Hey everyone ā Thanks for the responses to my article. It took a while for this thread to work its way over to me, but here I amā¦ and Iāll make sure to monitor the Forum more closely in the future.
Responding here to the a few of the comments aboveā¦
First to @brooks:
I have done my best to present a fair analysis; itās not my intention to ābadmouthā another project at all, let alone unfairly. At the same time, I do believe itās important that people have the opportunity to understand how Holochain is different from blockchain projects. I donāt believe itās possible to educate about Holochain thoroughly without pointing to some of the limitations of blockchain projects. This is why we are embarking on this #AHolochainPerspective series, which is scheduled to continue for at least another few articles.
That being said, I do think an edit is warranted in the article in order to clarify the matter about transaction wait times on Cardano. Itās true that āusers have recently reported transaction wait times on Cardano ranging from 1 to 18 hoursā, as the discussion behind the link shows. But itās also true that there may have been reasons for these wait times unrelated to the network itself. Part of the process of writing this article was to integrate input from various Holochain team members. One of my takeaways from receiving some critical feedback on this piece is that I need to more thoroughly consider the suggestions Iām receiving before finalizing their inclusion, or at least their languaging, in the article.
The only other specific critique I see in the Reddit thread you linked to is about use of the word āsubstantialā to describe Cardanoās gas fees. As far as I know itās unclear exactly what Cardanoās gas fees will be once their network is up and running at scale. āSubstantialā was a word designed to cover a broad range of possible costs, basically anything that adds up to a meaningful expense if anyone is doing a lot of transactions. One user on the Reddit thread said that 25 cents is not substantial, but if that kind of fee applied to every post, comment, like, share, etc in a social media platform, that absolutely would be substantial. Even for financial transacting that amount sounds quite substantial to me, especially if we want crypto to be versatile enough to use for small payments around the world.
By the way, I actually do like Cardano, and I hold ADA. I believe itās a better blockchain protocol in a lot of ways. And I also think itās not a stretch to say that the potential of blockchain, while substantial, is basically limited to low-throughput applications like financial services, with live-collaboration and media-intensive applications likely to remain always out of reach (unless decentralization is substantially compromised). Holochain does not have such limitations, or at least is far less limited by orders of magnitudes. Thatās a story that needs to be toldā¦ especially because, to the unfamiliar, even the word āHolochainā sounds like another blockchain project.
I am curious if thereās anything else about the article you ādonāt likeā. If itās just the fact that weāre pointing to the limitations of another project, I donāt really see us changing that approach any time soon. But if thereās something further about the way Iāve done so, Iām interested to know more.
Now to @ddd-mtl:
Re āinstantā latency: we considered a number of word choices here, and I do stand by this one as a fitting word. Thatās because you actually do write to your own source chain immediately, and thatās actually what matters because your source chain is the definitive source of information on the matter. There is nothing else that happens, really, that could be considered something you are āwaitingā for before transacting again based on your new account balance. The transaction does not need to be validated by the network. As soon as you write your transaction to your source chain, your balance is updated such that someone else may transact with you (by verifying your account balance themselves).
Re live video streaming: this is something Iāve spoken about with @artbrock on numerous occasions, including in my research for this article. He reports having seen live video streaming with latency of around one minute, which is suitable, and that was on Holochainās prototype, which was thousands of times slower than the current version. (Note that we do not say āinstantā hereā¦ itās reasonable to expect a bit of latency in video streaming, in both centralized and decentralized environments.)
Re large media applications: again, my understanding is that, actually, you can. Iāve spoken with Art extensively about this as well. What suggests to you that āyou cannot rely on Holochain aloneā for large-media applications?
In conclusion:
Itās essential to me that Holochain communicate with rigorous integrity to the absolute best of its ability, and itās doubly essential to me that I do. I appreciate the checks and balances showing up here in the community, and itās causing me to look at how I can improve my processes. At the same time, drawing a comparison between Holochain and blockchain projects ā including pointing out the limitations of the latter ā does not itself constitute unrigorous communication, in my view.
I think you meant 16MB instead of 16GB, just pointing it out because this thread could be visited by lots of people.