Not too pedantic at all; those are indeed two distinct ways of creating similar applications. In my opinion, federated alternatives are more appealing than those based on blockchain technologies. Federated networks are proving to provide a more palatable experience through hybrid decentralized centralization.
Federated networks are also able to leverage community goodwill to provide a free experience. Blockchains are just a tool to extract money from users in the name of immutability.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but is value inherently necessary to perpetuate PoW or verification steps in a Blockchain? In other words, do you need to create value for it to work? I didn’t think that was a necessary first step, but I suppose it could be if it’s all driven by miners or some other random PoW mechanism with a monetary incentive.
It’s not inherent (for example private blockchains exist and are being used, but private blockchains may as well be a centralized system anyway), but it is a soft requirement. You may create a Blockchain without mining rewards, but then there is no incentive to do work and you are much more vulnerable to 51% attacks. You could argue that federated servers already perform work out of the goodness of their hearts, but in the case of federated networks the work being done is much less than PoW blockchains, because only the first node to validate a block does useful work, all the other mining done is worthless. That in turn means that you are hammerring your server (if you aren’t, see above comment about 51% attacks) for effectively 0 reward. If you add the fact that blockchains as they exist must always be dealing in some sort of “value” exchange, and it means blockchains always are just money exchange schemes. Their volatility also turns them from stores of money to speculation a instruments and then it’s even harder to build community on it (I suggest the second part of the Line Goes Up documentary on yt for the community aspect of blockchains).
Not too pedantic at all; those are indeed two distinct ways of creating similar applications. In my opinion, federated alternatives are more appealing than those based on blockchain technologies. Federated networks are proving to provide a more palatable experience through hybrid decentralized centralization.
Federated networks are also able to leverage community goodwill to provide a free experience. Blockchains are just a tool to extract money from users in the name of immutability.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but is value inherently necessary to perpetuate PoW or verification steps in a Blockchain? In other words, do you need to create value for it to work? I didn’t think that was a necessary first step, but I suppose it could be if it’s all driven by miners or some other random PoW mechanism with a monetary incentive.
It’s not inherent (for example private blockchains exist and are being used, but private blockchains may as well be a centralized system anyway), but it is a soft requirement. You may create a Blockchain without mining rewards, but then there is no incentive to do work and you are much more vulnerable to 51% attacks. You could argue that federated servers already perform work out of the goodness of their hearts, but in the case of federated networks the work being done is much less than PoW blockchains, because only the first node to validate a block does useful work, all the other mining done is worthless. That in turn means that you are hammerring your server (if you aren’t, see above comment about 51% attacks) for effectively 0 reward. If you add the fact that blockchains as they exist must always be dealing in some sort of “value” exchange, and it means blockchains always are just money exchange schemes. Their volatility also turns them from stores of money to speculation a instruments and then it’s even harder to build community on it (I suggest the second part of the Line Goes Up documentary on yt for the community aspect of blockchains).
Nano is a good example of a no-value-generating blockchain. And it works