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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William Mougayar pfp
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: 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 pfp
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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