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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)?

#261

Post by briatx »

dgrin91 wrote: post #19

Broadly speaking blockchain only solves a singular problem: Trust. If there is some work that needs to be done between parties and you don't trust the parties involved then you can use blockchain to do the work in a trust-less setting. This is why money has been the first and most prominent use case; people are less trusting with their own money. For a specific non-money potential use case of blockchain I would say i…

> Broadly speaking blockchain only solves a singular problem: Trust

This is only true in the cryptographic sense when talking about data on the blockchain.

Blockchains do NOT solve any trust problem outside of data on the blockchain, and in real world use cases when we're not dealing with how many coins each person has in a wallet, this is the most important thing.

Specifically your cryptographic tamperproof data on the blockchain is useless if you have bad actors entering garbage data.

It's useless if the data on the blockchain is out of sync with state in the real world.

Even in the internet commerce use case where bitcoin was supposed to take over, once the bitcoins are transferred you still have the unsolved trust issue of verifying delivery.

Saying blockchains solve the trust issue in the real world is disingenuous magical thinking, and I wish people would stop doing it.

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

#263

Post by bb88 »

sebmellen wrote: post #184
bb88 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See my response to the grandparent comment for more details. > When was it taken? We currently verify this by including the last Bitcoin block hash in the photo, giving us a ~10 minute time window in which the photo was taken. Also, the whole handoff period is under 20 minutes, so the transporter only has access to the cars for 20 minutes (with many others around), before a timestamp is required. > Who was taking the…

I couldn't find this link originally, but this is effectively what I'm talking about.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi...

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

#264

Post by sebmellen »

accountofme wrote: post #241
sebmellen wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recourse is that the transporter doesn't get paid. Just a small adjustment to incentives massively changes the occurrence of damage to the car or anything similar. If you're arguing to put everything in a spreadsheet, or have us control the database and do without timestamping, I don't know what to say to you. Blockchain works here. Our business model isn't changing because you're saying we don't need it. Build a…

If you are the trusted party and your servers are secure, why do you need a blockchain?

We are not the trusted party. I have tried to make this abundantly clear in my other comments.

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

#265

Post by sebmellen »

SahAssar wrote: post #242
sebmellen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know anything about email headers, this is a bad solution. Are you suggesting that everyone has a shared Gmail account with one password? What happens when an email gets deleted?

What are you talking about? The suggestion was that the transporter simply send an email with the same data. The receiving party would get the email, and when an email is sent the sending party has no access to change it.

Yes, in that case the receiver and all other custodians in the party would need shared access to the same Gmail account, or many emails would be sent to the ever expanding list of custodians, leaving a nightmare of 1000+ email long chains of unsearchable information. It's not a feasible solution.

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

#266

Post by Balgair »

edanm wrote: post #249
drodgers wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that you even need full version control (as in, the bit where everyone involved uses the same system) — if you just have a good diff algorithm, that would let you check what's changed since you last read the document. I've seen companies like https://draftable.com providing exactly that (seemingly targeted at lawyers and people who do this all day) and it seems to work pretty well.

Microsoft Word has a great diff - it's used all the time when drawing up contracts.

https://www.howtogeek.com/339166/how-to-use-microsoft-words-...

For those that would like to use the feature.

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

#267

Post by afarrell »

Niksko wrote: post #229
sebmellen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about everything but that we're the common trusted party. We have a relationship with the receiver. They want to be sure nothing happens in transit from origin. We do not have a business relationship with the transporters (many of whom are independent). The way the transporters know they're getting a fair deal is precisely because we are not the source of truth — a database outside of our control is (a b…

I don't want to malign the transporters in your business, but the chance that they actually meaningfully understand the nuance of this is slim to none. This is a trust problem. Either people trust you, or they don't. You've attempted to increase their trust in you by creating a system that would increase somebody's trust if they had your understanding of the underlying technology. Very few people have this, and the o…

> Either people trust you, or they don't.

Trust really isn't binary.

> would increase somebody's trust if they had your understanding of the underlying technology.

Or if they had a handwaivey "I've heard that blockchain increases the verifiability of things" level of understanding.

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

#268

Post by sthnblllII »

mpfundstein wrote: post #98
sthnblllII wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either if that passkey is forgotten no one can own the land anymore, or there is a central authority (court) that can reallocate land, at which point there is no need for the decentralized trust of a blockchain.

ever heard of corruption?

Yes. Thats why courts need to be able to intervene, which they cant do in the case of a truly decentralized blockchain. Which is why a blockchain is a poor fit for recording the ownership of non-digital assets.

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

#269

Post by ninjanoel »

snarf21 wrote: post #106
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…

Sorry, but your solution solves nothing. The transporter could take a picture of the odometer and tweak the image. Your solution is only as secure as the input flow and you can't control it. A blockchain can't reflect physical reality. It can only reflect what someone said/says physical reality is. Additionally, they have to trust you to push the "right" data to the blockchain. If they are already trusting you, you c…

actually, the manipulation you mention isn't possible. the image would be 'hashed' when included on the blockchain signature, and it's computationally impossible to edit the image AND produce the same hash AND those changes being what you actually want the forgery to reflect. (producing the same haash is impossible enough)

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

#270

Post by mpfundstein »

sthnblllII wrote: post #268
mpfundstein wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ever heard of corruption?

Yes. Thats why courts need to be able to intervene, which they cant do in the case of a truly decentralized blockchain. Which is why a blockchain is a poor fit for recording the ownership of non-digital assets.

what about corrupt courts? or at least biased courts?
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