I don’t believe it has any current benefit when linked to physical real world actions/items, companies who make broad brush statements like “it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing.
That being said I think it does have good applicability to digital-only activities which require trust, a good example might be Poker, I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case - where we don’t trust the software created by casinos and bookmakers. So I think generally speaking, right now, gambling is the number 1 use case for Blockchain in my opinion. There’s definitely challenges in this space though, for example building a Poker game on Ethereum would be impossible at the moment, transaction cost for each move would be completely cost prohibitive and there’s still challenges with random number generation, but these problems are solvable.
The other thing I think about with blockchain is generally speaking the view is that they should, in theory, outlast tech companies, as the view is that these public ledgers would be maintained collectively by society, it would be nice to be able to keep certain forever record to pass through generations of families to avoid things getting lost in the digital world, but that’s hope, hope that the blockchain you choose is maintained etc, so that’s just as much of risk as now - but it pains me I don’t know much about my great great grandparents, and would hope future generations don’t have that same problem, I wouldn’t want to rely on tech companies to help with that, it would be much nicer to have a record which is decentralized.
>“it can help increase supply chain transparency” really are missing the fact there’s better/easier ways to do that sort of thing.
There isn't any method possible where you don't have to rely on a trusted third party - and that's the entire problem blockchain is trying to solve.
The main question in the post should be "what information do i want to know without having to trust anyone, because it's verified by a number of 3rd parties before i view it"
E.g. every single finance/share/security transaction, tracking info of humanitarian aid, government spending, sales direct to an artist (tickets etc)
> I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case
All it takes is one good competitor to highlight that fact. hint hint
Great for vendors of FPGAs.
Great for vendors of video cards.
Great for coal fired power stations.
Extortion.
Drug transactions.
Money laundering.
Greater fool farming.
One "killer feature" of blockchain is availability. For example, the bitcoin network has something like 99.99999% uptime since it was invented. I think is was down for something like half a day back in 2009 due to a bug, but since then it's had basically 100% uptime.
Blockchain can be used as a rather expensive and crude database, so one possible application is a key-value database which is guaranteed to always be up.
I suspect that as blockchain technologies improve and better techniques for sharding are developed, this could become quite a common real-world application.
From reading the comments most people here don't have any idea about the research that's currently happening in the blockchain space. They're just making ignorant comments about ponzi schemes and money laundering.
This doesn’t quite hold. It’s only as “up” as the node you’re connecting to is, if that node is down then for all intents and purpose the “blockchain” is down as far as your ability to access it is concerned.
Connect to multiple nodes and this won't be such a problem.
Obviously if a single node has a disk failure or OS crashes, and you are connected to that node, the blockchain is down for you and everybody else connected to that node .... but most of the other nodes are still up and the system as a whole is up.
So you’ll build a load balancer for the nodes you might connect to, is what you’re saying, and where will you host said load balancer? Wherever you host it that’s the availability level you’ll achieve. High availability is not a feature of the blockchain, if you would of said data resilience, I might have agreed, but availability, no, that falls into the same availability standards as any other computing platform.
"Availability" means being able to access the blockchain/system/network and get the data you want, when you want it.
The way most blockchain systems find out which nodes are on the network is usually through a gossip protocol, so typically your app will start off with some "seed nodes", which it contacts, then gets information about other nodes on the network.
Once you have the IPs of say 100 nodes scattered around the world, on different networks, running different OSes, etc. the chances of losing access to all those nodes is virtually zero.
Edit: You seem to be thinking about blockchains in terms of how traditional cloud/web based systems work. That's the wrong way to think about it. Blockchains have fundamentally different architecture. They do not use load balancers.
I won’t labour the point but you’re mistaken, nodes ARE traditional cloud/web based systems. All you have to do is check https://www.ethernodes.org/network-types to see that, 65% of Ethereum nodes are hosted and 25% of those are on AWS. Blockchain is built on existing infrastructure, there is no silver bullet availability it’s offering.
I am working on a project[0] to enable loan-free education and help increase income of teaching and non-teaching staff of education institutions.
The project is based on blockchain(though it is federated) technology. In fact multiple blockchain platforms are used to achieve the overall goal. Blockchain for identity, payments, distributed verifiable but ownerless database etc.
Looking for co-developers for the project. My email is in my HN profile.
Why do you need a blockchain? You even mention in the writeup that this behavior exists in other countries already - which means it already can be achieved without this technology. Heck, in the US there are already educational institutions that charge a portion of future salary rather than a tuition. You spend a huge amount of time describing the merits of this approach and (as far as I can tell) zero time describing what your software actually does, even when digging into the page that contains additional details.
> You even mention in the writeup that this behavior exists in other countries already - which means it already can be achieved without this technology.
Yes, the system exists. But it does not have the attributes mentioned above because those systems are controlled by single entity.
> Heck, in the US there are already educational institutions that charge a portion of future salary rather than a tuition.
Yes, I know. But I am trying to make this universal, a platform for everyone to use. My vision is that government will start funding education using equity rather than debt. That will promote life-long learning and reskilling without putting students into debt. That is a win-win for everyone.
> You spend a huge amount of time describing the merits of this approach and (as far as I can tell) zero time describing what your software actually does, even when digging into the page that contains additional details.
At the core the platform acts as a ledger that maintains records of monetary and non-monetary transactions between various stakeholders in education. The stakeholders are government, education institutions, students, businesses and policymakers. The non-monetary transaction is education "service" provided by education institution to students. That record is maintained by the platform to connect students to each education institution and its staff. And the monetary transactions are funding and grants received by education institutions from government for providing education per student; this indirect government funding of student education acts as investment in that student which the student pays back as dividend rather than loan-repayments. That way the students are not in debt but are still obliged to payback via auto-deduction from their income. This whole system is automated and handled by the proposed platform.
Think of this platform as a distributed ledger that maintains connections between various stakeholders in education, and what those connections are used for. And based on that information the students are funded for education. And when the students start generating income, then a small percentage of that income is autodeducted and distributed automatically to those involved in that students education.
Universities already have accounting software. Money comes in via grants and student payment (in whatever form that is) and pays staff salaries. Nothing about what you describe requires federation. You just simply announce it. Even in your paragraph describing it you just fall back on the description of the "funding with future salary" approach.
This is not an accounting software. Though others can build an accounting software on top of the proposed platform. But that is not my project's scope.
> Money comes in via grants and student payment (in whatever form that is) and pays staff salaries.
That money via "student payment" is what I am trying to change. Students are given loans to pay for education. This is a bad idea. Making students debtors even before they start generating income is wrong on so many fronts. I am trying to change education funding from debt-based to equity-based. Students should not be penalised for taking education. But I do think that everyone who has benefited from education should contribute back to whoever helped them in their education(this will also help better the education standards). The platform I am proposing will facilitate that. In the present system students pay first(using loans) and then hope of a better outcome to coverup the cost. This is reverse to how we pay for any other service/product! In real life we get the service/product and then we pay for it. Why do students have to first pay and then cross their fingers in the hope that they will be able to get the income to pay back the loans. Instead, if we treat funding in education as investment in a student, then the repayment should be treated as dividend and not loan. That way students will not suffer bankruptcy!
> Nothing about what you describe requires federation.
It requires federation because it is not controlled by any single entity, but it still has to have some oversight as the data on the platform is about students. It could have been permissionless/non-federated like bitcoin/ethereum blockchain. That is the ideal situation. But as the data held by the platform is sensitive, it has to be federated/permission-oriented.
> You just simply announce it.
It is not that simple. There are many stakeholders in this: the government, education institutions, students, businesses and policymakers. It is a multi-sided platform. It will make a subtle change to education funding, but will be a major disruption to the way education is funded sustainably. There will be some who will not like this change as it will disturb their profit-making carts!
> Even in your paragraph describing it you just fall back on the description of the "funding with future salary" approach.
Yes, that is the aim. But instead of private investors, it will be government(directly) and/or education institutions(backed by government) that will directly invest in the students. And this platform will be available for everyone to participate in. It is a non-profit, open source and blockchain-based for a reason. If I didn't want to change the status quo of education funding and wanted to make profit out of students then I would have just started a private, closed source, profit making platform based on traditional database as other are doing it.
I am just trying to make equity-based funding of education open, transparent, sustainable and universal without penalising students(and tax-payers) and at the same time increase income of education institutions and its staff. All the present solutions that are available do not provide that.
What if there is no more blockchain technology tomorrow morning, will your project survive? If your answer is YES then you might need to rethink about it.
This is like asking, "What if there is no more database technology tomorrow morning, will your project survive?"
I am using blockchain just as a distributed, federated and tamperproof database. Nothing else.
You could ask "What if cryptocurrencies do not exists tomorrow?" That is a valid question. But that I don't think applies as easily to database technologies.
I am using blockchain as a distributed, decentralised, tamper-proof database that no single entity controls. It is used just as a ledger to maintain monetary and non-moneraty transactions between various stakeholders in education: the government, the education institutions, the students, businesses and policymakers.
Once those connections are established then the information of funding of the student's education can be used to perform autodeduction from that student's income and distributed to everyone that was involved in that student's education. Again this transactions is also recorded in the distributed ledger.
This is because it’s better to use a database: simpler, faster, more efficient.
You can do crypto signing in a database or flat files if you really need proof that some actor approved something or other. Each actor can keep such signatures in a local db as evidence if needed.
Smart contracts are a great platform for freelancing and recurrent payment. Also the most mindblowing application I've seem so far are the stock-derivated tokens, or syntethics. It is possible now to trade stocks 24 hours a day, every day of the week.
It could be a good point of a spear to have interconnected services.
Let's take game assets for example. I don't see any chance right now to have Steam and Epic build a gaming metaverse since one of them would have to build and own the infrastructure.
A decentralized blockchain would make talks about data transfer and collaboration much easier. I'm not sure about the whole NTF thing as of right now, but I'm still curious for the future.
What is true for game assets can be true for personal data, copyright claims, or anything else. The blockchain might gain adoption because its principles make it interesting as a standard for value transfer.
I have co-authored/assisted in research for a series of articles on their potential application for indirect tax collection and remission. Indirect tax fraud (VAT, mostly) is a big problem, and a huge source for funding for terrorism. In a lot of places border states that do a lot of trade super don't trust each other. Having a self-auditing trustless database, of sorts, really would be a game changer.
How would you meaningfully integrate a Merkle tree into a “standard” database? I’m familiar with Merkle trees and several popular dbs, but I’m just not seeing it.
Assuming a popular standard transactional database, PostGreSQL for example, you could have a checksum column and a column containing the reference to the previous row primary key. The checksum value could be computed from the previous row checksum and the new row data. You would have to insert data sequentially though, so you would probably need something in front of the database to do that sequentially, and you would probably need some trigger to fail a transaction if the another row exists with a reference to the previous row so you are sure you don't have branches in your tree. All of this would require some PL/pgSQL.
Some international agency could take care of hosting the database. You would need some kind of trusted international agency anyway for such a project, the way the database works is a technical detail that is not super important IMHO. You don't fix such a problem with a blockchain database and a website.
Yeah I get your point. I'd note though that in policy often times it is less about the realities of a project and more about how that project can be sold.
While it is certainly true that this should be handled at an international/community level, it often just isn't. Selling the idea of solving indirect (VAT or sales) tax fraud through invoice matching and handling cross border trades while simultaneously not needing one state to trust another (even if that isn't strictly and in all instances true) can be a powerful pitch.
One of the actual useful things it can do is DNS. The current DNS system is about 40 years old and very flaky. Blockchain can do DNS better than the current system.
Blockchain based DNS allows people to actually own their domain, instead of the current system where we basically rent domains. It also makes it impossible for domain to be seized.
Look up DNS poisoning, spoofing, ISP manipulation, etc. There have been quite a few attacks on it.
Maybe "flaky" is a bit too strong of a term. It generally works I guess.
The main advantage blockchain offers is not really within the realm of getting the right answer to a DNS query, it's more to do with giving the owner of the domain name 100% control of the domain through cryptography and smart contracts. This also makes the process of domain transfer a lot more efficient, cutting out the need for middlemen like Godaddy, etc.
CDs, known as Certificates of Deposit or Time Deposits. This would be the best use of a blockchain, "trustless interest" rather than paying miners by inflation you pay people who lock there coins/stake.
Blockchain is great for temperature monitoring equipment. Small portable devices that make sure your food didn't thaw out during transport. Blockchain technology can make it hard to tamper with the logs.
Cryptographic signing of the temperature readings will do right?
I have a pet idea of electricity meters that cryptographically sign their value and timestamp. We have state employees who come every month and take readings. We can automate these readings without going full IOT.
No it makes the data tamper proof. That's a different problem to making the source data reliable.
Tampering happens when your delivery service tries to cover up a freezer outage. Yes they could grab the sensors and throw them in another freezer but you can't solve every problem with one tool. At least they can't try to do anything to alter the history so it makes it harder. Much like I can enter a locked home, but the lock makes it harder. The alarm makes it harder again. But nothing is fool proof.
whenever you need these three things together: decentralization, secure, and auditable data. Could be the cases when we do not want to give the authority of the data to a central resource. Like, what if all educational institutions host blockchain nodes to store educational records of their students. There can be similar use-cases but most of the noise is due to a buzz word and companies want to cash it.
I don't remember the details since it was a few years ago that I came across this, but I think the idea was that both buyer and seller could signal to the smart-contract that they're satisfied and that the withdrawal can happen.
Otherwise, there is also the concept of "oracles" [0] which are able to look outside the blockchain for information (think weather API, or a city's ledger) that could be your "external source of truth"
Without any arbitration mechanism this kind of escrow seems fairly useless. The buyer always loses to a malicious seller who is now able to keep the funds locked up forever.
Real estate deed/title records; will take a while to onboard existing records, but would then eliminate the need for title insurance (commonly required for home/land purchases in the US) as well as many types of real estate lend/lease scams.
For a technology that occupies such a big presence in people's minds, and has billions of peoples' money invested in, and hundreds of companies chasing their tails trying to find practical uses for it - it's a really short list.
I don't think it does occupy a big presence in most people's minds.
For the relatively small group that are either (a) happy to be the 'early' guy in an obvious ponzi/pyramid scheme or (b) convinced that despite all the evidence, it isn't in fact a scam, I'm sure it does occupy a big presence in their minds.
It's not really surprising. HN loathes any technology with a ton of hype surrounding it.
14 years in currency trading/quant/FinTech. Regardless of the tech, if you don't own at least some BTC/ETH at this point, I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah, yeah, it's the same shtick from HN technologists about anything new whether it's blockchain, JavaScript frameworks, or even Docker way back when.
I stopped heeding the tech elitists here a long time ago and have nothing but benefited from it.
That being said I think it does have good applicability to digital-only activities which require trust, a good example might be Poker, I think generally we believe that a company like Pokerstars are fair and honest so when we jump online to play a game we don’t question it, but there may come time when that’s not the case - where we don’t trust the software created by casinos and bookmakers. So I think generally speaking, right now, gambling is the number 1 use case for Blockchain in my opinion. There’s definitely challenges in this space though, for example building a Poker game on Ethereum would be impossible at the moment, transaction cost for each move would be completely cost prohibitive and there’s still challenges with random number generation, but these problems are solvable.
The other thing I think about with blockchain is generally speaking the view is that they should, in theory, outlast tech companies, as the view is that these public ledgers would be maintained collectively by society, it would be nice to be able to keep certain forever record to pass through generations of families to avoid things getting lost in the digital world, but that’s hope, hope that the blockchain you choose is maintained etc, so that’s just as much of risk as now - but it pains me I don’t know much about my great great grandparents, and would hope future generations don’t have that same problem, I wouldn’t want to rely on tech companies to help with that, it would be much nicer to have a record which is decentralized.