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Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

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Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#41

Post by sam_lowry_ »

cynusx wrote: post #23

I have only heard of one good use-case and I have been in fintech for the past 6 years. Swift GPI allows banks to credit the receiving parties' account in 10 minutes rather than overnight. It's an example where the existing party (swift) already had accumulated all the trust necessary and the consolidated ledgers were updated overnight. Swift GPI allows a bank to track any inbound payments and recognize it to clients…

A centralized messaging platform using blockchain? You may be kidding.

SWIFT has been playing with blockchain for years, always backing off. They had a partnership with Ripple once, some hackatons, a lab dedicated to blockchain. Former CEO even bragged about making bitcoin transactions himself.

There was one corner use case around GPI and R3 Corda announced in 2019, but I doubt it ever was used in production.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#42

Post by lucb1e »

oneplane wrote: post #38

Distributed non-repudiation; useful for inter-org or inter-political timestamping/handshaking and maybe even intention/confirmation registration. In can do some of the things you'd use a notary for.

So in a word, timestamping right? Because if you want to have non-renegable contracts then any digital signature will do, and you can sign a commonly agreed timestamp into it like "I will provide service X as of 2020-10-24T21:57:14+0200 ". The only thing you can't prove is when it really was signed, sent, published, that sort of thing, and for that a timestamping service can be used (which other comments already mentioned).

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#43

Post by handmodel »

xchaotic wrote: post #9
sebmellen wrote: post #7

The biggest use case I have found of blockchain tech is timestamping, especially in a case where the timestamping party cannot be trusted to act honestly because of conflicting interests. I'll give you an example, from one of my startup's enterprise customers. This company needs to ensure that their high-end auto inventory remains in the same state through transport — the mileage, the car body, etc. They've had issue…

why does it need a distributed blockchain though? Why not just put it in a database?

Call me cynical but I'm still confused by this.

If the issue is that people are taking cars for joyrides why not just have the car post a route file to a database or to its own computers of all the trips. Are auto suppliers really taking joyrides AND hacking into the computers? If you are capable enough to do that wouldn't it also stand to reason you'd be capable enough to disable any tracking units?

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#44

Post by lucb1e »

puranjay wrote: post #16

One good use case I've found is file authentication. If a file is signed and it can be matched against a distributed ledger, it can help ensure the authenticity of the file. I can imagine uses for this everywhere from piracy prevention to checking authenticity of documents, records, etc. Imagine that all land records are in a distributed ledger. The land owner has a signed certificate that can be verified anytime for…

I don't quite understand this one.

> If a file is signed and it can be matched against a distributed ledger, it can help ensure the authenticity of the file.

So I guess the point is that you don't want to have a central, trusted party. So someone can't simply hack or bribe that party. But what prevents a malicious actor from pushing their file's signature onto the blockchain? If only certain keys are allowed to use for signing, we're back to the trusted party: those with key access. What is the benefit here?

> Imagine that all land records are in a distributed ledger. The land owner has a signed certificate that can be verified anytime for authenticity.

Is this related to the file authentication thing? Perhaps because I don't know what benefit the former should have, I don't get what this is supposed to have in common. Here too, though, I don't see an advantage of doing it on a blockchain. The department of land records can publish a public key corresponding to the private key they use to sign land certificates: "that can be verified anytime for authenticity."

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#45

Post by sebmellen »

ricklamers wrote: post #36
sebmellen wrote: post #7

The biggest use case I have found of blockchain tech is timestamping, especially in a case where the timestamping party cannot be trusted to act honestly because of conflicting interests. I'll give you an example, from one of my startup's enterprise customers. This company needs to ensure that their high-end auto inventory remains in the same state through transport — the mileage, the car body, etc. They've had issue…

A cool initiative that applies time-stamping on blockchain to fight fake news/increase accountability in online publishing is https://wordproof.com/ . I've been trying to analyze the robustness of their approach but I think their hashing algorithm (sha of json content blob) and the trustworthiness of the blockchain (they use EOS) are the two only components. Can someone who has more background in cryptography and blo…

I find Wordproof interesting. Their technology is fine as blockchain tech goes, but I don't see how timestamping fights fake news.

Congrats to the team for their EU grant and traction, but this feels to me like a "problem looking for a solution". Take this with a grain of salt, as we are somewhat adjacent competitors.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#46

Post by cheeze »

_b8r0 wrote: post #2

Usually it's when you want decentralized validation of time-series data. E.g. The egg industry adopts a solution whereby the chicken are tracked on a blockchain so people know which chickens are kept outdoors and which are indoors. The eggs are then tracked and checked in at each quality gate and the consumer then gets a QR code for an app that tells them where the egg came from and where it was checked for tampering…

This is a poor example IMO. You're talking about something that can easily be handled by a database... you don't have trust issues or a byzantine generals problem to solve when it comes to egg tracking. Blockchain does nothing to ensure that the data is truthful.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#47

Post by lucb1e »

Geee wrote: post #5

Decentralized and private cloud data storage: https://sia.tech The benefit from using blockchain is that your data will be safely replicated and accessible from the cloud, and at the same time you are the sole owner of the data. Only your private key can access the data. In this case, blockchain also facilitates a decentralized marketplace for sellers and buyers of data storage.

> your data will be safely replicated and accessible from the cloud, and at the same time you are the sole owner of the data. Only your private key can access the data.

So it's like an FTP drive where the hosting company makes backups and you encrypt the files before uploading, like Tarsnap?

Trying to come up with any difference (advantageous or no) I guess the point is that there isn't a single owner? Nobody liable to keep your data available, but also not a single party that can go bankrupt or some such?

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#48

Post by Canada »

The use case is money. That's it. All valid use cases involve a transfer of stored value. (eg. money, securities, collectable stuff)

For everything else there's a much cheaper option, even for time stamping. Anything involving "proving" something, meaning making some assertion at some time is not a good case. For those look at certificate transparency for a better example of how to handle that. When people say "storage", I say no. All valid cases which involve that are really about the handling of payment for storage, not the storage itself.

Re: Ask HN: What are real-life useful use-cases for blockchain (not currencies)?

#50

Post by root_axis »

sebmellen wrote: post #7

The biggest use case I have found of blockchain tech is timestamping, especially in a case where the timestamping party cannot be trusted to act honestly because of conflicting interests. I'll give you an example, from one of my startup's enterprise customers. This company needs to ensure that their high-end auto inventory remains in the same state through transport — the mileage, the car body, etc. They've had issue…

What does the blockchain add to the equation beyond what the photo already does?
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