joepie91

You don't need a blockchain.

If you're reading this, you probably suggested to somebody that a particular technical problem could be solved with a blockchain.

Blockchains aren't a desirable thing; they're defined by having trustless consensus, which necessarily has to involve some form of costly signaling to work; that's what prevents attacks like sybil attacks.

In other words: blockchains must be expensive to operate, to work effectively. This makes it a last-resort solution, when you truly have no other options available for solving your problem; in almost every case you want a cheaper and less complex solution than a blockchain.

In particular, if your usecase is commercial, then you do not need or want trustless consensus. This especially includes usecases like supply chain tracking, ticketing, and so on. The whole *p

jywarren

Hi, this is a first-timers-only issue. This means we've worked to make it more legible to folks who either haven't contributed to our codebase before, or even folks who haven't contributed to open source before.

If that's you, we're interested in helping you take the first step and can answer questions and help you out as you do. Note that we're especially interested in contributions from people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software!

If you have contributed before, consider leaving this one for someone new, and looking through our general help wanted issues. Thanks!

The problem

What's supposed to happen:

joepie91

Don't use VPN services.

No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.

Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.

• A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
• A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
• There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.