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Comment by Moodles | Hacker News Reader

Indeed I have conjectured multiple times that I think the only application of blockchains is in cryptocurrency. Introducing any physical asset like a yacht or a banana in Laos or a diamond in Africa really doesn't make sense: you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain.

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> you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain

You can not otherwise too, right? A blockchain holds interactions/transactions not the data itself. Most blockchains are incredibly small in size. For example, the size of the entire Bitcoin blockchain is 215.84 GB [0].

[0] https://bitinfocharts.com

I can see its applicability in any kind of chain of trust for distribution of physical goods that have a potential to be counterfit or improperly handled/processed.

Also, I see a possibility for licensing/DRM of some types of media IP.

That does not mean it needs to be distributed, though.

I agree. You would need an oracle in order to put physical things on the blockchain, and that is subject to incorrect data or tampering. It's non-trivial, but not technically impossible.

Yes, but if you have a mechanism (either technical or institutional) that you trust to attach real-world goods to your blockchain in a sufficiently correct and tamper-resistant manner, why not just let that mechanism manage your ledger directly and skip the blockchain entirely?

Those seem like two separate problems to me. The oracle reliably reports to the blockchain while the blockchain ensures that the historical record is tamper-proof.

But why can you trust the oracle to report correctly but not to maintain the record?

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