Blockchain has a controversial reputation, linked as it is to cryptocurrency but Professor Peter McBurney of Kings College London thinks it’s an important an invention as the web itself.
This video was initially titled “Blockchain Benefits” to reflect Prof McBurney’s talk
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This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
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38 Comments
Let’s take three great things: tomatoes, nails and hot air balloons.
Now nail the tomatoes to the hot air balloon.
Voila. That’s an analog equivalent to a blockchain.
Oh and btw, you just got dog-piled by cryptocurrency shilling bots.
Well done Computerphile. Just delete this video and we’ll pretend it never happened.
Wow, look at the massive amounts of fake crypto coin scam comments pouring in. Computerphile page admin will have their work cut out for them
So the only use case is to facilitate mega-corporations in circumventing antitrust laws? Cool.
And this is the 2nd best thing in computer science next to the web?! I guess he hasn't heard of neural networks and AI. I'd say AlphaFold for instance is much more significant than running git on a torrent network.
A linked list is a blockchain.
I think it's clearer to say a blockchain doesn't "need" a currency rather than to claim they aren't cryptocurrencies or cryptocurrency networks.
What can blockchain do? It can replicate SWIFT, and it can replicate insurance contracts.
I'm failing to see the big step forward here, especially since all the financial blockchains have proved themselves vulnerable to losses, glitches, irreversible errors and attacks by sufficiently motivated groups. Nothing presented here seems to mitigate those issues.
I was truly hoping to hear a good use-case for blockchain. I am once again disappointed.
If a group of companies wanted a third party to handle interchange data, they could easily form a separate entity composed of elements from all companies, vetted by all the companies or an agreed arbitrator/third party.
I didn't follow the data access rights part at the end, since it again seemed to be replicating systems that already exist.
All of the legal uses suggested would still involve traditional contracts and lawyers with the possible addiiotn of legal expertise regarding distributed ledgers. And since blocks can't typically hold any large amounts of data, the blockchain isn't a way to store it and instead you would most likely just store a link to a centralised server anyway. That link can be shared without adding anything to the chain and now we can't prove anything. All the blockchain can do is show that falliable humans sometimes did things.
(X) Doubt.
1
computerphiles account must have been taken over… what about signatures?
I usually find the videos of the Computerphile helpful and informative, but just not this one. As many comments made much more valid points and suggestions, I think Computerphile should take down this video or make a better version of it, no offense. I am not a fan of Blockchain as it revolves around Bitcoin and has been abused by illegal usage, I am surprised that Blockchain and Bitcoin, and Bitcoin alike virtual currencies haven't faded away or died.
Here's a roadmap of the future of blockchain (or any speculative tech):
– Wait until other smart people figure out how to create useful implementations of the tech
– Freelance to take best advantage of the tech
– ???
– PROFIT!!
"blockchain" has reach levels of disinformation close to "climate change". People just immediately turn their brain off. We should just call the technology immutable ledgers instead just to get over the belief disconfirmation that otherwise rational people seem to be suffering from. The man literally gives real-world implementations of the technology and people are going "I DON'T SEE THE REAL-WORLD BENEFIT!". lol
I can't get as excited and passionate about this as Prof. McBurney clearly is. Blockchain is a novel idea and purely from an academic point of view it's extremely enthralling. As far as being a ‘revolutionary technology’, it has repeatedly shown itself to be nothing but a considerable detriment to society.
As others have said, it fixes things that other technologies are perfectly capable of dealing with, while simultaneously introducing attributes of dubious value (consensus isn't all it's cracked up to be and has been exploited many times), all the while sucking up levels of energy on a scale that would make the LHC blush.
Does it have utility? Absolutely. Is the utility worth the downsides? Probably no, but I'm happy to have my mind changed.
The main issue Blockchain must overcome now is its association with the overwhelming fraudulent activity attached to it; It feels like the Thalidomide of tech, it absolutely has valid uses, but it's so swamped by bad press and repeated examples of its participation in utter misery that it will need a complete reinvention (and frankly a name change) to get it back on the table.
I'm on the programming side rather than the IT admin side, so maybe i'm wrong, but i don't see how the traditional role model can't work. You create a permanent role for "External Surveyors", you allow members of this role fo add further members to the role, everyone that has those permissions to access that data are all under a single role and have a script set to run to purge the role of all userd on a given date.
Again, i'm not the admin side so i don't know if the feature exists in any of the current solutions for members to add other members, but as far as the model goes, even if it doesn't currently exist, it could be added. I don't see how this isn't a usable solution.
"Blockchain solutions are often much worse than what they replace." – Bruce Schneier
"To me, the problem isn’t that blockchain systems can be made slightly less awful than they are today. The problem is that they don’t do anything their proponents claim they do." – Bruce Schneier
"By its very design, blockchain technology is poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit." — Bruce Schneier
"From its inception, this technology has been a solution in search of a problem …." – Bruce Schneier
I'm going through the comment, and I realized almost everyone is skeptical, then it dawns to me, most revolutionary technological is almost always contrarian at early stages.
Amazing how smart people can find alternative solutions to problems that don't need fixing.
If blockchain was useful, then actual boots-on-the-ground programmers would be using it to great effect. Over a decade since its creation, this still hasn't happened, because blockchain doesn't provide any benefits that can't be achieved better, faster, or more efficiently through other means. And shame on Computerphile for trying to blow this smoke up our exhaust fans.
Would you all step a bit back?
It is clear, that if you connect various computer, you'll get a better security in transfering packages. Especially for private chains.
If you would solely enhance to the key another symbol, it would increase the security, but not in the combinatorial scale in chained -meshed networks.
And before some hobbyst or finance rebels say "quantum computers", then you are mistaking, that classical computer has to change their signature as well. But there are already for both quantum secure signatures.
Similiar to the question, why we need plancks constant to be 10^-42, we'll get a more secure transaction.
You cannot debate that. It is the exchange for speed, but please not bitcoin as a greenhouse devourer.
I'm disappointed to see this on an otherwise serious channel such as this.
use a different consensus algorithm challenge (impossible)
I still have yet to hear a good use case for blockchain, and these twelve minutes have not changed that.
Still waiting on the revolution. Aaaaaaany day now.
Expect more from Computerphile this is truly disappointing.
All these promises and I've yet to see it solve a real-world problem better than the solutions we already have.
Also, biggest thing after Web? Deep neural networks? Virtual Reality? Very, very strange claims.
Maybe a few years ago, I would have seen the technology more favourably, but over time, it's been used for too many scams, and when it's not used in a scam, it's merely used as the hot new technology just for the sake of it, or for the sake of investors who are excited about buzzwords. On a technical level, those applications, they would be better served by non-blockchain solutions. Cryptography is fine, and sure, given enough time it can be cracked. Blockchain is fine, but not when the network is controlled by a singular entity (e.g. government funded / controlled botnets). The former is more energy efficient, so why use something else? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Well, I've managed to listen to the entire video. I gave Computerphile the benefit of the doubt, and I did not hear a single real benefit mention in the video. I don't need to get into it, many in the comments have already articulated the problem.
Being pro-blockchain baffles me. Being a computerphile and pro-blockchain is a huge red flag to me, as I see them as incompatible stances and as such one of these identities is likely a persona the channel owners put on to get views. I've been a longtime subscriber, but I have little tolerance for this type of behavior. I'm unsubscribing. Someone please reply here if they ever release an apology video that addresses the reality of blockchains. Until then, peace out!
I know he mentions it at the end of the video, but I don't technically see how this is any different than acl using distributed keys. The nodes in his blockchains are not decentralized nor untrusted. They are just authorized nodes which can only participate in submitting contacts to what…a secondary or tertiary chain?
Blockchain entries' USP aren't that they're encrypted, it's that they can't be removed. A catastrophic nightmare for privacy.
I think a lot of why people seem to ignore what the professor is saying is because the professor doesn't talk about the key enabling factor: Zero Knowledge Proofs. ZKPs are basically impossible without an immutable ledger. The distributed nature of the blockchain is what makes it an (effectively) immutable ledger. There are plenty of great resources online that simplify and teach what ZKPs are. zk-SNARKS are a bit harder to explain simply, though. This is literally state of the art and people are building the theories and practical implementations in real time, which is why the progress has ben so slow.
it seems no one even bothers looking at the blockchains actually trying to solve real world issues like the cardano blockchain ..there are plenty just none in the Eth or Bitcoin space
I think that the first blockchain is the Monotone version control system. I think we need a new name for combining a blockchain with a trustless distributed agreement algorithms.
No actual novel use of the blockchain has materialized in the decade and a half it has been around, if crypto currency is not counted. And even that is having a hell of a time staying afloat these days. Revolutionary technology does not behave that way.
"Blockchain" is taking its rightful place along terms such as "snake oil"
chat is salty that channel about encryption talks about encryption lmao
Man, these comments are abysmal.
If they wanted to encourage economic competition, they wouldn't be piling on so many useless regulations
It restores my faith in humanity reading this comments section. I'm comforted knowing that most people can see blockchains + crypto for what it is.
Many of the problems blockchains promise to solve are really economic, policy, or social problems – which are very complicated and difficult to objectively solve, and can almost never be solved by technology alone. The application of crypto to solve these problems generally is presented as a panacea, but actually completely fails to address the root issue in the first place.
It's a solution looking for a problem, and it's only true application we've seen in the last 10 years is extracting the wealth from those who don't know better, or simply are begging for a better life.