Looks like another overly simple blockchain article. The author lists a bunch of reasons why someone might want to use a private ledger and then dismisses all o

Looks like another overly simple blockchain article. The author lists a bunch of reasons why someone might want to use a private ledger and then dismisses all of them without any argument. Here's a whole bunch of reasons why private ledgers make sense in some context: - Control read / write - A list of companies in a consortium might like to maintain shared settlement resources but don't trust a single party for consensus. A private ledger offers a genuine improvement in security over other technologies during a breach. I.e. imagine if there are machines being controlled by authorized humans working with contracts on the private ledger. Hacking a few servers there isn't going to compromise the contracts which is really cool. - Scale better (scrap the distributed part) - Some of the newer ledgers are doing exactly that. When you cut node count it does reduce decentralization but the trade-offs are on a gradient. Again, not necessarily an incorrect choice. Look at something like Ricardian contracts on Corda for settling bank deals. The actual "settlement" isn't done on the ledger at all. All that occurs on Corda is a beautiful way to craft financial contracts that will be easier to audit by regulators. Private ledgers all help with that and would benefit from not using an entire flooding-based p2p network to do it. - So we can store private data - There are many companies and institutions that need to store private data. One can imagine advertising companies sharing demographics or hospitals sharing medical records. There's nothing novel here about acting as a database. What the author fails to grasp are some of the more subtle aspects of distributed ledgers. Like the more nuanced trust relationships between companies or business requirements (upgrading old technology, sharing the costs, incentivized standardization.) Caveat: distributed ledgers are not blockchains. But my problem with this article is the blockchain fanaticism mixed with the authors seeming inability to think outside of black and white terms. He dismisses everything about enterprise ledger technology that doesn't fit in his narrow definitions and can't see any of the nuances of using them. The result is a person who fails to understand either public blockchains or private ledgers very well (like most people it seems.)