Ask HN: Is blockchain useful outside Currency?Is decentralized validation used?

> Isnt the entire purpose validation of data?

No. Digital signatures are for validating the data (who said what). The whole purpose of blockchain is to tell who said what when. Document timestamping, in other words. There were previous attempts at solving this problem, though they needed a trusted third party.

> Services, Products, and Leadership is still needed, blockchain ONLY decentralizes the validation.

No, it does not decentralize validation. It decentralizes assigning timestamps to documents.

> Will blockchain allow any sort of revolution to happen?

Doubtful, given the previous timestamping protocols haven't brought about any revolution.

> Or is it an expensive way to write to a database?

If you try to use it as a database, of course it will be expensive and unwieldy. Blockchain is a service not designed to work as a database. It was a document timestamping service from the day 1.

Thanks man.

This is basically been my understanding for a while.

Glad I'm 90% BTC and didnt fall for alt coin mania.

Logistics is the low hanging fruit that absolutely makes sense to use a blockchain for. You have multiple agencies and actors that don't need to trust each other... just send their data to the distributed database.

If you have tainted spinach, you can track where it was introduced into the supply chain and figure out very quickly the source of the issue.

When you have pharmaceutical returns, you can validate the source of the manufacturing and validate the returned product can be resold.

My turn to be a skeptic, looking for a response :)

We already have barcodes to track the source, this is already done outside blockchain.

Maybe its more immediate after a problem happens, but what is the cost to:

>Blockchain soil ph

>Blockchain fertilizer

>Blockchain water schedule

>Blockchain that workers washed their hands

>Blockchain the weight of the product

>Blockchain the date picked, shipped, etc........

If you do every step along the way, the cost becomes enormous. I cant imagine the size of the hash either.

Not to mention the extreme problem of garbage in garbage out. Sure you have an expensive thermometer that writes to a blockchain, but what about when its time to weigh it? What if someone accidentally sweat and that drip added 1g to the weight of something that needs precision.

Then the entire chain becomes unreliable.

How about some kind of distributed database you share with your friends, say to keep track who has borrowed books or equipment from each other?

How is blockchain beneficial there? This problem seems well-solved with traditional databases with ACLs.

The only benefit of Byzantine fault tolerance would be if you don't trust your friends.

P2P lending (none of the lenders/borrowers know each other) is a better candidate because there is no central authority and actors can't be trusted.

Remember that if your friend claims they returned the book, the blockchain accepts it even if your friend never got it.

If I understand your meaning, I think that's a problem with any kind of software tracking real-world transactions, not something limited to blockchain.

The point is blockchain provide no additional value.

Git is decentralized append-only tamper-resistant ledger aka “blockchain”.

I think append-only ledgers and specifically BFT distributed ledgers have obvious uses.

The question is whether you can call them blockchains (I'd argue that you can't) and whether the added traits of a blockchain have any additional benefit.

Can you speak to the 'obvious' uses? They are not obvious to me unfortunately.

Append-only ledgers have been used for a while and pre-date the concept of blockchain. Some accounting systems use them. Other examples are IPFS (which uses Bitcoin technology but technically doesn't need to), Internet Archive, some types of event logs, some message queues, chain-of-custody applications, and some P2P marketplaces.

As for Byzantine fault tolerance, it's a bit more of a niche. The most famous examples I know of are extremely high-risk situations, like aircraft software. I don't fully understand how it's used there, but to my knowledge, it prevents "bad" signals (from malfunctioning sensors, cosmic rays, etc.) from corrupting the rest of the data that controls the hardware.

Can you clarify?

Git? The software I use to:

git add *

---

This is a private 'blockchain' based on a project? So there isnt any 'coins' that are going to be doing similar worldwide?

Can you make an attempt to come up with the worldwide or coin usage that solves a verification problem similar to git?

Very interesting btw