Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens)
Why Hacker News recommends it
A staple HN recommendation in crypto and Web3 threads as an entertaining, compelling case against blockchain.
What it is
James Mickens of Harvard gives a funny lecture at HBS's Future Assembly arguing that blockchains are a very bad idea. He covers their trust, legal and practical shortcomings for real-world problems.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2018 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec asciimike · 2021-09 · on “Bitfinex just spent $23.7M in fees to make a single Ethereum transaction”
James Mickens' "Blockchains are a bad idea" talk [1] is a great explanation that discusses exactly that. [1]: [this video]
Recommends tootie · 2018-09 · on “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are useless”
James Mickens has a pretty good breakdown of why blockchain isn't a good solution for most real-world problems: [this video]
Recommends Reedx · 2018-09 · on “Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than the Dot-Com Crash”
Can only hide from fundamental issues for so long I suppose... Here's a compelling and fun to watch lecture that James Mickens (Harvard SEAS) recently gave about the problems with Blockchain - [this video]
Recommends onli · 2018-09 · on “GnuPG can now be used to perform notarial acts in the State of Washington”
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
Recommends raghava · 2018-12 · on “Ask HN: Best talks of 2018?”
Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens) [this video] I find almost all from GOTO 2018 very insightful. [LINK] esp ones listed below. GOTO 2018 • The Do's and Don'ts of Error Handling • Joe Armstrong [LINK] GOTO 2018 • Pragmatic Event-Driven Microservices • Allard Buijze [LINK] GOTO 2018 • Why Business Cases are Toxic • Chris Matts [LINK] GOTO 2018 • Unconditional Code • Michael Feathers [LINK]
Recommends DyslexicAtheist · 2020-02 · on “SEC Commissioner's “safe harbor” proposal for ICOs will only enable scammers”
: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 Persp
Recommends how2cflags · 2020-12 · on “Steve Wozniak launches Efforce, a blockchain-based energy-saving platform”
I concur with your point, considering we already have methods like hashing to create rather unique signatures, and with frameworks and regulations(laws). I'm going to vaguely quote James Mickens here, but you can basically sue someone if there is an issue. If there is an issue on the block chain? You need to fork it. Oh, and the talk for anyone who's interested considering he conveys a few interesting points I've seen throughout this thread. [this video]
Recommends thesuperbigfrog · 2021-09 · on “Ask HN: What is your strongest argument AGAINST Bitcoin?”
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 bl