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Usually it's when you want decentralized validation of time-series data. E.g. The egg industry adopts a solution whereby the chicken are tracked on a blockchain

by iuguy 6y ago

Usually it's when you want decentralized validation of time-series data. E.g. The egg industry adopts a solution whereby the chicken are tracked on a blockchain so people know which chickens are kept outdoors and which are indoors. The eggs are then tracked and checked in at each quality gate and the consumer then gets a QR code for an app that tells them where the egg came from and where it was checked for tampering etc. A blockchain isn't the only solution available, and it doesn't require a public blockchain. A blockchain could work in this space for storing decentralized time-series signatures.

Tomte 6y ago
> the chicken are tracked on a blockchain so people know which chickens are kept outdoors and which are indoors. A blockchain does nothing to ensure that an indoor chicken isn't marked as outside. How an untruthful information is distributed or secured doesn't matter. All those blockchain logistics tracking ideas fail at the same point: where the blockchain meets the real, physical world.
- mattkevan 6y ago
  Probably missing something big here, but that’s the problem I see with all crypto/blockchain/smart contract stuff. They’re supposed to remove the need for trust, but they don’t, they just shift the need along a bit. There always needs to be an element of trust somewhere or it all falls apart. For blockchain logistics, you have to trust that the information entered is correct in the first place. For smart contracts, if you don’t trust the legal system or the other party enough to use standard contract law, you still have to trust that they will abide by the contract (and if the legal system is in such poor shape that you don’t trust it, or the transaction is by nature illegal, then the other party has even less incentive to follow the rules). It’s not possible to create a purely technological solution to what is essentially a people problem. Our entire civilisation is built on trust, our systems are built to reinforce trust and to provide consequences when it’s broken. Things go badly fast when trust fails and no amount of clever sums can change that.
- jarofgreen 6y ago
  I think this is referred to as "the oracle problem" in Blockchain
cheeze 6y ago
This is a poor example IMO. You're talking about something that can easily be handled by a database... you don't have trust issues or a byzantine generals problem to solve when it comes to egg tracking. Blockchain does nothing to ensure that the data is truthful.
- iuguy 6y ago
  Yes it's absolutely a poor example, that's why I wrote this: > A blockchain isn't the only solution available, and it doesn't require a public blockchain. You are right that Blockchain does nothing to ensure that the data is truthful. Neither does a centralized database.

by iuguy 6y ago

Tomte 6y ago

> the chicken are tracked on a blockchain so people know which chickens are kept outdoors and which are indoors. A blockchain does nothing to ensure that an indoor chicken isn't marked as outside. How an untruthful information is distributed or secured doesn't matter. All those blockchain logistics tracking ideas fail at the same point: where the blockchain meets the real, physical world.

mattkevan 6y ago
Probably missing something big here, but that’s the problem I see with all crypto/blockchain/smart contract stuff. They’re supposed to remove the need for trust, but they don’t, they just shift the need along a bit. There always needs to be an element of trust somewhere or it all falls apart. For blockchain logistics, you have to trust that the information entered is correct in the first place. For smart contracts, if you don’t trust the legal system or the other party enough to use standard contract law, you still have to trust that they will abide by the contract (and if the legal system is in such poor shape that you don’t trust it, or the transaction is by nature illegal, then the other party has even less incentive to follow the rules). It’s not possible to create a purely technological solution to what is essentially a people problem. Our entire civilisation is built on trust, our systems are built to reinforce trust and to provide consequences when it’s broken. Things go badly fast when trust fails and no amount of clever sums can change that.
jarofgreen 6y ago
I think this is referred to as "the oracle problem" in Blockchain

cheeze 6y ago

This is a poor example IMO. You're talking about something that can easily be handled by a database... you don't have trust issues or a byzantine generals problem to solve when it comes to egg tracking. Blockchain does nothing to ensure that the data is truthful.

iuguy 6y ago
Yes it's absolutely a poor example, that's why I wrote this: > A blockchain isn't the only solution available, and it doesn't require a public blockchain. You are right that Blockchain does nothing to ensure that the data is truthful. Neither does a centralized database.