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Comment by sanswork | Hacker News Reader

You won't have the option too and they won't have the need for you to so there is no incentive.

How does anyone trust it then? Isn't it by default able to have them alter it then, as they win 51% of the processing power? It seems to miss all the benefit of a blockchain, or I'm missing something?

They know all the participants and they don't use PoW. The benefits of a blockchain are known entry ordering and immutability.

It sounds like you are missing a lot by having a bitcoin centric view of the problem space.

Every time Ive ever heard blockchain on here it was a Bitcoin- or Xcoin-centric view involving mining. I always countered with stuff like you just said from old research into distributed, fault-tolerant DB or SCM design. I had no idea until now that there was even parallel blockchain work with no proof of work.

So there might be a greater press problem at work here not bringing out knowledge of other aspects of blockchain research to wider audience. I dont closely follow the field so I cant accurately guess more.

The so-called non-work based blockchains are typically just presented as blockchains for the marketing hype. These are run of the mill paxos databases which isn't very useful compared to modern signed message sending platforms that companies like swift use

I figured it was something like that. Makes sense. Audible sigh once more for effect of marketing hype on comprehension.

I think the main press issue is that these other chains aren't really for public use so there is little benefit to pushing for press unless you're a company that develops them trying to find clients and we do actually see a lot of stories about this in the financial news.

Makes sense.

Same reason people trust the banks current way of doing things.

Keep in mind, this is just for the banks. You're not going to use it, except indirectly as your bank is using it to talk with other banks.

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