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Is there an example of a blockchain implementation that is tried and true outside of cryptocurrency? I remember seeing when large tech firms were jumping on th

Is there an example of a blockchain implementation that is tried and true outside of cryptocurrency? I remember seeing when large tech firms were jumping on the bandwagon and proposing things that blockchain could do. Everyone was like "so, that problem has already been solved for years with X, blockchain provides no advantages".

teepo 6y ago
from the article: "Big Blue’s major blockchain networks are FoodTrust, a farm-to-supermarket tracking system backed by Walmart; and TradeLens, a shipping container logistics blockchain backed by Maersk. IBM has also added the Trust Your Supplier network and previously had a go at payments via World Wire."
- perardi 6y ago
  Is there any analysis out there about how well these systems work, and why a blockchain works better than a traditional inventory management system? All I can find on these implementations are by blockchain startups who have a pretty obvious interest in making blockchain solution look good. But…how is this better than a good old database? They say “trust”, and I guess that’s true in the sense you can verify the changes to the ledger. But isn’t the lack of trust in the original producers? How is it more trustworthy if they catalog this with a blockchain versus a database?
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  But since IBM is canning the blockchain group, it's safe to say that those implementations are far from tried-and-true.
arsome 6y ago
There's some really cool stuff going on in the distributed storage space thanks to this - blockchains have provided a way to pay for, prove you've stored data and provide collateral should you fail to store it, establishing the whole contract without the need for a centralized party, allowing anyone to sell excess storage. Sia is probably the most mature implementation at the moment, but there's a number of competitors in the space. But as you can see even this is pretty cryptocurrency adjacent. For anything that doesn't rely on distributed trust you're much better off making a database, perhaps with a hash chain glued to it if you need to prevent reversion.
- phil21 6y ago
  I really want this concept to work, but I still cannot ever get someone involved in these projects to really give me a realistic (paying) customer base that scales. I'm ready and willing to stand up a rack full of spinning rust for such a concept to be a provider, I just have yet to make the model work or trust there is a customer base willing to store their data in such a manner.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > I'm ready and willing to stand up a rack full of spinning rust for such a concept to be a provider, So ... you're really not that committed financially.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Ironically, tying a cryptocurrency to a real-world use case like paying for storage is the fastest way to throw cold water on price speculation. Once people can price a coin in terms of real-world assets like storage, it becomes easy to see when the coin is overvalued. IMO, this is why Bitcoiners aren’t actually interested in making Bitcoin easy to use for payments. They only want two use cases: Buying and holding. Selling or spending will only drive the price down.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > this is why Bitcoiners aren’t actually interested in making Bitcoin easy to use for payments. They only want two use cases: Buying and holding. TL; DR The political history of deflationary currencies, which until modern times meant any metal-based currency that wasn't being mined at a rate similar to or faster than economic growth.
    - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      The cryptosphere is trying to push a populist narrative for cryptocurrencies. Calling it the people’s money or democratized banking. This seems doomed to backfire when people realize that the vast majority of crypto is held by lucky early adopters. A hypothetical Bitcoin dominated economy would be nearly the polar opposite of fair or democratized. I expect the populist angle to fail as people catch on to the incentives of early adopters, both private and institutional.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fny 6y ago
Ethereum?
- UShouldBWorking 6y ago
  Ive used and built ethereum contacts and for me it's a failed project. Today it costs $11 to get a transaction through. That alone makes the project useless for most people. Even just reansering money is expensive. BTC and ethereum have both failed. Bitcoin Cash and Monero are doing well but basically ignored because they work so well they are boeing.
mgoetzke 6y ago
In our system (has event-sourcing parallels) we can optionally use it by chaining subsequent event hashes to each other and letting blocks of such events be signed by an external signing server. This does not require a bitcoin de-centralized signing process though and is better done via a normal external authority. It is now harder to falsify server data, since you not only have to recreate all hashes from the moment of change in the event log, but also have them be authenticated by the external source. In addition to the underlying ZFS snapshots a lot needs to be compromised to change data without detection
ericcholis 6y ago
Agriculture Supply chain?
sodafountan 6y ago
IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ Filecoin: https://filecoin.io/ https://filecoin.io/ blockchains are all about decentralization which will make more and more sense in the age of de-platforming (facebook, robinhood, twitter, AWS with Parler.. you name it), it makes sense why nobody would want to work on this technology for IBM, completely defeats the purpose. There's so many other interesting applications for cryptocurrency too. In terms of gaming could you imagine in-game tokenized economies? What if Blizzard built a World of Warcraft token and had a real-time in game economy. What if Rockstar did it with Grand Theft Auto? All of a sudden these IP's have real world value tied to them in the form of a cryptocurrency - it really is interesting if you think it through.
teknopurge 6y ago
IMO, Storj (storj.io) is the most mature in terms of viability. The project uses blockchain for metering and economics of the ecosystem but uses a more traditional and practical architecture that make's sense for apps and companies to use. They seem to be taking a more performant and practical(read: usable) hybrid blockchain approach. I do like what Filecoin is doing albeit Filecoin is more academic/provocative and a few years away from viability, IMO.
- DenseComet 6y ago
  The main thing I like about Filecoin is how Filecoin is tied to IPFS, but IPFS is not tied to Filecoin. It provides useful functions to applications building on IPFS and uses proven tech, but if I just want to use IPFS, I don't have to touch any crypto.
ThePowerOfDirge 6y ago
Decentralized derivatives trading https://injectiveprotocol.com/ https://injectiveprotocol.com/
baby 6y ago
Corda? Hyperledger? Fabric?
cphajduk 6y ago
Not an "implementation", but for me cryptocurrencies seem like a nice way for replacing the slow international wire transfers that you get from the average bank. I honestly haven't used crypto this way much, but it seems like it would be a decent way to transact across borders.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  This is one of the markets some alt coins with low transaction fees and high number of transactions per second try to tackle.
aaron695 6y ago
LARPing, Hobbiests, Art All multi-billion $ industries.

teepo 6y ago

from the article: "Big Blue’s major blockchain networks are FoodTrust, a farm-to-supermarket tracking system backed by Walmart; and TradeLens, a shipping container logistics blockchain backed by Maersk. IBM has also added the Trust Your Supplier network and previously had a go at payments via World Wire."

perardi 6y ago
Is there any analysis out there about how well these systems work, and why a blockchain works better than a traditional inventory management system? All I can find on these implementations are by blockchain startups who have a pretty obvious interest in making blockchain solution look good. But…how is this better than a good old database? They say “trust”, and I guess that’s true in the sense you can verify the changes to the ledger. But isn’t the lack of trust in the original producers? How is it more trustworthy if they catalog this with a blockchain versus a database?
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
But since IBM is canning the blockchain group, it's safe to say that those implementations are far from tried-and-true.

arsome 6y ago

There's some really cool stuff going on in the distributed storage space thanks to this - blockchains have provided a way to pay for, prove you've stored data and provide collateral should you fail to store it, establishing the whole contract without the need for a centralized party, allowing anyone to sell excess storage. Sia is probably the most mature implementation at the moment, but there's a number of competitors in the space. But as you can see even this is pretty cryptocurrency adjacent. For anything that doesn't rely on distributed trust you're much better off making a database, perhaps with a hash chain glued to it if you need to prevent reversion.

phil21 6y ago
I really want this concept to work, but I still cannot ever get someone involved in these projects to really give me a realistic (paying) customer base that scales. I'm ready and willing to stand up a rack full of spinning rust for such a concept to be a provider, I just have yet to make the model work or trust there is a customer base willing to store their data in such a manner.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > I'm ready and willing to stand up a rack full of spinning rust for such a concept to be a provider, So ... you're really not that committed financially.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Ironically, tying a cryptocurrency to a real-world use case like paying for storage is the fastest way to throw cold water on price speculation. Once people can price a coin in terms of real-world assets like storage, it becomes easy to see when the coin is overvalued. IMO, this is why Bitcoiners aren’t actually interested in making Bitcoin easy to use for payments. They only want two use cases: Buying and holding. Selling or spending will only drive the price down.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > this is why Bitcoiners aren’t actually interested in making Bitcoin easy to use for payments. They only want two use cases: Buying and holding. TL; DR The political history of deflationary currencies, which until modern times meant any metal-based currency that wasn't being mined at a rate similar to or faster than economic growth.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    The cryptosphere is trying to push a populist narrative for cryptocurrencies. Calling it the people’s money or democratized banking. This seems doomed to backfire when people realize that the vast majority of crypto is held by lucky early adopters. A hypothetical Bitcoin dominated economy would be nearly the polar opposite of fair or democratized. I expect the populist angle to fail as people catch on to the incentives of early adopters, both private and institutional.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fny 6y ago

Ethereum?

UShouldBWorking 6y ago
Ive used and built ethereum contacts and for me it's a failed project. Today it costs $11 to get a transaction through. That alone makes the project useless for most people. Even just reansering money is expensive. BTC and ethereum have both failed. Bitcoin Cash and Monero are doing well but basically ignored because they work so well they are boeing.

mgoetzke 6y ago

In our system (has event-sourcing parallels) we can optionally use it by chaining subsequent event hashes to each other and letting blocks of such events be signed by an external signing server. This does not require a bitcoin de-centralized signing process though and is better done via a normal external authority. It is now harder to falsify server data, since you not only have to recreate all hashes from the moment of change in the event log, but also have them be authenticated by the external source. In addition to the underlying ZFS snapshots a lot needs to be compromised to change data without detection

ericcholis 6y ago

Agriculture Supply chain?

sodafountan 6y ago

IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ Filecoin: https://filecoin.io/ https://filecoin.io/ blockchains are all about decentralization which will make more and more sense in the age of de-platforming (facebook, robinhood, twitter, AWS with Parler.. you name it), it makes sense why nobody would want to work on this technology for IBM, completely defeats the purpose. There's so many other interesting applications for cryptocurrency too. In terms of gaming could you imagine in-game tokenized economies? What if Blizzard built a World of Warcraft token and had a real-time in game economy. What if Rockstar did it with Grand Theft Auto? All of a sudden these IP's have real world value tied to them in the form of a cryptocurrency - it really is interesting if you think it through.

teknopurge 6y ago

IMO, Storj (storj.io) is the most mature in terms of viability. The project uses blockchain for metering and economics of the ecosystem but uses a more traditional and practical architecture that make's sense for apps and companies to use. They seem to be taking a more performant and practical(read: usable) hybrid blockchain approach. I do like what Filecoin is doing albeit Filecoin is more academic/provocative and a few years away from viability, IMO.

DenseComet 6y ago
The main thing I like about Filecoin is how Filecoin is tied to IPFS, but IPFS is not tied to Filecoin. It provides useful functions to applications building on IPFS and uses proven tech, but if I just want to use IPFS, I don't have to touch any crypto.

ThePowerOfDirge 6y ago

Decentralized derivatives trading https://injectiveprotocol.com/ https://injectiveprotocol.com/

baby 6y ago

Corda? Hyperledger? Fabric?

cphajduk 6y ago

Not an "implementation", but for me cryptocurrencies seem like a nice way for replacing the slow international wire transfers that you get from the average bank. I honestly haven't used crypto this way much, but it seems like it would be a decent way to transact across borders.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
This is one of the markets some alt coins with low transaction fees and high number of transactions per second try to tackle.

aaron695 6y ago

LARPing, Hobbiests, Art All multi-billion $ industries.