Blockchain have a few characteristics that make them unique:
- they are database
- they are distributed
- everybody has the entire db
- it's transparent: everyone see the content
- it's temper proof
- it has a notion of temporality
- it has a notion of transactions, and each transaction has a unique id and an history
- transactions have authors, sources and destinations, with unique identifiers that can't be faked.
Hence it's a transaction based system that is a source of truth that can be audited from end to end by anybody.
So the only applications that are interesting for the blockchain are the ones mapping to this EXACT concept. Otherwise, you don't need a blockchain.
But because of the bubble, people are now using the blockchain for everything, since that gives visibility. I have friends myself that have projects making ICO just for that. And it works. Their product clearly didn't need a coin, but they raised several millions of euros to build their stuff.
Ok, so what kind of project DOES match the blockchain paradigm?
So money, obviously is a contender.
But voting systems as well.
Or a mix of both, such as betting (see the wagger project).
Compliance systems are another use case. E.G: make a public database of all plane inspections or food products origin.
Being decentralized doesn't mean blockchain systems don't have central authorities. The decentralized nature mean the data access (and potentially production) is not on a central system, which has great benefits. But as soon has you need human actions, you need something to tell them in which direction to go.
So you need a central authority for the part dealing with the humans.
E.G: for the voting system, something to register the citizen and produce the polls. For the betting system, something to introduce the bet results into the blockchain. Etc.
One alternative to that we are experimenting with currently as a community is the use masternodes (POS machines holding a lot of coins out of the market for a long period of time to show their commitment). It's basically an oligarchy.
The coin Polis is an example of that: they make proposals of things to finance, and each masternode vote yes or no for the proposal.
They are a lot of masternode coins, now, for various uses. Zencash uses them to distribute the messages of its chat system, wagger to introduce the data from bets into the chain, etc.
But most of the masternodes are just used to increase the ponzi effect (we build and host masternode for our clients as a service so we have a large sample of them on our servers).
> Compliance systems are another use case. E.G: make a public database of all plane inspections or food products origin.
I feel like a broken record when I point out yet again that this is a technical non-solution to a human problem. The same bad actors who would falsify inspection records or food origin information will have no issue simply falsifying it into the blockchain instead of whatever current system is used.
The problem with bad actors faking records has everything to do with the bad actors and nothing whatsoever to do with the mechanism by which the records are recorded. The blockchain solves absolutely nothing in these use cases.
Of course. The problem it solves is not preventing bad human behavior, but easier detection by a broader number of actors, and an history of it.
It's basically by-passing a lot of bureaucracy, cut some of the news reporting middle ware and give a central source of truth (or lie) for a given issue. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a damn good improvement.
Can you give me an exact, explicit, description of exactly how use of blockchain would have prevented (eg) the oft-cited melamine milk poisoning scandal in China?
> It's basically by-passing a lot of bureaucracy
That bureaucracy caught the problem. Physical testing of the product uncovered the bad actor. How on earth would blockchain have helped?
> cut some of the news reporting middle ware
???
> give a central source of truth (or lie) for a given issue
There already is. And obviously the problem is when it's a lie. What value does blockchain bring? What good does it bring if the lie is more visible? And if there's no bad actors then there was no problem anyway.
> It's not a silver bullet, but it's a damn good improvement.
It's not any kind of bullet. I just don't see any improvement. Exactly what has improved and how? Consumers can reassure themselves that every step in the chain says everything is OK, rather than relying on the manufacturer to do that, which they do. And? If the manufacturer did not believe everything to be OK, the product would not even be on the shelf. The consumer will never see anything other than "everything OK!".
> Technology and social progress goes hand in hand.
Hype and money also go hand in hand. I don't think you've refuted my point successfully. As always, I want to be convinced otherwise, but I'm just not hearing anything compelling.
> Can you give me an exact, explicit, description of exactly how use of blockchain would have prevented (eg) the oft-cited melamine milk poisoning scandal in China?
I can't give you an exact, explicit description on __exactly__ how smiling more could have prevented one specific argument. But I can tell you that globally it will improve your relationships.
The point is that the track records are not only visible, in a standard format and accessible by all, but also with a permanent impossible to alter format.
So the data is more visible, more easily to a vastly greater number of people. And people can't rewrite history afterward.
You don't need to request papers to some kind of administration.
You don't need to scan thousands of papers.
You don't need to fight the PR trying to tell they never said that.
Again, it's not a silver bullet. But if you ever tried to do a citizen investigation, you knew that the process just to get the administrative data is excruciating.
The block chain helps with that, and so help citizen be part of their democratic process.
In turn, globally, this will help diminishing the number of problem than the one you describe. Not a specific instance, but the global number.
> It's basically by-passing a lot of bureaucracy
> That bureaucracy caught the problem.
Not the same bureaucracy. Besides, the chinese bureaucracy probably knew the probleme since day one and just "caught them" because they stopped paying something.
> Physical testing of the product uncovered the bad actor. How on earth would blockchain have helped?
By giving an easier opportunity to the public to have basic data to compare to the one they get if they choose to investigate.
Democracy is about having the people execicing power, not relying on institution to do everything.
It's like saying "how a knife is going to solve my hunger problem?". Well it won't. But it will make it easier to engage in the process of solving it.
> cut some of the news reporting middle ware
Data journalism is a thing.
> give a central source of truth (or lie) for a given issue
> There already is.
You never tried to investigate obviously. It's a maze of offices that don't talk to each others using incompatible format they make very hard to obtain. And that's just the official, potentially faked record.
You can't bust institutions all the time when they make bad move. But you can make it easier. The block chain can help with that. It makes fact checking easier, because half of what you need, the official story, is in one place, one format, accessible by all.
> What good does it bring if the lie is more visible? And if there's no bad actors then there was no problem anyway.
Visibility is everything. Try to ask your company to reveal salaries of each employees, including bosses. What do you think will happen ?
> Hype and money also go hand in hand.
That's not mutually exclusive with usefullness.
> I don't think you've refuted my point successfully. As always, I want to be convinced otherwise, but I'm just not hearing anything compelling.
It's my last attempt. It's ok. Not everybody needs to understand everything.
> It's my last attempt. It's ok. Not everybody needs to understand everything.
I asked you direct questions and you have answered none of them. Yes I am aware of what a blockchain is, to the finest detail. There is no need to reiterate its features.
You haven't answered my questions at all. I directly challenged you on how blockchain would have helped in a famous case of "food products origin" - an example you yourself mentioned. You have utterly failed to answer that, instead holding forth on the value of smiles, PR, silver bullets, irrelevant theories about chinese governance, democracy and its virtuousness, company salaries, how hype is actually good, and my own lacking IQ.
Can you please just answer my damn question, or do the honourable thing and admit you have no fucking idea how blockchain helps foodchain security.
Thanks for a very useful and clear checklist! Would you say decentralized DNS checks all those boxes (Namecoin is a thing, after all)? Why would a DNS require the notion of transaction?
I'm aware of sites that tell you whether you need a blockchain or not for your application, but they don't say what to use if only one or two of the requirements for a blockchain are not needed. What would a decentralized DNS strictly need if the notion of transaction wasn't required (but only the latest value)?
Actually DNS would benefit from transactions, it would allow to detect attack much more efficiently, or to analyze them after the fact.
It could also help analyze tendencies and adjust.
And as usual, you would get more accountability, which never hurts (Steven ! Why is the website down ? - * Steven quickly revert back his silly click * - Errr, nothing. No reason. Everything is alright !)
- they are database
- they are distributed
- everybody has the entire db
- it's transparent: everyone see the content
- it's temper proof
- it has a notion of temporality
- it has a notion of transactions, and each transaction has a unique id and an history
- transactions have authors, sources and destinations, with unique identifiers that can't be faked.
Hence it's a transaction based system that is a source of truth that can be audited from end to end by anybody.
So the only applications that are interesting for the blockchain are the ones mapping to this EXACT concept. Otherwise, you don't need a blockchain.
But because of the bubble, people are now using the blockchain for everything, since that gives visibility. I have friends myself that have projects making ICO just for that. And it works. Their product clearly didn't need a coin, but they raised several millions of euros to build their stuff.
Ok, so what kind of project DOES match the blockchain paradigm?
So money, obviously is a contender.
But voting systems as well.
Or a mix of both, such as betting (see the wagger project).
Compliance systems are another use case. E.G: make a public database of all plane inspections or food products origin.
Being decentralized doesn't mean blockchain systems don't have central authorities. The decentralized nature mean the data access (and potentially production) is not on a central system, which has great benefits. But as soon has you need human actions, you need something to tell them in which direction to go.
So you need a central authority for the part dealing with the humans.
E.G: for the voting system, something to register the citizen and produce the polls. For the betting system, something to introduce the bet results into the blockchain. Etc.
One alternative to that we are experimenting with currently as a community is the use masternodes (POS machines holding a lot of coins out of the market for a long period of time to show their commitment). It's basically an oligarchy.
The coin Polis is an example of that: they make proposals of things to finance, and each masternode vote yes or no for the proposal.
They are a lot of masternode coins, now, for various uses. Zencash uses them to distribute the messages of its chat system, wagger to introduce the data from bets into the chain, etc.
But most of the masternodes are just used to increase the ponzi effect (we build and host masternode for our clients as a service so we have a large sample of them on our servers).