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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

#131

Post by srmarm »

newdude116 wrote: post #97
ipaddr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common with new technology. It was amazing what was sold under web 2.0. It was amazing what was sold before the dotcom craze. Blockchains are here to stay. Replacing money is probably not a medium term goal but allowing trustless entities to reach an agreement could be interesting. No one has explored it in smaller non-global settings like a classroom where the first one to get the answer wins. Not trusting y…

I don't see many applications for blockchain. The only application is where you don't want to have a trusted central party, be it a company or a government. I see many start-ups advertising and betting on a blockchain technology by something that could be easier solved with a regular, central database. Are they just bullshitting? Digital vaccination passports it an example. Why do you need the blockchain? A central g…

That's the bit that gets me confused, with cryptocurrencies there is a clear link between the computer processing and the 'thing' you're representing (i.e crypto hashes).

With say a digital vaccination passport the 'thing' you're wanting to prove is that someone is vaccinated and the interface between the blockchain and the real world still requires a trusted central party(s) - whoever certifies the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, that the batch is legit and that it was actually administered competently and to the person in this case.

As with many of these applications there doesn't seem to be an existing problem with a trusted central party or immutability to solve

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#132

Post by jandrese »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #70
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…

>contributing compute power is economically incentivized I think this is the aspect in blockchain that has really been stretched. Most problems are within closed networks and solved with digital signatures -- is the act of signing a record proof of work? If you squint hard enough and razzle-dazzle it enough I could see how you could call it that -- or simply call it a database with a signature column :)

I'm always saddened that the energy that goes into those blockchain signatures is basically wasted.

Why couldn't bitcoin work by having the miners fold proteins or something? Proof of work comes from advancing the state of the art just a hair each time. Imagine if all of the computation power being used to prop up bitcoin were also doing something productive?

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#133

Post by enumjorge »

simias wrote: post #75
enumjorge wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's effectively become a casino for millenials and zoomers Mark Cuban and Elon Musk are also investing in cryptocurrencies and neither of them fall into those age groups.

Please don't be obtuse, I obviously wasn't implying that 100% of cryptocurrency enthusiasts are in a specific age range, I'm just saying that culturally they probably have more of a following in a younger crowd.

I wasn’t being obtuse, but I can see why it came across that way. Crypto definitely got started among the younger more indie crowd, but I think that has slowly changed over time and will continue to do so. Bitcoin was introduced almost as a way for the little guy to fight “the system”, but I think people underestimate how much influence the old players like Wall Street, billionaires (hence my previous comment) and governments are starting to have on it.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#134

Post by yrro »

dcolkitt wrote: post #110
newdude116 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see many applications for blockchain. The only application is where you don't want to have a trusted central party, be it a company or a government. I see many start-ups advertising and betting on a blockchain technology by something that could be easier solved with a regular, central database. Are they just bullshitting? Digital vaccination passports it an example. Why do you need the blockchain? A central g…

For vaccination passports, I don’t think you even need a database. Public key signatures work fine. “John Smith is officially vaccinated. Love, Cook County Health Department”. No persistent service even necessary. John can just keep that QR code on his phone. Blockchain or trusted database authority is only necessary when there’s the risk of double spend. Like I try to sell my house to two different people at the sam…

You need a service that verifiers can query to determine if the signature has been revoked too...

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#135

Post by tinus_hn »

mumblemumble wrote: post #79
tinus_hn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parties can prove things without others needing to trust anyone. You can put information on the blockchain and others can be sure it can’t be removed. There are use cases.

> Parties can prove things without others needing to trust anyone. Yes, but the only things you can prove without trust are events that happen 100% inside the blockchain. Which, AFAICT the only use for a system that works that way that I've seen is cryptocurrency. The other one people were really hot on was supply chain, but, from what I understand, when you have supply chain trust issues, they don't look like "oh ge…

You’re describing a number of limitations, some of them more valid than others.

I don’t think blockchain is worth the hype it got a few years ago, but still, with these limitations, there are use cases. That doesn’t change because you say ‘this use case doesn’t work’.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#136

Post by tinus_hn »

slver wrote: post #72
tinus_hn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parties can prove things without others needing to trust anyone. You can put information on the blockchain and others can be sure it can’t be removed. There are use cases.

Thing is, "without trusting anyone" isn't that relevant most times. The entire system of property rights is based on trusted notaries. Works as well as anything.

It doesn’t work internationally, but we’re used to that because there never was an alternative.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#138

Post by mumblemumble »

derefr wrote: post #109
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…

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It’s because “blockchain” software is a thing that already exists, but its superclass, “distributed log of signed proofs” software, isn’t a thing that already exists (except in the form of the subclass, blockchain software.) There are tons of use-cases for which a “distributed log of signed proofs” is the perfect fit. Have you got an architecture where nodes independently m…

I am coming to think that it's precisely the "distributed" bit that nobody really wants.

For example, distributed version control systems are often held up as an example of some form of precedent for blockchain-type technologies. But I've never actually seen a truly distributed (in the blockchain sense) deployment of Git. It's technically possible, but it just doesn't seem to happen.

Similarly, I'm not sure people actually want immutability. They want the ability to edit history, they just want it to not be an everyday thing. In a discussion about the relative merits of different distributed version control systems, someone invariably points out that the thing Git has that makes it more usable in practice than any of the others is that it allows you to rewrite history. In the repositories I manage, I even mandate it, in the form of requiring people to rebase before merging into the main branch so that we can linearize history. As salty former Mercurial user, I used to do the opposite and ban the practice, until I realized that rebasing and squashing is more practical in the long run. I'm trying to run a software project, not an episode of Hoarders.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#139

Post by rchaud »

srmarm wrote: post #125
rchaud wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of Web 2.0 snake oil? I remember the shift from 1.0 to a more JS/AJAX based web. It was still the web, something hundreds of millions used. >No one has explored it in smaller non-global settings like a classroom where the first one to get the answer wins. What?

I thought web 2.0 was more about communication flow, i.e rather than a bunch of people publishing a website for others to consume we have more of a two way communication (i.e social media). There was a bunch of tech that enabled it and came along at the same time and a very clear style that accompanied it though.

There are good articles that talk about what the difference between 1.0 and 2.0 were. The transition was definitely more fluid than what numbers like "1.0" might indicate.

Web 2.0 for me was dynamic web apps like Google Docs that refreshed in real-time. Streaming video and web games were also a big part of this. The early Youtube and Dailymotion sites used Flash until HTML5 support was widespread enough to deprecate it.

Re: Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service

#140

Post by motohagiography »

jandrese wrote: post #132
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>contributing compute power is economically incentivized I think this is the aspect in blockchain that has really been stretched. Most problems are within closed networks and solved with digital signatures -- is the act of signing a record proof of work? If you squint hard enough and razzle-dazzle it enough I could see how you could call it that -- or simply call it a database with a signature column :)

I'm always saddened that the energy that goes into those blockchain signatures is basically wasted. Why couldn't bitcoin work by having the miners fold proteins or something? Proof of work comes from advancing the state of the art just a hair each time. Imagine if all of the computation power being used to prop up bitcoin were also doing something productive?

Arguably, it's doing something very desirable. Maybe invent a protein coin?
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