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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#161

Post by EFreethought »

legutierr wrote: post #69
XorNot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one knows if you own something, then you don't own it . Literally the entire concept of "ownership" it based on socialized distribution of that information. Which means anyone within range of an item for ownership rights to matter, by definition, is either aware of your claim by some means and respecting it, or unaware and you now get to see how good your legal or kinetic protections of it are. EDIT: The parent…

> Once again, "blockchain" fixes nothing that a central database wouldn't do faster, cheaper and better. Some things that blockchains would do better than centralized databases in your example: * Blockchains are natively replicated on a massive basis, so you wouldn't have to worry about data loss due to disruption, inaccessibility or incompetent management of the centralized system. * Blockchains cannot be corrupted…

When you say "blockchain", are you referring to something like bitcoin? In other words, a proof of work blockchain? If we put all the world's data on a POW blockchain, we will cook the planet very quickly, and we won't have any energy for anything else.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#162

Post by runeks »

csomar wrote: post #139

It is a shame that we are ending up here with "Blockchain technology". Beyond the financial aspect (Bitcoin/Stablecoins), here are a few use cases where a Blockchain will shine : - Tracking shipments across countries. This is an append-only operation, across multiple jurisdictions/languages/infrastructures. A blockchain ledger can play the role of standardizing operations for the tracking of shipments. - Healthcare r…

No. Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant.

The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the "double spend problem", ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipients (and so they conflict and cannot both be included in the canonical list of transactions). A double spend is the result of the sender either (a) making a mistake, or (b) attempting fraud. In both cases the important property is that as long as only a single of these conflicting transactions is included, the systems works.

For all the applications you list above, this property is not present. If I create a transaction in your "shipping blockchain" that says "shipment A moved to location X" and another, conflicting transaction that says "shipment A moved to location Y", then it's obviously important which transaction we include, since it must reflect the actual, physical location of "shipment A".

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#163

Post by pabe »

People saying a database is as good as a blockchain are taking a look from the wrong perspective.

Blockchains are more like always available, immutable logs for interfacing parties that don't trust each other or an intermediary.

Blockchains are more like an API than a database.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#164

Post by chaxor »

namdnay wrote: post #120
Nursie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blockchains are great for one-thing... guarantee that data is being appended and never modified. in a distributed, trustless fashion If it's not distributed or trustless, you can do the same without the blockchain.

Yeah, a git repo covers 99% of these pseudo-blockchain usecases

A git repo is a blockchain...

Git is why people like blockchains so much - the value is clear, since it's what we interact with all day.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#165

Post by Kwpolska »

fareesh wrote: post #127

From an Indian pov my take is the boundary markers use-case sounds pretty good. I don't expect an American flying around from EWR to Seattle to ever understand this intuitively without being exposed to the realities in this part of the world, but having thought about it for all of 20 seconds it sounds like a very good idea. Yes - it is a solution to the problem of power and corruption. In India there is corruption at…

A petty criminal visits your farm with a gun in his hands. You tell him that the blockchain says this land belongs to you. What happens then? Does he say "oh, sorry to bother you, have a nice day" and go away? Or does he just shoot you and take over the land?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#166

Post by j0hnM1st »

pabe wrote: post #163

People saying a database is as good as a blockchain are taking a look from the wrong perspective. Blockchains are more like always available, immutable logs for interfacing parties that don't trust each other or an intermediary. Blockchains are more like an API than a database.

Blockchains normally has a database and then an API. Many of the newer chains uses Rocksdb.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#167

Post by runeks »

Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant.

The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the "double spend problem", ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipients (and so they conflict and cannot both be included in the canonical list of transactions). A double spend is the result of the sender either (a) making a mistake, or (b) attempting fraud. In both cases the important property is that as long as only a single of these conflicting transactions is included, the systems works.

Only if your problem exhibits the above property (and it's a distributed system) does using a blockchain make sense.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#168

Post by kilburn »

csomar wrote: post #139

It is a shame that we are ending up here with "Blockchain technology". Beyond the financial aspect (Bitcoin/Stablecoins), here are a few use cases where a Blockchain will shine : - Tracking shipments across countries. This is an append-only operation, across multiple jurisdictions/languages/infrastructures. A blockchain ledger can play the role of standardizing operations for the tracking of shipments. - Healthcare r…

What I see missing in most of those is that decentralized immutable storage is the only part solved by blockchain technologies, and:

- Storage is not the hard part of all those proposals. Standard formats and a shared ontology between all players is the actual hard part. Medical records are useless if you can't read them.

- Immutable storage is not hard to do in a centralized fashion and can be made much more efficient. Do blockchain-based systems offer the bandwidth to ingest _all_ medical records produced worldwide? I'd say the required amount of records-per-second would surprise you (as well as the potential size of those records, where some are high resolution scans and stuff like that).

- Usually you _don't_ want immutable records, even when it seems like you do. What happens when you want to advance the formats stored in the blockchain? You can't edit old records (to update them to the new format), so your only options become: create a new blockchain and/or keep the cruft forever.

- Storing anything private via encryption poses problems in many domains: sometimes you want certain third-parties to be able to access that information (e.g.: the hospital should have access to your medical records if you get there unconscious in an ambulance). I've seen no real solution to the kind of issues that arise there.

These are very serious limitations against blockchains _shining_ if you ask me. Of all your proposed use-cases the only one that I can't see hitting those issues is the company registry records one (and maybe that's because I'm not acquainted enough with that domain).

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#169

Post by fabianfabian »

csomar wrote: post #139

It is a shame that we are ending up here with "Blockchain technology". Beyond the financial aspect (Bitcoin/Stablecoins), here are a few use cases where a Blockchain will shine : - Tracking shipments across countries. This is an append-only operation, across multiple jurisdictions/languages/infrastructures. A blockchain ledger can play the role of standardizing operations for the tracking of shipments. - Healthcare r…

This guy is exactly what's wrong with the crypto space. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the strengths and weaknesses of blockchains.

Putting all those things he listed on a blockchain is the perfect example of “That's not a blockchain, that's a sequence of poor engineering decisions!”

Everything he listed can already be done with basic software engineering. Add a blockchain to these things makes it slow, adds unnecessary complexity and fake decentralization where its not even needed.

Crypto is full of Ape NFTs and casino gambling because there is nothing useful in blockchains other than removing trusted third parties.

Bitcoin added something new, crypto asked what more can we do with this? The answer is not much.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#170

Post by grey-area »

Kwpolska wrote: post #165
fareesh wrote: post #127

From an Indian pov my take is the boundary markers use-case sounds pretty good. I don't expect an American flying around from EWR to Seattle to ever understand this intuitively without being exposed to the realities in this part of the world, but having thought about it for all of 20 seconds it sounds like a very good idea. Yes - it is a solution to the problem of power and corruption. In India there is corruption at…

A petty criminal visits your farm with a gun in his hands. You tell him that the blockchain says this land belongs to you. What happens then? Does he say "oh, sorry to bother you, have a nice day" and go away? Or does he just shoot you and take over the land?

Or worse, steal your only phone and take over the land, as ownership of the keys is now ownership of the land.

Blockchain would actually make property theft easier in a poor area where people only have a phone.

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