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The value prop for private or consortium chains is significantly different than public blockchains. The first point is that it's a shared database that allows

The value prop for private or consortium chains is significantly different than public blockchains. The first point is that it's a shared database that allows organizations to co-operate, with a common view of the world meaning fewer integration points which are exponential as the number of participants grows. The second point is that none of the individual parties has monopoly control of the "central" database meaning they can't extract excessive rent from the participants and exert political/corrupt influence on the network. This is my favorite video explaining this and blockchains in general, and this aspect specifically which begins at 23:45 in. The sound is terrible, but definitely worth listening to. https://vimeo.com/153600491 https://vimeo.com/153600491

runeks 10y ago
The thing is, none of the things you mention require proof-of-work, which is really the only thing that makes a Blockchain a Blockchain, rather than just a weird append-only database which allocates tokens to accounts (scripts). Only by proof-of-work do these tokens become meaningful, because it allows the tokens to be moved around by the account-holders without a central party. There is simply no need for a private consortium to waste energy on proof-of-work. The features you mention can be implemented without any need for proof-of-work. The purpose of the organized waste that is proof-of-work is to achieve trustlessness, simply by requiring a huge expansion of energy if you wish to rewrite history. In Bitcoin, the maintainers of the database (the miners) are separate from the users, and proof-of-work prevents the Blockchain/database maintainers (miners) from rewriting history. But if the owners and users of the database exist within the same organization, it would be trivial to verify that nothing has been rewritten simply by every party keeping a copy.

runeks 10y ago

The thing is, none of the things you mention require proof-of-work, which is really the only thing that makes a Blockchain a Blockchain, rather than just a weird append-only database which allocates tokens to accounts (scripts). Only by proof-of-work do these tokens become meaningful, because it allows the tokens to be moved around by the account-holders without a central party. There is simply no need for a private consortium to waste energy on proof-of-work. The features you mention can be implemented without any need for proof-of-work. The purpose of the organized waste that is proof-of-work is to achieve trustlessness, simply by requiring a huge expansion of energy if you wish to rewrite history. In Bitcoin, the maintainers of the database (the miners) are separate from the users, and proof-of-work prevents the Blockchain/database maintainers (miners) from rewriting history. But if the owners and users of the database exist within the same organization, it would be trivial to verify that nothing has been rewritten simply by every party keeping a copy.