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Ask HN: How does Blockchain as a Service work?
Hi HN,
can someone explain briefly why blockchain as a service makes sense? e.g. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/
Based on my basic understanding I do see two major issues:
1. The integrity of the blockchain relies on (many) different parties that operate a copy of the blockchain independently. If someone offers this as service this prerequisite is violated, isn't it?
2. The implementation is controlled by a single party and not implemented by a third-party which is not directly involved in the business.
All in all, Blockchain as a service seems to be just another (business) term for a trustee protocol.
- seanwasere 9y agoblockchain as a service means, you can access the blockchain, but you will need to pay a price. This is the future of bitcoin, due to the ever increasing complexities of hosting a full node yourself. If demand continues to warrant, your access to the blockchain will accessed only via the networks of the largest and most powerful institutions in the world.
- brudgers 9y agoBlockchains are cryptographically hashed ledgers, this means that barring a hash collision, each unique input will produce a unique output and that one of the inputs to the hashing algorithm is a representation of all the previous transactions on the ledger. Independent operation is a premise of distribution, not integrity. Integrity comes from idempotence of the cryptographic hash...the same inputs always produce the same outputs. In terms of integrity the blockchain is no different from Git. Unlike Bitcoin there are many situations in which the ledger operates in an environment with higher interparty trust. Bitcoin is entirely adversarial in a way that a blockchain operating entirely internal to an organization such as a bank is not. In between are many potential interparty applications where partial trust may be good enough, such as the agreement of 50% or 70% of nodes. One of feature that can make a network good enough is the ability to blacklist nodes that appear untrustworthy. To put it another way, the trust model for Azure's service is different from the trust model for Bitcoin, etc.