Ask HN: Is blockchain useful outside Currency?Is decentralized validation used?
I am very skeptical of blockchain as a revolutionary technology.
Isnt the entire purpose validation of data?
To me, for social media, Facebook isnt going to lie about my July 4th vacation pictures. I can trust Facebook with this data. If they screw up, I can leave facebook.
So where do we need decentralized Validation?
Currency, Voting, Timestamps.
I dont think Logistics is worth the extra price and is untrustworthy due to the garbage in garbage out problem.
dApps are are extremely rigid, and if they arent, the decentralized verification means nothing. Smart Contracts are not smart and are only useful for niche scenarios that are also very rigid.
Services, Products, and Leadership is still needed, blockchain ONLY decentralizes the validation.
I understand Bitcoin is valued around the world because the currency/rare number is validated and trusted. This is a real use of blockchain where people do pay extra for having 7 'Notaries'.
I'd like to hear from other programmers if I am wrong about my understanding of blockchain. Will blockchain allow any sort of revolution to happen? Or is it an expensive way to write to a database?
(Goal is to communicate ideas an learn, if you have a coin that solves a problem, I'm all ears.)
14 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadThe only benefit of Byzantine fault tolerance would be if you don't trust your friends.
P2P lending (none of the lenders/borrowers know each other) is a better candidate because there is no central authority and actors can't be trusted.
The question is whether you can call them blockchains (I'd argue that you can't) and whether the added traits of a blockchain have any additional benefit.
As for Byzantine fault tolerance, it's a bit more of a niche. The most famous examples I know of are extremely high-risk situations, like aircraft software. I don't fully understand how it's used there, but to my knowledge, it prevents "bad" signals (from malfunctioning sensors, cosmic rays, etc.) from corrupting the rest of the data that controls the hardware.
Git? The software I use to:
git add *
---
This is a private 'blockchain' based on a project? So there isnt any 'coins' that are going to be doing similar worldwide?
Can you make an attempt to come up with the worldwide or coin usage that solves a verification problem similar to git?
Very interesting btw
If you have tainted spinach, you can track where it was introduced into the supply chain and figure out very quickly the source of the issue.
When you have pharmaceutical returns, you can validate the source of the manufacturing and validate the returned product can be resold.
We already have barcodes to track the source, this is already done outside blockchain.
Maybe its more immediate after a problem happens, but what is the cost to:
>Blockchain soil ph
>Blockchain fertilizer
>Blockchain water schedule
>Blockchain that workers washed their hands
>Blockchain the weight of the product
>Blockchain the date picked, shipped, etc........
If you do every step along the way, the cost becomes enormous. I cant imagine the size of the hash either.
Not to mention the extreme problem of garbage in garbage out. Sure you have an expensive thermometer that writes to a blockchain, but what about when its time to weigh it? What if someone accidentally sweat and that drip added 1g to the weight of something that needs precision.
Then the entire chain becomes unreliable.
No. Digital signatures are for validating the data (who said what). The whole purpose of blockchain is to tell who said what when. Document timestamping, in other words. There were previous attempts at solving this problem, though they needed a trusted third party.
> Services, Products, and Leadership is still needed, blockchain ONLY decentralizes the validation.
No, it does not decentralize validation. It decentralizes assigning timestamps to documents.
> Will blockchain allow any sort of revolution to happen?
Doubtful, given the previous timestamping protocols haven't brought about any revolution.
> Or is it an expensive way to write to a database?
If you try to use it as a database, of course it will be expensive and unwieldy. Blockchain is a service not designed to work as a database. It was a document timestamping service from the day 1.
This is basically been my understanding for a while.
Glad I'm 90% BTC and didnt fall for alt coin mania.