3 ms·

The trustlesness comes with a heavy price of Proof of Work with its wastefulness, complexity and vulnerability to various attacks. I can understand why financia

by zby 10y ago

The trustlesness comes with a heavy price of Proof of Work with its wastefulness, complexity and vulnerability to various attacks. I can understand why financial institutions don't want that part.

runeks 10y ago
It shouldn't be necessary either. The proof-of-work is only necessary to avoid a central party wrt. which blockchain is the "right one". Financial institutions are working together with each other, they can easily just agree on which blockchain to follow. But without proof-of-work, the blockchain is just a database with atomic updates. I don't see why they would need a blockchain for that. Ripping Bitcoin in two gives you two fairly uninteresting things: 1) hash-cash and 2) a database full of public keys/signatures. Only combining the two gives you something interesting: negotiable/fungible hash cash (hash cash that can be transferred from person to person via a distributed database).
- dgreensp 10y ago
  I think by "blockchain" they mean hashed blocks that include the hash of the previous block and can be synced; basically git.
  - TillE 10y ago
    That doesn't gain you much besides a definite order and a way to check integrity. Useful things to be sure, but nothing a traditional database can't do.
- bendbro 10y ago
  I had this feeling when I was discussing it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044767
- wpietri 10y ago
  > But without proof-of-work, the blockchain is just a database with atomic updates. I don't see why they would need a blockchain for that. I have been asking this question for a long time and not yet seen a satisfactory answer. At this point I'm sure that either I or a bunch of blockchain advocates are missing something important. Glad to know somebody else sees the problem too.

3 ms·

The trustlesness comes with a heavy price of Proof of Work with its wastefulness, complexity and vulnerability to various attacks. I can understand why financia

by zby 10y ago

The trustlesness comes with a heavy price of Proof of Work with its wastefulness, complexity and vulnerability to various attacks. I can understand why financial institutions don't want that part.

runeks 10y ago
It shouldn't be necessary either. The proof-of-work is only necessary to avoid a central party wrt. which blockchain is the "right one". Financial institutions are working together with each other, they can easily just agree on which blockchain to follow. But without proof-of-work, the blockchain is just a database with atomic updates. I don't see why they would need a blockchain for that. Ripping Bitcoin in two gives you two fairly uninteresting things: 1) hash-cash and 2) a database full of public keys/signatures. Only combining the two gives you something interesting: negotiable/fungible hash cash (hash cash that can be transferred from person to person via a distributed database).
- dgreensp 10y ago
  I think by "blockchain" they mean hashed blocks that include the hash of the previous block and can be synced; basically git.
  - TillE 10y ago
    That doesn't gain you much besides a definite order and a way to check integrity. Useful things to be sure, but nothing a traditional database can't do.
- bendbro 10y ago
  I had this feeling when I was discussing it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044767
- wpietri 10y ago
  > But without proof-of-work, the blockchain is just a database with atomic updates. I don't see why they would need a blockchain for that. I have been asking this question for a long time and not yet seen a satisfactory answer. At this point I'm sure that either I or a bunch of blockchain advocates are missing something important. Glad to know somebody else sees the problem too.