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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

> b.lock saves the encrypted passwords/secret notes on the Nebulas blockchain

What possible benefit could there be to storing my secrets in a public blockchain rather than private storage? I only see downsides.

The readme mention 2 'problems' with existing solutions:

"Single point of failure: if the server/database goes down, there goes your passwords"

This is not a reason to use a blockchain - it's a reason to use a highly available system.

"Trust issue: can you really trust that these closed-source softwares will not just read your passwords?"

This is not a reason to use a blockchain - it's a reason to use OSS.

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I'm not seeing the benefit either. If your credentials are stored under strong encryption, then it's the encryption that's providing a confidentiality and integrity assurance, wholly independent of blockchain or any other storage solution.

> Private storage

Easier to store a private key that gives access to a blockchain datastore than to store a decryption key + private storage file that would need to be replicated across all systems you want password access.

> HA system

That's a hosted solution, so it isn't completely trustless.

> closed-source softwares will not just read your passwords

I agree that this has nothing to do with a blockchain.

> That's a hosted solution, so it isn't completely trustless

If the secrets are encrypted, I don't see how there is any more of a trust issue with a hosted storage system than with a public blockchain?

The fact that the data is encrypted means that it can literally be stored anywhere. You can throw it in a local file or in Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud.

The trust issue also doesn’t matter cause if the encryption is right, then third parties wouldn’t be able to read your data even if they wanted to.

> What possible benefit could there be to storing my secrets in a public blockchain rather than private storage? I only see downsides.

This is why you are poor. You wrap this in an ICO and easily make a million dollars.

Centralized systems aren't vulnerable just because of uptime. They can also terminate your access at will, like if you forget to pay a bill, or if some government actor comes knocking on their door.

And spaffing your encrypted secrets to the wind allows anyone to have a go at cracking your keychain.

YEah its "universally available" but so is having a few git repos, or god forbid one's own server or two.

Blockchain has very limited use outside of a system that has lots of money and requires zero trust immutable log of things, which can tolerate very high latency and long period of inconsistency (ie a trading platform.)

That's discussed on the linked page (under the 'Why blockchain?' heading).

My post literally questions the 2 'reasons' given in the linked page.

That should be the entirety of the web page.

A blockchain is a database with virtue. This solution provides social acceptance.

The "blockchain" is an extremely inefficient self validating database. There is no virtue.

https://twitter.com/dgwbirch/status/1010606861740101632

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