I see the potential, yes, but deeply tying one’s programming language to a single concept like this is a questionable choice, like creating a language and bonding it to CORBA would have been twenty years ago.
I guess we’ll just have to see how deeply integrated this Red/C3 “dialect” is. Some REBOL dialects are effectively a set of user-level functions. If Red/C3 is also, then it isn’t a big deal. If, on the other hand, it is part of the red.exe binary, then it may easily become an issue.
Is the #Fossil #scm #vcs a #blockchain? Maybe not, but the article illustrates how many concepts of a blockchain are used in fields other than cryptocurrencies.
I think the author's focus is wrong. Instead of tokenizing existing regulated assets 1:1, like stocks and bonds, tokenizers should use smaller, relatively cheap items, and even then, they should ask whether it makes sense.
You can already buy mutual funds, and indirectly own a prorated fraction of all the stocks and bonds it invests in. An ERC-20 token based on a certain number of Amazon shares doesn't make sense when you look at it that way.
What could make sense: Tokenized ownership shares of a major artwork that periodically goes to various museums. As a cultural investment, not primarily a financial one. Assuming, of course, that enough people would be interested ... there must be more to it than a financial investment, since token-holders get all the risk of common stock without any chance to receive dividends.
But if it made it possible for museums to display artworks for less cost and to bring those artworks to the public, then maybe tokens could be worthwhile.
One of the big issues I have with #blockchain is that people lost all rationality once they saw the prices that #Bitcoin ( #BTC ) has reached. Suddenly, everything is blockchains when most things are not improved in any way by adding a blockchain.
And of course, whenever sleazeballs smell dummies with money, they start rolling out scam after scam using the magic word or phrase that convinces people to open their wallets and bank accounts.
@geniusmusing I still think there may be some things a blockchain is suited for, but most of the announcements I see (including this one) are not it.
As I understand it, investors are supposed to buy cryptotokens, which fund energy efficiency and power generation projects in existing small businesses, who then forward some of their utility savings back to this company for distribution back to investors. In that case, what they needed is just a financial company whose managers aren't stuck in 1978. No #blockchain required.
https://butterflyprotocol.io/ sounded like I might be interested when I first saw Tristan ( @deavmi ) posting about it. But I read a little of the site and saw #Blockchain. I'm not an ultra-anti-blockchain person, but I think people use it for the buzzword potential, rather than finding places where it makes sense and limiting it to those places.
@strypey So there's a lot to unpack in that document. The #Session onion routing protocol involves using a #blockchain called #Loki to make it difficult for an adversary to control a significant fraction of the nodes and prevent exposing the IP addresses (and therefore identities) of a user and his/her contacts to the same person or group. (As you noticed, Session is not yet using onion requests.)
There's also swarms and attachments and message storage (including attachments), online vs offline messages, multiple device support, spam resistance, a modified version of #Signal's encryption protocol, group chats (3-500 member "closed" groups are end-to-end encrypted like the rest of Session; "open" groups are not, and require an account on a special group server [self-hostable])
Note that all this stuff happens under the covers. It seems that Session will handle most of it without the user ever seeing it. I'm going to query some family members and see whether any would be willing to try this as a secondary channel (for now #Wire is our primary channel). Just adding offline messages is a clear advantage over #Jami, but the lack of audio & video chats is going to limit its usefulness.
I see that it uses the onion-routed Loki Service Node network, which is tied to some sort of #cryptocurrency #blockchain. Yes, I really do need to read more about blockchains. So far, they do not go deeply into that (thankfully).
They use the cryptocurrency to raise the cost of operating a node, so that it will not be as easy to acquire a significant fraction of the nodes and perform traffic analysis to de-anonymize users. However, I will have to read up on this Loki.
At least in the first chapter or two (where I am), they are unabashed #blockchain enthusiasts. And while, I happen to think there are things that blockchains are good at, even when the book came out in 2018, there were some serious questions being asked about the use of blockchains in the context of #BTC and other #cryptocurrencies.
Alright, it's buzzword bingo day! #docker and #blockchain check. Is "cloud" still part of buzzword bingo or are we past that? I feel like I just need #serverless and I'll have things with the free space. !devops