What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?
Wowing govt officials and scamming public money.
Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
11–20 of 260 posts
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#12I'm guessing hardly anyone ever used this, considering the relatively short 4 month notice period.
Or every company that did use it realized it’s full of bs and stopped.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Docusign[1] has been using blockchain for a while now because it solves technical problems for their use cases. [1] https://www.docusign.com/products/blockchain
Did Docusign really have a problem that couldn't be solved by any other means of publishing the hash? Ultimately the hash comes from Docusign, so I'm not sure I can think of the problem case where someone doesn't trust Docusign to self publish that hash but does trust a hash that Docusign publishes to the blockchain.
Presumably, by publishing the hash on a public blockchain they are creating a trusted record of when the hash was published, which can be verified after the fact and which cannot be modified or removed, with planet-scale proof-of-work level of cryptographic assurance.
If they published the hashes on, say, their webpage or some third party's webpage, nothing would prevent them (or the third party) from redacting or removing the hash after the fact, given sufficient motivation.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#14> Microsoft's documentation suggests users start migrating to an alternative now
So, a database?
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#15What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?
Blockchains are an irrevocable proof of record (immutability with cryptographic proof) unlike traditional databases that need to be audited to capture all updates. Amazon QLDB, though private but not a Blockchain, could be used as one: For ex, creating and maintaining customer wallets (per customer coupons and discounts specific to your service).
Public blockchains could be used for accounting transparency, for example, for tracking donations and spends of a non-profit. Decentralised blockchains are of course being continually redefined and reinvented, with an alternate financial complex at the forefront of it all.
There are likely many more usecases, but the ones most interesting to me are global payments infrastructure being built by stellar.org, celo.org, and diem.com.
See also: https://www.hyperledger.org/
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#16What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?
Blockchains are an irrevocable proof of record (immutability with cryptographic proof) unlike traditional databases that need to be audited to capture all updates. Amazon QLDB, though private but not a Blockchain, could be used as one: For ex, creating and maintaining customer wallets (per customer coupons and discounts specific to your service). Public blockchains could be used for accounting transparency, for examp…
But how can a blockchain be actually and meaningfully "public" without proof of work and distributed mining establishing majority based consensus on what _is_.
If you just store the equivalent of a blockchain somewhere then I don't see what benefit it provides over a database controlled by a consortium.
It's all bullshit.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blockchains are an irrevocable proof of record (immutability with cryptographic proof) unlike traditional databases that need to be audited to capture all updates. Amazon QLDB, though private but not a Blockchain, could be used as one: For ex, creating and maintaining customer wallets (per customer coupons and discounts specific to your service). Public blockchains could be used for accounting transparency, for examp…
But how can a blockchain be actually and meaningfully "public" without proof of work and distributed mining establishing majority based consensus on what _is_. If you just store the equivalent of a blockchain somewhere then I don't see what benefit it provides over a database controlled by a consortium. It's all bullshit.
Presumably, there's a third party that keeps a copy of the blockchain. If you rewrite the history of your blockchain, they'll detect it.
It's fair to ask why this public record needs to be in a blockchain though. You could store the record in plain HTML on a public website and have the Web Archive create periodic immutable snapshots of it.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did Docusign really have a problem that couldn't be solved by any other means of publishing the hash? Ultimately the hash comes from Docusign, so I'm not sure I can think of the problem case where someone doesn't trust Docusign to self publish that hash but does trust a hash that Docusign publishes to the blockchain.
Presumably, by publishing the hash on a public blockchain they are creating a trusted record of when the hash was published, which can be verified after the fact and which cannot be modified or removed, with planet-scale proof-of-work level of cryptographic assurance. If they published the hashes on, say, their webpage or some third party's webpage, nothing would prevent them (or the third party) from redacting or re…
RFC 3161 does the same, without a blockchain (public or private).
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how can a blockchain be actually and meaningfully "public" without proof of work and distributed mining establishing majority based consensus on what _is_. If you just store the equivalent of a blockchain somewhere then I don't see what benefit it provides over a database controlled by a consortium. It's all bullshit.
Presumably, there's a third party that keeps a copy of the blockchain. If you rewrite the history of your blockchain, they'll detect it. It's fair to ask why this public record needs to be in a blockchain though. You could store the record in plain HTML on a public website and have the Web Archive create periodic immutable snapshots of it.
Exacactly - you just need something equivalent to a certificate authority which signs states of the database and guarantees the correctness of the stored data.
Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service
#20What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?
Blockchains are an irrevocable proof of record (immutability with cryptographic proof) unlike traditional databases that need to be audited to capture all updates. Amazon QLDB, though private but not a Blockchain, could be used as one: For ex, creating and maintaining customer wallets (per customer coupons and discounts specific to your service). Public blockchains could be used for accounting transparency, for examp…
What is the advantage of a private blockchain over a hash tree like used in git?
A git commit is also irrevocable, except if you do a git rebase. How do you prevent something similar like a git rebase in a private blockchain?
A public blockchain with multiple agents that do not trust each other like in BitCoin make sense to me.