Hi. I'm the author of the article. Thanks for your interest. I'm glad the piece is sparking a deeper discussion of the technical trade offs of the technology.
I just want to clarify that this article is one of many included in a full Spectrum issue dedicated to blockchain technology, which I had a hand in organizing. From the outset I was adamant that we acknowledge the costs and limitations of blockchains. Part of that treatment can be found in the last half of the overview.
But we also try to hit those notes in a separate piece, which you can find here.
Hi. I'm the author. Thanks for pointing this out. You were not the only one. We've reworked the attributions paragraph to include all of the institutions that had a hand in this particular work. And we also tried to make it clear that the snarks they worked on were specific to the zcash project.
I went to the website for the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and nowhere can I find the document that is circulating in all these news posts.
This link, which you maybe shouldn't click, because who knows what's going on here, [http://www.genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-86432/] indicates that it should be in the news section. But when I go there directly, I can't find it.
Has anyone been able to even verify the authenticity of the original announcement, let alone interpret what it means? If so, can you share where on the official website you found it?
You have to keep in mind that during the course of those six months, Silk Road was taken offline. SR was assumed to be driving most of the non-exchange transaction volume. The fact that its dissolution had no impact on this metric is quite surprising and I'd argue it's an indication that "legitimate" trade activity has actually increased over the last few months.
Normally I would agree with both of these because they seem to be the reasons other companies introduce currency schemes. But in this case I think it's telling that Amazon first made the announcement on a blog for app developers. My guess is they are trying to attract developers by guaranteeing them a market.
If you're interested, I wrote about it in IEEE Spectrum when they first announced Amazon Coins in February.
I just want to clarify that this article is one of many included in a full Spectrum issue dedicated to blockchain technology, which I had a hand in organizing. From the outset I was adamant that we acknowledge the costs and limitations of blockchains. Part of that treatment can be found in the last half of the overview.
But we also try to hit those notes in a separate piece, which you can find here.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/do-you-need-a-b...