Ask HN: Crypto skeptics, would uncancellable services change your mind? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Crypto skeptics, would uncancellable services change your mind?

3 pointsxrd11 comments

I was recently listening to this podcast by The Defiant, a "DeFi" conversation. In it, Ali Yahya, GP at a16z, notes that blockchain applications are the first software applications that cannot be turned off by a centralized authority.

https://thedefiant.io/ether-goes-deflationary

For example, as we all talk about often on HN, Google often cancels services, services that might have millions of people using them.

You could imagine someone developing a "service" (in this case, a smart contract) running inside Ethereum which could not be turned off by a centralized authority. You could imagine someone designing a service that permits the developer to continue charging fees even if they have no control over the underlying VM, and even if they don't want to support it at all.

Yahya notes that it "used to be that hardware had control over software." You turn off the machine, and the software is off permanently. This means, until now, whoever owns the hardware has full control over the software in the end. Everything has to run in a datacenter somewhere.

In a CS Operating Systems class you learn that everything is virtual machines all the way down. Isn't Ethereum the first VM which cannot be turned off by an owner, and does not that change SaaS as we know it?

All this is highly speculative, of course, no services exist like this yet. But, in a few years, isn't this something that could change a lot of economics for software companies?

Putting aside all the concerns about energy usage and scammy things like NFTs, isn't this an idea worth pursuing?

    Isn't Ethereum the first VM which cannot be turned off by an owner

No.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/10/14/censored-ethereum-b...

Absolutely. And I’ve spent a significant part of the last 4 years helping develop exactly that:

https://holo.host

No more logins or passwords. Apps that can’t be shut down, and can be forked or customized at will. No more meddling busy-bodies deplatforming whoever offends their sensibilities or rejects their “religion”.

I’m pretty sure nobody realizes yet just how powerful this concept is. And it’s getting close to public release.

Yes this idea is interesting.

Short of US-government sanctions, there is very little that can be done to tear down a permanent contract.

Even Tornado Cash still works and can be accessed and analyzed[1][2], the US government could not remove it or secretly embed a back door so their only option was to criminalize anybody who touches it, even honest users, something that is now being challenged in courts[3].

[1] https://twitter.com/liamzebedee/status/1578127982173908992

[2] https://dune.com/poma/tornado-cash_1

[3] https://www.coincenter.org/coin-center-is-suing-ofac-over-it...

Nope, Because there are very good reasons for some services/applications to be shut down. Making it impossible to shut them down attracts a vary particular clientele that I personally don't want to be associated with.

So, presumably you are also fine with being deplatformed because we don't want to be associated with you?

Sure, If you feel the need to deplatform me go for it. I am not particularly invested in any particular online platform or community and regard them almost entirely as not worth the effort to maintain. If I kicked off one who cares.

So you don’t mind being deplatformed — just so long as those you deem happen to deem undesirable get deplatformed?

No.

We’ve seen time and time again that platforms with no moderation tend to do two things:

1) Attract “objectionable” content.

2) Repel the vast majority of people who object to such content.

Hence the general view that [insert platform depending on personal views] is a “cesspool”.

In an extreme example, let’s go with “won’t someone please think of the children”. Imagine the news story the first time a web3/crypto/whatever “uncancellable service” hosts the exploitation videos of a kidnapped child who was sold in to sex slavery.

I know these kinds of “think of the children” scenarios are much maligned on HN but the vast majority of the world isn’t HN. In this scenario 99% of the population wouldn’t dare deal with the service, tech, etc in the example above.

Ask anyone walking down the street about the “dark web”. If they’ve heard of it at all almost every person will say it’s that thing for criminals, CP, drugs, etc and they’re scared of it and don’t want anything to do with it. Meanwhile here on HN it’s fairly routine for someone to pop in the comments and talk about exclusively browsing with tor… The HN bubble is real.

Plus, regardless of how you feel about things like Tornado Cash I don’t see a lot of people advocating for the repeal of CSAM laws (as one example) so you have a completely different level of enforcement there. Outside of some serious fringe I’ve never even really seen them debated.

Truly uncancellable and/or unmoderated services are a complete non-starter for 99% of people walking down the street.

You’re describing “dark web 2.0” and the adoption (if any) will likely look exactly the same.

Yes I understand tor is used by activists under oppressive governments, etc and that’s fantastic. The difference for this discussion is tor hasn’t received tens of billions of dollars of investment like the web3 ecosystem has with the promise it’s going to completely change the world.

If the bubble, hype, etc reflected the realities I’ve described in this post I wouldn’t be skeptical. I’m skeptical because many of the fundamental concepts (like being uncancellable) are completely incompatible with mass adoption and everything we know about people and platforms.

https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2022/08/bruce-schneie...

Bruce is great. Usually...

But unfortunately, he's got a belief that massive, fragile global-consensus machinery is "cryptocurrency". And that "wildcat banks" or random people issuing "money" is bad. Neither of these are universally true.

If a global-scale highly efficient program allowed consistent transfer of assets between agent's ledger balances, without possibility of interference by unrelated parties, and guaranteed that all agents followed the rules, how is this bad?

DHT-based agent-centric systems like Holochain now allow this to be built; every transaction -- and the full tree of all prior transactions -- is inductively proven to be correct. Even a single non-fraudulent agent in the DHT can detect and report any non-compliant transaction attempt. There is no "50%+1 attack": a full "blackout" of all correct agents is required to perpetrate a fraudulent (eg. double-spend) attack against any agent(s) in the system.

These systems continue to operate, correctly and efficiently, even in the face of devastating "Partition" attacks; your cryptocurrency "money" still works between you and all agents you can "see"; when the network "Partition" is repaired, you can proceed to do transactions with agents in the rest of the network. Very much like cash money, but with full and instant network reach.

As for "wildcat banks"; even Bruce would prefer to use money where every unit is backed by actual wealth, and there is no "fractional reserve" shenanigans, right? Well, governments are never going to issue money like that. But, cryptocurrency options like that are already available, and more are coming.

So, Bruce, if you're reading this -- perhaps it's time to get updated on the state of the art in Cryptocurrency. Because Bitcoin isn't it...

Like tornado cash right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com