the technology itself has its use cases.
Cool.
Name one.
I mean, it’s been, what, 15 years of hype? Surely there must be a successful deployment of a commercially viable and useful blockchain, right?
Right?
Comment on Please Stop
Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
as hostile as people are to block chain due to MFC’s and bad implementations, the technology itself has its use cases. It’s a great solution for information exchange that requires verification and Immutation. This makes them perfect for ledgers or transaction networks.
It’s just there is so much bad PR regarding it everyone just discredits it. Not all of the block chain technologies are massively energy intensive per transaction, it’s just many of the cryptocurrencies use the most intensive one because it’s also arguably the most secure
zaphod@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
nothead@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I can’t find the case study, but this blockchain project by IBM was implemented in Singapore and was shown to reduce customs processing times from several weeks to just several hours.
The general idea was that with a successful blockchain implementation, the Singapore government was able to expedite parts of their customs process which normally require intensive human labor, and the use of smart contracts removed the need for having documents sent and resent when all parties had access to the smart contract directly.
There are specific use cases where it can benefit existing processes, but people just think blockchain = crypto.
Lianodel@ttrpg.network 9 months ago
First thing I found when I searched for “Maersk IBM blockchain”:
A.P. Moller - Maersk and IBM to discontinue TradeLens, a blockchain-enabled global trade platform
paholg@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The only selling point of blockchain is that it’s trustless. This becomes a less-useful property when it comes to things in the real world, as you tend to need to trust at least one party.
For example, anything they achieved there with blockchain, they could have achieved with a simple government-run web service and a traditional database.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Except it’s not though. Because you have to trust the majority, hence why you’ve had forks like Bitcoin Cash. Because those people wanted to trust someone else. “trustless” is just a buzzword, like everything else with Bitcoin
reassure6869@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I can’t find the case study, but this blockchain project by IBM was implemented in Singapore and was shown to reduce customs processing times from several weeks to just several hours.
the real question is what part of this was specific to blockchain, something that would be difficult or impossible to do without it. if you want to put forward this argument you need to at least provide a simple, clear, coherent answer to that.
in this case, i could easily argue a sqlite db hosted on gitea would work better and theres no way to prove im wrong.
Supermariofan67@programming.dev 9 months ago
kautau@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yes, both git and blockchain tech use merkle trees. No, that doesn’t make git a blockchain
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Meh. Doesn’t solve the double spending problem.
hglman@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Who are you? Go make bad arguments elsewhere.
zaphod@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I stand corrected. One project in Italy and two proofs of concept that never went anywhere.
Truly revolutionary.
Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 9 months ago
Well I use Bitcoin everyday and I’m grateful for it.
Banks don’t support the transactions I need to make.
mlg@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I mean… the original Bitcoin?
Blockchain never promised anything related to economic viability or stability. Only that it would ensure a P2P network would remain practically safe from malicious transactions by utilizing a system that rewards verification.
By that standard, every other crypto that people use happens to be a pretty successful blockchain use case.
If you want something stable and not a straight cryptocurrency then I’m pretty XRP qualifies because it also handles fiat and other commodities.
Otherwise, most DDBSs don’t use blockchain because they don’t need verification requirements relating to transactions and ownership. DHTs are way more common like IPFS.
sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
csa-iot.org/…/distributed-compliance-ledger/
Matter Distributed Client Ledger. In use by Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, and many more.
Contains all the attestation information for on boarding Matter devices. Where once it was Google Home vs Apple HomeKit vs Amazon Echo / Alexa, supporting devices can now work cross ecosystem.
Since many of these companies are competitors working together. A distributed ledger makes sense to keep everyone honest and provide a level of tech supported governance.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
I’m not understanding what problem this is solving.
The ESRB is a “cross-ecosystem” institution to keep games producers honest—what does this… DCL(?) actually do?
From what little I’ve read here:
csa-iot.org/…/white-paper-distributed-compliance-…
All I can say is that this protects companies from homebrew “infractions” on their software copyright by making it difficult to install un-attested firmware updates.
I’m not even confident in that summary. What does this do?
sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Company A submits a new device for certification signed by their private key.
Company B certifies the device signed by their private key.
Company C on boards a device for an end-user and is confident it came from Company A and has been verified by Company B since the device has a certificate that can be verified from Companies A and B.
Yes it prevents home brew (though you can do home brew by replacing Company C with your own controller), but it also prevents knock offs.
When this information is distributed (like Lemmy federation), between instances, one has a degree of assurances all these records originated from the signer.
While the ledger part is not required, it provides a nice audit trail for the companies who do not trust each other enough without the transparency. Sure a central authority like the ESRB could do the same, but we could also all be on Reddit and not Lemmy…
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
There is nothing Crypto can do better than regular database. Immutability is not a desirable property.
hglman@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
It can coordinate disjoint actors without a 3rd party.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Does it though? Because to me the fact that the largest cryptos have had several forks is proof that no, in fact, the magic of crypto can’t coordinate people. People coordinate people and then decide what to do with the technology.
uis@lemm.ee 9 months ago
“There is nothing math can do better than math.”
RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Crypto != database
uis@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Precisely
Fisch@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Monero actually has very good uses. It does use POW but their algorithm is made to encourage using CPUs instead of GPUs and slower, power efficient devices, which makes it a lot less energy intensive than other POW cryptocurrencies.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
It’s only use is illegal commerce. It’s the only one thar actually has a purpose, and it’s to help criminals.
daltotron@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s kind of epic, though, I’m pretty sure HRT is cheaper on the black market instead of going through your medical provider, and I need steroids in bulk so I can hulk out and become jacked.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I mean… I know there are some backwards countries like the US where you don’t have access to safe HRT, but would you really roll the dice and get some random injectable shit from the dark web…? I mean…
sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Privacy is a crime? I pay for several online services with XMR (or BTC swapped from XMR): Jmp.chat (mobile service), EteSync (E2EE contact sync), Proton Mail, Mullvad VPN, Usenet (might have an argument there).
Why can’t I access Google’s individual transactions but they should have access to mine?
reassure6869@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Why can’t I access Google’s individual transactions but they should have access to mine?
why are you giving google access to your transactions to begin with? all my credit card transactions are between me and visa and my credit union and the federal government, but not google.
blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I find the actual technology very interesting. At one point I wanted to create a distributed research journal, and I spent some time trying to develop a trustless, immutable ledger that didn’t have the high overhead that most blockchains have for proof of work. It was extremely cool, but nobody gives a shit unless it has coins lol
I look forward to 20 years from now when it gets resurrected and used for interesting things that don’t involve cryptocurrency.
kofe@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I remember reading a few years ago that the US postal service was looking into using it for voting. I haven’t seen anything about it since, but it did peak my interest. I’d love to see it used for research if possible, too, but then I can barely understand these decentralized social media platforms so my opinion isn’t worth much with tech
blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
That, to me, seems like an ideal use case. My only reservation is that I think it would be bungled in implementation, then pushed without enough testing and validation, then hacked due to the bungled implementation, and then rejected forever because it was hacked once lol
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This makes them perfect for ledgers or transaction networks.
It doesn’t scale well, so it generally works best for ledgers of relatively small scale. Anything that might need to go beyond that small scale will run into technical/performance issues.
reassure6869@lemm.ee 9 months ago
the technology itself has its use cases.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI I would love to hear the counterarguments. video is <15 mins, academic setting.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Just responding that I did see this, The video has peaked my curiosity and I plan on watching it later when I have more free time outside of midterm’s season
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 9 months ago
His arguments are:-
We don’t need blockchain to stop problems from happening because we have a [super efficient, cheap, accessible, well constructed] legal system to correct those problems when they occur.
We don’t need distributed ledgers to store the data because we can just trust Amazon Web services.
reassure6869@lemm.ee 9 months ago
That’s a unique interpretation
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You wanted counter-arguments.
Trusting the legal system (9m23s,11m34s) and Amazon (12m35s) are vastly inferior to what blockchain offers.
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Absolute immutability is kind of a terrible property for a financial system though, cos it completely ignores the fact that mistakes and fraud happen and you need a way to forcefully recover funds other than “lol sucks to be you I guess”.
The one actually genuinely useful application for this kind of technology that anyone has come up with is Certificate Transparency, but crypto people don’t get excited about it cos it’s not possible to make money from it.
anivia@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
You can implement clawback while still having an immutable blockchain. The transaction will always stay on the blockchain, but the funds can be recovered
Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
this is how it should be anyway, you do not want any ledger or database to be mutable because it allows for integrity violations and will cause you to lose the ability to trust it. Even non-blockchain styles follow that principle.
uis@lemm.ee 9 months ago
You can revert transactions with immutable storage. For example git can do revert-commits.
OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Reverts work because users have equal write access to all the data. You can mess things up in the codebase, and even if you die of a heart attack 10m later, my revert is just as valid as your commit.
It’s not really the same when every user has “sovereignty” over their address in the ledger. A bad actor has to consent to pushing a revert transaction onto the chain, or they have to consent to using a blockchain system where 3rd-party reversion is possible (which exists on some systems, but also defeats the concept of true sovereignty over your address).
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So, would the bitcoin equivalent be sending the BTC back?
HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Yes. Clawback might be executed by having some entity or system of trust that is able to reverse a transaction by creating and posting the opposite of the faulty transaction. This is not built in to the current BTC.