[ashkankiani]

As someone who stopped getting involved in blockchain "tech" 12 years ago because of the prevalence of scams and bad actors and lack of interesting tech beyond the merkle tree, what's great about it?

FWIW I am genuinely asking. I don't know anything about the current tech. There's something about "zero knowledge proofs" but I don't understand how much of that is used in practice for real blockchain things vs just being research.

As far as I know, the throughput of blockchain transactions at scale is miserably slow and expensive and their usual solution is some kind of side channel that skips the full validation.

Distributed computation on the blockchain isn't really used for anything other than converting between currencies and minting new ones mostly AFAIK as well.

What is the great tech that we got from the blockchain revolution?

[throwme_123]

Scams and bad actors haven't changed sadly.

But zk-based really decentralized consensus now does 400 tps and it's extraordinary when you think about it and all the safety and security properties it brings.

And that's with proof-of-stake of course with decentralized sequencers for L2.

But I get that people here prefer centralized databases, managed by admins and censorship-empowering platforms. Your bank stack looks like it's designed for fraud too. Manual operations and months-long audits with errors, but that is by design. Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

[dspillett]

> But I get that people here prefer

For many of us it isn't that we think the status quo is the RightWay™ - we just aren't convinced that crypto as it currently is presents a better answer. It fixes some problems, but adds a number of its own that many of us don't think are currently worth the compromise for our needs.

As you said yourself:

> The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great

That but is not enough for me to want to take part. Yes the tech is useful, heck I use it for other things (blockchains existed as auditing mechanisms long before crypto-currencies), but I'm not going to encourage others to take part in an ecosystem that is as shady as crypto is.

> Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto, more likely because you basically said “you know that article you are all discussing?, well I think you'll want to know that I didn't bother to read it”, then without a hint of irony made assertions of “angst and negativity”.

And if I might make a mental health suggestion: caring about online downvotes is seldom part of a path to happiness :)