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Comment by SeanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

Just a reminder that there was an example of a company using blockchain to track inventory, admittedly in a pilot project, shared on HN just ten days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37469811

Their reasons was: "If you are wondering about using a p-Chip instead of an RFID tag, the former boasts several advantages. According to the maker, p-Chip devices are smaller, cheaper (a few cents each), tougher, and more secure than nearest competitor RFID."

I don't claim to be sufficiently versed in these fields to critique, and I'm not trying to start an ideological war here, but I felt it important to highlight that legitimate companies in America continue to explore its use cases.

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It seems to me that the actual relevant innovation has to do with a better chip than with the blockchain.

Ultimately, there's a single source of truth: whoever certifies the cheese to be authentic. And there's the requirement to shoot a laser at this thing. It's a device you have to physically interact with.

So this at best requires what, a standard cryptographic signature emitted by a trusted party? The blockchain part is complete fluff.

The main point of this seems to be that for a third party it's hard to obtain this very specific chip to insert into their non-authentic cheese, which is why they use a physical chip instead of printing a QR code on the rind. So that'd be what provides the benefit, not the blockchain.

Like with anything else with blockchain, the question is how that is any better than using centralized database. I don't even see any mention of a blockchain in the article.

Hyperledger is used by quite a few organisations, mainly to share data trustlessly. There are some interesting governance structures growing out of DAO contracts too.

These don't get talked about much because real-world use cases are often too boring to make for good internet arguments. Talk of scams and bubbles and grifts spreads much more easily.

These used to get talked about endlessly.

IBM built its entire blockchain business around the idea of logistics and ran expensive TV ads promoting the IBM blockchain for years.

The problem is that for all that was promised, in reality what we have are a few very specialized niche uses. The fundamental issue with the blockchain is that the case for a “trustless” database as opposed to outsourcing it to a single trustworthy are very limited. And the cases where the benefits outweigh the significant operational complexities are even more limited.

And that’s before you consider that 50%+1 attacks exist. So even the “trustless”ness is vulnerable to attacks.

You should read the first comment on that article.

I read through the HackerNews discussion on the article before sharing. It still felt worthwhile to me to share this here. Please don't make assumptions in bad faith.

I did not mean it that way, i was just mentioning the first comment, because it gives a good view on it.

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