's being retold to you as it was originally told to the blockchain. Worse, there's no proof that any app is exclusively storing/retrieving data on a blockchain. As a user, I'd need a second app to verify that the first app actually did what it claimed -- logged my data to a public chain.