Hacker News Reader

Comment by 60secz | Hacker News Reader

Proof of work solutions to byzantine fault tolerance are vulnerable to 51% attacks almost by definition, so if there's a value to the data it needs to be backed by a stronger economic incentive for "virtuous behavior". Doing this outside of money is problematic.

The other option is private blockchains with limited, authenticated accounts, but then why not just use a timestamped db?

View on HN

This. People keep wanting to strip the money from the technology in blockchain but, like many have stated: blockchain as a append only log is of little innovation or value if you have to rely on courts, lawyers and other humans outside of the technology to make it work

True but it does add an element of non-tamperabitiry the data. Of course if a txn is a result of some stolen key type scenario a court might be required. A correction can be added like a journal entry. But like git the history is all there and there is less to debate.

The OP asked about hyperledger, which does not require proof of work. He/She's asking specifically about private blockchains.

Yes, but what if I piggyback my insignificant data on the back of some other bigger public blockchains, like bitcoin or ethereum, where cost of 51% attack is in tens of billions? That way I can get protection with their level of security.

But at a significant price is complexity, latency, maintenance, and transaction fees. There are plenty of immutable append only databases, e.g. datomic. Why violate Occam's razor?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com