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It's buzzwords being thrown around again. Blockchain is highly inefficient for anything other than decentralized consensus.

by rabuse 7y ago

tzumby 7y ago
For sure, doesn’t seem like there’s a need to solve for adversarial Byzantine style attacks here. Even a permissioned proof of authority blockchain is overkill for this (which is most likely what Accenture is building/configuring for them)
derpherpsson 7y ago
Maybe the blockchain is meant for "offline" transactions, when neither part is in contact with the Main Server. Disclaimer: I dont know
tadfisher 7y ago
Blockchains are highly inefficient for decentralized consensus as well.
- darawk 7y ago
  But they are the most efficient known solution to the problem. Efficiency is relative.
  - tadfisher 7y ago
    No, they are the most efficient known solution to global consensus for double-spend. There are alternatives that relax the constraints using extra information such as connections in the network to get a relatively good approximation of the global consensus. See Safecoin, for example.
teh_infallible 7y ago
Are blockchains inefficient if you’re not using proof of work? I thought it was the latter that was a source of inefficiency, and you don’t need PoW on a permissioned network.
- tzumby 7y ago
  If you're not using proof of work, blockchains start to look more like distributed storage with an audit trail and immutable row level db constraints - if it's a Proof of Authority is like a way to deal with who has access to write to the db - the distributed consensus part is well researched (Raft, Paxos etc) The only advantage that I can think of is interoperability: you will be able to communicate with the public blockchain for point in time "backups". Also, building your internal smart contracts you can use an existing language like Solidity.
- lawn 7y ago
  Even if you use some other consensus mechanism they're still inefficient. All full nodes in the network still have to propagate, validate and store all transactions forever. This is indeed much more inefficient compared to a centralized solution and it's very difficult to create a decentralized network that can handle the amount of transactions that VISA processes for example.

It's buzzwords being thrown around again. Blockchain is highly inefficient for anything other than decentralized consensus.

by rabuse 7y ago

It's buzzwords being thrown around again. Blockchain is highly inefficient for anything other than decentralized consensus.

tzumby 7y ago

For sure, doesn’t seem like there’s a need to solve for adversarial Byzantine style attacks here. Even a permissioned proof of authority blockchain is overkill for this (which is most likely what Accenture is building/configuring for them)

derpherpsson 7y ago

Maybe the blockchain is meant for "offline" transactions, when neither part is in contact with the Main Server. Disclaimer: I dont know

tadfisher 7y ago

Blockchains are highly inefficient for decentralized consensus as well.

darawk 7y ago
But they are the most efficient known solution to the problem. Efficiency is relative.
- tadfisher 7y ago
  No, they are the most efficient known solution to global consensus for double-spend. There are alternatives that relax the constraints using extra information such as connections in the network to get a relatively good approximation of the global consensus. See Safecoin, for example.

teh_infallible 7y ago

Are blockchains inefficient if you’re not using proof of work? I thought it was the latter that was a source of inefficiency, and you don’t need PoW on a permissioned network.

tzumby 7y ago
If you're not using proof of work, blockchains start to look more like distributed storage with an audit trail and immutable row level db constraints - if it's a Proof of Authority is like a way to deal with who has access to write to the db - the distributed consensus part is well researched (Raft, Paxos etc) The only advantage that I can think of is interoperability: you will be able to communicate with the public blockchain for point in time "backups". Also, building your internal smart contracts you can use an existing language like Solidity.
lawn 7y ago
Even if you use some other consensus mechanism they're still inefficient. All full nodes in the network still have to propagate, validate and store all transactions forever. This is indeed much more inefficient compared to a centralized solution and it's very difficult to create a decentralized network that can handle the amount of transactions that VISA processes for example.