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Every time we have a story like this, every time I ask - how does this work on a blockchain? Many people will talk about blockchain trustless-ness and how this

Every time we have a story like this, every time I ask - how does this work on a blockchain? Many people will talk about blockchain trustless-ness and how this doesn't requires trust etc. And I ask give me an end to end example of what are the trust issues here and how does blockchain solve it? I have yet to get a concrete answer. So, again what trust issues does blockchain solve? To ensure we are not talking about completely abstract things let's take a real life example. Here's an issue: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-welspun-india-walmart-idUSKCN11G02A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-welspun-india-walmart-idU... Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Friday said it will stop selling Egyptian cotton sheets made by Welspun India after the Indian manufacturer was unable to assure them the products were authentic. How does blockchain help?

noddy1 9y ago
An olive farm makes some extra virgin olive oil in Italy. It is recorded at some date. They also make some virgin and some regular olive oil. It gets put in bottles and shipped somewhere. The shipping info is linked to the original production entry on the blockchain. An IOT device in the shipping load adds an entry to the blockchain saying that that it hasnt gone above or below some range of temperatures. It finally reaches a wholesale destination. At this point, it could go to a number of companies. In this case, any buyer could verify: 1) That an entry was made that this was extra virgin 2) that the olive farm is also making appropriate quantities of virgin and non-virgin olive oil - eg. not just labeling all of it extra virgin 3) where and when the shipping company picked up the olive oil from that farm 4) that this olive oil was transported in appropriate conditions These are all timestamped, impossible to alter, and would require an elaborate planned fraud between a number of parties to fake. How would you do this without blockchain? with a trusted 3rd party. Who can you trust when you are involving the russian govt, chinese govt, and US govt, and EU, and corrupt italian public servants? none of those groups trust any of the other parties completely.
- adyus 9y ago
  > It is recorded at some date. This is where the human element comes into play, and something the blockchain cannot secure.
  - noddy1 9y ago
    Crime and plotting is much harder to do prospectively than retrospectively. Having prospective records timestamped from a number of independent providers is really hard to fake.
    - adyus 9y ago
      That's true, but I cannot recall a recent instance of "cooked books" since everything started moving to centralized databases. The blockchain keeps looking like a solution in search of a problem that could be solved easier by other means.
      - noddy1 9y ago
        I agree; I'm cynical on about 99.99% of touted blockchain use cases. However, for the 0.01% of use cases where you can't trust the government (money printing) or where the stakes are too high to rely on the security of a trusted 3rd party, blockchain is great.
- thisisit 9y ago
  That is a pretty exhaustive example. And the timestamp process looks pretty foolproof. Couple of questions though - How would the IOT device in the shipping load know what temperature the olive oil has been? Please don't say the IOT device can be placed in farms because we are currently talking about a logistics systems. And even if the IOT was placed in the farms - how would anyone verify if the IOT ie the source of data was hacked. Maybe just enough to show that the farm is producing 10% more extra virgin oil? How would the blockchain entries be managed? Because remember a block is added via majority rules - PoW or PoS. So, in case of olive oil manufacturing - who would verify if the IOT entry is correct? What happens if the IOT is not tampered and just malfunctions giving incorrect data?
- bildung 9y ago
  Could you eaborate how any trust problem is solved here? Points 1 and two aren't solved in any way, as the buyer has to trust the producer to not lie when making the entry. In other words, the trust problem here occurs before entry into the database. Point 4 is already solved with by a multitude of companies selling those temperature-sensible stickers (and adding/removing the stickers is the same vulnerability as adding/removing the iot device). BTW, with a blockchain solution, these are not at all "impossible to alter". That would only be true for a blockchain that is actually decentralized and heavily mined. That implies a blockchain with a multitude of products using the same chain (e.g. not just an OliveOilChain), but then we approach the scaling border very fast, making a blockchain unusable for this use case.
  - noddy1 9y ago
    "Points 1 and two aren't solved in any way, as the buyer has to trust the producer to not lie when making the entry. In other words, the trust problem here occurs before entry into the database." The blockchain will show in time that X producer sells X amount of extra virgin, virgin, and regular olive oil. This will make it difficult for a small single origin producer claiming that ALL of their output is extra virgin. It would also make it difficult for a small producer to rebrand large volumes of some other olive oil as their own. As for the temp-sensing stickers - add GPS, encryption and transmitting functions and you can add some cool features to temp sensing stickers. Finally- there isn't THAT much data involved here for the $$ involved, you could do it on the ethereum blockchain or even the litecoin chain. There are quite a number of ultrasecure blockchains at this point.
  - chrisallenlane 9y ago
    > BTW, with a blockchain solution, these are not at all "impossible to alter". That would only be true for a blockchain that is actually decentralized and heavily mined. An excellent point. I wonder if a market will emerge from the need to secure (and thus mine) these private blockchains. IE, perhaps Walmart could secure its logistical blockchain by compensating miners in "WalmartCoin", which is redeemable at the store.

noddy1 9y ago

An olive farm makes some extra virgin olive oil in Italy. It is recorded at some date. They also make some virgin and some regular olive oil. It gets put in bottles and shipped somewhere. The shipping info is linked to the original production entry on the blockchain. An IOT device in the shipping load adds an entry to the blockchain saying that that it hasnt gone above or below some range of temperatures. It finally reaches a wholesale destination. At this point, it could go to a number of companies. In this case, any buyer could verify: 1) That an entry was made that this was extra virgin 2) that the olive farm is also making appropriate quantities of virgin and non-virgin olive oil - eg. not just labeling all of it extra virgin 3) where and when the shipping company picked up the olive oil from that farm 4) that this olive oil was transported in appropriate conditions These are all timestamped, impossible to alter, and would require an elaborate planned fraud between a number of parties to fake. How would you do this without blockchain? with a trusted 3rd party. Who can you trust when you are involving the russian govt, chinese govt, and US govt, and EU, and corrupt italian public servants? none of those groups trust any of the other parties completely.

adyus 9y ago
> It is recorded at some date. This is where the human element comes into play, and something the blockchain cannot secure.
- noddy1 9y ago
  Crime and plotting is much harder to do prospectively than retrospectively. Having prospective records timestamped from a number of independent providers is really hard to fake.
  - adyus 9y ago
    That's true, but I cannot recall a recent instance of "cooked books" since everything started moving to centralized databases. The blockchain keeps looking like a solution in search of a problem that could be solved easier by other means.
    - noddy1 9y ago
      I agree; I'm cynical on about 99.99% of touted blockchain use cases. However, for the 0.01% of use cases where you can't trust the government (money printing) or where the stakes are too high to rely on the security of a trusted 3rd party, blockchain is great.
thisisit 9y ago
That is a pretty exhaustive example. And the timestamp process looks pretty foolproof. Couple of questions though - How would the IOT device in the shipping load know what temperature the olive oil has been? Please don't say the IOT device can be placed in farms because we are currently talking about a logistics systems. And even if the IOT was placed in the farms - how would anyone verify if the IOT ie the source of data was hacked. Maybe just enough to show that the farm is producing 10% more extra virgin oil? How would the blockchain entries be managed? Because remember a block is added via majority rules - PoW or PoS. So, in case of olive oil manufacturing - who would verify if the IOT entry is correct? What happens if the IOT is not tampered and just malfunctions giving incorrect data?
bildung 9y ago
Could you eaborate how any trust problem is solved here? Points 1 and two aren't solved in any way, as the buyer has to trust the producer to not lie when making the entry. In other words, the trust problem here occurs before entry into the database. Point 4 is already solved with by a multitude of companies selling those temperature-sensible stickers (and adding/removing the stickers is the same vulnerability as adding/removing the iot device). BTW, with a blockchain solution, these are not at all "impossible to alter". That would only be true for a blockchain that is actually decentralized and heavily mined. That implies a blockchain with a multitude of products using the same chain (e.g. not just an OliveOilChain), but then we approach the scaling border very fast, making a blockchain unusable for this use case.
- noddy1 9y ago
  "Points 1 and two aren't solved in any way, as the buyer has to trust the producer to not lie when making the entry. In other words, the trust problem here occurs before entry into the database." The blockchain will show in time that X producer sells X amount of extra virgin, virgin, and regular olive oil. This will make it difficult for a small single origin producer claiming that ALL of their output is extra virgin. It would also make it difficult for a small producer to rebrand large volumes of some other olive oil as their own. As for the temp-sensing stickers - add GPS, encryption and transmitting functions and you can add some cool features to temp sensing stickers. Finally- there isn't THAT much data involved here for the $$ involved, you could do it on the ethereum blockchain or even the litecoin chain. There are quite a number of ultrasecure blockchains at this point.
- chrisallenlane 9y ago
  > BTW, with a blockchain solution, these are not at all "impossible to alter". That would only be true for a blockchain that is actually decentralized and heavily mined. An excellent point. I wonder if a market will emerge from the need to secure (and thus mine) these private blockchains. IE, perhaps Walmart could secure its logistical blockchain by compensating miners in "WalmartCoin", which is redeemable at the store.