You suspected you would find cryptographic primitives in a system that deals with privacy?

I think the subtext is that this is blockchain-y.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a block chain. It's a cryptographically immutable linked list. Anti-buzzwords can be as shallow as buzzwords.

With the exception of the inefficiency of proof of work, nearly all the problems with cryptocurrency are human problems related to the toxicity of the ecosystem rather than intrinsic issues with the tech. Code doesn't scam people. People scam people.

I'll never understand the undeserved hate that blockchain tech gets. I understand that some people automatically associate blockchain with crypto scams, but fundamentally the tech is inspiring.

I thought the same but I really do understand the "hate" now. In fact, as someone who sees a lot of potential in the tech, there's even more reasons to be upset. "Blockchain" and even "crypto" are terms that became synonymous with opportunistic speculation at best, and scams and frauds at worst.

And honestly, the vast majority of people on the "inside", i.e. those actually working with it, were opportunists as well. Most of them saw the tech narrowly as an unregulated financial instrument.

I'm inspired by alternate modes of data storage and compute, and blockchain gets points for popularizing public key pairs as a means of committing transactions, but I totally understand the hate: whenever a tool is invented, it makes certain things easier than they used to be, sometimes unintentionally. Merkle trees make verifying data integrity fast, and proof of work was invented to make sending spam emails slow. The two combined with a money-metaphor makes spinning up pyramid schemes zero marginal cost. Whether or not you're on board with Mr Nakamoto's banking critiques, the result of the technology has been a tidal wave of thin schemes defrauding hopeful and desperate people, while adding little value outside of that world.

because all the people working on blockchain-esque systems never seem to grasp societal trust boundaries.

its like theres no amount of Adam Curtis documentaries that will shake silicon valley folks from the myth that the computer will lead to a better, more equal society.

you cant compute yourself out of a broken world.

> you cant compute yourself out of a broken world.

Most certainly not, but surely you can build better tools with the aspiration of facilitating certain goals, can't you? It's not the tools in or by themselves that will improve (or worsen) the world, rather something at your disposal to pursue your goals.

> the myth that the computer will lead to a better, more equal society

Agreed that it won't. But, IMO, the strength of Shelter is that it covers a niche that many other systems (blockchain-y or otherwise) don't, which is data autonomy and confidentiality. Most popular web apps today are centralised silos that don't give you privacy from the operator, and those that aim for federation often also don't give you much privacy either.

Now, it can be that those factors are not important for the specific thing you're developing, and that's fine. But, if they are, having an existing framework to build on top of can give you a head start (even indirectly, by showing you what works or doesn't).

Disclaimer: I'm involved in the development of Shelter. All opinions are my own.

This is unnecessarily defeatist. You can make improvements to a broken world, including new frameworks for compute that removes dependency on billionaire data brokers.

As an Adam Curtis fan (for all his faults), I don't believe technology is neutral nor that progress is teleologic. I do believe that people could be better served that software that works in their interests instead of against them.

And funny you mention a broken world, as if we're doomed to be excluded from the paradise of eden, the very first walled garden. Those of us working on distributed applications are trying to make walled gardens obsolete, no forgiveness required :)

those of you working on distributed applications are trying to transfer power from current tech companies to new tech companies.

thats it. thats all it is. all the madness about cryptography replacing trust just makes that power more concentrated.

What do you mean by replacing trust with crypto? Like in 'code is law'? If so, yeah, you can't replace one thing with the other because they're fundamentally different things that may only overlap in certain areas.

But on a broader scale, I don't see what in cryptography makes power inherently more concentrated. Crypto is just a way for enforcing certain trust relations that have already been established or agreed upon. Just like you can use crypto to help centralise power (e.g., allowing you to only run signed applications that can only show signed content), you can use crypto to help decentralise power with tools for confidentially presenting content and allowing you to vet your applications haven't been tampered with.

In both cases the underlying technology has many common components, and what changes is the use you make of it.

bitcoin-esque systems, yea - largely agreed. they're trying to technologically force rules on a social system. there are Issues™ frequently adjacent to that.

blockchains have little to do with that though, they're more of an easily-validated data replication technique than anything that has social implications. and they've been around for much, MUCH longer than bitcoin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

> I'll never understand the undeserved hate that blockchain tech gets. I understand that some people automatically associate blockchain with crypto scams, but fundamentally the tech is inspiring.

Is it? From where I sit it's an environmental catastrophe as we burn squillions of CPU/GPU cycles for the modern day tulip craze (bitcoin).

For any purported use case of blockchains, with possible exception of buying illegal things online, existing technologies are better.

Monero is the one cryptocurrency I will endorse for having a genuine focus on private transactions. For people living under authoritarian regimes, oppressive families, or just whoever wants privacy. My only misgiving is the energy usage.

I assume they're referring to the technology. Ie immutable ledgers, merkle trees, etc. You're referring to crypto coins.

An immutable ledger != bitcoin.

I don't hate blockchain, but I also don't see much use for it that isn't better accomplished through other means. So I guess I'm just not inspired by the tech.