Blockchains
Cf.
People who understand databases realize that blockchains only work as long as there are incentives to keep a sufficient number of non-colluding miners active, preventing collusion is probably impossible, and that scaling blockchains up to handle an interesting transaction rate is very hard, but that no-government money is really interesting.
People who understand economics and particularly economic history understand why central banks manage their currencies, thin markets like the ones for cryptocurrencies are easy to corrupt, and a payment system needs a way to undo bogus payments, but that free permanent database ledger is really interesting.
Not surprisingly, the most enthusiastic bitcoin and blockchain proponents are the ones who understand neither databases nor economics.
- John Levine, "Blockchain's Two-Flavored Appeal" (2018)
mais sous un angle différent :
Autres ressources :
Ducau : "c'est comme le village gaulois, la transaction se fait sur la place du village, tout le monde est témoin que c'est moi qui ai acheté le menhir, si on veut changer ça il faut que tout le village se mette d'accord pour dire que ce n'est pas mon menhir"
Depoorter cite Alexandre Stachtchenko qui avance l'idée que la consommation énergétique des blockchains "participe de la transition écologique" en tirant parti de la "surproduction d'électricité" renouvelable
Un des sujets centraux du séminaire organisé par Depoorter au printemps 2024
Molly White à propos de la consommation énergétique de la blockchain Ethereum (mars 2024) :
I can only think of one concern of mine that has been even remotely addressed: the reduction of the once massive environmental impact from the Ethereum blockchain, thanks to The Merge towards the end of 2022. Credit where credit's due for that one, but the environmental concerns have not generally been the biggest focus of mine.
But, for scale, it takes six hours of that sustained power draw for the Bitcoin network to process as many transactions as VISA handles in one minute, and during that time VISA is using fractions of a cent of electricity per transaction. And that’s just VISA. That’s one major institution. (...)
So just to head all this off at the pass, Bitcoin and proof-of-work cryptocurrency aren’t incentivizing a move to green energy sources, like solar and wind, they are offsetting it. Because electrical consumption, electrical waste, is the value that underpins Bitcoin. Miners spend X dollars in electricity to mine a Bitcoin, they expect to be able to sell that coin for at least X plus profit. When new power sources come online and the price of electricity goes down, they don’t let X go down, they build a bigger machine.
On the energy cost side of things, proof of stake is still inefficient, just by virtue of the sheer volume of redundancy, but on a per-user basis it’s at least inefficient on the scale of, like, an MMO as opposed to a steel foundry. This is difficult to assess because the most popular proof of stake chains are still unpopular and low traffic in the scope of things, heavily centralized. Claims about scalability are backed up by nothing but the creators’ word.
NFTs impose a simulacrum of this physical scarcity and uniqueness onto digital objects within their ecosystem. The end goal of this infinite machine is the financialization of everything. Any benefits of digital uniqueness end up being a quirk, a necessary precondition of turning everything into a stock market. There’s nothing particularly offensive underpinning the concept of digital collectibles, frameworks and subcultures for digital collectibles have existed for decades within various contexts, but NFTs exist to lend credibility and functionality to the cryptocurrencies that they exist on top of.