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Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

blogs.wsj.com

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Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#61

Post by ruiquelhas »

imhoguy wrote: post #15
wyldfire wrote: post #8

Decentralized? No, it's "IBM Food Trust". So how is this any better or different from hosting a database on IBM's server? Secured by a PoW? Doubt it. Here's the closest I could find to technical info: > IBM Food Trust's blockchain solution, on the other hand, is permissioned so invited members know exactly with whom they are transacting, similar to what happens between business partners today. Participants also deter…

Sounds like another buzzword charged write-once database.

Is it really write-once though? I'm pretty sure there's no PoW involved (didn't bother to read) so all bets are off.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#62

Post by 0898 »

duxup wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #18

IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was. There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies. You don’t need “blockchain” to…

IBM really seems stuck in their old systems / and at some level doesn't understand what to do with new systems. I was talking to someone who was using the "IBM cloud". They went to spin up some servers and etc and IBM was all "that will take a few weeks, we have to install them". At least to me "cloud" includes the ability to spin stuff up on demand.... IBM was operating it like you were ordering from a very old co-l…

Yes. They kind of claimed Watson would tell you the answer even if you didn’t even know the question.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#63

Post by adamb01 »

Without focusing on the relevance of whether Blockchain is required in this situation, the thing that I find interesting is that this is Walmart and this news source is the WSJ.

That means executives from the world's largest companies are all reading this article and many will be having discussions with their management teams about blockchain.

Technology relevance discussions aside, moves like this are what turn fads and buzzwords into funded projects and business models.

And when a big company like Walmart makes a move like this, others follow ...

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#64

Post by simias »

x2398dh1 wrote: post #38

Since so many comments on this thread are so absolutely negative, I will try to play devil's advocate here. Is a given blockchain a more efficient database? Not efficient measured by percent of data stored in any given entry, which of course throughput and any other, "engineering metric," will suffer because of that. As an engineer, the idea of wasted energy, memory, space, etc., makes one cringe. Efficient from the…

The problem is that we've mostly exhausted technical discussions surrounding the blockchain. Everybody who cares about them (on either side of the fence) know how they work and what they do and don't do. But that's not even the point anymore.

>That being said Blockchain at its heart, stripping away the history, is just a mathematical concept, and it's a math tool that can be used to point from one source to another.

Not anymore. Look at this thread, not everybody seems to agree about what a "blockchain" is. Is it a blockchain without PoW? Is it a blockchain if it's fully centralized? The word is so generic to begin with that people can overload it with whatever they want, like "cloud computing" and all these other buzzwords.

This is not a technical discussion because we're well past that point. This is not about technology, this is about marketing and banking on the hype. Cryptocurrency proponents are happy because it can be used to boast wider adoption, crypto haters (like me) dislike it for exactly the same reason.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#65

Post by bayesian_horse »

code4tee wrote: post #18

IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was. There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies. You don’t need “blockchain” to…

As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time.

I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies/sole proprietors involved. From the original soy farmer, through feed production (maybe multiple factories because the soy is processed and later mixed with other ingredients), feed distributors and transporters, to the cattle farm. Again the individual animal can change hands multiple times, for example a bull calf can be fed soy based milk exchangers at a dairy farm where it was born, then be sold to a farm that raises it to market (with pigs there can be three different farmers from piglet to market maturity), then to the slaughterhouse, the meat goes to food processors and then into a distribution channel.

Easily a dozen or two separate legal entities. I can see why it could be hard to connect each of them to a central database reliably may be tricky.

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#68

Post by maxerickson »

x2398dh1 wrote: post #38

Since so many comments on this thread are so absolutely negative, I will try to play devil's advocate here. Is a given blockchain a more efficient database? Not efficient measured by percent of data stored in any given entry, which of course throughput and any other, "engineering metric," will suffer because of that. As an engineer, the idea of wasted energy, memory, space, etc., makes one cringe. Efficient from the…

Let's keep in mind that Walmart has more stores and customers in China and more problems with food than the United States by orders of magnitude.

Walmart has 10x as many stores in the US relative to China. It's 5,358 in the US¹ vs 426 in China².

Does Walmart have leverage in China to force this on growers? They do in the US.

1. https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/locations/united-sta...

2. https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/locations/china#/chi...

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#69

Post by ceejayoz »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #65
code4tee wrote: post #18

IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was. There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies. You don’t need “blockchain” to…

As I understand it, a blockchain is a decentralized database which does not require the individual instances to have perfect connectivity and perfect trust all the time. I can see why that would be something worth doing in a food chain. To trace, for example, a particular load of soy beans to a customer eating a steak, there are a couple of completely autonomous companies/sole proprietors involved. From the original…

If those dozen or two separate legal entities can all hop on a blockchain, they can likely make a POST request to Walmart's API too, right?

Re: Walmart Requires Lettuce, Spinach Suppliers to Join Blockchain

#70

Post by Milner08 »

duxup wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #18

IBM is quietly brushing its Watson mess under the carpet and now they’re trying to focus on blockchain. However this is just as substanceless and full of marketing fluff as Watson was. There’s nothing being done here that couldn’t or shouldn’t just be handled with a traditional database. Having IBM “run it” also sort of defeats the whole decentralized aspect of blockchain technologies. You don’t need “blockchain” to…

IBM really seems stuck in their old systems / and at some level doesn't understand what to do with new systems. I was talking to someone who was using the "IBM cloud". They went to spin up some servers and etc and IBM was all "that will take a few weeks, we have to install them". At least to me "cloud" includes the ability to spin stuff up on demand.... IBM was operating it like you were ordering from a very old co-l…

I hate to defend IBM (I used to work there and have nothing good to say) but its likely they were using the "Private Cloud" which is exactly what you say, co-location in the IBM Datacenter. Its just marketing rubbish.
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