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How pointless. The whole point of Bitcoin was to have uncensorable, decentralized asset that can be used to exchange value without any trust etc. That is the

by dpc_pw 9y ago

How pointless. The whole point of Bitcoin was to have uncensorable, decentralized asset that can be used to exchange value without any trust etc. That is the only reason we endure this utterly shitty and inefficient blockchain thing, and we exchange money for this otherwise pointless online points. I have no problem with ETH as cryptocurrency / smart contract platform. But this whole Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is just one big BS. Etherum community is trying to pump ETH value by associating with brand names, and corporations are trying to pump their stock value by presenting themselves as innovative. BS - empty words and marketing gimmicks. Just read through that page. Just watch Blockchain vs. Bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMEOKDVXlUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMEOKDVXlUo

subway 9y ago
Enterprise Ethereum has almost nothing to do with Ethereum the public blockchain, or crypto-currency. Ethereum based blockchains (that is based on Ethereum the software, not the canonical global instance of that software) provide an ability to create an auditable log of events. Those events might be "who accessed my credit card account and when" or "who requested access to my health records and when". These chains can exist entirely independently of of the global "Ethereum" chain, and can operate entirely without the concept of a crypto-currency (aside from using it as a scheduling mechanism within your blockchain cluster). People need to stop getting hung up the cryptocurrency aspect of blockchains.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  I agree. Also, the EEA is more of an R&D coordination group than anything else. It's to see if there really is something there, and these companies have joined up their R&D departments and innovation labs to do so. They have a lot of industry pull, especially together -- so if there is something viable that comes out of it, most [North American/Asian at least] people can expect it to impact the way they do things, or the way the tools they use operate.
- hudon 9y ago
  > Ethereum based blockchains provide an ability to create an auditable log of events If all they want is a log of events, why not use a tried and true database whose performance is more well understood? MySQL, Cassandra, whatever. You can add the ability to audit the tables by signing data updates with public key crypto.
  - subway 9y ago
    By using a blockchain, you enable auditing organizations to participate in the authentication process. For instance, I might publish a private message to the blockchain that is an authentication request to resource X. A smart contract would then act on that authentication request, and publish either an ACCEPT or REJECT message. By bringing auditing organizations into the blockchain, every authentication attempt is sent to the auditing organization before access is granted. The key is that every transaction must be made known to the auditors before it is acted on. By logging to a traditional db, you're at the mercy of the party responsible for sharing out those logs.
    - dfischer 9y ago
      Interesting. Seems like potentially cool ideas in government and politics for transparency.
    - hudon 9y ago
      Here is your schema: DATA | auditor_sig ------------------ Now: a) Assume 3 components: client, server, auditorService b) How to write to server: 1- client sends DATA to auditorService 2- auditorService signs DATA and returns S(DATA) 3- client writes (DATA, S(DATA)) to server c) How to read: 1- client reads (DATA, S(DATA)) from server 2- client verifies S(DATA) 3.1- valid? -> continue 3.2- invalid? -> delete DATA from server There are ways you can configure this to make either of these services have more weight (I made the server weak in this setup), and you can also give read access to everyone if you want it to be public (and only a subset of clients get write access). You don't need a blockchain.
      - deleted 9y ago
- xorcist 9y ago
  That doesn't make sense. Read accesses couldn't possibly be logged. You probably wouldn't want sensitive information like health records in a block chain. The risk for leaks is obvious. Both credit cards records and health records are data where there is a single authoritative data source. You want to know who actually accessed the data, and not any sort of decentralized consensus about the matter. Agree about the wider aspects however, but those are probably about payouts to stakes in immaterial data or zero knowledge trading of cryptographic keys rather than your health data.
  - csydas 9y ago
    This is especially true for Health Records with regards to US Health Care, as access control is heavily monitored and Hospital Employees are instructed clearly and frequently that you do not access records for anyone you are not treating, accidental access needing to be reported, and so on. Confidentiality of the patient records requires a clear system to see who accessed what, when, and from where they accessed it. Blockchain seems like a complete mismatch for such an endeavor.
    - subway 9y ago
      Just because a node can participate in a blockchain and cryptographically verify the chain doesn't mean the node can access the plaintext of every record in check chain. Check out permissioned implementations like JP Morgan's Quorum.
squiggy22 9y ago
There's even evidence of vote manipulation on this very HN thread on the announcement over on Reddit.
ScottAS 9y ago
The EEA was formed in response to Hyperledger, the heavily IBM-backed private blockchain. I think it was the only possible move. The risk of Hyperledger taking over the world of blockchain was too great. EEA is sort of to Ethereum/Blockchain what RedHat is to Linux. A necessary evil.
kgin 9y ago
It's an industry working group to shape the direction of the Ethereum project, similar to a million working groups (ex Bluetooth) where companies are motivated to agree on and advance a technology. Nothing about being in EEA says that company will use the public chain. Most of them will probably use private chains. You presenting it as if it's possible for an open source project to recruit a long list of multinational corporations to sign on to collude on a pointless project just to make everyone involved look "cool" and get rich. If only.

by dpc_pw 9y ago

subway 9y ago

Enterprise Ethereum has almost nothing to do with Ethereum the public blockchain, or crypto-currency. Ethereum based blockchains (that is based on Ethereum the software, not the canonical global instance of that software) provide an ability to create an auditable log of events. Those events might be "who accessed my credit card account and when" or "who requested access to my health records and when". These chains can exist entirely independently of of the global "Ethereum" chain, and can operate entirely without the concept of a crypto-currency (aside from using it as a scheduling mechanism within your blockchain cluster). People need to stop getting hung up the cryptocurrency aspect of blockchains.

52-6F-62 9y ago
I agree. Also, the EEA is more of an R&D coordination group than anything else. It's to see if there really is something there, and these companies have joined up their R&D departments and innovation labs to do so. They have a lot of industry pull, especially together -- so if there is something viable that comes out of it, most [North American/Asian at least] people can expect it to impact the way they do things, or the way the tools they use operate.
hudon 9y ago
> Ethereum based blockchains provide an ability to create an auditable log of events If all they want is a log of events, why not use a tried and true database whose performance is more well understood? MySQL, Cassandra, whatever. You can add the ability to audit the tables by signing data updates with public key crypto.
- subway 9y ago
  By using a blockchain, you enable auditing organizations to participate in the authentication process. For instance, I might publish a private message to the blockchain that is an authentication request to resource X. A smart contract would then act on that authentication request, and publish either an ACCEPT or REJECT message. By bringing auditing organizations into the blockchain, every authentication attempt is sent to the auditing organization before access is granted. The key is that every transaction must be made known to the auditors before it is acted on. By logging to a traditional db, you're at the mercy of the party responsible for sharing out those logs.
  - dfischer 9y ago
    Interesting. Seems like potentially cool ideas in government and politics for transparency.
  - hudon 9y ago
    Here is your schema: DATA | auditor_sig ------------------ Now: a) Assume 3 components: client, server, auditorService b) How to write to server: 1- client sends DATA to auditorService 2- auditorService signs DATA and returns S(DATA) 3- client writes (DATA, S(DATA)) to server c) How to read: 1- client reads (DATA, S(DATA)) from server 2- client verifies S(DATA) 3.1- valid? -> continue 3.2- invalid? -> delete DATA from server There are ways you can configure this to make either of these services have more weight (I made the server weak in this setup), and you can also give read access to everyone if you want it to be public (and only a subset of clients get write access). You don't need a blockchain.
    - deleted 9y ago
xorcist 9y ago
That doesn't make sense. Read accesses couldn't possibly be logged. You probably wouldn't want sensitive information like health records in a block chain. The risk for leaks is obvious. Both credit cards records and health records are data where there is a single authoritative data source. You want to know who actually accessed the data, and not any sort of decentralized consensus about the matter. Agree about the wider aspects however, but those are probably about payouts to stakes in immaterial data or zero knowledge trading of cryptographic keys rather than your health data.
- csydas 9y ago
  This is especially true for Health Records with regards to US Health Care, as access control is heavily monitored and Hospital Employees are instructed clearly and frequently that you do not access records for anyone you are not treating, accidental access needing to be reported, and so on. Confidentiality of the patient records requires a clear system to see who accessed what, when, and from where they accessed it. Blockchain seems like a complete mismatch for such an endeavor.
  - subway 9y ago
    Just because a node can participate in a blockchain and cryptographically verify the chain doesn't mean the node can access the plaintext of every record in check chain. Check out permissioned implementations like JP Morgan's Quorum.

squiggy22 9y ago

There's even evidence of vote manipulation on this very HN thread on the announcement over on Reddit.

ScottAS 9y ago

The EEA was formed in response to Hyperledger, the heavily IBM-backed private blockchain. I think it was the only possible move. The risk of Hyperledger taking over the world of blockchain was too great. EEA is sort of to Ethereum/Blockchain what RedHat is to Linux. A necessary evil.

kgin 9y ago

It's an industry working group to shape the direction of the Ethereum project, similar to a million working groups (ex Bluetooth) where companies are motivated to agree on and advance a technology. Nothing about being in EEA says that company will use the public chain. Most of them will probably use private chains. You presenting it as if it's possible for an open source project to recruit a long list of multinational corporations to sign on to collude on a pointless project just to make everyone involved look "cool" and get rich. If only.