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Get Started with Blockchain Using the New AWS Blockchain Templates

114 points by chatmasta 9y ago

viraptor 9y ago
I'm really confused by this post. It seems to me like: a) the worst place to mine anything is in a general purpose cloud with resource sharing out of your control and b) burning as many resources of a specific type as available is (I'd expect) the worst kind of customer behaviour for AWS since underutilization and overprovisioning is free money. So why does this official post exist?
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > So why does this official post exist? It lets Sales send this article to people who write in asking "can I build my blockchain on AWS", which lets Amazon make some money off the craze.
- itsnotlupus 9y ago
  I think the ability to mine is incidental here. This is more likely to be targeted at dapps developers by offering them an easy setup for both test and production environment.
- kerng 9y ago
  Azure has this for a some time with Ethereum. Blockchain as a Service they call it. It's mostly for being able to test and develop things I assume, not for mining. But I'm still not fully understanding the value of these offerings. Ethereum does have multiple test networks already. One can develop in private, that seems the main advantage.
- lt 9y ago
  This doesn't have anything to do with mining. It's about templates to provision your own private/permissioned blockchain network.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    > The template supports Ethereum mining, the EthStats and EthExplorer status pages, ... Literally the first use case mentioned.
buildbuildbuild 9y ago
Has anyone here benefited from deploying a private Ethereum network? I'm struggling to brainstorm practical use cases for my projects, other than perhaps for smart contract confidentiality reasons. It feels like the cost of maintaining more infrastructure and the potential waste of computing resources through mining outweigh any benefits but I am likely missing some great use cases.
- DIVx0 9y ago
  Yes, my company is using Quorum to build a permissioned blockchain amongst industry parties to exchange data for various value-add purposes. We have done a lot of analysis and can see large benefits of using Ethereum based private network in this way. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2018/04/02/unitedhealths-optum-and-humana-in-blockchain-deal-to-improve-doctor-directories/#1b007eeb3998 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2018/04/02/unitedhe...
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > The use of blockchain technology will hopefully avoid the all too common problem that occurs when a claim comes through from the provider and it mismatches with the information the insurance company has in its provider directory. How?!
  - grepthisab 9y ago
    Would love to see this analysis, I can’t myself think of how it would help.
  - simias 9y ago
    People keep coming back with this use case but it always baffles me. Certainly you need to have some amount of trust in these parties not to falsify data? If so, why do you need a Blockchain instead of basically anything else that would be cheaper and simpler? I hoped to find answers in this Forbes articles but all I get are vague claims like: >The use of blockchain technology will hopefully avoid the all too common problem that occurs when a claim comes through from the provider and it mismatches with the information the insurance company has in its provider directory. >CMS found 52% of Medicare Advantage plan provider “directory locations had at least one inaccuracy.” How will the blockchain magically make sure that everybody updates all information? And if people suddenly somehow make sure to publish and update the info then why can't they do the same thing with boring old technology? >“With increasing state and federal requirements relating to provider data maintenance and quality, tackling the high cost and redundancy in this space is a logical starting point" Backups and redundancy existed before the Blockchain, also I'm sure nobody wants to publish private user data publicly for all to see so it's not like random users around the world are going to mirror your database. So you end up with a "Blockchain" where only trusted people can access and contribute. What's the advantage over spinning up a PostgreSQL intance? I mean when you read the Quorum wiki[1] it reads more like a database setup guide than spinning a bitcoin node: >The P2P layer has been modified to only allow connections to/from permissioned nodes. And just like that the entire point of the Blockchain vanishes. >‘Proof of work’ consensus algorithm has been replaced with ‘QuorumChain’ consensus, a vote-based consensus mechanism. Surely I hope that medicare providers obey to some top-down rules to operate, not a consensus on a Blockchain. And given that all nodes are whitelisted anyway I'm not sure why such a voting is even required. It's pretty crazy to me that when I read articles like this one on Forbes or the Quorum website I see pages after pages of hype and praise and yet so far nobody is capable of giving me one simple use case demonstrating the practical usefulness of the technology outside of cryptocurrencies. The more I read about it the more I become convinced that the only real feature of the Blockchain is being a magic word that makes suits throw money at you. Maybe I'm just too dumb to understand it. [1] https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki
purephase 9y ago
That article lead is one of the oddest/funniest I've ever seen.
- jeffbarr 9y ago
  I wrote it, and great to hear! Did it make sense in the context of multiple uses for blockchain?
  - purephase 9y ago
    Sorry Jeff, just noticed this comment! Yes, absolutely. I liked it a lot as it added whimsy to a subject that could easily be written in a much drier style. Appreciate it!
notyourday 9y ago
Based on my observation we are reaching PeakBlockChain(tm): 1. Half of the posts in my LinkedIn use words block chain - they are not coming from usual P&D crowd. I'm seeing lawyers post "Where are all the #ladies of #blockchain. So inspired by #blockchain diversity efforts!" 2. I cannot go to a restaurant/bar/cafe/coffee shop in NYC without hearing someone next to me talking about blockchain and awesome stuff they are going to do to be riiiich riiich rich on #blockchain. Yesterday, I overheard two Mormon kids on a mission talk about blockchain over lunch. 3. IBM's ads are all about blockchain. 4. And now Amazon is jumping into Blockchain-in-a-box
- tzahola 9y ago
  Time to cash out?
  - hossbeast 9y ago
    That time was in December
    - Relys 9y ago
      "You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over." (Joe Kennedy)
      - hndamien 9y ago
        Shoeshiners were on it in July unfortunately. That would have been too early.
- jackpeterfletch 9y ago
  5. Despite being 3 years old a compelling use case for smart-contracts has yet to emerge, nor has any use for blockchain become common place except as a clandestine currency.
  - zodiac 9y ago
geraldbauer 9y ago
FYI: To get started with Blockchains from Scratch (Zero) coding / building your own in thirty lines of Ruby, Python, Go, JavaScript, ... I collect starter articles and free code samples at the Awesome Blockchains page @ https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains
s2g 9y ago
This has to be peak blockchain hype right? Make it easy to use and let people discover that it’s just not really needed for the cat majority of applications.
dkobran 9y ago
Also on HN today: “Amazon was just granted a patent for tracking Bitcoin transactions and selling the data to the government” https://www.techspot.com/news/74246-amazon-granted-patent-tracking-bitcoin-transactions-selling-data.html https://www.techspot.com/news/74246-amazon-granted-patent-tr...
- dkobran 9y ago
  Cool, just got downvoted a bunch. The Amazon mafia takeover of HN is ruining this community.
  - buildbuildbuild 9y ago
    Love your company. Don’t get paranoid. Keep it up :)

114 points by chatmasta 9y ago

I'm really confused by this post. It seems to me like: a) the worst place to mine anything is in a general purpose cloud with resource sharing out of your control and b) burning as many resources of a specific type as available is (I'd expect) the worst kind of customer behaviour for AWS since underutilization and overprovisioning is free money. So why does this official post exist?

ceejayoz 9y ago
> So why does this official post exist? It lets Sales send this article to people who write in asking "can I build my blockchain on AWS", which lets Amazon make some money off the craze.
itsnotlupus 9y ago
I think the ability to mine is incidental here. This is more likely to be targeted at dapps developers by offering them an easy setup for both test and production environment.
kerng 9y ago
Azure has this for a some time with Ethereum. Blockchain as a Service they call it. It's mostly for being able to test and develop things I assume, not for mining. But I'm still not fully understanding the value of these offerings. Ethereum does have multiple test networks already. One can develop in private, that seems the main advantage.
lt 9y ago
This doesn't have anything to do with mining. It's about templates to provision your own private/permissioned blockchain network.
- viraptor 9y ago
  > The template supports Ethereum mining, the EthStats and EthExplorer status pages, ... Literally the first use case mentioned.

buildbuildbuild 9y ago

Has anyone here benefited from deploying a private Ethereum network? I'm struggling to brainstorm practical use cases for my projects, other than perhaps for smart contract confidentiality reasons. It feels like the cost of maintaining more infrastructure and the potential waste of computing resources through mining outweigh any benefits but I am likely missing some great use cases.

DIVx0 9y ago
Yes, my company is using Quorum to build a permissioned blockchain amongst industry parties to exchange data for various value-add purposes. We have done a lot of analysis and can see large benefits of using Ethereum based private network in this way. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2018/04/02/unitedhealths-optum-and-humana-in-blockchain-deal-to-improve-doctor-directories/#1b007eeb3998 https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2018/04/02/unitedhe...
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > The use of blockchain technology will hopefully avoid the all too common problem that occurs when a claim comes through from the provider and it mismatches with the information the insurance company has in its provider directory. How?!
- grepthisab 9y ago
  Would love to see this analysis, I can’t myself think of how it would help.
- simias 9y ago
  People keep coming back with this use case but it always baffles me. Certainly you need to have some amount of trust in these parties not to falsify data? If so, why do you need a Blockchain instead of basically anything else that would be cheaper and simpler? I hoped to find answers in this Forbes articles but all I get are vague claims like: >The use of blockchain technology will hopefully avoid the all too common problem that occurs when a claim comes through from the provider and it mismatches with the information the insurance company has in its provider directory. >CMS found 52% of Medicare Advantage plan provider “directory locations had at least one inaccuracy.” How will the blockchain magically make sure that everybody updates all information? And if people suddenly somehow make sure to publish and update the info then why can't they do the same thing with boring old technology? >“With increasing state and federal requirements relating to provider data maintenance and quality, tackling the high cost and redundancy in this space is a logical starting point" Backups and redundancy existed before the Blockchain, also I'm sure nobody wants to publish private user data publicly for all to see so it's not like random users around the world are going to mirror your database. So you end up with a "Blockchain" where only trusted people can access and contribute. What's the advantage over spinning up a PostgreSQL intance? I mean when you read the Quorum wiki[1] it reads more like a database setup guide than spinning a bitcoin node: >The P2P layer has been modified to only allow connections to/from permissioned nodes. And just like that the entire point of the Blockchain vanishes. >‘Proof of work’ consensus algorithm has been replaced with ‘QuorumChain’ consensus, a vote-based consensus mechanism. Surely I hope that medicare providers obey to some top-down rules to operate, not a consensus on a Blockchain. And given that all nodes are whitelisted anyway I'm not sure why such a voting is even required. It's pretty crazy to me that when I read articles like this one on Forbes or the Quorum website I see pages after pages of hype and praise and yet so far nobody is capable of giving me one simple use case demonstrating the practical usefulness of the technology outside of cryptocurrencies. The more I read about it the more I become convinced that the only real feature of the Blockchain is being a magic word that makes suits throw money at you. Maybe I'm just too dumb to understand it. [1] https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/wiki

purephase 9y ago

That article lead is one of the oddest/funniest I've ever seen.

jeffbarr 9y ago
I wrote it, and great to hear! Did it make sense in the context of multiple uses for blockchain?
- purephase 9y ago
  Sorry Jeff, just noticed this comment! Yes, absolutely. I liked it a lot as it added whimsy to a subject that could easily be written in a much drier style. Appreciate it!

notyourday 9y ago

Based on my observation we are reaching PeakBlockChain(tm): 1. Half of the posts in my LinkedIn use words block chain - they are not coming from usual P&D crowd. I'm seeing lawyers post "Where are all the #ladies of #blockchain. So inspired by #blockchain diversity efforts!" 2. I cannot go to a restaurant/bar/cafe/coffee shop in NYC without hearing someone next to me talking about blockchain and awesome stuff they are going to do to be riiiich riiich rich on #blockchain. Yesterday, I overheard two Mormon kids on a mission talk about blockchain over lunch. 3. IBM's ads are all about blockchain. 4. And now Amazon is jumping into Blockchain-in-a-box

tzahola 9y ago
Time to cash out?
- hossbeast 9y ago
  That time was in December
  - Relys 9y ago
    "You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over." (Joe Kennedy)
    - hndamien 9y ago
      Shoeshiners were on it in July unfortunately. That would have been too early.
jackpeterfletch 9y ago
5. Despite being 3 years old a compelling use case for smart-contracts has yet to emerge, nor has any use for blockchain become common place except as a clandestine currency.
- zodiac 9y ago

geraldbauer 9y ago

FYI: To get started with Blockchains from Scratch (Zero) coding / building your own in thirty lines of Ruby, Python, Go, JavaScript, ... I collect starter articles and free code samples at the Awesome Blockchains page @ https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains

s2g 9y ago

This has to be peak blockchain hype right? Make it easy to use and let people discover that it’s just not really needed for the cat majority of applications.

dkobran 9y ago

Also on HN today: “Amazon was just granted a patent for tracking Bitcoin transactions and selling the data to the government” https://www.techspot.com/news/74246-amazon-granted-patent-tracking-bitcoin-transactions-selling-data.html https://www.techspot.com/news/74246-amazon-granted-patent-tr...

dkobran 9y ago
Cool, just got downvoted a bunch. The Amazon mafia takeover of HN is ruining this community.
- buildbuildbuild 9y ago
  Love your company. Don’t get paranoid. Keep it up :)