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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)?

#121

Post by josalhor »

I have thought about this a lot. I think there exists a finite set of properties your problem needs for blockchain to be an effective solution.

First of all, you need multiple sources of truth. i.e. Everyone can make transactions with money, therefore everyone is a source of truth.

Second, you want to solve your problem in a distributed fashion and you need to figure out the incentives for each node that contributes. i.e. Everyone wants to participate in the economy and is okay with giving a small commission for a transaction.

On top of all this, you also want to maintain some invariant. i.e. Transactions do not create money.

I have thought of more properties, but they are much more boring. These are enough to throw away pretty much all the hype around blockchain. Every time someone suggests blockchain to solve a problem ask yourself if these properties apply to the problem at hand.

Example: Someone suggests logistic company x could use blockchain in order to keep a log of their distribution. But then, you astute reader ask yourself: If a single company essentially holds all the information, there are no multiple sources of truth. How would this instance of blockchain be different from a centralized database? What values does it add?

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

#122

Post by samatman »

Urbit has been using Ethereum to distribute scarce identities for its peer to peer personal-server network.

There have been some growing pains, but it works.

Note: not interested in explaining what Urbit is, let alone fielding tedious political commentary about its departed founder. Just highlighting a successful non-currency use of a blockchain.

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

#123

Post by lucb1e »

Geee wrote: post #110
lucb1e wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes, it's similar to just encrypting yourself and then using AWS S3 or something. That's not a differentiator, but usually people object decentralized solutions because they fear that anybody could access the data. So it's built into the protocol itself, and you can't accidentally send unencrypted data to the network. For most users, the real benefit is price. Also, there might be users who can't use AWS S3 for examp…

Thanks for the reply! I hadn't thought of that this might drive down costs due to making competition way easier, censorship is definitely another consideration, and smart contracts for liability could also totally work with deposits. I'm not switching just yet because it's not solving a problem I'm having, but fair is fair: you've convinced me this is another legitimate use case for blockchain technology. That's very rare so I'm happy :)

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

#124

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I'm not sure if it counts as a "block" "chain", but I'm using a chain of hashes to verify integrity of an online message board, so that you can more easily verify that you are all seeing the same conversation thread.

And if any messages are deleted, everyone can see that something was there, and when it was deleted, and who deleted it.

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

#125

Post by udfalkso »

Canada wrote: post #48

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 "stora…

Timestamping can be accomplished cheaply by piggy backing on a secure blockchain that’s already being used for the purpose of money (Bitcoin). No need to start from scratch for each use case.

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

#126

Post by michaelt »

ayewo wrote: post #69

In the long-term, I think blockchains will make a major showing in the design of self-driving vehicles (SDVs). For SDVs to really take off, it needs to surpass the safety of a human driver but the only way to do this reliably in a way that avoids the high costs and ugly protrusion of roof-mounted LIDARs is for SDVs to use low-cost internal sensor inputs and fallback on low-cost external sensor outputs from nearby veh…

If a self-driving car needs data from other self-driving cars on the road, how's it going to work in the early stages, when only 0.1% of cars on the road have the feature?

IMHO it'd be much easier to sell people a $10,000 self-driving option that worked immediately, than a $2,000 self-driving option and a promise it would start working at some point in the future, when xx% of vehicles on the road had deployed it.

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

#127

Post by FridgeSeal »

mareko wrote: post #114

Venmo for all. We're used to Venmo in the US but many places in the world don't have an equivalent. Valora is a new Venmo-like mobile app that's built on the Celo blockchain, a new network where mobile devices can efficiency sync with the chain, with a native stable coin, and a decentralized phone number verification protocol. Check out https://valoraapp.com and https://celo.org

In my country this is already fully supported: PayID will let you transfer money instantly instantly between accounts (up to some daily limit), with no fees.

Similarly, an app called BeemIt, which is supported by the major banks here gives you a very similar experience, albeit with a prettier UI/UX. As it stands, there’s now no advantage that cryptocurrency offers in this space anymore IMO.

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

#129

Post by bb88 »

smt88 wrote: post #101
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…

> where the timestamping party cannot be trusted to act honestly because of conflicting interests But in this case, isn't whoever controls your code the "timestamping party"? Looking at two examples: A: With blockchain The timestamp that the photo was taken is immutably, publicly logged. B: Without blockchain The timestamp the photo was taken is logged by you, the software provider. What is a scenario where (B) is le…

The picture of the car is not protected by hard crypto until it's inserted into the blockchain. Until it is inserted the trust chain breaks at the questions of:

    When was it taken?
    Who was taking the picture?
    What is the picture of?  The car to be protected? Or someone else's car.
Blockchain works for currencies, since currencies are just numbers in a ledger. And numbers can be easily secured with strong crypto.

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

#130

Post by bawolff »

scubbo wrote: post #97

(Disclaimer - I believe myself to have a better idea of what a blockchain is and how it works than the average layman, but I'm certainly not an expert) Having recently completed a house purchase and waded my way through reams of paperwork in the process, I'm stunned that there's no "document provenance chain" implementation. At every stage of the process, I was presented with tens or hundreds of pages of paperwork th…

> it could just be Version Control, right?

Or just a list of sha256 hashes.

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