HBS Digital Initiative
8 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2018–2023
14:34 · 68K views · Jun 4, 2018
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.
A staple HN recommendation in crypto and Web3 threads as an entertaining, compelling case against blockchain.
13 comments from Hacker News
James Mickens' "Blockchains are a bad idea" talk [1] is a great explanation that discusses exactly that. [1]: this video
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
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.