互联网与文化medium.com
建立在信任、规范与制度上的系统比区块链更有效
Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain
2018 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章批评“去中心化、无需信任的加密天堂”叙事：作者认为现实中的信任、规范与制度（法律、声誉、中介等）往往比区块链方案更有效，所谓“无需信任”其实只是把信任转移或掩盖了。文章以智能合约买电子书等例子说明，区块链并不能自动解决交易对手是否可信的问题。
为什么经久不衰：它抓住了加密热潮中最持久的问题：区块链究竟消除了信任，还是只是把信任换了个位置；多年后每次熊市或丑闻都会被重新提起。
HN 评论精选
区块链的炒作不等于技术无价值；它新增数字财产和智能合约等能力，仍处早期。
Venmo 并非免费，只是成本被隐藏了。作者所批评的那种“可信赖性”确实是神话，但这不等于区块链是“烂技术”或“错误的未来愿景”。区块链给世界带来一样新东西：无法被免费复制的数字财产；智能合约则带来能直接与金融系统交互的不可变软件。两者都很强大，多数有趣项目仍在研发阶段；炒作很荒谬，但技术本身仍可能带来变革。
cowpig查看英文原文
> Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free Venmo is not free. There's a cost, it's just hiding. > Blockchain-based trustworthiness falls apart in practice... The particular brand of trustworthiness the author is arguing against is indeed a myth, but that doesn't mean blockchain is "crappy technology" or "a bad vision for the future" Blockchain adds a new thing to the world: digital property that cannot be reproduced for free. Smart contracts add another new thing to the world: the ability to build immutable software that interacts directly with the financial system. Both of these ideas are very powerful, and almost all of the interesting blockchain projects are still in the R&D phase. The hype around blockchain is ridiculous and absurd, but that doesn't mean the technology isn't exciting or potentially transformative. edit: I actually wrote an article about the "trustlessness" thing: http://cowpig.github.io/bitcoin/ethereum/poker/cryptocurrency/trust/economics/game-theory/2018/01/29/Trustless-Myth/
区块链无法消除隐藏的权力和杠杆，指标一旦成为目标就会被操纵。
区块链其实是某个社会学主张投下的技术影子：你可以相信人们会为了共同利益自愿放弃筹码。它本质上是一种衡量网络中各节点拥有多少筹码的工具，而其运行前提是：网络中只存在协议指标能表示的那些筹码。现实显然不是这样：网络常有多层，很多层不可见、被刻意隐藏或临时非正式形成；派系会聚拢影响力，最终总有人找到理想位置，成为“去中心化”的中心。这类似古德哈特定律或麦克纳马拉谬误：只把可计数的东西当作系统中真正重要的因素。
tCfD查看英文原文
Blockchain is actually a technological shadow cast by a sociological proposition, which is then you can trust people to voluntarily deprive themselves of leverage for the sake of the greater good. Blockchain is essentially a tool for measuring how much leverage different nodes have in a network system. All of the functional premises of blockchain depend on the assumption that the only leverage that exists in a blockchain network is that which can be represented by the various metrics exposed by the protocol. Obviously this is not the case, networks are often stacked with multiple layers, not all of which are visible to instrumentation, and many are deliberately hidden or informally created as the opportunity arises. Cliques form, whether by design or merely as a consequence of some underlying structure or geometric boundary domain, influence builds around them, and sooner or later someone finds the ideal geometric position from which they can become the center of decentralisation. This is essentially another instance of goodhart's law, which states that the moment any given metric becomes a useful target for optimization, it ceases to be a useful measurement. Or another variation of this same observation, the McNamara fallacy, which can be summed up as the belief that the only factors in a system that count, are those that can be counted.
PoW 的贡献是为唯一时间点建立共识，是重大技术突破，不应简单贬为烂技术。
工作量证明区块链解决的问题被广泛误解。它用 PoW 在普遍唯一的时间点上建立共识。中本聪论文之前我们没有解决方案，所以这是重大技术进步。我不觉得它烂，实际上很出色。
gtrubetskoy查看英文原文
The problem that proof-of-work blockchain solves is widely misunderstood. It uses proof-of-work to establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique. Prior to the publication of Satoshi's paper we did not have a solution to this problem and for that reason it is a significant advance in technology. I wouldn't call it crappy, it's actually quite brilliant. For a detailed description see this: https://grisha.org/blog/2018/01/23/explaining-proof-of-work/
作者混淆了“交易对手可信”和“数据或执行不可篡改”，智能合约并不保证前者。
不。没人因为交易在区块链上就信任交易所。智能合约的想法是让保险等高摩擦交易去中心化（Amazon 或 PayPal 本质上提供的就是这类服务）。重点是不必信任任何人也能确保交易被执行，这在合理程度上确实做到了。作者还把点对点交易中的可信问题（如买东西）与数据或交易执行不被篡改的可信问题混为一谈。区块链用挖矿保障后者，并不保障前者。
jmeyer2k查看英文原文
> To understand why this is the case, let’s work from the practical to the theoretical. For example, let’s consider a widely-proposed use case for blockchain: buying an e-book with a “smart” contract. The goal of the blockchain is, you don’t trust an e-book vendor and they don’t trust you (because you’re just two individuals on the internet), but, because it’s on blockchain, you’ll be able to trust the transaction. No. Nobody trusts an exchange because it's on the blockchain. The idea of a smart contract is to decentralize high-friction transactions such as insurance (which is essentially what Amazon or PayPal is providing). The whole point is to not have to trust anybody to ensure a transaction is carried out, which it does accomplish to a reasonable extent. The author also confuses peer-to-peer trustworthiness such as making a purchase, with trustworthiness that data or transaction executions will not be tampered with. The blockchain backs up the latter with mining, whereas it does not back up the former.
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