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Enterprise Ethereum has almost nothing to do with Ethereum the public blockchain, or crypto-currency. Ethereum based blockchains (that is based on Ethereum the

by 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
      [deleted]
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  Federated blockchains allow multiple parties in an industry (for example) to maintain a shared trusted database, with no single owner, or single point of failure. (Also, changing immutable data or posting fraudulent transactions requires collusion between multiple parties.) This is why many large industries like healthcare and finance are actively exploring this space.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Distributed databases can be configured to work that way as well. Why do you need a proof-of-work blockchain? With such a small number of participants doesn't that weaken it's integrity to attacks, especially without capital incentives?
    - omarchowdhury 9y ago
      Please someone answer this.
    - subway 9y ago
      There's nothing that ties a blockchain to proof of work. Proof of work just just one consensus protocol. For instance, JP Morgan's Quorum is working on Raft based consensus. https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/blob/master/raft/doc.md https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/blob/master/raft/doc...
      - hudon 9y ago
        The nodes are federated and you're still calling this a blockchain? What definition of the word "blockchain" are you using? Is this not more commonly called a "distributed database"?
        cbr 9y ago
        To me, "blockchain" implies the individual nodes don't trust each other, while "distributed database" does.
        9y ago
- baby 9y ago
  If I understand correctly, this is basically a database but in a merkle tree form + crypto. There is also no proof of work as it is not needed. Maybe the client has key pinning baked in it, where each bank owns a key?
  - hudon 9y ago
    If you take Ethereum and you remove ETH/gas, you remove proof of work, you remove decentralized computation because that's just really inefficient and you want high throughput... can you really call what you have left Ethereum?
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.

by subway 9y ago

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
    [deleted]
zeroxfe 9y ago
Federated blockchains allow multiple parties in an industry (for example) to maintain a shared trusted database, with no single owner, or single point of failure. (Also, changing immutable data or posting fraudulent transactions requires collusion between multiple parties.) This is why many large industries like healthcare and finance are actively exploring this space.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Distributed databases can be configured to work that way as well. Why do you need a proof-of-work blockchain? With such a small number of participants doesn't that weaken it's integrity to attacks, especially without capital incentives?
  - omarchowdhury 9y ago
    Please someone answer this.
  - subway 9y ago
    There's nothing that ties a blockchain to proof of work. Proof of work just just one consensus protocol. For instance, JP Morgan's Quorum is working on Raft based consensus. https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/blob/master/raft/doc.md https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/blob/master/raft/doc...
    - hudon 9y ago
      The nodes are federated and you're still calling this a blockchain? What definition of the word "blockchain" are you using? Is this not more commonly called a "distributed database"?
      - cbr 9y ago
        To me, "blockchain" implies the individual nodes don't trust each other, while "distributed database" does.
      - 9y ago
baby 9y ago
If I understand correctly, this is basically a database but in a merkle tree form + crypto. There is also no proof of work as it is not needed. Maybe the client has key pinning baked in it, where each bank owns a key?
- hudon 9y ago
  If you take Ethereum and you remove ETH/gas, you remove proof of work, you remove decentralized computation because that's just really inefficient and you want high throughput... can you really call what you have left Ethereum?

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.