What's the incentive for keeping these "robust" databases online, if not for making a lot of money by running scams?

alphazard 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

No one is going to run a database for you unless you pay them. If you want to write data to an existing public ledger, then you are going to have to get some of the token that allows you to write to that ledger. Paying for a token to use the ledger is not speculative, it's pragmatic. Holding the token and not using it to write to the ledger is speculative, and encouraging people to do that in order to make money yourself is a scam.

If you pay AWS to host Postgres for you, are you being scammed? You might be if someone convinces you to invest in Postgres credits that you never use. But if you actually use Postgres, and it's cheap, and you are glad to pay for it, then it's not really a scam.

I think more of the promise of these technologies is in private ledgers, where the traffic is confined and the system could even be run altruistically. For example, a university club or a town could coordinate elections using this technology. They don't have to pay to use a public ledger if enough people in the group can run nodes themselves. Everyone who cares about the result of the election is incentivized to participate in the network just to know the result and ensure its authenticity. They aren't processing transactions for random users, they are coordinating using the latest technology with people who they want to coordinate with.

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amrocha 2 days ago | parent [-]

Or the university could pay 3$ per year to host a DB that all clubs can use.

I’m sure you can imagine a make believe world where no one has money and everyone cares and is tech savvy and yet no one can be trusted at the same time, and in this world somehow blockchains are useful.

But that’s not the world we live in.

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alphazard 2 days ago | parent [-]

> no one has money and everyone cares and is tech savvy and yet no one can be trusted at the same time

lol, you perfectly described a group of college students.

	▲	amrocha 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t know if you’re just old and out of touch or just being facetious so I’m not gonna bother explaining to you in detail why you’re wrong, but fyi there’s these things called part time jobs and internships people do in university so they have money.

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wyck 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Imagine you have a home on Airbnb , your guest sends you a payment, but its not directly to you, the payment goes through the payment rails stipulated and controlled by airbnb. This amounts to what is often 25-35% of your listening fee (payment charges, visa network, listing fee, etc, etc.) This is the middle men crypto is supposed to replace.

Only a trustworthy network can replace the current system, it must be something public, immutable and participatory , otherwise it will just centralize back to the above scenario, regardless of any intent. Essentially crypto is network code, it creates the primitives on transmission. And thus anyone (really anyone) can run a node and get a reward for supporting this security model. That's not a scam or even just pragmatic, its literally how money operates, as a incentive/disincentive mechanism.

People forget the early stock market was filled to the brim with scams, the original intent was good, but it attracted bad actors piggy backing in its lack of regulations, and it took years to clean-up, one can make an easy argument that's its still filled with fraud.

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cwmma 2 days ago | parent [-]

In your example crypto would only replace the visa network. Most of the fee you are playing is to Airbnb for getting you the client in the first place.

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wyck 2 days ago | parent [-]

Correct, but these fees are trending up and not down, its not uncommon in this space to see payment fees hitting 15%. Removing the primitives of payment requirements, rails which are hard to build and practicably a monopoly, would free the state, this would power end-users instead of building more monopolies.

	▲	cwmma a day ago \| parent [-]
		Actual payment fees are hitting a couple % max, all the rest is platform fees which are orthogonal to how you are paying. If you sell something through airbnb, they will get a cut no matter how you pay. Credit card fees are a great deal for consumers even when they are added as a surcharge or there is a cash discount. Not having to deal with cash AND being able to dispute transactions are significant benefits.