Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)

Notarizing documents is a great example where some people think blockchain is a good use case, and it's never true. Where would be the advantage of the scheme you describe to the current system? There is none. The system already works: people are given power to validate documents by the authority. The authority stores that centrally. The validation is mostly collected centrally. All stuff you can do perfectly fine without needing to run replicated servers storing an evergrowing immutable blockchain sipping authority from the real authority. The current scheme allows things like secret notarization and revocation, stuff a blockchain is very bad at. > it'll be up to the receiving agencies like England's government to decide "We trust the system the US uses to validate it's notiaries, so we'll add 'USRoxs' to our list of accepted Established Authorities (along with 'TheEnglish' of course)" Countries already have systems in place to accept documents made in other countries. Works with official translators and stamps/seals of authenticity. In better and funny: Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens), [this video]

:D I also got so annoyed that I started curating blogs and videos (as myth-busters) to help me bring the point across in discussions. My experience with this is sadly that changing anyone's mind who has already made it up is _really_ hard. Here is my list: Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens) [this video] Hacking Blockchain (Konstantinos Karagiannis, Chief Technology Officer, Security Consulting, BT) [link] Myth Busting: Can a blockchain save healthcare? [link] Blockchain Graveyard [link] Response to Blockchain & Blockcerts Critiques from Privacy Researcher [link] Blockcerts: Using blokchain for identity management is (mostly) ridiculous [link] Blockchains from a Distributed Computing Perspective [link] Do you need a Blockchain? [link] IOTA Tweets from cybergibbons: [link]

In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: [this video] 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities undermine trust relationships and are not needed for legitimate (not illegal) transactions. 2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections. 3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.

Exactly. Making money on blockchain requires retrofitting the web to use blockchain to do what the web can mostly do already. In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: [this video] 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities undermine trust relationships and are not needed for legitimate (not illegal) transactions. 2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections. 3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.

Web3 requires retrofitting the web to use blockchain technologies to do what the web can mostly do already. In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: [this video] 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities undermine trust relationships and are not needed for legitimate (not illegal) transactions. 2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections. 3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.

Web3 requires retrofitting the web to use blockchain technologies to do what the web can mostly do already. In "Blockchains Are a Bad Idea", James Mickens gives several arguments against blockchain-based systems like Bitcoin: See his presentation here: [this video] 1. People have out-of-band trust relationships in real life which reduce the likelihood of malice. Bitcoin-style anonymous identities undermine trust relationships and are not needed for legitimate (not illegal) transactions. 2. Real life legal systems encourage good behaviors. If you have a dispute with someone, you can sue them. Bitcoin and related systems lack these protections. 3. Existing tools such as public-key cryptography and digital signatures can provide most of the functionality that applications need without the problems that blockchain-based systems have.