One of the most interesting aspects of the whole Blockchain thing is how it fails at one of it’s core concepts.
Consider, Blockchain requires that all transactions are made public using zero knowledge encryption to assure that both parties are valid and that no party can double spend. It is built off of the core principle that You Can Not Trust. Heck, advocates practically scream that Blockchain is superior to “fiat” currencies because they don’t trust the banks or government to manage them.
And yet, almost every sad case you read about on Web3IsGoingJustGreat is fundamentally due to someone’s misplaced trust.
Folks are trusting that various NFTs are legit, or not stolen, or will be valuable.
Folks trust that storage and management systems are secure and reliable.
Folks trust that the code for their smart contract is bug free and that the developers tested against all possible cases.
Folks trust that the exchanges are secure against attack and that their funds or holdings will not be stolen.
Folks trust that their fellow coin holders will not cash out and that their investment will continue to grow.
For a system built off of the concept of “Trust No One”, there’s an awful lot of trust at play.
It’s almost as if having a trust free system is infeasible. Unless you have unlimited time and resources, you can’t verify and validate every aspect of the system you’re partaking in. You can’t presume that the various exchanges aren’t favoring other exchanges over your transactions. You’re not always going to audit the code in whatever smart contract that’s tied to your Ether transaction, nor will you validate that the language implementation that runs your code is error free. You not going to independently audit and validate every system and interaction point that is required for your transaction to be recorded, validated, and authorized. Ultimately, you have to trust that someone, at some level is acting in your benefit for some reason.
And that’s where the Trust No-One thing kinda/sorta breaks down.
The problem is that once you trust someone, you immediately have to accept all the parties that they trust, regardless of whether or not they disclose those trusts. You can safeguard against those relationships to a degree, but it’s not going to be perfect because no trust relationship is. In that case, you have to start asking “so, what really differentiates this system with any other one?”
Well, for one, traditional “fiat” based systems have various regulations, monitoring and established law based on the fact that they’ve been “a thing” since the dawn of civilization, where as CryptoCurrencies have been around for less than 20 years and very proudly don’t have any of those. So, basically, you have a system of finance that is based off of centuries of preventing damage from bad actors trying literally everything possible to a group of dudes pushing a “Zero Trust” system by saying “Trust me.”
i guess, maybe, the big reason i’m cynical about blockchain and web3 and all the other crap is that i’ve been in tech long enough to know that you don’t trust tech.
CDF
