polynya pfp
polynya
@polynya
Though well-written and inspirational, I believe this post fundamentally misunderstands Ethereum and blockchains. Ethereum's distinctive property is objective, strict global consensus, and absolutely nothing else. It's great for usecases that require strict global consensus, but it's impossible for everything else, because Ethereum cannot parse any subjectivity or rough consensus at all. As such, while money, contracts, governance, identity, law are presented as examples, Ethereum can only parse very, very limited forms of the above, where it's objective. In some cases, like governance or law, it's almost entirely subjective with negligible scope for Ethereum to help. 99.99% of economics, institutions and the like are deeply human and subjective, which Ethereum or blockchains in general cannot interpret at all. Indeed, we've seen many a times how forcing subjectivity into objective code has led to many disastrous outcomes in crypto. (Contd...)
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polynya pfp
polynya
@polynya
To be clear, Ethereum is extremely valuable in usecases where strict global consensus is required - autonomous store-of-value, "dumb" contracts like basic DeFi, objective identity registries, but it's also important to understand this so that we can focus on these usecases where it makes a difference, and not waste time where it cannot. We have wasted billions of dollars and countless person-hours on these diversions because of a poor understanding of strict global consensus.
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will pfp
will
@w
I don't think you're actually engaging with what he's saying -- ethereum doesn't need to interpret most things directly, so much as provide a "hard" substrate to coordinate humans (and their interpretations, e.g. the legal system) one example would be an LLC vs multisig. The former might define certain rights for certain people, and then ultimately rely on the legal system to back it up if/when those rights are violated. The "multisig" can be right-by-construction (!!), which isn't at all to say it doesn't need human input to operate properly!
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Josh Stark
@js
A few thoughts: - Hardness is not about explaining blockchains, but really about explaining the category of things to which blockchains belong. It is just true that blockchains (ethereum), institutions (the fed), and atoms (gold) can all be used to create a money, and it bothers me that we haven't had a conceptually clear story for why that is the case. What do they share that enables them to be used for the same application? - "Strict global consensus" describes something true about blockchains, but i don't think it is sufficient for the above purpose. Based on how I understand you to define the term, I think "strict global consensus" is missing a notion of "confidence in the future". A blockchain that reaches strict global consensus once cannot be a foundation for money or conditional financial relationships. We must have justified confidence that it will keep reaching strict global consensus in the future, and that the rules it uses to do so won't materially change.
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William Mougayar
@wmougayar
Agreed. Knowing when *not* to use a blockchain is as important as knowing when to use it.
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albi is /nervous pfp
albi is /nervous
@albiverse
/microsub tip: 724 $DEGEN
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albi is /nervous pfp
albi is /nervous
@albiverse
/microsub tip: 2421 $DEGEN
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Special Agent Royo
@hadrien
Doesn’t EigenLayer solves that and extends Eth objective consensus to subjective use cases?
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nintynick.eth
@nintynick.eth
feels like you're stuck in a thinking local maxima. guaranteeing the limited objective forms of money, governance, identity gives rise to emergent complexity, where meaningful subjective / social forms can thrive. sure, that's not Ethereum interpreting them, but they uniquely exist because of Ethereum.
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Michael Depetrillo
@klassicd
It seems like strict global consensus (aka hardness) will allow us, overtime, to refactor subjective systems into objective ones.
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Zen4Wolf
@zen4wolf
hi
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