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> So, how does blockchain help? Easy: the malicious actor has zero chance of arguing that port authority XY messed up the paperwork or that the documentation s
by qayxc 5y ago
> So, how does blockchain help?
Easy: the malicious actor has zero chance of arguing that port authority XY messed up the paperwork or that the documentation said it was 1 brick all along.
Sure, there is the oracle problem, but that's not what the blockchain (not a public BC by the way, it uses a fixed number of trusted nodes) tries to solve.
The issue is often patchy documentation and lack of traceability. BC is only one tool of many here and the major improvement is digitalisation of the entire supply chain.
I worked on a project in wholesale logistics several years ago and you wouldn't believe how many parts of the delivery system are still handled using literal paperwork. Coffee stains and manual "corrections" are daily occurrences and because of that, resolving irregularities way too often comes down to his/her words against theirs.
A fully digital supply chain with every step and update permanently recorded in a cryptographically secured manner, helps immensely with these kinds of issues.
BC is just one part of it and doesn't aim to solve everything, but it's a huge improvement. The distributed nature of the ledger provides an incentive for all participants to take part in it, because it reduces trust issues that might arise if all trust is to be put into a single party.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to tell whether a more conventional distributed database system would've sufficed, and what the pros and cons of either approach are in detail, but BC is a viable solution.
- Jasper_ 5y agoThe malicious actor insists they shipped 1 ton of bricks, and that the port authority is lying or stole the remaining ones. The blockchain says they shipped 1 ton of bricks, after all.
- kazoomonger 5y agoI'm actually kind of bullish on blockchain for these sorts of scenarios, because yes, the malicious actor can claim that someone else in the chain screwed up, but all parties involved can verify all claims that were made in the entire chain. In other words, the malicious actor can't destroy or modify the paperwork and then claim something different.
- dmitriid 5y agoMalicious actors don't have to "destroy or modify paperwork". Paperwork is very rarely "destroyed or modified". It is usually already kept/entered as modified (and there's potentially an entirely separate and isolated paperwork trail for the actor's own accounting purposes, but that one by definition won't be on a blockchain).
- kazoomonger 5y ago> Malicious actors don't have to "destroy or modify paperwork" Sure, they don't have to, but it eliminates one possible source of malicious behavior. I'm not saying that using a blockchain will eliminate all malicious behavior, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
- dmitriid 5y ago> but it eliminates one possible source of malicious behavior. Why is it that every single discussion about blockchain starts with "it opens up unprecedented opportunities never seen before and will disrupt eveyrthing" and ends with "well, it will maybe perhaps help in some minor way"? In this discussion: How it started: "irrevocable timestamps and ordering for cryptographic signatures provide a level of audibility and traceability that wasn't there before." How it's going: "it eliminates one possible source of malicious behavior" Color me not impressed.
- kazoomonger 5y agoI didn't say anything about disrupting everything shrug. I just said I'm kind of bullish on it for this use case. That being said, "it eliminates one possible source of malicious behavior" is exactly derived from "irrevocable timestamps and ordering for cryptographic signatures provide a level of audibility and traceability that wasn't there before." so I'm not sure what your complaint is there. The auditability and traceability are exactly what eliminates that avenue of malicious behavior. Again, it's not going to revolutionize everything, but it seems useful here.