• Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    So, if I understand correctly, the content passes use a blockchain system for authentication, but aren’t intended to be used as a currency or investment vehicle and can’t be resold or traded. It just uses a blockchain for authentication. The reason why it blew up is because the payment processor was originally meant for nfts and crypto.

    Soooo… Basically it sounds like a bunch of people getting upset for no reason because they think blockchain = crypto. Cool. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful. Tbh I don’t really care about whatever the Mr. Beast thing is, but the fact that people are confusing the two frustrates me because I could see blockchains having legitimate uses, it’s just that scam artists and get-rich-quick schemes have fucked it up.

    Maybe it would have turned into an nft scheme, but as it stands right now, it sounds like they were trying to use a blockchain in a legitimate manner.

    • yata@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The decision to use blockchain for this just screams bad decisions (and very likely an attempt to push NFTs or crypto later). There is no reason to use blockchain for authentification in this situation and people are right to be suspicious of a event which does that in this manner.

      • Acters@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Right, they could just use pgp if they want some cryptographic authentication methods. Blockchain and other “crypto” shenanigans are strange and full of potential for future up selling/marketing push.

    • realharo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s just inherently suspicious, because there is no valid technical reason to do it that way (things just end up being more complicated, more expensive, etc., for no benefit, not to mention the brand damage), unless you have some future plans for it that will involve crypto/NFT crap. The fact that MrBeast has a history with NFTs also doesn’t help.

      Or course it’s still pure speculation.

      Have they explained why they chose to use it in some plausible way?

    • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      1 year ago

      What is the legitimate use you see? People in this post keep saying there are legitimate uses and gives no examples of what that is.

      • audaxdreik@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        There are no legitimate uses, full stop.

        As others have pointed out, it’s just a fully public database. Its use case is among trustless parties, and that’s why it fails. At some point, somebody is going to want to take action off the data and that’s going to involve a trusted party enforcing it. Sooo … just have the trusted party host the data (and make it public if you really care). And if all the parties are truly that trustless, 1) why are they dealing with either and 2) get a third party trustee to broker your deals

    • Neato@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Isn’t blockchain the un-editable database that tracks changes by appending new ones?

      How does this benefit an authentication server? Needing it to be decentralized with multiple accurate copies sounds like a recipe for forking your auth server.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        I keep saying this; blockchain is just a database and a particularly inefficient database at that. That’s it, that’s all it is, I wish people would stop wanking off over it.

        As you say it appends changes, which is a stupidly poor way of doing it because your file size just gets larger and larger over time. It’ll literally never be able to get smaller because of the way it works. It’ll consume more and more resources until eventually the whole planet is either blockchain or we get bored and give up with it.

        The only problem it solves is the necessity for decentralisation, but that’s not really a requirement for 99.99% of projects. So it doesn’t really solve that many problems. It’s nice that it’s an option that’s there if you need it but it ridiculous the general public even know about it. It should just be one of those projects that only people who browse GitHub know about.

    • aleph@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Basically it sounds like a bunch of people getting upset for no reason because they think blockchain = crypto.

      Pretty much, yeah. Seems that people heard the phrase “blockchain” and instantly assumed the idea was to flog NFTs, which is unfortunate for the people behind the platform.

      That said, this seems to be yet another example of people using blockchain unnecessarily. Wouldn’t a centralized database/authentication server have been a simpler choice?

      • thalience@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t a centralized database/authentication server have been a simpler choice?

        By far, which is why many people assumed that the plan was to start flogging NFTs later (once it became more difficult to back out).

        • aleph@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Possibly, although there’s also the fact that “blockchain” is the trendy new buzzword that companies like to use because they think it makes them look cool.

    • Astroturfed@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s past the point where if people want to use block chain tech for a practical purpose they just need to shut up about it and no one will even think about what’s on the back end making a system work. The crypto-bros have been so loud and annoying for too long. No one wants anything to do with it now.

      • themusicman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Blockchain is so rarely the right tool for the job that I would be generally skeptical of any project which uses it.

        Event tickets are definitely not a good use case.

        • Acters@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I agree one time use events are not a good use case. The main solution blockchain brings to the table is to be a long-term record keeping system for where blocks in the chain are either non-fungible or act as historical progression of actions. This usage as a short-term verification for a one-time event is not a good fit for blockchain technologies. There is a good reason why it is good enough for banking, but people associate the value on a token as what blockchain is used for when the value is self created by people in control of the blockchain(which is usually the token holders). Blockchain is simple, and people just overthink it as having more than it is because it is “computer stuff.”

          • Goronmon@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I wouldn’t consider blockchain “simple”. Especially when the alternative truly is simple, where the system is based on a “single” source of truth.

            • Acters@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              “blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes.”

              It is pretty simple. Blockchain is record keeping with cryptographic metadata as a form of discerning its place in the blockchain ledger/history.

              The integrity verification is up to the creator of the blockchain or community, which is separate from what the blockchain is and acts as a supplementary system. In fact, blockchain can have a “single source of truth” because it depends on who controls most of the verification stake. such as having over 50% of the “mining” capacity coming a single entity will allow that entity to be the single source of truth. There is a risk that a decentralized network can become centralized. Fortunately, blockchains like Bitcoin and ethereum have a large enough pool of decentralized verification “miners” that keep the system from falling into a centralized entity. I remember when Bitcoin first started becoming popular, there were mining pools that were growing large enough that there could be a single centralized mining network that will control it.

              You are correct that there is a complexity, but it is not the blockchain itself that is complex. It is the verification we attach to it when it comes to large-scale decentralization efforts.

      • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The entire web3 hype worked on people not understanding it, not particularly surprising that it’s fallout does too. No, most people don’t know what blockchain is beyond blockchain|crypto|web3 = scam.