Zk rollups are about as fast as visa network - and recursive zk snarks can scale further if needed. The benefit is that they inherit the security of the main network - users can withdraw tokens from them trustlessly, and at no point can the rollup owner steal user funds or block them from withdrawal.
For financial services like lending and swaps this is great and avoids some of the CeFi and CEX problems we are seeing. For other apps like art sales, public groups, and ENS domain name aliases, it allows ownership of assets to be held non custodially rather than a single company’s servers and records.
your last point isn't true - EMV cards with a chip (modern credit cards) use public key cryptography and don't reveal more than they need to to the merchant. Typing in the card numbers (or swiping it) will slowly stop in the US, as it has in most other developed countries by now.
I disagree with the rest also - mainly on the grounds that for a normal person, there isn't any benefit and as the OP says, the status quo is preferable
Apple Pay is one. Also, in Asia it's very common for a website to display a QR code which you scan with your phone to make a payment, either with your bank's app or with a separate payment platform app. These don't reveal any secret data to the merchant.
Even when using traditional card numbers, many banks offer you the ability to instantly mint as many cards as you like, so you can just generate a card for the specific website. Often you can even lock the card number to that merchant after the first payment.
not cryptographically no (and would be nice to see, but crypto is not the answer). But as a consumer when I shop online I never worry - if I am defrauded the (centralised) bank will give me the money back, that's the solution and it works for everyone
And that's how I ended up having to change my card numbers on file with a bunch of businesses, and why every couple months a purchase fails until I respond to a fraud email. It's a hassle and it's unnecessary, especially when phones have secure enclaves for private key storage. I'm not even arguing for blockchains now, just for using public keys in online purchases.
> Crucially, iOS itself cannot directly access data stored in the secure enclave, so even if malware could make its way onto an iPhone, it would have no access to the data.
Even if it's not a perfect solution, it's better than handing full account credentials to every online merchant I use. A dedicated FIDO fob would be even better but the phone is something most people already have.
For anything to work efficiently in crypto it always needs to be centralised e.g. OpenSea, Coinbase. Both of which hilariously are backed by a16z. As Scott G says... "meet the new boss... it's your old boss"
More examples: Metamask, Moralis, Blockchain.com, Kraken, Binance
Regulation can’t come soon enough. These are risky assets at best. People are getting hurt.
Just think how much real tech talent has been wasted on this pointless experiment. This could have gone into fintech, greentech, healthtech, proptech etc anything else really that creates real value.
Or adtech, or more adtech, or even more adtech, or how about some adtech?
That's pretty much what the majority of tech companies boil down to nowadays, or at least some free service (or paid + ads!) that's a trojan horse to get ad revenue.
So true. Yes there are a minority making huge sums of money in crypto but most are young or naive people putting in savings they need and HODLing this trash until it sinks.
There is a moral imperative to stop crypto/NFTs/etc, especially from those most vulnerable to it, the young.
We are putting the planet in peril already without the existence of this pointless technology, which represents the first net-negative invention of Computer Science. As a discipline we must evolve to apply an ethical lens to what we do, just as other sciences have had to do with time.
author here - folks... just look into this stuff for 5 mins, it's amazing. Beeple (famous NFT artist) actually threatened to do this to one his NFTs if Trump one the 2020 election
Kim Kardashian, Matt Damon, Jamie Foxx, Mike Tyson, Tom Brady, Michael Owen (2000s English footballer). Crypto should be regulated by the SEC at this point. Real people are losing real savings.
