Comment on Is the blockchain an interesting innovation, aside from cryptocurrencies ?
dragontamer@lemmy.world 11 months agoThe value is in the forward signed, immutable ledger written by neutral consensus.
I have Excel spreadsheets at home though and you can be assured that they haven’t changed if you take a hash of them.
manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 11 months ago
This is true, the fundamental of a blockchain is simply signed blocks of binary data. We can get into the debates on weather this can work in a public system like many groups are trying now, though I presume that that is not really what the poster is talking about since most public chains fundamentally rely on thier cryptocurrencies to to function, which for some is an argument as to why they can’t work.
dragontamer@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My cryptographically signed .pdf for my mortgage document requires no cryptocoin or “blockchain” to function.
Its just simple hashing and signatures. You know, standard cryptography. The thing that allows “HTTPS” connections? The thing that signs your credit-card each time you enter it into Amazon? The thing that signs your password as you type it into the password field?
Yeah, that’s cryptography. Not “cryptocoins” or “blockchain”, its just a cryptographic hash, signature, or encryption.
manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 11 months ago
if you just keep your document on your machine and only use it for personal encryption sure. its a key exchange network, this is for when bob and alice want to talk, not look at something in the safe and put it back. distributed PKI has been a challenge for decades, im not sure about this current incarnation of public systems but I find a lot of promise in many other applications.
dragontamer@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m not sure if you fully understand what I’m talking about.
www.docusign.com/solutions/industries/mortgage
I’m talking about real world business. I’m not getting a $300,000 mortgage leaving a pdf on my personal computer. I’m talking about real world applications here.