using blockchains to track the movement of goods, like from ports or for cheese, is probably their only non-BS use case other than volatile currencies
We already do this with barcodes and QR codes, which you can just make with a printer.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
this honestly doesn’t sound too bad (as long as the chips aren’t toxic)
using blockchains to track the movement of goods, like from ports or for cheese, is probably their only non-BS use case other than volatile currencies
the reason a Blockchain would be preferable to a traditional database is bc its effectively impossible to change the records on it
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 days ago
usrtrv@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
No? Barcodes and QR codes do not have enough information for unique identification. (Well they could but they start getting bigger and bigger)
But the real issue is needing these codes tracked and audited in a public manner. Instead of having a third party company trusted with all the cheese, you use a Blockchain with a public ledger. This doesn’t even require much processing power since there’s no incentive to mine as many blocks as possible.
I hate cryptobros but logistics is a good use for the tech. Tech is tech, not all use cases are bad.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 days ago
Barcodes and QR codes do not have enough information for unique identification. (Well they could but they start getting bigger and bigger)
This is not really true. A 16-digit decimal code gives you 10 quadrillion unique numbers. FedEx handled ~3 billion packages in 2024, so at that rate it would take them more than 3 million years to use up the ID space. You don’t need ridiculously long strings for useful package ID codes.
If you stored the 16 digits as ASCII characters (7 bits each) it would be all of 112 bits of data. The Micro QR format is more than enough to represent that data, with room to spare for error correction. If you used alphanumeric instead of decimal you’d have 62^16 unique IDs (UC + LC + 0-9), still only 16 ASCII characters (112 bits), and at that point you’re more worried about the sun burning out than you are about running out of package ID codes.
But the real issue is needing these codes tracked and audited in a public manner. Instead of having a third party company trusted with all the cheese, you use a Blockchain with a public ledger. This doesn’t even require much processing power since there’s no incentive to mine as many blocks as possible.
If you want the tracking to be useful, then every time a package passes through a handling station the ID needs to be scanned and the ledger updated indicating the transfer of the package ID from one station to the other. Then every node on the blockchain network needs to update their copy of the ledger with the new transaction data. Never mind mining, if you’re handling millions of packages per day then updating the ledger will create a stupid amount of network traffic and just eat processing power. Also, correcting any errors that get written into the ledger due to some handling failure will be extremely difficult if not impossible.
Without mining, what incentive would there be for anyone besides the actual shipping company to host a blockchain node for this? How would it not still be “a third party company trusted with all the cheese”?
Little8Lost@lemmy.world 2 days ago
QR codes are just symbols in a camera readible way and barcodes numbers in a camara readible way.
A storage medium for 0´s & 1´s like a USB stick or a disc but way less storage.They dont add any security, heck when you would have looked at barcodes you would likely have realised that the same product uses the same code (and not each one being unique)
Their use cases are cashiers dont have to manually find/type each product into their terminal but have a scanable ID & QR Codes are mostly to open websites as users without having to type a potentionally long URL.
In booth cases they remove the human error.NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 days ago
QR codes are just symbols in a camera readible way and barcodes numbers in a camara readible way.
A storage medium for 0´s & 1´s like a USB stick or a disc but way less storage.Yes, a QR code is a representation of digital data. There are different versions which can represent different amounts of data. The represented data can be anything that you want, as long as the scanning device can interpret that data as something useful.
They dont add any security,
An RFID tag holding a blockchain token string also does not add any security, it’s just a different thing holding an alphanumeric value. They could just use RFID tags without the blockchain, the result would be the same.
But my point is mostly that this is already an entirely solved problem, you don’t need very many bits to store a useful unique ID code, you certainly don’t need a blockchain-token-value amount of bits, and a printed paper tag is cheaper, easier to manufacture, and less environmentally impactful than a microchip.
yesman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s ironic that the design of blockchain is to be impossible to edit as security against fraud. Because crypto is famous for all the fraud, And the block-chain’s nature makes the fraud permanent and fixed.
At least one of the currencies had to fork because fraudulent transactions couldn’t be undone.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Well security against monetary fraud, like faking coins or double spending. Especially double spending, at the time when bitcoin started pretty much all the other mathematical problems were figured out except that one.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Not true
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
well it is unless the blockchain is forked without that transaction, which doesn’t happen often at all so its mostly true with like two exceptions ever