I’m kinda amazed I haven’t seen anyone mention the biggest upcoming use case for block chain here. In a world where anyone can create any media with Ai we are going to need robust systems of cryptographic proof of origin and history that anyone can access and that is not controlled by anyone who may wish to manipulate information. The exact strength of block chain.
As for cryptocurrency I’m seeing a lot of confusion here in how people think it works. While scaling has been an issue its not an insolvable one and multiple solutions exist. The issue with crypto is its image not the tech in general. And thats a combination of people using it to scam and governments/banks doing their best to discredit it.
It failed because owning digital collectables is dumb or because block chain failed to create immutable cryptographic proofs and history that could be read by anyone? I think your missing the forest for the trees. Confusing a demo case for the tech that made it possible.
It failed because an “immutable cryptographic proof” that the information being represented is valid is about as useful as a handwritten certificate that says you own Sagittarius.
Cryptography cannot verify your ownership of Sagittarius; it is not an authority. It cannot prevent you from claiming you do, either: anybody can enter whatever they want into the system.
And funny enough, this cryptographic lock and key isn’t even undisputable. If you have a dated record from 2020, and someone else wants it, they can just verify theirs on a different chain. Who is to say which chain is “more correct”? The dates? Dates don’t matter. If you were unlucky enough not to publish your work before someone else does, you don’t cryptographically own your work. If you were lucky and you had published, someone else can just lie that they weren’t ready and you stole it from them. So, even with all of our fancy math, we’re still back to he-said, she-said.
Worse, most blockchain records I know of are way too small for images, let alone video, so all they do is cryptographically “verify” URLs to the work. What exactly is the point of this? Can the files served by these URLs not simply be… changed?
I know they can be changed because C2PA has this very same, exact problem.
The blockchain is, at best, a database. The fact that it’s public doesn’t mean anything—it might be worse, even.
Why bother reinventing all of this? We have institutions already that keep records. What social good is bought from having the most public of all records?
Blockchain is a synchronization and consensus mechanism that provides an authoritative record. None of your issues are unique to blockchains if multi possible authorities exist they way have conflicting rules and records. Blockchains just allow the addition of new entities and users without the traditional costs and scaling issues of existing organization is.
Great response on why NFTs are lame for what most are being used for.
I play some blockchain games where the NFT represents digital items, and the only real use case for it being on blockchain is having the marketplace to trade in game items for money. And that doesn’t even need to be blockchain, it’s like an overengineered steam marketplace.
Say I want to say that I created an image. I could post that image’s hash to a block chain, and point to it as something anyone can check.
But you already have to trust me for that to be valuable. So I can just host that hash in any of a myriad of conventional methods that are simpler, more performant, and less wasteful.
Your missing the history part. Obviously any signature in isolation is only as good as your knowlage of that person. Thats how cryptography has worked classically. A block chain is not just a hosting service. Of course that could be done cheaper. The point is to have imutable history of what information is provided. This allows a reputation system as well as the ability for parties to endorce or rebuke information in a way that can not be covered up later.
Trust requires reputation. No anonymous person in isolation can be trusted. The point is to allow collaborative verification with proof. And that can not be done by a centralized host or authority without giving that authority control over what is “true”.
The only thing a malicious host can do is to omit information, which can be mitigated simply by using more than one host, which is still cheaper than using a blockchain. You could have each signature include the previous one, which will allow anybody to verify that they have a complete prefix of the history. Host them on, say Imgur and Imgchest, and it would even be free, whereas hosting it on say the ethereum blockchain would cost about 10$ per image (Based on this: https://etherscan.io/gastracker#costTxAction. I’m lowballing my estimate. If its too high, please tell me by how much, and how you arrived at your number.)
In other words, even in the best case scenario, using the blockchain would only provide negligible benefits compared to much cheaper alternatives.
I’m kinda amazed I haven’t seen anyone mention the biggest upcoming use case for block chain here. In a world where anyone can create any media with Ai we are going to need robust systems of cryptographic proof of origin and history that anyone can access and that is not controlled by anyone who may wish to manipulate information. The exact strength of block chain.
As for cryptocurrency I’m seeing a lot of confusion here in how people think it works. While scaling has been an issue its not an insolvable one and multiple solutions exist. The issue with crypto is its image not the tech in general. And thats a combination of people using it to scam and governments/banks doing their best to discredit it.
This does not need blockchain, this is exactly what NFTs were about, and it completly failed
It failed because owning digital collectables is dumb or because block chain failed to create immutable cryptographic proofs and history that could be read by anyone? I think your missing the forest for the trees. Confusing a demo case for the tech that made it possible.
It failed because an “immutable cryptographic proof” that the information being represented is valid is about as useful as a handwritten certificate that says you own Sagittarius.
Cryptography cannot verify your ownership of Sagittarius; it is not an authority. It cannot prevent you from claiming you do, either: anybody can enter whatever they want into the system.
And funny enough, this cryptographic lock and key isn’t even undisputable. If you have a dated record from 2020, and someone else wants it, they can just verify theirs on a different chain. Who is to say which chain is “more correct”? The dates? Dates don’t matter. If you were unlucky enough not to publish your work before someone else does, you don’t cryptographically own your work. If you were lucky and you had published, someone else can just lie that they weren’t ready and you stole it from them. So, even with all of our fancy math, we’re still back to he-said, she-said.
Worse, most blockchain records I know of are way too small for images, let alone video, so all they do is cryptographically “verify” URLs to the work. What exactly is the point of this? Can the files served by these URLs not simply be… changed?
I know they can be changed because C2PA has this very same, exact problem.
The blockchain is, at best, a database. The fact that it’s public doesn’t mean anything—it might be worse, even.
Why bother reinventing all of this? We have institutions already that keep records. What social good is bought from having the most public of all records?
Blockchain is a synchronization and consensus mechanism that provides an authoritative record. None of your issues are unique to blockchains if multi possible authorities exist they way have conflicting rules and records. Blockchains just allow the addition of new entities and users without the traditional costs and scaling issues of existing organization is.
Great response on why NFTs are lame for what most are being used for.
I play some blockchain games where the NFT represents digital items, and the only real use case for it being on blockchain is having the marketplace to trade in game items for money. And that doesn’t even need to be blockchain, it’s like an overengineered steam marketplace.
That is not a use for blockchain.
Say I want to say that I created an image. I could post that image’s hash to a block chain, and point to it as something anyone can check.
But you already have to trust me for that to be valuable. So I can just host that hash in any of a myriad of conventional methods that are simpler, more performant, and less wasteful.
Your missing the history part. Obviously any signature in isolation is only as good as your knowlage of that person. Thats how cryptography has worked classically. A block chain is not just a hosting service. Of course that could be done cheaper. The point is to have imutable history of what information is provided. This allows a reputation system as well as the ability for parties to endorce or rebuke information in a way that can not be covered up later.
Trust requires reputation. No anonymous person in isolation can be trusted. The point is to allow collaborative verification with proof. And that can not be done by a centralized host or authority without giving that authority control over what is “true”.
The only thing a malicious host can do is to omit information, which can be mitigated simply by using more than one host, which is still cheaper than using a blockchain. You could have each signature include the previous one, which will allow anybody to verify that they have a complete prefix of the history. Host them on, say Imgur and Imgchest, and it would even be free, whereas hosting it on say the ethereum blockchain would cost about 10$ per image (Based on this: https://etherscan.io/gastracker#costTxAction. I’m lowballing my estimate. If its too high, please tell me by how much, and how you arrived at your number.)
In other words, even in the best case scenario, using the blockchain would only provide negligible benefits compared to much cheaper alternatives.
One technical reason is that it’s more traceable than cash.
For a reputation based system and proof of origin and history traceability is exactly what we want.
For untraceable internet cash just look to monero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI