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> Once submitted, that “contract” will be carried out exactly as specified. It is observable to everyone, debuggable, and non-falsifiable. But a centralized da

> Once submitted, that “contract” will be carried out exactly as specified. It is observable to everyone, debuggable, and non-falsifiable. But a centralized database can also achieve this, right? The premise of the general public trusting a blockchain more than an established, centralized 3rd party (e.g. government) seems so feeble.

jen729w 5y ago
Isn’t it the visibility thing? Yeah a centralised database can do this. Good luck getting access to it. “Security” says you can’t. I think that one of the allures of the blockchain is that it’s publicly visible. This may or may not be a fallacy of reasoning but hey, we’re human.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  A lot of government databases are publicly accessible. For example, in Austria we have the "Grundbuch", a register of land ownership. Everyone can inspect the Grundbuch database. Authenticity is guaranteed by requiring a public notary or a court to confirm any changes in the database, and there is a paper trail for every change to a record. It's boring old tech, but it works, and doesn't have all the gotchas of blockchains.
  - hansonkd13 5y ago
    Same thing exists in the US. Property ownership and property tax is open and publicly accessible
  - berkes 5y ago
    Many people complain about transaction fees and limited throughput of a blockchain. I can only imagine this ancient system to be a magnitude worse in those regards.
    - nicbou 5y ago
      Depends on the system. We served webpages quickly 20 years ago. Berlin also has an open data portal, and it's as fast as any other website.
    - newaccount74 5y ago
      The system is optimized for security, preventing fraud is more important than throughput in this case. Registering something in the Grundbuch is fast enough for property transactions. Transaction fees are high by design. They are a form of tax on property transactions that discourages short term investments. The system works very well and I just don't think it needs fixing.
      - berkes 5y ago
        > The system works very well and I just don't think it needs fixing. For the few use-cases that match it, yes. The name Grundbuch itself puts a limit on its use, but we can imagine that there are many situations that call for the same amount of protection and trust, but which require a far higher throughput. Back when Grundbuch was set up, ground and estate was probably the most valuable asset peopel can own. Today we have stocks, bonds, contracts, savings, companies, art, private-keys, hell; even cars, that are worth a multiple of a typical meadow in the Austrian hills. Many of these classes cannot use the a system like Grundbuch because its fees are too high or its throughput too low. No-one wants to pay upwards of €600 just to sell some AAPL stock. No insurance company wants to drive to a notary for each contract they sign and then pay €600 upwards. I'm not trying to say that blockchain is a solution for all these cases (It isn't). I'm saying that the system is limiting, problematic and unfit for many cases. That therefore, this system is unfit for the majority of cases that would need them 2021 (but for one specific case it works).
ulrikrasmussen 5y ago
Exactly. Case in point: GitHub. We trust it to provide consensus on the latest hashes that branches point to, and if you use signed commits, then you don't even have to trust it to ensure integrity. The identity used to sign is completely controlled by you, and you can easily move to a self-hosted solution if GitHub loses your trust. Distributed consensus mechanisms are not worth it if you just design your system to (a) be auditable and independently verifiable (b) support identities controlled by the users.
ssss11 5y ago
Well not exactly. The blockchain is distributed and you effectively can’t modify it (let’s not get into 51% attacks etc) A centralised database is controlled and modifiable by the owner - government, private company or whoever. They will act on their best interest not yours. I don’t personally have a problem with government having my dat although they’re usually useless at implementing technology, but a decentralised blockchain would be way more trustworthy than private companies..
- 908087 5y ago
  If the problem you have with the web is that "the government has your data", putting it on a public blockchain certainly isn't going to solve that problem.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- aforwardslash 5y ago
  Blockchain is not necessarily "distributed", in the sense that multiple competing parties have a copy of it. As an example, hyperledger fabric is commonly used as a "private" blockchain. Also, it is trivial to implement the same verification mechanisms in traditional databases, without the performance penalties of "blockchain", and transforming them in immutable, append-only storage systems that can't be tampered transparently. A good example of this is google trillian, the backend used by Certificate Transparency implementations.
errantmind 5y ago
Feeble in what sense? Even absent blockchains, I only trust the people running the government in so far our incentives are aligned, and they aren't all that aligned at the moment. Perhaps alternative structures of implementing governments should be explored.
Longwelwind 5y ago
If I understood Web3 correctly, it would be exactly like traditional web, except that: * The source code of all websites would be open-source, and accessible to anyone. It could still be changed, but it could not be done secretly. * All the actions of the users of the websites would be public. If we take social forums, for example Hacker News, it would mean that: * The algorithm behind the front page of social forums would be known. Administrators would have no way of secretly skewing it. * When a moderator would delete a message, they would merely mark them as deleted in the blockchain, and they would merely be hidden in the UI that you use to see the blockchain. The message would still be accessible on the blockchain. The biggest downside, though, is that there would be a fee to any action done on the website (posting, moderation actions, changing your profile, ...).
- linkdd 5y ago
  > The message would still be accessible on the blockchain. What about the right to be forgotten and GDPR laws?
  - berkes 5y ago
    That is a tough issue. A blockchain is essentially an Event Sourced system. And Right To Be Forgotton is a common issue in all event sourced systems. Several technical and one non technical solution are common: Encrypt events with per actor keys. Delete the key when user wants to be forgotton. Or encrypt just certain attributes in the same way. Keep actual data outside of events but only include a link to the data and checksum of the data. Avoid storing PII in the first place. Does your domain model really require an IPaddress or First Name? All have tradeoffs, none are silver bullets. But it is a solved problem in Event Sourcing, so it is a solved problem with blockchains (if only new programmers new this and reused patters instead of continually reinventing them)
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > so it is a solved problem with blockchain You're saying this: > Encrypt events with per actor keys. Delete the key when user wants to be forgotton. Blockchain is immutable. Which key are you going to delete? Or, wait, you're going to centrally store these keys?
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
"Seems feeble?" You can go on about implementation details, UX flaws, problems with the state of crypto today - but what's been mathematically obvious since Bitcoin's inception is that the right ledger is both permanent and open enough to disregard issues of trust (you could say it has infinite trust, which is an exaggeration, but in a practical sense this is how its used without blemish), and that governments and central parties are easily corruptible and capable of cheating in ways so as to never get caught or noticed. You either know very little about cryptography and game theory or very little about government to be asserting such doubt. Crypto-currencies have many problems, but finding ones where trust can be taken for granted is trivial.
maccolgan 5y ago
A centralized database can't achieve being public without putting trust in a third party (and no Web3 developer seem to eminently trust the government) to verify the double spend problem, otherwise blockchain is just a database. Non-falsiability can be verified through cryptography, yet we have no centralized but non-falsiable database system ready to use.
- aforwardslash 5y ago
  Well, you mention double-spend problem, that is a very narrow scope of applicability for a centralized database. There is a huge public, cryptographically secure, append-only, verifiable centralized database (in fact, they are several), used by Certificate Transparency. Spoiler alert: Its a sparse merkle tree in MySQL.
timdaub 5y ago
How can a database achieve observability to anyone?
- tracyhenry 5y ago
  just make it openly accessible...
iamwil 5y ago
A centralized database is not observable by default. It’s usually not directly connected to the internet accessible by anyone. Databases as they’re usually designed today are updated in-place so they have no provenance of the data. Blockchain data one written will exist in the history and cannot be changed. Unless specifically designed this way centralized db doesn’t work this way.
- tracyhenry 5y ago
  > no provenance of the data This is hardly true. It's easy to keep a history of query logs, which is enough to figure out 90% of data lineage. The rest 10% probably correspond to operations not even runnable on a blockchain. I can mock a web3 application by opening a database to the entire internet. All edits logs will be visible, although edits will be access controlled. Now I'll claim this is observable. Some people would probably complain. But how in the world is the general public going to complain?
  - drdeca 5y ago
    I still think it could be potentially useful to, with a centralized database, use a similar kind of authentication scheme, in a way that allows for succinct demonstrations of any kinds of rule violations (compared to the rules that were set), as well as efficient to check proofs that state changes are in accordance with the rules which were set. (I wonder if a network of such centralized DBs run by different parties might be enough to produce incentives among the different DB owners to behave in accordance to rules which they initially publish for themselves, etc. )

jen729w 5y ago

Isn’t it the visibility thing? Yeah a centralised database can do this. Good luck getting access to it. “Security” says you can’t. I think that one of the allures of the blockchain is that it’s publicly visible. This may or may not be a fallacy of reasoning but hey, we’re human.

newaccount74 5y ago
A lot of government databases are publicly accessible. For example, in Austria we have the "Grundbuch", a register of land ownership. Everyone can inspect the Grundbuch database. Authenticity is guaranteed by requiring a public notary or a court to confirm any changes in the database, and there is a paper trail for every change to a record. It's boring old tech, but it works, and doesn't have all the gotchas of blockchains.
- hansonkd13 5y ago
  Same thing exists in the US. Property ownership and property tax is open and publicly accessible
- berkes 5y ago
  Many people complain about transaction fees and limited throughput of a blockchain. I can only imagine this ancient system to be a magnitude worse in those regards.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    Depends on the system. We served webpages quickly 20 years ago. Berlin also has an open data portal, and it's as fast as any other website.
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    The system is optimized for security, preventing fraud is more important than throughput in this case. Registering something in the Grundbuch is fast enough for property transactions. Transaction fees are high by design. They are a form of tax on property transactions that discourages short term investments. The system works very well and I just don't think it needs fixing.
    - berkes 5y ago
      > The system works very well and I just don't think it needs fixing. For the few use-cases that match it, yes. The name Grundbuch itself puts a limit on its use, but we can imagine that there are many situations that call for the same amount of protection and trust, but which require a far higher throughput. Back when Grundbuch was set up, ground and estate was probably the most valuable asset peopel can own. Today we have stocks, bonds, contracts, savings, companies, art, private-keys, hell; even cars, that are worth a multiple of a typical meadow in the Austrian hills. Many of these classes cannot use the a system like Grundbuch because its fees are too high or its throughput too low. No-one wants to pay upwards of €600 just to sell some AAPL stock. No insurance company wants to drive to a notary for each contract they sign and then pay €600 upwards. I'm not trying to say that blockchain is a solution for all these cases (It isn't). I'm saying that the system is limiting, problematic and unfit for many cases. That therefore, this system is unfit for the majority of cases that would need them 2021 (but for one specific case it works).

ulrikrasmussen 5y ago

Exactly. Case in point: GitHub. We trust it to provide consensus on the latest hashes that branches point to, and if you use signed commits, then you don't even have to trust it to ensure integrity. The identity used to sign is completely controlled by you, and you can easily move to a self-hosted solution if GitHub loses your trust. Distributed consensus mechanisms are not worth it if you just design your system to (a) be auditable and independently verifiable (b) support identities controlled by the users.

ssss11 5y ago

Well not exactly. The blockchain is distributed and you effectively can’t modify it (let’s not get into 51% attacks etc) A centralised database is controlled and modifiable by the owner - government, private company or whoever. They will act on their best interest not yours. I don’t personally have a problem with government having my dat although they’re usually useless at implementing technology, but a decentralised blockchain would be way more trustworthy than private companies..

908087 5y ago
If the problem you have with the web is that "the government has your data", putting it on a public blockchain certainly isn't going to solve that problem.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aforwardslash 5y ago
Blockchain is not necessarily "distributed", in the sense that multiple competing parties have a copy of it. As an example, hyperledger fabric is commonly used as a "private" blockchain. Also, it is trivial to implement the same verification mechanisms in traditional databases, without the performance penalties of "blockchain", and transforming them in immutable, append-only storage systems that can't be tampered transparently. A good example of this is google trillian, the backend used by Certificate Transparency implementations.

errantmind 5y ago

Feeble in what sense? Even absent blockchains, I only trust the people running the government in so far our incentives are aligned, and they aren't all that aligned at the moment. Perhaps alternative structures of implementing governments should be explored.

Longwelwind 5y ago

If I understood Web3 correctly, it would be exactly like traditional web, except that: * The source code of all websites would be open-source, and accessible to anyone. It could still be changed, but it could not be done secretly. * All the actions of the users of the websites would be public. If we take social forums, for example Hacker News, it would mean that: * The algorithm behind the front page of social forums would be known. Administrators would have no way of secretly skewing it. * When a moderator would delete a message, they would merely mark them as deleted in the blockchain, and they would merely be hidden in the UI that you use to see the blockchain. The message would still be accessible on the blockchain. The biggest downside, though, is that there would be a fee to any action done on the website (posting, moderation actions, changing your profile, ...).

linkdd 5y ago
> The message would still be accessible on the blockchain. What about the right to be forgotten and GDPR laws?
- berkes 5y ago
  That is a tough issue. A blockchain is essentially an Event Sourced system. And Right To Be Forgotton is a common issue in all event sourced systems. Several technical and one non technical solution are common: Encrypt events with per actor keys. Delete the key when user wants to be forgotton. Or encrypt just certain attributes in the same way. Keep actual data outside of events but only include a link to the data and checksum of the data. Avoid storing PII in the first place. Does your domain model really require an IPaddress or First Name? All have tradeoffs, none are silver bullets. But it is a solved problem in Event Sourcing, so it is a solved problem with blockchains (if only new programmers new this and reused patters instead of continually reinventing them)
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > so it is a solved problem with blockchain You're saying this: > Encrypt events with per actor keys. Delete the key when user wants to be forgotton. Blockchain is immutable. Which key are you going to delete? Or, wait, you're going to centrally store these keys?

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

"Seems feeble?" You can go on about implementation details, UX flaws, problems with the state of crypto today - but what's been mathematically obvious since Bitcoin's inception is that the right ledger is both permanent and open enough to disregard issues of trust (you could say it has infinite trust, which is an exaggeration, but in a practical sense this is how its used without blemish), and that governments and central parties are easily corruptible and capable of cheating in ways so as to never get caught or noticed. You either know very little about cryptography and game theory or very little about government to be asserting such doubt. Crypto-currencies have many problems, but finding ones where trust can be taken for granted is trivial.

maccolgan 5y ago

A centralized database can't achieve being public without putting trust in a third party (and no Web3 developer seem to eminently trust the government) to verify the double spend problem, otherwise blockchain is just a database. Non-falsiability can be verified through cryptography, yet we have no centralized but non-falsiable database system ready to use.

aforwardslash 5y ago
Well, you mention double-spend problem, that is a very narrow scope of applicability for a centralized database. There is a huge public, cryptographically secure, append-only, verifiable centralized database (in fact, they are several), used by Certificate Transparency. Spoiler alert: Its a sparse merkle tree in MySQL.

timdaub 5y ago

How can a database achieve observability to anyone?

tracyhenry 5y ago
just make it openly accessible...

iamwil 5y ago

A centralized database is not observable by default. It’s usually not directly connected to the internet accessible by anyone. Databases as they’re usually designed today are updated in-place so they have no provenance of the data. Blockchain data one written will exist in the history and cannot be changed. Unless specifically designed this way centralized db doesn’t work this way.

tracyhenry 5y ago
> no provenance of the data This is hardly true. It's easy to keep a history of query logs, which is enough to figure out 90% of data lineage. The rest 10% probably correspond to operations not even runnable on a blockchain. I can mock a web3 application by opening a database to the entire internet. All edits logs will be visible, although edits will be access controlled. Now I'll claim this is observable. Some people would probably complain. But how in the world is the general public going to complain?
- drdeca 5y ago
  I still think it could be potentially useful to, with a centralized database, use a similar kind of authentication scheme, in a way that allows for succinct demonstrations of any kinds of rule violations (compared to the rules that were set), as well as efficient to check proofs that state changes are in accordance with the rules which were set. (I wonder if a network of such centralized DBs run by different parties might be enough to produce incentives among the different DB owners to behave in accordance to rules which they initially publish for themselves, etc. )