Do You Need a Blockchain? (2017)
doyouneedablockchain.com
doyouneedablockchain.com
If the answer is "perhaps", why don't the authors list viable alternatives?
Perhaps this is how we could all actually learn something new.
Don't use things that you are not hundred percent sure you need. Blockchain is a robust solution for high complex state management issues but most people will never end up using it for its full potential. Even if you did there often are alternatives that performs much better for your need.
People will try to bend their projects to meet the blockchain need rather than just use it when you need to use it.
Nobody wants to say it but a bold founder would raise money as blockchain project, would sell to clients as a blockchain project but would operate it via a common database.
When money comes in , then you can disclose it and say that you did something completely different , VCs and clients would look like fools considering the quality of the product even without blockcahin and everybody would live happily ever after.
Sometimes people who live in hypersocial echo chambers such as the VC party scene or even your amateur Clubhouse angel investor scene, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of their ideas which they acquired in the aforementioned hypersocial echochambers. And that is tons of work in and of itsef.
It's much easier to say "Oh yes we are totally commited to blockchain"
>Do you need to generate media buzz and mislead investors?
I've heard of about 10 local "blockchain" startups and I swear to god this was their #1 reason of using a blockchain (it did work partially for one of them, although they eventually dropped the blockchain, and failed anyway).
git is a form of blockchain.
My use for a blockchain is for a system where even if I were the only writer, I would want there to be an archival, tamperproof record which anyone can verify. I publish a daily hash, which confirms everything behind it.
I don't know of a better way to accomplish that than a simple blockchain, publishing daily SHA hashes.
It is overhyped and oversold as a technology, but it has its uses. Perhaps they're not the same as the uses we have today, but they definitely exist.
When radio was invented, the original planned use cases had little to do with what it was adopted for eventually.
The mechanism behind git is most probably what most people seeking to use a blockchain actually need though, for the reasons you gave.
I fail to understand if you are amazed by the low or the high quality of comments on Bitcoin on HN but if it is the latter, people post insightful things here because they are curious and look into things.
Does this look like a valid argument? Where is the distributed consensus that is at the heart of blockchain? git will just cause conflicts leading to prejudiced manual intervention.
I also don't see a great reason against its energy use as the nature of being fair is to make the competition as useless as possible or else it will be unfair for some people with financial incentives leading to unbalanced distributions in certain industry sectors.
But at the cost of that, it doesn't put anyone as a dictator, which is worth more. (As the public agrees with its price action.)
At least some miners are trying to use cleaner energies at this point, so it's an improvement.
>> git is a form of blockchain.
> Does this look like a valid argument?
It looks like a claim you don't agree with. I don't agree with it neither but I can see where the OP is coming from and I see no bad intent. I found their comment very reasonable and well-balanced even if I disagree. You seem to see it as an attack against Bitcoin, and you seem to be the one who is involved emotionally into this topic. By the way, notice how we were speaking about blockchains in general and not Bitcoin, you introduced Bitcoin (though I agree that Bitcoin is the elephant in the room when speaking about blockchains).
> I also don't see a great reason against its energy use
I intentionally and specifically did not enter this discussion by not giving any argument. This is boring, there are a lot of detailed discussions about this here on HN already.
I do have a mild beef with many of the other uses of blockchain technologies, but bad uses don't invalidate a technology.
From Wikipedia: "A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree). The timestamp proves that the transaction data existed when the block was published in order to get into its hash. As blocks each contain information about the block previous to it, they form a chain, with each additional block reinforcing the ones before it. Therefore, blockchains are resistant to modification of their data because once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks."
Perhaps it ought to, but I would prefer a different word ("distributed ledger?"). For "blockchain," I actually rather like the simpler definition of a cryptographically-linked chain of blocks.
This is contradicted by the popularly-believed inventor / date of invention.
> Consensus nodes receive transactions, work together to determine consensus using hashgraph, and store the public ledger's latest state. The Hedera Governing Council currently runs all mainnet consensus nodes. As Hedera advances on its path to decentralization, anyone will be able run a consensus node.
https://hedera.com/hh-decentralization-of-consensus.pdf
> Hedera Hashgraph is a proof-of-stake network that aims to use permissionless nodes and a widespread coin distribution to ensure the network’s security while working to achieve complete decentralization.
> Hbar cryptocurrency represents the “stake” of voting power in Hedera’s proof-of-stake consensus model – more coins equal more voting power over consensus. Thus, to ensure the network’s security, hbars need to be widely distributed so no attacker or group of attackers can amass control over one-third of the coins.
> Until hbars are sufficiently distributed, Hedera will remain a permissioned network. To maintain the security of the network, the network will remain permissioned until the total value of all the circulating coins is high enough to be too expensive for a malicious user (or group of users) to buy one-third of the total supply to conduct an attack.
Whatever other good points their technology has on its efficiency and not using proof-of-work, their web site shows that (1) right now the network is centralized and consensus is operated by the original developers and people they've personally approved, (2) their path to eventual decentralization is reliant on their own judgments about the size and value of the network. The consensus part doesn't reflect an improvement on the status quo from the point of view of decentralization, in that all they've claimed is that, some day, when their network is big and valuable enough, they can allow it to decentralize because attacks will then become unreasonably expensive.
We might all be better off if a mechanism like this had already caught on to a huge extent instead of Bitcoin. But I don't see a particular innovation here for securing decentralized consensus relative to other proof-of-stake systems.
Which seems to be the typical sentiment in comments when it comes to Blockchain technologies and DLTs in general. I’m not surprised considering the amount of questionable technology and news associated with the space.
But clearly there are technologies out there. I thought it was important to address that. Most people obviously don’t know about the newer technologies in this space and remain in the dark.
As to your points on decentralisation - I agree they’ve got their work cut-out to prove us otherwise. Time will tell. But if you’re going to make a genuinely useful public ledger that can act as a layer of trust, you better make damn sure it’s safe from bad actors and is future-proof. Their route to decentralisation certainly seems like a good way of achieving that. They’re playing the long game by the looks of things.
To your last point regarding not seeing a particular innovation here for securing decentralised consensus relative to other POS systems…
This is a key, and I believe a unique feature, of the Hashgraph algorithm:
https://help.hedera.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000674097-What-...
Honestly it should probably just be presented as a static flow chart instead of a quiz with these strange 3D cube transitions.
This is about creating commons for people to use that is trusted. It's fundamentally a different paradigm and mindset.
Can you technically do something similar to your idea with Postgres? So what. Do you have to put some degree of trust in another party? So what. That doesn't eliminate completely any benefit of an auditable system.
If you want to call git a blockchain I guess that's fine, but it's not what most people have in mind when they think of "blockchain".
and there’s nothing wrong with that
we are in the money game, this is a way to do that and you can get bankrolled for it