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> I'd go as far as to say that supply chain management probably is one of the few truly viable use cases for the blockchain. I get that there is a massive amou

> I'd go as far as to say that supply chain management probably is one of the few truly viable use cases for the blockchain. I get that there is a massive amount of hype and bullshit around everything "blockchain", but surely it's way too early to write it off[1]. It could be as prevalent as HTTP or SQL some day (or maybe it disappears, but it's too early either way). I think one exciting area is voting - imagine the convenience of mail-in ballots, verifiable, instant vote counts, and the ability of anyone, e.g. the electorate, universities, political parties, transparency non-profits and so on to act as a node and therefore monitor the voting in real time. I think it could be a great innovation to strengthen democracy. Imagine a real time, direct democracy that has voting (or even just opinion polls) on a continuous basis to keep politicians in check. [1] PG likes things that are written off as geek's toys: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/819810970021134337 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/819810970021134337

datenwolf 10y ago
> I think one exciting area is voting Uhhh… I'm no expert regarding blockchains, just know what the basic idea is. And in my understanding you can't have truly anonymous votes using a blockchain. Or can that be done?
- yorwba 10y ago
  I imagine it could be done if you could distribute one truly anonymous, but verifiable token to each eligible voter and if there is a way to anonymously insert a block "token x votes for y" into the blockchain. To provide the anonymous tokens, fully homomorphic encryption could be used to have a trusted authority blindly sign a token when a voter requests it. (Maybe these requests could also be recorded in the blockchain, to make sure nobody gets two tokens?) The hard part will probably be the anonymous network access.
  - fragmede 10y ago
    The hard part isn't the network. The hard part is anonymity (secret ballot) is directly at odds with verification. The 'x' in the formula "token x votes for y" is so secret the voter themselves can barely be allowed to have it, never mind their Gmail or Yahoo account. And never mind verification over the Internet, even on a LAN, verification is suspect to being hacked. Secret ballot requires that it's hard to verify tokens, or else paying or otherwise coercing voters to vote one way becomes way easier to do at scale.

datenwolf 10y ago

> I think one exciting area is voting Uhhh… I'm no expert regarding blockchains, just know what the basic idea is. And in my understanding you can't have truly anonymous votes using a blockchain. Or can that be done?

yorwba 10y ago
I imagine it could be done if you could distribute one truly anonymous, but verifiable token to each eligible voter and if there is a way to anonymously insert a block "token x votes for y" into the blockchain. To provide the anonymous tokens, fully homomorphic encryption could be used to have a trusted authority blindly sign a token when a voter requests it. (Maybe these requests could also be recorded in the blockchain, to make sure nobody gets two tokens?) The hard part will probably be the anonymous network access.
- fragmede 10y ago
  The hard part isn't the network. The hard part is anonymity (secret ballot) is directly at odds with verification. The 'x' in the formula "token x votes for y" is so secret the voter themselves can barely be allowed to have it, never mind their Gmail or Yahoo account. And never mind verification over the Internet, even on a LAN, verification is suspect to being hacked. Secret ballot requires that it's hard to verify tokens, or else paying or otherwise coercing voters to vote one way becomes way easier to do at scale.