5 ms·

I found the blockchain use case flow chart here to be excellent. pg 42

by meow_mix 8y ago

raws 8y ago
p53 in pdf :)
gitgud 8y ago
A good starting point for someone to make: youdontneedablockchain.com
andrewflnr 8y ago
Haha, that's brutal. By which I mean brutally accurate. I would be happy to show that to anyone considering a blockchain.
- darawk 8y ago
  You think conditions that satisfy that flow chart don't exist?
  - piracy1 8y ago
    Except, ya know, trustless currency. :p
  - BenoitP 8y ago
    In my opinion, very little current business practices fall under a positive answer to this: "Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the datastore" Because by definition, if the business practice exists in the first place it is because they already found a solution to collaborate. I'm almost tempted to add a snarky: "for further information, please refer to this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law"
    - darawk 8y ago
      I understand why you might think that that isn't an issue, but it absolutely is. Think about stagnant systems that persist for seemingly incomprehensible reasons. SWIFT payments, paper stock settlement, do you know how bond trading works? Paper. Someone has to physically sign it over. Do you know why these legacy methods persist? They persist not because the people involved don't know there's a better way. They persist because nobody can agree on who should control the new way. This is exactly the problem that blockchains solve. This point is subtle, but it is extremely important, and it absolutely needs to be taken seriously. I should point out, that Git solves exactly the same problem, by the way. You don't want a centralized entity hosting your project? Great, use git. Git, by the way, is a blockchain.
      - dreamcompiler 8y ago
        Git is not a secure blockchain. It's quite easy to rewrite history in git to change the true order of events (after all, that's the whole purpose of rebase). A true blockchain has to be protected by cryptographic signing protocols; git is not.
        darawk 8y ago
        A) What is your point? B) Git is perfectly secure if you don't accept pushes.
        dreamcompiler 8y ago
        My point is that it cannot solve the problems a blockchain can. You could not build a digital currency on git.
        darawk 8y ago
        Cryptocurrencies are just git + proof of work. Git, on its own, is a blockchain. Adding proof of work to a blockchain solves the timestamping problem, which allows you to use that blockchain as a currency (i.e. prevent double spends). Many times that property is useful (more than just in currencies, e.g. trading stocks), but not always, and it is not an essential property of a 'blockchain'.
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    No. That's the beautiful thing about it. It doesn't try to tell you there are no good use cases, just that there are very few and you almost certainly don't have one.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Well, except that there are actually quite a few. Git (distributed version control), for instance. Currencies, for another. Asset trading of any kind. Supply chain management and authenticity validation. Maybe you think those things are 'few', but they are quite critical.
      - c-cube 8y ago
        git is not what people call "blockchain", only half of it. The distributed consensus part is not there. Maybe that's what it's both efficient and popular?
        darawk 8y ago
        Git absolutely has distributed consensus. That's what merges are. That's the sense in which git is decentralized. What git does not have is distributed timestamping, which is necessary for a currency, but not version control. And which is why PoW et al were introduced for cryptocurrencies. However, that is not a fundamental property of a blockchain, though it is useful for some (but not all) of the applications of blockchains.
      - andrewflnr 8y ago
        "Few" is quite enough to establish that most people should use something else, regardless of how crucial the rest may be. Speaking of "enough", enough with the "git is a blockchain" thing. It's a chain of blocks, but it's not a "blockchain" in the sense that term is actually used, and everyone knows it. You're not helping your case with that.
        darawk 8y ago
        Oh, so a thing can have all of the properties of a blockchain, but because it doesn't suit your narrative, it is not one? That doesn't seem like much of an argument to me. Tell me, which of the conditions of the flow chart does git not satisfy? And better yet, which technical property of a blockchain does git lack that disqualifies it? You seem to be trying to define blockchain as "a thing without a use case", and then when presented with a use case say "see look it has a use case! it's not a blockchain!".
sdinsn 8y ago
Sadly it leaves out distributed hash tables, which is a commonly ignored solution to a lot of the "problems" that bring people to blockchain.

I found the blockchain use case flow chart here to be excellent. pg 42

raws 8y ago

p53 in pdf :)

gitgud 8y ago

A good starting point for someone to make: youdontneedablockchain.com

andrewflnr 8y ago

Haha, that's brutal. By which I mean brutally accurate. I would be happy to show that to anyone considering a blockchain.

darawk 8y ago
You think conditions that satisfy that flow chart don't exist?
- piracy1 8y ago
  Except, ya know, trustless currency. :p
- BenoitP 8y ago
  In my opinion, very little current business practices fall under a positive answer to this: "Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the datastore" Because by definition, if the business practice exists in the first place it is because they already found a solution to collaborate. I'm almost tempted to add a snarky: "for further information, please refer to this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law"
  - darawk 8y ago
    I understand why you might think that that isn't an issue, but it absolutely is. Think about stagnant systems that persist for seemingly incomprehensible reasons. SWIFT payments, paper stock settlement, do you know how bond trading works? Paper. Someone has to physically sign it over. Do you know why these legacy methods persist? They persist not because the people involved don't know there's a better way. They persist because nobody can agree on who should control the new way. This is exactly the problem that blockchains solve. This point is subtle, but it is extremely important, and it absolutely needs to be taken seriously. I should point out, that Git solves exactly the same problem, by the way. You don't want a centralized entity hosting your project? Great, use git. Git, by the way, is a blockchain.
    - dreamcompiler 8y ago
      Git is not a secure blockchain. It's quite easy to rewrite history in git to change the true order of events (after all, that's the whole purpose of rebase). A true blockchain has to be protected by cryptographic signing protocols; git is not.
      - darawk 8y ago
        A) What is your point? B) Git is perfectly secure if you don't accept pushes.
        dreamcompiler 8y ago
        My point is that it cannot solve the problems a blockchain can. You could not build a digital currency on git.
        darawk 8y ago
        Cryptocurrencies are just git + proof of work. Git, on its own, is a blockchain. Adding proof of work to a blockchain solves the timestamping problem, which allows you to use that blockchain as a currency (i.e. prevent double spends). Many times that property is useful (more than just in currencies, e.g. trading stocks), but not always, and it is not an essential property of a 'blockchain'.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  No. That's the beautiful thing about it. It doesn't try to tell you there are no good use cases, just that there are very few and you almost certainly don't have one.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Well, except that there are actually quite a few. Git (distributed version control), for instance. Currencies, for another. Asset trading of any kind. Supply chain management and authenticity validation. Maybe you think those things are 'few', but they are quite critical.
    - c-cube 8y ago
      git is not what people call "blockchain", only half of it. The distributed consensus part is not there. Maybe that's what it's both efficient and popular?
      - darawk 8y ago
        Git absolutely has distributed consensus. That's what merges are. That's the sense in which git is decentralized. What git does not have is distributed timestamping, which is necessary for a currency, but not version control. And which is why PoW et al were introduced for cryptocurrencies. However, that is not a fundamental property of a blockchain, though it is useful for some (but not all) of the applications of blockchains.
    - andrewflnr 8y ago
      "Few" is quite enough to establish that most people should use something else, regardless of how crucial the rest may be. Speaking of "enough", enough with the "git is a blockchain" thing. It's a chain of blocks, but it's not a "blockchain" in the sense that term is actually used, and everyone knows it. You're not helping your case with that.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Oh, so a thing can have all of the properties of a blockchain, but because it doesn't suit your narrative, it is not one? That doesn't seem like much of an argument to me. Tell me, which of the conditions of the flow chart does git not satisfy? And better yet, which technical property of a blockchain does git lack that disqualifies it? You seem to be trying to define blockchain as "a thing without a use case", and then when presented with a use case say "see look it has a use case! it's not a blockchain!".

sdinsn 8y ago

Sadly it leaves out distributed hash tables, which is a commonly ignored solution to a lot of the "problems" that bring people to blockchain.