I've spent a lot of time doing consulting around blockchains for fortune 500 companies. Most technology choices are not a need. You can use MongoDB or MySQL in most cases. There are places where MongoDB has benefits, just as there are cases where a permissioned, immutable record has benefits. It's not a silver bullet, but it can add trust. This article seems to miss that creating immutable records of intermediary attestations can serve as an audit trail later. If these audit logs are 100% immutable, that's nice. It's more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it still has some value.
You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
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Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#32Anyone have any good counter arguments to articles like this? That there is a use case that makes sense? I’ve been trying to find one and can’t, but it hasn’t stopped major corporations like IBM, who I would expect to jump on the hype train, but even AWS is embracing it to a degree with their latest announcements.
As I understand it, blockchain is only a solution if your problem is of the shape: I need to record statements, but I cannot/do not want to trust a central authority to not tamper with those statements.
So bitcoin solves the problem of not wanting governments being able to print extra money. The sibling comment [1] about timestamping the date of birth of veal is not a good use case, because it's perfectly possible and easier to set up a central authority that the veterinarian can report to. Which, according to a response [2], is exactly what happened, and solves the problem of timestamping veal just fine.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#33I've said this several times before on this site but will keep repeating it: there's exactly one use case where the blockchain is a superior (and, in fact, the only) solution: when you can't use contracts and the legal system to ensure trust between the parties. In other words, anything illegal. For any other conceivable use case, a database and a contract between parties are a superior solution.
Edit: To clarify what I mean by "a database and a contract": I mean the way the world does business, and as been for as long as society exists. There's trust between parties, and there's a multi-layered system in place to resolve disputes, starting from the customer support call center, reviews, bad publicity, and going all the way to the courts.
Guys, this works. It's literally how the world works.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#34I've spent a lot of time doing consulting around blockchains for fortune 500 companies. Most technology choices are not a need. You can use MongoDB or MySQL in most cases. There are places where MongoDB has benefits, just as there are cases where a permissioned, immutable record has benefits. It's not a silver bullet, but it can add trust. This article seems to miss that creating immutable records of intermediary att…
The big problem with these kind of arguments is that is misses the interface between the real world and the blockchain.
Say I have a blockchain that tracks births and deaths. Now if I see a record on there I can be assured it hasn't been tampered with. But that tells me nothing about how it was created - was the person entering the data acting with malfeasance?
All blockchain does is audit the data after its creation. It doesn't solve the issue of provenance of the original information. This seems to be where all these schemes and ideas (beyond crypto-currencies[1]) fall down when compared to current databases.
[1]slow and pointless. Money transfer is solved and current systems, while lacking the assured fidelity of the transactional data, offer so much more - fraud detction, chargebacks, etc etc
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#35Anyone have any good counter arguments to articles like this? That there is a use case that makes sense? I’ve been trying to find one and can’t, but it hasn’t stopped major corporations like IBM, who I would expect to jump on the hype train, but even AWS is embracing it to a degree with their latest announcements.
People are over complicating what a *Blockchain" really is.
All a Blockchain is, is a public, append only database. That's it.
And no, it does not require "proof of work". People have released lots of Blockchains that do not have proof of work. They might even use a central authority to sign their blockchain transactions.
Public append only databases have existed for a long time, and are quite useful.
Someone else gave the example of git. Yes git is a Blockchain. Really.
There are a lot of reasons to use a public append only database, as opposed to a private database, hidden behind a central authority.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#36"However, this system is vulnerable to a very simple threat: a dishonest seller can make a copy of a real bottle with a token, fill it with wine of lower quality, and either steal you..."
The argument around “someone that doesn’t care about tokens” is weak because that applies to any authenticity solution.
The idea behind the authenticity guarantees would be that every step along the way, you add a record that the object has passed through your step. Otherwise I agree this won’t work.
If someone adds a record, but does fill the bottle with cheaper wine, the first person that catches them will blacklist that actor.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#37I've said this several times before on this site but will keep repeating it: there's exactly one use case where the blockchain is a superior (and, in fact, the only) solution: when you can't use contracts and the legal system to ensure trust between the parties. In other words, anything illegal. For any other conceivable use case, a database and a contract between parties are a superior solution. Edit: To clarify wha…
You can repeat it all the times you want, but it it is still a shortsighted view.
“A database and a contract”... but who owns the database? And who enforces the contract? And who owns the actual data?
Blockchain provides satisfactory answers to all those problems.
I agree 100% with the article in that blockchain is being ‘applied’ to a whole bunch of places that don’t need it. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work well in many other (legal!) scenarios.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#38Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#39I've spent a lot of time doing consulting around blockchains for fortune 500 companies. Most technology choices are not a need. You can use MongoDB or MySQL in most cases. There are places where MongoDB has benefits, just as there are cases where a permissioned, immutable record has benefits. It's not a silver bullet, but it can add trust. This article seems to miss that creating immutable records of intermediary att…
The big problem with these kind of arguments is that is misses the interface between the real world and the blockchain. Say I have a blockchain that tracks births and deaths. Now if I see a record on there I can be assured it hasn't been tampered with. But that tells me nothing about how it was created - was the person entering the data acting with malfeasance? All blockchain does is audit the data after its creation…
That's why I said "intermediary attestations".
I did not miss the interface between real world and blockchain. I did not claim that the records would be 100% accurate. What I'm saying is, when audited and we discover that someone provided bad data, we know who that was.
That's how fraud claims work in general. Having a nicely packaged up list of who attested to what is nice. That's my point.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#40I've said this several times before on this site but will keep repeating it: there's exactly one use case where the blockchain is a superior (and, in fact, the only) solution: when you can't use contracts and the legal system to ensure trust between the parties. In other words, anything illegal. For any other conceivable use case, a database and a contract between parties are a superior solution. Edit: To clarify wha…
well the original idea was exactly that: subvert the government by making legal enforcement of (some) contracts redundant.