4 ms·

Can anyone name a single success story about the use of blockchain technology to solve a specific problem, and how this problem was solved using blockchain tech

by runeks 10y ago

Can anyone name a single success story about the use of blockchain technology to solve a specific problem, and how this problem was solved using blockchain technology (besides Bitcoin)?

kneel 10y ago
From an investment banks perspective a lot of the intrigue around 'blockchain technology' is due to the relative speed and security it offers. Investment banks have chosen to pursue 'blockchain technologies' rather than bitcoin because they don't like bitcoin's transparency. Here's the problem. Bitcoin is secure and fast because of it's transparency.
- Phlarp 10y ago
  I think given the prevailing network conditions of the past 6-12 months the statement that "Bitcoin is fast" needs a [citation needed] qualifier.
  - kneel 10y ago
    'relative speed' Much faster than ACH payments, wire tranfers.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      and much slower than Visa, never mind the sorts of transactions where there are algorithms earning big bucks profits from frontrunning trades with millisecond advantages....
      - kneel 10y ago
        Investment banks don't use Visa to transfer money and bitcoin isn't replacing electronic trading platforms.
        notahacker 10y ago
        Sure, my point is that where systems are optimised for speed Bitcoin is miles behind the curve. If a distributed ledger is simply updating to reflect the authoritative accounts of a centralised authority I'm not really seeing what trustlessness is adding to the reconciliation process either.
        kneel 10y ago
        In a trustless decentralized world (ie the web) more speed means less security. There is definitely an equilibrium between centralized and decentralized systems. I realize I'm starting to sound like a crackpot so I'll just recommend the writings of a more well-respected crackpot Dee Hock (founder of Visa Inc.) https://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/ChaordicOrg.pdf https://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/ChaordicOrg.pdf
        occamrazor 10y ago
        TARGET2 settles within seconds.
    - runeks 10y ago
      Depends on which metric you look at. While Bitcoin has much faster settlement time than international wire transfers, it has slower throughput (~7 TPS max currently).
      - Phlarp 10y ago
        7 TPS is theoretical and very optimistic. So far it's best day was just over 4. These numbers will not change until the blocksize is increased, which still looks unlikely. https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all
      - kneel 10y ago
        It's a tradeoff for security. It'll be interesting to see what happens when(if?) Bitcoin upgrades to SegWit. This infrastructure is designed to support off-chain transactions while settling on the chain.
patmcguire 10y ago
Wall Street Clearinghouse to Adopt Bitcoin Technology https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/business/dealbook/wall-street-clearing-house-to-adopt-bitcoin-technology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/business/dealbook/wall-st... Hasn't come out yet, but they're clearly a boring company that isn't chasing trends. We'll know in a year or so whether this is all smoke.
- runeks 10y ago
  > IBM, which has been making a big push into blockchain technology, [...] aims to have it fully functioning by early next year. I believe this is the timeless state of all big Blockchain projects: ready one year from now. I specifically asked for success stories because I know everyone is throwing money after blockchain stuff. So I don't doubt that there are tons of planned projects. However, I haven't yet heard of blockchain technology being applied to solve an actual problem, except Bitcoin. CME Group and the UK Royal Mint are planning to launch a blockchain-based product [1] -- also in 2017. But according to the article, it seems to be a simple digital promissory note, with the bearer owning the right to a certain amount of gold. Since we already have a central creditor, upon which the entire system depends (the Royal Mint), there is zero reason to use a distributed database to store anything. Just put the database in the same safe as the gold. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-blockchain-royal-mint-idUSKBN13O0M4 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-blockchain-royal-mint...
  - patmcguire 10y ago
    Yeah, I think you're right. It just doesn't exist yet, everything uses weird weasel language to make the future sound like it's the present. It is possible there's just too much hype to find the existing use cases, that's one of the weaknesses of Google.
alcio 10y ago
git
- rspeer 10y ago
  Git is fundamentally different from a blockchain. In git, you trust the upstream repo to maintain the integrity of the data.
- throwawayish 10y ago
  git and blockchains have in common that they both use cryptography. So you might have as well said "Signal".
elastic_church 10y ago
Counterparty - create and register assets. Create secondary markets for those assets. STORJ - (storage in a southern dialect combined with startup lingo) - A Counterparty asset that is used as fuel for a decentralized unlimited cloud storage platform. Farmers offer storage, consumers upload shards of their files to a variety of different farmers. Encrypted, unlimited, redundant. I believe the STORJ company now has VC funding as well. OMNI - create and register assets. Create secondary markets for those assets. (Counterparty and OMNI compete for market share) Tether - An OMNI asset which is used to create stable value cryptocurrencies that are representations of national currencies. The Tether company has a centralized account of USD and EUROs, but this enables people to hold stable value cryptocurrencies, or "cash out", but not have to worry about the long delay of getting national currency from a bank. Primarily used for trading. All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitcoin underneath, then Dogecoin has a Counterparty layer as well :)
- runeks 10y ago
  > All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitcoin underneath, then Dogecoin has a Counterparty layer as well :) My point was precisely that you cannot, as far as I can see, separate blockchain technology from Bitcoin. My argument is that it's not blockchain technology that's useful, but rather a blockchain, in itself, that's useful. And it's useful because it's a distributed, proof-of-work timestamp server. The value of Bitcoin comes not from the technology it uses, but from its incentive structure. An increase in the value of bitcoins feeds back into the system, resulting in an increase in security (hash rate) by way of an increase in the profitability of mining. Since Bitcoin's value comes from its time-stamping ability, and since this time-stamping is done using proof-of-work, it makes sense for an increase in the hash rate to also cause an increase in value, at least up to a certain point (provided no changes to the protocol are made to take advantage of the enormous hash rate of the current network).
  - elastic_church 10y ago
    Hm, okay, well since we're preaching to the choir here I'm not sure why I got the downvote. Your question was vague.
sho 10y ago
http://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/ocbc-debuts-use-of-blockchain-technology-for-faster-more-secure-and-cheaper-inter http://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/ocbc-debuts-use... "OCBC Bank said Monday (Nov 14) it became the first bank in Southeast Asia to use blockchain technology to make local and cross-border inter-bank fund transfers." Textbook use case for blockchain IMO.
- runeks 10y ago
  I've read the article, and many like it, but I can never find an actual explanation of exactly how a problem was solved using blockchain technology. It's always marketing speak, with reference to all the wonderful properties of "blockchain technology", and diagrams like [1], which could have simply been summed up in three words: "no payment intermediary". Although... doesn't that diagram look like they just changed the intermediary's name from "Payment Intermediaries" to "BCSIS Blockchain platform", plus added some cool-looking server icons? But the source code will almost certainly never see the light of day, so we will never really know how they use blockchain technology. At the end of the day, I think it's a lot more likely that this bank's software provider created a new solution and just said it has "blockchain technology" because it's a vague buzzword, and then the bank released a press release based on this, again because of the buzzword effect. [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/blockchain.png http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/blockchain.p...

by runeks 10y ago

Can anyone name a single success story about the use of blockchain technology to solve a specific problem, and how this problem was solved using blockchain technology (besides Bitcoin)?

kneel 10y ago

From an investment banks perspective a lot of the intrigue around 'blockchain technology' is due to the relative speed and security it offers. Investment banks have chosen to pursue 'blockchain technologies' rather than bitcoin because they don't like bitcoin's transparency. Here's the problem. Bitcoin is secure and fast because of it's transparency.

Phlarp 10y ago
I think given the prevailing network conditions of the past 6-12 months the statement that "Bitcoin is fast" needs a [citation needed] qualifier.
- kneel 10y ago
  'relative speed' Much faster than ACH payments, wire tranfers.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    and much slower than Visa, never mind the sorts of transactions where there are algorithms earning big bucks profits from frontrunning trades with millisecond advantages....
    - kneel 10y ago
      Investment banks don't use Visa to transfer money and bitcoin isn't replacing electronic trading platforms.
      - notahacker 10y ago
        Sure, my point is that where systems are optimised for speed Bitcoin is miles behind the curve. If a distributed ledger is simply updating to reflect the authoritative accounts of a centralised authority I'm not really seeing what trustlessness is adding to the reconciliation process either.
        kneel 10y ago
        In a trustless decentralized world (ie the web) more speed means less security. There is definitely an equilibrium between centralized and decentralized systems. I realize I'm starting to sound like a crackpot so I'll just recommend the writings of a more well-respected crackpot Dee Hock (founder of Visa Inc.) https://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/ChaordicOrg.pdf https://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/ChaordicOrg.pdf
      - occamrazor 10y ago
        TARGET2 settles within seconds.
  - runeks 10y ago
    Depends on which metric you look at. While Bitcoin has much faster settlement time than international wire transfers, it has slower throughput (~7 TPS max currently).
    - Phlarp 10y ago
      7 TPS is theoretical and very optimistic. So far it's best day was just over 4. These numbers will not change until the blocksize is increased, which still looks unlikely. https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all
    - kneel 10y ago
      It's a tradeoff for security. It'll be interesting to see what happens when(if?) Bitcoin upgrades to SegWit. This infrastructure is designed to support off-chain transactions while settling on the chain.

patmcguire 10y ago

Wall Street Clearinghouse to Adopt Bitcoin Technology https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/business/dealbook/wall-street-clearing-house-to-adopt-bitcoin-technology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/business/dealbook/wall-st... Hasn't come out yet, but they're clearly a boring company that isn't chasing trends. We'll know in a year or so whether this is all smoke.

runeks 10y ago
> IBM, which has been making a big push into blockchain technology, [...] aims to have it fully functioning by early next year. I believe this is the timeless state of all big Blockchain projects: ready one year from now. I specifically asked for success stories because I know everyone is throwing money after blockchain stuff. So I don't doubt that there are tons of planned projects. However, I haven't yet heard of blockchain technology being applied to solve an actual problem, except Bitcoin. CME Group and the UK Royal Mint are planning to launch a blockchain-based product [1] -- also in 2017. But according to the article, it seems to be a simple digital promissory note, with the bearer owning the right to a certain amount of gold. Since we already have a central creditor, upon which the entire system depends (the Royal Mint), there is zero reason to use a distributed database to store anything. Just put the database in the same safe as the gold. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-blockchain-royal-mint-idUSKBN13O0M4 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-blockchain-royal-mint...
- patmcguire 10y ago
  Yeah, I think you're right. It just doesn't exist yet, everything uses weird weasel language to make the future sound like it's the present. It is possible there's just too much hype to find the existing use cases, that's one of the weaknesses of Google.

alcio 10y ago

git

rspeer 10y ago
Git is fundamentally different from a blockchain. In git, you trust the upstream repo to maintain the integrity of the data.
throwawayish 10y ago
git and blockchains have in common that they both use cryptography. So you might have as well said "Signal".

elastic_church 10y ago

Counterparty - create and register assets. Create secondary markets for those assets. STORJ - (storage in a southern dialect combined with startup lingo) - A Counterparty asset that is used as fuel for a decentralized unlimited cloud storage platform. Farmers offer storage, consumers upload shards of their files to a variety of different farmers. Encrypted, unlimited, redundant. I believe the STORJ company now has VC funding as well. OMNI - create and register assets. Create secondary markets for those assets. (Counterparty and OMNI compete for market share) Tether - An OMNI asset which is used to create stable value cryptocurrencies that are representations of national currencies. The Tether company has a centralized account of USD and EUROs, but this enables people to hold stable value cryptocurrencies, or "cash out", but not have to worry about the long delay of getting national currency from a bank. Primarily used for trading. All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitcoin underneath, then Dogecoin has a Counterparty layer as well :)

runeks 10y ago
> All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitcoin underneath, then Dogecoin has a Counterparty layer as well :) My point was precisely that you cannot, as far as I can see, separate blockchain technology from Bitcoin. My argument is that it's not blockchain technology that's useful, but rather a blockchain, in itself, that's useful. And it's useful because it's a distributed, proof-of-work timestamp server. The value of Bitcoin comes not from the technology it uses, but from its incentive structure. An increase in the value of bitcoins feeds back into the system, resulting in an increase in security (hash rate) by way of an increase in the profitability of mining. Since Bitcoin's value comes from its time-stamping ability, and since this time-stamping is done using proof-of-work, it makes sense for an increase in the hash rate to also cause an increase in value, at least up to a certain point (provided no changes to the protocol are made to take advantage of the enormous hash rate of the current network).
- elastic_church 10y ago
  Hm, okay, well since we're preaching to the choir here I'm not sure why I got the downvote. Your question was vague.

sho 10y ago

http://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/ocbc-debuts-use-of-blockchain-technology-for-faster-more-secure-and-cheaper-inter http://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/ocbc-debuts-use... "OCBC Bank said Monday (Nov 14) it became the first bank in Southeast Asia to use blockchain technology to make local and cross-border inter-bank fund transfers." Textbook use case for blockchain IMO.

runeks 10y ago
I've read the article, and many like it, but I can never find an actual explanation of exactly how a problem was solved using blockchain technology. It's always marketing speak, with reference to all the wonderful properties of "blockchain technology", and diagrams like [1], which could have simply been summed up in three words: "no payment intermediary". Although... doesn't that diagram look like they just changed the intermediary's name from "Payment Intermediaries" to "BCSIS Blockchain platform", plus added some cool-looking server icons? But the source code will almost certainly never see the light of day, so we will never really know how they use blockchain technology. At the end of the day, I think it's a lot more likely that this bank's software provider created a new solution and just said it has "blockchain technology" because it's a vague buzzword, and then the bank released a press release based on this, again because of the buzzword effect. [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/blockchain.png http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/blockchain.p...