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Discussion on: What's the most wasteful software?

 
jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

proof of work should be understood as meaning proof of waste

cryptography itself is super useful, for sure.

you don't need to convince me. my colleagues and I at Mautinoa Technologies have built one year ago an offline payment system for countries with poor banking infrastructure. I was asked all the time why we didn't use the Blockchain, and had to reply every time: look,

  • on a theoretical level this consensus algorithm thing is not actually needed, building trust is better than assuming it is not there and finding a complex software workaround
  • on a practical level, how would my users in Timor Leste buy their vegetables on the market with a Bitcoin transaction, given that they often have no internet reception?
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giorgosk profile image
Giorgos Kontopoulos πŸ‘€ • Edited

@jmfayard thanks for the follow up. Seems contradicting to know the difference between POW and POS and actually say "blockchain is wasteful" in your original post.

"Some blockchain projects are wasteful" might be a more appropriate thing to say. Blockchain is not inherently wasterful you need to speak about the consensus algorithm that puts the next block in chain and if that is a wasteful process.

Is that mobile payment system you describe open sourced ? I am genuinely interested to read about seems interesting though.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

My initial comment was a hot take in 3 words, not a completly accurate description. Blockchain has valid usages, just no as many as the enthousiasts claim. We were thinking ourselves about building a blockchain between the central bank of Timor Leste and the banks in the country.

I don't work at Mautinoa anymore but you can read about it here
medium.com/@mautinoa_technologies

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_hs_ profile image
HS

Glad I commented. A lot of information just went in. Didn't know someone would build cryptocurrency without blockchain, purely because "it's not cool". I'm stuck with the idea that if you don't use hype words you loose client's and reputation so you need either to be in a stable long living company or freelance for such big guys. Reason is that I've been frowned upon and not invited to next rounds of application processes as I don't want to learn Kotlin or use Nodejs or read books about TDD, Clean etc. I'm currently in a company where they put hype words in a presentation because it's a must, but they let me do what I want so I'm confused how long will it last.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

@greenroommate
focus on delivering value to your users
they won't care about which technologies you use, as long as it does the job

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_hs_ profile image
HS • Edited

Well yeah currently it's like that as my client is not software company and I'm sitting there with a small team building their first software solution so it's fine. But before I only worked for software companies where they only care about technology and how your code looks. Values were set by clients, CEO and team leads etc were giving tasks and handling what needs to be done. You were the how it needs to be done and code review from them was a must. Each day they only review code and it was always "something" but no one tells you what, why, and how. You are expected to know as non junior developer. It's like they give you a task, expect you to fail and then tell you "this should be done better" or "this library should be used you shouldn't code it yourself". Basically if it was simple, it was wrong. And they use same technology always because "if you want to be senior you can only do one tech stack" or else your playing around and don't know anything good enough.