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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)?

#71

Post by lucb1e »

usr1106 wrote: post #49

I believe certificate transparency http://www.certificate-transparency.org/ is based on blockchain technology. (Haven't studied it in detail, just happened to notice this new SCT field in my Let's Encrypt certificate recently.)

Open site, use the search box on the top right to look for merely the keyword "blockchain", find 1 hit which says:

> We are not making "the" blockchain, and we do not claim to support decentralisation.

This does not use a blockchain in the bitcoin/ethereum/... sense of the word. Perhaps in a "git" sense of the word, but I don't think that's what OP meant when asking for legitimate uses.

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

#72

Post by detaro »

lucb1e wrote: post #57
zubairq wrote: post #3

Timestamping documents via their hash

I know there exist uses for timestamping, but I don't know how often this actually comes up in practice. Have you ever gone to a notary to timestamp something before Bitcoin came along? The options are posting it to something like Twitter, including a newspaper headline in your cryptographic signature if you want to prove an after date rather than a before date, or indeed a notary. While I agree blockchain is a more…

The interesting cases are much more companies wanting to timestamp dozens to thousands of documents or events per day. But there the "notary" solution is a common one - many companies offer timestamping as a service with an API, and in most cases you can probably find one all involved parties can trust (e.g. some CAs run such services)

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

#73

Post by lucb1e »

detaro wrote: post #72
lucb1e wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know there exist uses for timestamping, but I don't know how often this actually comes up in practice. Have you ever gone to a notary to timestamp something before Bitcoin came along? The options are posting it to something like Twitter, including a newspaper headline in your cryptographic signature if you want to prove an after date rather than a before date, or indeed a notary. While I agree blockchain is a more…

The interesting cases are much more companies wanting to timestamp dozens to thousands of documents or events per day. But there the "notary" solution is a common one - many companies offer timestamping as a service with an API, and in most cases you can probably find one all involved parties can trust (e.g. some CAs run such services)

What are these companies timestamping though? That's what I meant to ask. I know there is a need for the service or there wouldn't be parties offering it, I just don't really know specific examples of uses for it because I never came across any myself. It appears to be a rare need to me, but you make it sound like some companies would want to do this so much that it's worth automating, but then I still don't know what those companies do or want timestamped by a third party (be that a notary or a blockchain).

The two Wikipedia articles I found on timestamping aren't really about timestamping of this kind. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timestamp and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timestamping_(computing))

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

#74

Post by mgraczyk »

AlexandrB wrote: post #37
mgraczyk wrote: post #24

This hasn't really been done, but one possibility is credibly committing to a promise about future product behavior. Imagine a company with a negative reputation for whimsically changing product goals and functionality (cough, Google). Using a blockchain allows the company to commit to a certain set of rules for product logic, regardless of which PMs take over the product 2 years and 4 PSC cycles later.

This doesn't make sense. What are the repercussions if they change product direction? They can just ditch the blockchain along with the parts of the product they committed to.

The cost of changing direction is higher.

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

#75

Post by ummonk »

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…

To make sure I understand it correctly, the blockchain is acting as a distributed notary service, right? That definitely feels useful.

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

#77

Post by 60secz »

Proof of work solutions to byzantine fault tolerance are vulnerable to 51% attacks almost by definition, so if there's a value to the data it needs to be backed by a stronger economic incentive for "virtuous behavior". Doing this outside of money is problematic.

The other option is private blockchains with limited, authenticated accounts, but then why not just use a timestamped db?

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

#78

Post by ricklamers »

sebmellen wrote: post #45
ricklamers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

Edit: apparently I don't know how to read. (Asked what parent post was working on)

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

#79

Post by technoplato »

root_axis wrote: post #59
sebmellen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timestamp of the photo. This way we know that the photos were taken before transport, and the state of the car when it's dropped off should match the state of the car at pickup.

Nothing proves that the timestamp accurately reflects when the photo was taken or that the photo itself is even accurate. If I wanted to joy-ride one of these cars I'd simply do so before taking the photo. The odometer display can also be trivially modified for the sake of a photo (i.e. roll back the odo for a photo and then revert to accurate numbers after the photo)

This has been the only comment I'm actually interested in seeing a response from parent commenter on.

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

#80

Post by goatinaboat »

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…

Our solution lets the transporter timestamp the odometer reading and car body with photos at time of pickup, on a blockchain. When the car is dropped off, it's just a matter of comparing the blockchain record with the car's actual state. Our system lets many parties who don't know or trust each other view the same "shared state" on a public blockchain ledger (Stellar), enforcing between these parties.

I have a friend with a similar use case. His company solves it by taking Polaroids, and both parties sign the backs.

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