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This. When I see something like this: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/walmart-is-betting-on-the-blockchain-to-improve-food-safety/ https://techcrunch.com/20

This. When I see something like this: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/walmart-is-betting-on-the-blockchain-to-improve-food-safety/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/walmart-is-betting-on-the-... I just don't get it. I understand the motivation behind them wanting this sort of broad supply-chain tracking, but I don't see what "blockchain" actually solves for them that can't be more readily/efficiently solved in other ways. A trusted third party, with an immutable transaction ledger, and a simple to develop to set of APIs seems far superior from a product perspective in a case like this rather than those solutions that will simply build this same thing on "blockchain" software. The only gap is an API which is domain specific (like for food supply chain). (And even this won't solve many of the trust issues in food supply chain, but it looks like it will offer the same useful traits of a blockchain only more simply). [edit for clarity]

Alex3917 8y ago
> A trusted third party What does an industry with thousands of different major players have to gain by coming together to give a single company a monopoly over their entire industry? And in fact, one of the biggest strengths of blockchain is that it provides a viable alternative to monopolies for various industries.
- michaelmior 8y ago
  I don't think the parent was suggesting there be a single trusted third party.
  - darawk 8y ago
    > A trusted third party, with an immutable transaction ledger This is overall great. QLDB is necessary for a lot of things, and it will be useful for a lot of the stupid 'blockchain' projects to be displaced by a better technical solution. Now cryptocurrencies and blockchains are exactly what they are: a decentralized version of this. I believe that decentralization has some use cases that are extremely important. Now it can stand on its own, without being conflated with verifiable ledgers.
- qyv 8y ago
  Using a private blockchain has the same issue of trusting a third party. As soon as someone has control of who can write to the ledger, you need to trust them, period.
  - Kinnard 8y ago
    A lot of people would assert that "private blockchain" is an oxymoron. The semantics have not resolved yet. I expect that they will resolve to exclude such things.
  - petra 8y ago
    Well AWS is already the trusted third party for so much stuff. What's another db ?
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Ask the financial industry e.g. Swift.
iblaine 8y ago
The idea is immutable micro-transactions to track operations in a complex inventory system. Consider a situation where a customer finds a nail in their banana. This 'blockchain' db could be used to recognize where the banana was sold, what truck delivered it, where that specific banana and was sourced. It can be an interesting solution or vaporware depending on your level of interest. I personally think micro-transactions and blockchain do not go well together but reading debates about the tech is still interesting.
- baxtr 8y ago
  What’s the advantage over a centralized system?
  - antaviana 8y ago
    Inmutability of the transaction history.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      You don’t need a blockchain for that also if the “transcation data” itself is not immutable such as in the case of a banana so how would this work exactly?
      - sbuttgereit 8y ago
        The transaction data should be immutable; many of the actual facts concerning the Banana are not mutable: it was picked when it was picked, it was moved when it was moved. Assuming the transactions reflect this accurately, they need not be mutable. What the transaction data should not be is irreversible. So, for example, if there's a data entry error discovered, I need to show that I'm changing the current knowledge of that banana without losing the prior erroneous transaction. It's the same sort of thing we'd do for a financial ledger: we don't change existing erroneous records in the database... we book new correcting records. In a number of your comments you talk about errors: the transaction processing technology being discussed will not address those issues be they mistakes, non-compliance, or anything other that rather naive cheating. I think people hear about some of the attributes of blockchain, such as being distributed, and say, "hey, that solves some of the problem of getting disparate, unrelated parties transacting in a common data set."... along with a misunderstanding of trust model and its relationship to data integrity across that shared ledger... and they get all excited about blockchain. You're right you don't need blockchain and a central database could do it. The harder parts are administrative around the many parties and then getting the parties to participate at all. I think the transnational immutability aspects are beneficial for food safety, I don't think the raw complexity of implementing a new blockchain to do it makes sense. I do think with the right kind of industry focused solution on top of something like this Amazon product, can be that sort of single database, with some of the helpful parts that have appeal in regards to blockchain and without the complexity. There are still issues which I don't believe something like this Amazon product solves, but I do think it moves the needle.
acjohnson55 8y ago
The Walmart thing is just PR. I doubt it's anything beyond a pilot and it's probably just a permissioned ledger, much like QLDB.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  I work with a couple of food industry businesses which are also in business with some of the other members of the Walmart initiative. The specific technology the Walmart group is working with is IBM's implementation of: https://www.hyperledger.org/about https://www.hyperledger.org/about There is a concerted effort from what we can see, and are getting some subtle hints that we need to be going down this path from some shared government customers. That is far from saying that this will be successful or that it will get past early stages, but they're definitely trying. Having said all that, my understanding is this is more in line with a true blockchain effort rather than something like QLDB (though I hope I've misread on that count in case I do get stuck on dealing with this).

Alex3917 8y ago

> A trusted third party What does an industry with thousands of different major players have to gain by coming together to give a single company a monopoly over their entire industry? And in fact, one of the biggest strengths of blockchain is that it provides a viable alternative to monopolies for various industries.

michaelmior 8y ago
I don't think the parent was suggesting there be a single trusted third party.
- darawk 8y ago
  > A trusted third party, with an immutable transaction ledger This is overall great. QLDB is necessary for a lot of things, and it will be useful for a lot of the stupid 'blockchain' projects to be displaced by a better technical solution. Now cryptocurrencies and blockchains are exactly what they are: a decentralized version of this. I believe that decentralization has some use cases that are extremely important. Now it can stand on its own, without being conflated with verifiable ledgers.
qyv 8y ago
Using a private blockchain has the same issue of trusting a third party. As soon as someone has control of who can write to the ledger, you need to trust them, period.
- Kinnard 8y ago
  A lot of people would assert that "private blockchain" is an oxymoron. The semantics have not resolved yet. I expect that they will resolve to exclude such things.
- petra 8y ago
  Well AWS is already the trusted third party for so much stuff. What's another db ?
dogma1138 8y ago
Ask the financial industry e.g. Swift.

iblaine 8y ago

The idea is immutable micro-transactions to track operations in a complex inventory system. Consider a situation where a customer finds a nail in their banana. This 'blockchain' db could be used to recognize where the banana was sold, what truck delivered it, where that specific banana and was sourced. It can be an interesting solution or vaporware depending on your level of interest. I personally think micro-transactions and blockchain do not go well together but reading debates about the tech is still interesting.

baxtr 8y ago
What’s the advantage over a centralized system?
- antaviana 8y ago
  Inmutability of the transaction history.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    You don’t need a blockchain for that also if the “transcation data” itself is not immutable such as in the case of a banana so how would this work exactly?
    - sbuttgereit 8y ago
      The transaction data should be immutable; many of the actual facts concerning the Banana are not mutable: it was picked when it was picked, it was moved when it was moved. Assuming the transactions reflect this accurately, they need not be mutable. What the transaction data should not be is irreversible. So, for example, if there's a data entry error discovered, I need to show that I'm changing the current knowledge of that banana without losing the prior erroneous transaction. It's the same sort of thing we'd do for a financial ledger: we don't change existing erroneous records in the database... we book new correcting records. In a number of your comments you talk about errors: the transaction processing technology being discussed will not address those issues be they mistakes, non-compliance, or anything other that rather naive cheating. I think people hear about some of the attributes of blockchain, such as being distributed, and say, "hey, that solves some of the problem of getting disparate, unrelated parties transacting in a common data set."... along with a misunderstanding of trust model and its relationship to data integrity across that shared ledger... and they get all excited about blockchain. You're right you don't need blockchain and a central database could do it. The harder parts are administrative around the many parties and then getting the parties to participate at all. I think the transnational immutability aspects are beneficial for food safety, I don't think the raw complexity of implementing a new blockchain to do it makes sense. I do think with the right kind of industry focused solution on top of something like this Amazon product, can be that sort of single database, with some of the helpful parts that have appeal in regards to blockchain and without the complexity. There are still issues which I don't believe something like this Amazon product solves, but I do think it moves the needle.

acjohnson55 8y ago

The Walmart thing is just PR. I doubt it's anything beyond a pilot and it's probably just a permissioned ledger, much like QLDB.

sbuttgereit 8y ago
I work with a couple of food industry businesses which are also in business with some of the other members of the Walmart initiative. The specific technology the Walmart group is working with is IBM's implementation of: https://www.hyperledger.org/about https://www.hyperledger.org/about There is a concerted effort from what we can see, and are getting some subtle hints that we need to be going down this path from some shared government customers. That is far from saying that this will be successful or that it will get past early stages, but they're definitely trying. Having said all that, my understanding is this is more in line with a true blockchain effort rather than something like QLDB (though I hope I've misread on that count in case I do get stuck on dealing with this).