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A regular centralized company wouldn't want to necessarily use the ETH blockchain. They would use a private blockchain for internal auditing or supply chain par

A regular centralized company wouldn't want to necessarily use the ETH blockchain. They would use a private blockchain for internal auditing or supply chain partnerships, and would probably build it on something like HyperLedger https://www.hyperledger.org/use/fabric https://www.hyperledger.org/use/fabric (What?! The Linux Foundation??). Binance did fork ETH and has built out the Binance Smart Chain. Problem is that is still centralized. The unresolved debate is whether its the code or the network effects that matter. Oh by the way: Bitcoin is open sourced too. Here's the link! https://github.com/bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoin

XorNot 6y ago
Why would any company build a private blockchain? Private companies have top to bottom control of their systems, which means they don't need proof of work or proof of stake or any other system to establish trust: they can just issue PKI keys to employees from a database. Private blockchain has never made any sense: you just give all your employees private keys and move on with your life. EDIT: Which is to say, I'm sure a lot of people are saying they're doing it, and it is yet to be for anything more then to say "we're doing blockchain" to investors and the public. EDIT 2: Reading through the Hyperledger case studies seems to bare this out as well - the implementations are comparatively small, and keep desperately asking the question "was blockchain vital to any of this, or was the actual innovation you just finally automated something into a database?"
- meowkit 6y ago
  Clearly we have different interpretations of the case studies. Walmart seems interested. But I guess its all just buzzwords and speculation! All these people wasting their time on something so obviously useless. You should let them know!!
  - XorNot 6y ago
    Walmart have literally thousands if not tens of thousands of product lines, but after an initial study are not using their hyperledger implementation for more then 25 according to the website. But that's not the real problem: the real problem is, how can blockchain contribute anything to this problem for them? The process of validating the origin of goods depends on remotely uploading certificates of authenticity - an artifact produced off-chain. From that point on, nothing else matters - since it all depends on whether that certificate is legitimate, trust is external to the chain. The rest does not require "blockchain" at all and is actively made more difficult by it - since every other step is just regular logistics tracking, something Walmart is very good at. Again: what possible benefit is blockchain bringing here? The original artifact is off chain, the goods in question are offchain and the cited benefit is not "improved security" -- it's "quicker look ups". But...that would've been achieved by just scanning barcode numbers into a database at every location (which again: is trust, it's not a fact which is established on-chain). So yes, I do believe people are wasting their time on something obviously useless - IBM was involved and their biggest contribution to my country was to call 25 million people logging on to do a census on one night a denial of service attack. Walmart executives aren't technical - they need to know "what the blockchain could do" and IBM sells them some snakeoil.
- inter_netuser 6y ago
  Because consortiums of companies exist? Because companies don't really trust each other and have huge legal teams review 100+ pg contracts? Even internally trust is lacking at times? It does have some efficiencies. They are likely tiny compared to separating money and state, like we managed to separate religion and state.
ObserverNeutral 6y ago
> Bitcoin is open source Bitcoin is open source, all right. But the first mover advantage and marketing campaign that it has...well it's insurmountable at this point. > Problem is that is still centralized The world doesn't give a damn about that. The only killer app of decentralization as of today is the ability to give people peace of mind that the unit of account they use to store their wealth cannot be tempered with by anybody. Literally the only application of decentralization was the ability to avoid the ever present threat of money printing because people are scared of inflation and rightfully so. Ever since the stone age people have been diluted by the the central currency authority, it's a fear that is deeply rooted in our brains. People aren't similarly scared about Paypal or Visa processing their transactions. Fear is the greatest motivation and fear of inflation is the only thing giving the decentralization thing any market. Everybody , ranging from the supermarket employee to Stanley Druckenmiller...they are all scared as hell about inflation. And it shows in the marketcap and price of king BTC BTC gives those 7 billions people a way to express such fears in the market whereas they could only buy Gold, Silver, and Inflation indexed bonds before BTC came about.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  >>The only killer app of decentralization as of today is the ability to give people peace of mind that the unit of account they use to store their wealth cannot be tempered with by anybody. Being able to use a tamper-proof currency in financial applications that are decentralized means one's holdings of that currency remain tamper-proof even when they are employing them in financial applications. That is the value that Ethereum's smart contract functionality provides.
  - ObserverNeutral 6y ago
    > financial applications Legacy financial applications are fine. People who are afraid of inflation just convert BTC>USD the sole amount they need to use the financial application and that's it. Also DeFi apps are very illiquid and extremely complicated to use. Finally let's not hide the truth: 99% of financial apps are based on loans. Crypto loans are doomed because people don't want to borrow crypto as they anticipate huge appreciation and such appreciation would leave them in a hole financially speaking. Also without an identity system a borrower can just steal crypto, and never pay back interest or principal Also the lender requires high interest to separate themselves from their crypto considering how novel is the system and how frequent hacks and as I said people outright fleeing are. The most successful crypto loans are the ones denominated in USD and happening on centralized platforms (and those crypto never leave the platform as they are used to short)

XorNot 6y ago

Why would any company build a private blockchain? Private companies have top to bottom control of their systems, which means they don't need proof of work or proof of stake or any other system to establish trust: they can just issue PKI keys to employees from a database. Private blockchain has never made any sense: you just give all your employees private keys and move on with your life. EDIT: Which is to say, I'm sure a lot of people are saying they're doing it, and it is yet to be for anything more then to say "we're doing blockchain" to investors and the public. EDIT 2: Reading through the Hyperledger case studies seems to bare this out as well - the implementations are comparatively small, and keep desperately asking the question "was blockchain vital to any of this, or was the actual innovation you just finally automated something into a database?"

meowkit 6y ago
Clearly we have different interpretations of the case studies. Walmart seems interested. But I guess its all just buzzwords and speculation! All these people wasting their time on something so obviously useless. You should let them know!!
- XorNot 6y ago
  Walmart have literally thousands if not tens of thousands of product lines, but after an initial study are not using their hyperledger implementation for more then 25 according to the website. But that's not the real problem: the real problem is, how can blockchain contribute anything to this problem for them? The process of validating the origin of goods depends on remotely uploading certificates of authenticity - an artifact produced off-chain. From that point on, nothing else matters - since it all depends on whether that certificate is legitimate, trust is external to the chain. The rest does not require "blockchain" at all and is actively made more difficult by it - since every other step is just regular logistics tracking, something Walmart is very good at. Again: what possible benefit is blockchain bringing here? The original artifact is off chain, the goods in question are offchain and the cited benefit is not "improved security" -- it's "quicker look ups". But...that would've been achieved by just scanning barcode numbers into a database at every location (which again: is trust, it's not a fact which is established on-chain). So yes, I do believe people are wasting their time on something obviously useless - IBM was involved and their biggest contribution to my country was to call 25 million people logging on to do a census on one night a denial of service attack. Walmart executives aren't technical - they need to know "what the blockchain could do" and IBM sells them some snakeoil.
inter_netuser 6y ago
Because consortiums of companies exist? Because companies don't really trust each other and have huge legal teams review 100+ pg contracts? Even internally trust is lacking at times? It does have some efficiencies. They are likely tiny compared to separating money and state, like we managed to separate religion and state.

ObserverNeutral 6y ago

> Bitcoin is open source Bitcoin is open source, all right. But the first mover advantage and marketing campaign that it has...well it's insurmountable at this point. > Problem is that is still centralized The world doesn't give a damn about that. The only killer app of decentralization as of today is the ability to give people peace of mind that the unit of account they use to store their wealth cannot be tempered with by anybody. Literally the only application of decentralization was the ability to avoid the ever present threat of money printing because people are scared of inflation and rightfully so. Ever since the stone age people have been diluted by the the central currency authority, it's a fear that is deeply rooted in our brains. People aren't similarly scared about Paypal or Visa processing their transactions. Fear is the greatest motivation and fear of inflation is the only thing giving the decentralization thing any market. Everybody , ranging from the supermarket employee to Stanley Druckenmiller...they are all scared as hell about inflation. And it shows in the marketcap and price of king BTC BTC gives those 7 billions people a way to express such fears in the market whereas they could only buy Gold, Silver, and Inflation indexed bonds before BTC came about.

CryptoPunk 6y ago
>>The only killer app of decentralization as of today is the ability to give people peace of mind that the unit of account they use to store their wealth cannot be tempered with by anybody. Being able to use a tamper-proof currency in financial applications that are decentralized means one's holdings of that currency remain tamper-proof even when they are employing them in financial applications. That is the value that Ethereum's smart contract functionality provides.
- ObserverNeutral 6y ago
  > financial applications Legacy financial applications are fine. People who are afraid of inflation just convert BTC>USD the sole amount they need to use the financial application and that's it. Also DeFi apps are very illiquid and extremely complicated to use. Finally let's not hide the truth: 99% of financial apps are based on loans. Crypto loans are doomed because people don't want to borrow crypto as they anticipate huge appreciation and such appreciation would leave them in a hole financially speaking. Also without an identity system a borrower can just steal crypto, and never pay back interest or principal Also the lender requires high interest to separate themselves from their crypto considering how novel is the system and how frequent hacks and as I said people outright fleeing are. The most successful crypto loans are the ones denominated in USD and happening on centralized platforms (and those crypto never leave the platform as they are used to short)