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Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

zdnet.com

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Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#31

Post by 74d-fe6-2c6 »

daniellarusso wrote: post #28
74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

A blockchain does not require anything beyond ensuring the prior entries checksums make sense. Making past entries immutable is the purpose. Proof of work and distributed mining don’t need a blockchain. Have you heard of hashcash? It is proof-of-work concept to prevent email spam. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

what prevents the entity controlling the blockchain from recursively changing data and adjusting the checksums?

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#32

Post by lars »

Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand.

Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That applies to cryptocurrencies, but basically nothing else.

It's amazing how much bullshit has been pitched under the flag of "blockchain". Millions of dollars have been poured into projects that are technically unsound or that had no use for a blockchain to begin with. This has been going on for years.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#33

Post by haukem »

anonymousDan wrote: post #25
haukem wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think of an industry e.g. like banking, where the different participants know who each other are but don't fully trust each other. Presuming each participant controls one replica in the system, then using BFT algorithms you can ensure that so long as less than a third of the participants are malicious it is not possible to perform such an attack.

You can also set up a git repository and prevent history rewrites on the central server. Some third party could also offer this as a service. Each entity can check this by doing a pull every minute in a cron job, which fails when history rewrite happened. If they detect this, their legal department can take some actions.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#34

Post by koheripbal »

picardo wrote: post #23
_pdp_ wrote: post #3

What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?

Permissioned blockchains can be useful in trade finance and international trade. Financial transactions across borders can be delayed to allow for clearance and settlement between several institutions, which requires multiple banking systems to verify the integrity of transaction and collect a lot of paper trail. There are several competing projects solving for that problem right now.

I don't see why these would need a blockchain rather than just a centralized database.

I'm very skeptical of these use cases.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#35

Post by acdha »

anonymousDan wrote: post #25
haukem wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think of an industry e.g. like banking, where the different participants know who each other are but don't fully trust each other. Presuming each participant controls one replica in the system, then using BFT algorithms you can ensure that so long as less than a third of the participants are malicious it is not possible to perform such an attack.

Don’t signatures get you the same benefit? I don’t need to trust you simply to sign something saying “user X showed me hash Y at time Z”.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#37

Post by hn8788 »

tootahe45 wrote: post #11
_pdp_ wrote: post #3

What are the practical uses of private blockchains anyway?

Wowing govt officials and scamming public money.

Sometimes it's the government's idea in the first place. I work at a contracting company, and one of our government customers said they wanted a service that utilized blockchain technology. They didn't know what a blockchain was, or care what the blockchain powered service was, they just wanted to sound like they were responsible for acquiring cutting edge technology. Luckily that was shortly before NIST put out their research paper that said there is almost never a good reason to use a blockchain, and the government employee quickly lost interest.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#38

Post by ignoramous »

haukem wrote: post #33
anonymousDan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of an industry e.g. like banking, where the different participants know who each other are but don't fully trust each other. Presuming each participant controls one replica in the system, then using BFT algorithms you can ensure that so long as less than a third of the participants are malicious it is not possible to perform such an attack.

You can also set up a git repository and prevent history rewrites on the central server. Some third party could also offer this as a service. Each entity can check this by doing a pull every minute in a cron job, which fails when history rewrite happened. If they detect this, their legal department can take some actions.

Just because Encarta existed, didn't mean Wikipedia shouldn't; or because NFS exists, Dropbox shouldn't. They can be solutions to the same problem. In git's case though, it sounds more like a abuse of its underlying properties (not to mention, you'd have to block all git commands that can rewrite history).

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#39

Post by davewritescode »

lars wrote: post #32

Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…

There's also the fact that small blockchain networks become less useful the smaller they become because while it's impossible to change history, 51% attacks can make a blockchain not function in optimal ways. When you have a massive network of nodes and the incentives not devalue the thing you're trying to earn it works.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#40

Post by simias »

lars wrote: post #32

Similar to how "god of the gaps" arguments work, there's a "god of complexity" phenomenon in tech, where people will project infinite possibilities onto technology they don't understand. Blockchain is a brilliant solution to an extremely rare problem. It lets you do distributed consensus among untrusted nodes in a setting where contributing compute power is economically incentivized (e.g. where there's mining). That…

Some of it is that, some of it is just simple greed. Many people think they're too good to fall for pyramid schemes and MLM, yet they'll dump money into cryptocurrencies or some meme stock because they think it'll make them millionaires.

I too believe that the blockchain is mostly useless outside of buying drugs online, yet I don't think cryptocurrencies are going anywhere any time soon. It's effectively become a casino for millenials and zoomers where everybody hopes to become a millionaire overnight. Some even succeeded.

No amount of technical argumentation is going to change that.

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