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I have a PhD in cryptography. Please be precise. Exactly what problem will blockchain solve for vehicles? You can't just hand wave and say stuff like "decentral

I have a PhD in cryptography. Please be precise. Exactly what problem will blockchain solve for vehicles? You can't just hand wave and say stuff like "decentralized trust management" and expect us to nod along.

easymodex 8y ago
Trust and transparency.
- Moodles 8y ago
  Are you capable of being precise?
the_snooze 8y ago
Yeah, I'm quite skeptical of it as well. If I'm being really charitable to it, then it's a way to synchronize data between parties without relying on a trusted intermediary. That said, it's unclear what practical value that has outside of purely digital applications like cryptocurrency. When you roll it into things in the real world (e.g., supply chains, health records, etc.) then you necessarily have to trust the data sources and sensors, at which point what good is a blockchain?
- prostoalex 8y ago
  > it's a way to synchronize data between parties without relying on a trusted intermediary At the expense of time. So most real-world use cases (securities trading, vehicular networks, payments) fail when you introduce a 10-minute delay required for distributed confirmation. For time-insensitive examples you've provided - supply chain and health records - the use cases work better, but who will dedicate the resources and mine the blocks to ensure that specific blockchain's survival?
- easymodex 8y ago
  Say you initiate a contract to sell a yacht for 1 million $. You and your buyer go to a notary where all 3 of you sign the contract and all the proper procedures. You give the buyer the yacht and he says he will transfer you the money tomorrow. Meanwhile the buyer and the notary strike a shady deal to screw you over and make new contracts that say you sold it for 1k$. It's 2 against 1 and you will lose a costly court battle and your yacht and so on. Solution: blockchain smart contracts where code is law, more secure, trustworthy and transparent than any individual, bank, government or company.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    You are trying to solve a problem with a blockchain that does not exist. Also, exactly how does your blockchain even know "this yacht now belongs to this person"?
    - tom_ 8y ago
      It doesn't. You go to court like normal people.
    - the_snooze 8y ago
      Exactly. How does the real world's state get accurately put into a blockchain? My big beef with all the blockchain hype is that this doesn't seem to be addressed. They say "trustless" and "secure" and "transparent" all the time, but those assurances only exist within the very limited confines of the data structure itself. As soon as you hook it into real-world data, then those assurances only guarantee that fraud is accurately carried out.
    - easymodex 8y ago
      How is this not a problem if the court system is filled to the brim with situation that could have been solved with smart contracts in place. As for the yacht it's easy, the ownership is transfered from your address to the buyers address on the government's blockchain. :)
      - Moodles 8y ago
        hey everyone lets record every transaction from everyone on a big government database so we can solve trade disputes if someone steals my yacht and crashes it.
      - the_snooze 8y ago
        Let's say I'm the buyer and this happens. There's now a record on the government blockchain that says I own a yacht. Does that mean I physically have possession of the yacht now? How do we assure that what's in the blockchain is an accurate reflection of who actually has physical possession of the boat?
- Moodles 8y ago
  Indeed I have conjectured multiple times that I think the only application of blockchains is in cryptocurrency. Introducing any physical asset like a yacht or a banana in Laos or a diamond in Africa really doesn't make sense: you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain.
  - gibsons77 8y ago
    I agree. You would need an oracle in order to put physical things on the blockchain, and that is subject to incorrect data or tampering. It's non-trivial, but not technically impossible.
    - vec 8y ago
      Yes, but if you have a mechanism (either technical or institutional) that you trust to attach real-world goods to your blockchain in a sufficiently correct and tamper-resistant manner, why not just let that mechanism manage your ledger directly and skip the blockchain entirely?
      - neospice 8y ago
        Those seem like two separate problems to me. The oracle reliably reports to the blockchain while the blockchain ensures that the historical record is tamper-proof.
        UncleMeat 8y ago
        But why can you trust the oracle to report correctly but not to maintain the record?
  - denzil_correa 8y ago
    > you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain You can not otherwise too, right? A blockchain holds interactions/transactions not the data itself. Most blockchains are incredibly small in size. For example, the size of the entire Bitcoin blockchain is 215.84 GB [0]. [0] https://bitinfocharts.com https://bitinfocharts.com
- hef19898 8y ago
  Which is exactly the point I still try to get my head around when it comes to supply chains. First, for blockchain to work you need trustable sources. Problem is, when the aource is trustworthy, what added benefit comes from a blockchain? Second, having a, theoretically uninterrupted blockchain from the first raw material to, say, a car would provide way to much insight into supply chains. I pretty sure companies do not want that. Finally, and that is IMHO the haedest point to practically solve, you need to make 100 percent sure that the physical and information flow in your supply chain are never ever seperated. One single separation and your whole blockchain is worthless. And that risk is so incredibly high in the real world it's almost laughable. So, to make sure a given blockchain matches the physical product you need a trustworthy party to assure that. And then, what value does blockchain add? Someday someone a lot smarter than me will find a use case. At which I will say how damn obvious it is.
  - abraham_lincoln 8y ago
    Have you worked in manufacturing with ERP systems and BoM transactions? I could see how this would be useful for medical device manufacturing, especially something like a pacemaker.
    - hef19898 8y ago
      Indeed I did. Thing is, I see how blockchain could help existing processes. I just don't see the revolution yet. Which puzzles me, since on the one side I see the potential but on the other hand I still fail to see a real use case. And that introgues me quite a lot.
  - qnmaster 8y ago
    It's not an end-all for supply chains, but that doesn't make it useless. It still prevents forgery of old records. If someone signs something, they can't later go back and change it or claim they didn't.
gibsons77 8y ago
This is the example I was referring to: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8358773 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8358773. The problem is one where there are multiple vehicles, from different manufacturers, that must communicate with each other in real time (say at an intersection) and must make decisions based on messages being relayed to them. This is easier if they are all following the same protocol.
- Moodles 8y ago
  There is no need to have a database replicated everywhere across a network and for all nodes in the network to be constantly engaging in a consensus protocol to agree upon the state on the ledger for some cars to communicate. Almost always a blockchain is (i) useless or (ii) something kinda vaguely like Satoshi's blockchain but really more like Git.
  - gibsons77 8y ago
    I agree for this particular case, which is why I think a DAG with local consensus (something like IOTA) is more applicable for this application.
    - Moodles 8y ago
      I think DAGs are possibly even more useless.
      - gibsons77 8y ago
        And you're of course free to have your own opinion. I'm not as quick to dismiss them simply because I acknowledge that new technologies have historically been ridiculed by experts at least initially. But healthy skepticism is always warranted.
  - yarrel 8y ago
    There is an important qualifier that people keep forgetting. You wouldn't need such a system for cars to communicate in the presence of authority or in the absence of value. The former is the case for Lyft or Uber, the latter is the case if we have an infinite supply of cars. But if one wishes to have peer-to-peer value (and cars ain't cheap) without a central authority (and Uber is evil) a proof-of-work blockchain is better for that than Git or a server run by some guy is. There may of course be superior social or technical forms for this use case. But once you have added the qualifier that the system should be decentralised (and for everyone making a career out of pretending not to understand what this word means: I mean here that there should be no central point of control at the point of transaction) a blockchain may make more sense than some of the alternatives.
proxylittle 8y ago
Is it just me or do the replies I'm seeing come across condescending and unsubstantial? I'm also missing why your PhD in cryptography is any important for the sake of the argument. We are not you in regards to your last remark by the way: "...expect us to nod along". But since you are looking for a good argument to support your confirmation bias, blockchain itself doesn't solve anything. It's just a data structure and a tool. The problem solving happens in the bigger picture, e.g. "decentralised trust management". But let me ask you this: exactly what problem will a database/tree/file solve for vehicles or currencies? We can agree upon that what you are asking and looking for can't be answered or will get a reply similar to: we don't have that problem. You may have asked the wrong question though. Let me be more precise and create a problem that doesn't exist but for programming purposes I want these requirements: many users should be able to read a (hardly) modifiable data structure that gets more resilient the more use it and that is a singleton who everybody has access to (call it decentralised if you will). Blockchain sounds like a perfect fit doesn't it? Now, when we replace the data structure keyword with OS and resiliency with speed, we can agree upon that this sounds like a decentralised operating system (Ethereum or whatnot). Don't get me wrong. I don't see any problems that need to be solved with blockchain right now either. But clearly there is a trend in cryptocurrencies and decentralisation that seems to be important to a lot of people. There are tons of problems that need solving: trust misuse, censorships, privacy issues, advertising and so on. That there is a need for a change is obvious. That this change started with blockchain technology is good. I'm also sure cryptography is important to you too. Why not embrace an emerging technology that benefit your field of study?
abraham_lincoln 8y ago
Service records for the life of the car. Vehicle purchasing/financing paperwork. Inspection tracking.

easymodex 8y ago

Trust and transparency.

Moodles 8y ago
Are you capable of being precise?

the_snooze 8y ago

Yeah, I'm quite skeptical of it as well. If I'm being really charitable to it, then it's a way to synchronize data between parties without relying on a trusted intermediary. That said, it's unclear what practical value that has outside of purely digital applications like cryptocurrency. When you roll it into things in the real world (e.g., supply chains, health records, etc.) then you necessarily have to trust the data sources and sensors, at which point what good is a blockchain?

prostoalex 8y ago
> it's a way to synchronize data between parties without relying on a trusted intermediary At the expense of time. So most real-world use cases (securities trading, vehicular networks, payments) fail when you introduce a 10-minute delay required for distributed confirmation. For time-insensitive examples you've provided - supply chain and health records - the use cases work better, but who will dedicate the resources and mine the blocks to ensure that specific blockchain's survival?
easymodex 8y ago
Say you initiate a contract to sell a yacht for 1 million $. You and your buyer go to a notary where all 3 of you sign the contract and all the proper procedures. You give the buyer the yacht and he says he will transfer you the money tomorrow. Meanwhile the buyer and the notary strike a shady deal to screw you over and make new contracts that say you sold it for 1k$. It's 2 against 1 and you will lose a costly court battle and your yacht and so on. Solution: blockchain smart contracts where code is law, more secure, trustworthy and transparent than any individual, bank, government or company.
- Moodles 8y ago
  You are trying to solve a problem with a blockchain that does not exist. Also, exactly how does your blockchain even know "this yacht now belongs to this person"?
  - tom_ 8y ago
    It doesn't. You go to court like normal people.
  - the_snooze 8y ago
    Exactly. How does the real world's state get accurately put into a blockchain? My big beef with all the blockchain hype is that this doesn't seem to be addressed. They say "trustless" and "secure" and "transparent" all the time, but those assurances only exist within the very limited confines of the data structure itself. As soon as you hook it into real-world data, then those assurances only guarantee that fraud is accurately carried out.
  - easymodex 8y ago
    How is this not a problem if the court system is filled to the brim with situation that could have been solved with smart contracts in place. As for the yacht it's easy, the ownership is transfered from your address to the buyers address on the government's blockchain. :)
    - Moodles 8y ago
      hey everyone lets record every transaction from everyone on a big government database so we can solve trade disputes if someone steals my yacht and crashes it.
    - the_snooze 8y ago
      Let's say I'm the buyer and this happens. There's now a record on the government blockchain that says I own a yacht. Does that mean I physically have possession of the yacht now? How do we assure that what's in the blockchain is an accurate reflection of who actually has physical possession of the boat?
Moodles 8y ago
Indeed I have conjectured multiple times that I think the only application of blockchains is in cryptocurrency. Introducing any physical asset like a yacht or a banana in Laos or a diamond in Africa really doesn't make sense: you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain.
- gibsons77 8y ago
  I agree. You would need an oracle in order to put physical things on the blockchain, and that is subject to incorrect data or tampering. It's non-trivial, but not technically impossible.
  - vec 8y ago
    Yes, but if you have a mechanism (either technical or institutional) that you trust to attach real-world goods to your blockchain in a sufficiently correct and tamper-resistant manner, why not just let that mechanism manage your ledger directly and skip the blockchain entirely?
    - neospice 8y ago
      Those seem like two separate problems to me. The oracle reliably reports to the blockchain while the blockchain ensures that the historical record is tamper-proof.
      - UncleMeat 8y ago
        But why can you trust the oracle to report correctly but not to maintain the record?
- denzil_correa 8y ago
  > you can't literally put those physical things in the blockchain You can not otherwise too, right? A blockchain holds interactions/transactions not the data itself. Most blockchains are incredibly small in size. For example, the size of the entire Bitcoin blockchain is 215.84 GB [0]. [0] https://bitinfocharts.com https://bitinfocharts.com
hef19898 8y ago
Which is exactly the point I still try to get my head around when it comes to supply chains. First, for blockchain to work you need trustable sources. Problem is, when the aource is trustworthy, what added benefit comes from a blockchain? Second, having a, theoretically uninterrupted blockchain from the first raw material to, say, a car would provide way to much insight into supply chains. I pretty sure companies do not want that. Finally, and that is IMHO the haedest point to practically solve, you need to make 100 percent sure that the physical and information flow in your supply chain are never ever seperated. One single separation and your whole blockchain is worthless. And that risk is so incredibly high in the real world it's almost laughable. So, to make sure a given blockchain matches the physical product you need a trustworthy party to assure that. And then, what value does blockchain add? Someday someone a lot smarter than me will find a use case. At which I will say how damn obvious it is.
- abraham_lincoln 8y ago
  Have you worked in manufacturing with ERP systems and BoM transactions? I could see how this would be useful for medical device manufacturing, especially something like a pacemaker.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    Indeed I did. Thing is, I see how blockchain could help existing processes. I just don't see the revolution yet. Which puzzles me, since on the one side I see the potential but on the other hand I still fail to see a real use case. And that introgues me quite a lot.
- qnmaster 8y ago
  It's not an end-all for supply chains, but that doesn't make it useless. It still prevents forgery of old records. If someone signs something, they can't later go back and change it or claim they didn't.

gibsons77 8y ago

This is the example I was referring to: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8358773 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8358773. The problem is one where there are multiple vehicles, from different manufacturers, that must communicate with each other in real time (say at an intersection) and must make decisions based on messages being relayed to them. This is easier if they are all following the same protocol.

Moodles 8y ago
There is no need to have a database replicated everywhere across a network and for all nodes in the network to be constantly engaging in a consensus protocol to agree upon the state on the ledger for some cars to communicate. Almost always a blockchain is (i) useless or (ii) something kinda vaguely like Satoshi's blockchain but really more like Git.
- gibsons77 8y ago
  I agree for this particular case, which is why I think a DAG with local consensus (something like IOTA) is more applicable for this application.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    I think DAGs are possibly even more useless.
    - gibsons77 8y ago
      And you're of course free to have your own opinion. I'm not as quick to dismiss them simply because I acknowledge that new technologies have historically been ridiculed by experts at least initially. But healthy skepticism is always warranted.
- yarrel 8y ago
  There is an important qualifier that people keep forgetting. You wouldn't need such a system for cars to communicate in the presence of authority or in the absence of value. The former is the case for Lyft or Uber, the latter is the case if we have an infinite supply of cars. But if one wishes to have peer-to-peer value (and cars ain't cheap) without a central authority (and Uber is evil) a proof-of-work blockchain is better for that than Git or a server run by some guy is. There may of course be superior social or technical forms for this use case. But once you have added the qualifier that the system should be decentralised (and for everyone making a career out of pretending not to understand what this word means: I mean here that there should be no central point of control at the point of transaction) a blockchain may make more sense than some of the alternatives.

proxylittle 8y ago

Is it just me or do the replies I'm seeing come across condescending and unsubstantial? I'm also missing why your PhD in cryptography is any important for the sake of the argument. We are not you in regards to your last remark by the way: "...expect us to nod along". But since you are looking for a good argument to support your confirmation bias, blockchain itself doesn't solve anything. It's just a data structure and a tool. The problem solving happens in the bigger picture, e.g. "decentralised trust management". But let me ask you this: exactly what problem will a database/tree/file solve for vehicles or currencies? We can agree upon that what you are asking and looking for can't be answered or will get a reply similar to: we don't have that problem. You may have asked the wrong question though. Let me be more precise and create a problem that doesn't exist but for programming purposes I want these requirements: many users should be able to read a (hardly) modifiable data structure that gets more resilient the more use it and that is a singleton who everybody has access to (call it decentralised if you will). Blockchain sounds like a perfect fit doesn't it? Now, when we replace the data structure keyword with OS and resiliency with speed, we can agree upon that this sounds like a decentralised operating system (Ethereum or whatnot). Don't get me wrong. I don't see any problems that need to be solved with blockchain right now either. But clearly there is a trend in cryptocurrencies and decentralisation that seems to be important to a lot of people. There are tons of problems that need solving: trust misuse, censorships, privacy issues, advertising and so on. That there is a need for a change is obvious. That this change started with blockchain technology is good. I'm also sure cryptography is important to you too. Why not embrace an emerging technology that benefit your field of study?

abraham_lincoln 8y ago

Service records for the life of the car. Vehicle purchasing/financing paperwork. Inspection tracking.