31 ms·

> Use cases like storing the history of a car on-chain, transparent supply chains, public voting... this all sounds interesting but never made it to product-mar

> Use cases like storing the history of a car on-chain, transparent supply chains, public voting... this all sounds interesting but never made it to product-market fit. Anything that does not exist natively on the blockchain doesn't need a blockchain at all. If a token on the blockchain would represent you as the owner of a car and one day someone steals your private key which represents your car ownership, that person is now the owner of your car. Still, the car keys are located in your house, the license plate is registered on your name and address, the insurance is on your name. I guess I don't need to explain further how ridiculous that idea is that a token would officially represent you as the car owner.

axg11 5y ago
Couldn’t you say the same thing about the deed for a house?
- duskwuff 5y ago
  Physically possessing the deed to a house doesn't make you its owner either.
  - bratwurst3000 5y ago
    The law makes me the owner… good we have something to trust that my house is my house… the law and not crypto ;)
    - arlcode 5y ago
      Well the law and the fact that (eventually) someone will come and physically remove whoever claims to own your house. A Blockchain without the ability to initiate (and complete) such a process is worthless for questions of real world ownership. Of course a Blockchain could be empowered to do that....through a law.
      - cinquemb 5y ago
        A blockchain (or the contracts that run upon any particular one) could also incentivize a distributed group of participants to take it upon themselves to temporarily and physically enforce some ones else's real world claims (a signed tx from the same addr with the on chain claim putting their owner ship up as collateral to be liquidated at a discount conditional if the buyer can secure the premises by any means necessarily, some onchain decentralized AMM prediction markets already have alot of this functionality and more), esp if those up for the task already have the means to do so and the potential payout is enough… irrespective of a particular jurisdiction laws. Gets even more interesting when people can buy puts and calls on someones liquidation via options dex. A few of the ex-mil people in a DAO i'm apart of are really interested in this space growing for services like that, for obvious reasons.
        Nextgrid 5y ago
        > if the buyer can secure the premises by any means necessarily How does the blockchain know that said access has been secured? Is it up to the original requestor to confirm this? If so, what if they're malicious and don't want to do so as to not give up their collateral? If it's down to a neutral third-party acting as an oracle, what prevents said third-party from being bribed/coerced/hacked into providing false data to the blockchain? All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain? Blockchain only works for assets that live entirely on the blockchain, such as cryptocurrencies. Anything that lives in the real-world is a bad use-case for blockchains as you now need a centralized, trusted third-party to sync the state of the blockchain with the state of the real world, at which point you may just do away with the blockchain entirely and let the third-party run a good old database.
        cinquemb 5y ago
        > How does the blockchain know that said access has been secured? Is it up to the original requestor to confirm this? If so, what if they're malicious and don't want to do so as to not give up their collateral? If it's down to a neutral third-party acting as an oracle, what prevents said third-party from being bribed/coerced/hacked into providing false data to the blockchain? Auger[0] has something like this: "Reputation (REP) and (REPv2) is a cryptocurrency, used by reporters during market dispute phases of Augur. REP and REPv2 holders must perform work, in the form of staking their REP or REPv2 on correct outcomes, to receive a portion of the markets settlement fees. If you do not report correctly, you do not get the fees. If you report incorrectly, you lose your REP or REPv2. If you don’t participate in a fork (when the network has a very large dispute over an outcome), you permanently lose your ability to migrate your REP or REPv2 to a forked universe, making it functionally useless within the used version of the Augur Protocol, and in theory making it worthless. Passive holders of Reputation (REP or REPv2) that are not using their Reputation (REP or REPv2) within the Augur protocol to stake on disputes and forks are penalized. The treatment of REP and REPv2 within the Augur protocol is governed not by the Forecast Foundation but by the protocols smart contracts as described in the Augur white paper and documentation." Other protocols may handle things differently. > All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain? Assuming if the law in all jurisdictions around the world were as sufficient for all cases presently and into the future. Also this assumes that its not the enforcers of a particular law aren't also the ones that the on chain claimant wants to take action against (again, the payout would need to be high enough for those to incentivize action against a particular jurisdictions enforcers, which need not necessarily mean engaging on the property, but anything to get the enforcers to back off even going after friends and family and their property in retaliation [which is more doable in jurisdictions who databases with such sensitive information have been compromised]) [0] https://augur.net/faqs/ https://augur.net/faqs/
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  The government enforces property rights though, so it's not a matter of distributed consensus, it's a matter of who the government views as the rightful owner. In a property dispute, a court might look at a number of factors: occupation and use, maintenance and upkeep of the property, paying bills associated with the property, registration of a deed with a title office, etc. A digital signature on a blockchain somewhere means nothing. How do you connect it with the real property? All of the other above things go some way to demonstrating a real connection to the property. A block chain does not. It's the same problem all blockchain solutions have: verifying the data at the point of entry to the block chain. If that is distributed and can not be trusted and verified remotely, then the existence of it in a block chain does not help. I'll create PropertyBlock™ blockchain tomorrow and sign a block with your property address it over to myself. Worthless.
- nly 5y ago
  Deeds aren't a thing anymore in many countries. In the UK ownership is determined by a centralised land registry, and it must be registered if ownership is to change hands.
  - arlcode 5y ago
    Exactly, and while the government database "land registry" could, of course, be replaced with a government "HouseChain" it wouldn't actually solve any Problem but would introduce a ton of new ones.
    - aflag 5y ago
      However, if you have no government, the housechain could be a way for a decentralized society to implement the concept of a land registry. Once everyone agrees that the housechain is proof of ownership, then measures can be taken to enforce that without necessarily evoking a central government. I'm not sold on the idea of a society without a central government, but I think the blockchain would help — or even enable — such an experiment.
      - giaour 5y ago
        In the absence of a governing authority, property disputes would revert to being settled by violence or the threat thereof. Why should my band of armed thugs defer to what it says on the blockchain when they could instead hit you with a $5 wrench until you vacate the premises? https://xkcd.com/538 https://xkcd.com/538
        aflag 5y ago
        Because everyone else around them would help defend the validity of the deeds, as they all own property in the same way. Like I said before, I'm far far away from having all the answers about how to set up a decentralized society and I'm not even sure I would like to live in such a society. However, issuing deeds and currency is an important job that currently you need a central government you trust to do. With a blockchain that problem is solved. There are plenty of other problems besides that. But it is one less item in the checklist.
Galanwe 5y ago
> one day someone steals your private key which represents your car ownership, that person is now the owner of your car. Why take such a naive blockchain as example? You could very well have a proof of authority blockchain so that 3 notary have to sign a car transaction. You could also very well have revocation lists published on the blockchain by a further authority if keys are stolen. There are hundreds of ways to make this work. At the very least, that would allow me to know that I'm not buying a stolen car.
- robjan 5y ago
  Who appoints the notaries?
  - beertoagunfight 5y ago
    This. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer to how centralization is prevented in such cases.
    - kikimora 5y ago
      Vote with your (imaginary) citizen token to appoint a notary. And have a right to vote against it at any time. With blockchain you can elect new notaries every day if this is how you want to manage it.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        How many votes does it take to appoint a notary? If one or a few, I can set up a corrupt notary (or several) to notarize my fake deal with you. If many, I can't get rid of the corrupt notary (or notaries) you have set up to notarize your fake deal with me. Is either of these particularly great?
        kikimora 5y ago
        I don't see your point. You attack an outline of a system. Fun system will be complex and I won't describe it here in full. In the same way as today notary appointment procedure is complex and involve multiple organisations. I claim that blockchain solves Byzantine generals problem (BGP) in a scalable way and no other such solution exists. I also claim that this very problem (BGP) is being solved right now in multiple instances by using a trusted middleman, usually appointed, controlled and often funded by the government. I also claim that maintaining trust is not free and often paid from tax money (as in DVLA example). And my last claim that partial or full automation of a middleman function with blockchain is cheaper than running it traditional way (considering all costs involved). Potentially unexpected corollary from the first and second claims - a software without blockchain cannot automate a trusted middleman function because of trust issues. Feel free to attack any of the claims.
conradev 5y ago
This problem exists with cash. We teach people to not keep too much cash on them, but to keep it in a bank where it is safer. You could get a credit card, and then it’s not even your money that you are spending! or your money that you lost to fraud. I can see both of these existing in the crypto world in some form, the same way they exist in the fiat world as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure
- lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
  > as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure No, that used to be a real-world problem for banks until laws were passed that more tightly regulated financial institutions... e.g. in the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking
conradev 5y ago
This problem exists with cash. We teach people to not keep too much cash on them, but to keep it in a bank where it is safer. You could get a credit card, too, and then it’s not even your money that you are spending! or your money that you lost to fraud. I can see both of these existing in the crypto world in some form, the same way they exist in the fiat world as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure
- lawfulSteadfast 5y ago
andreskytt 5y ago
That said, blockchain-like technologies (ksi, more specifically) can be used to assure the integrity of databases storing the relationship between you and your car.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Databases have been doing that for a long time. Blockchains only add additional guarantees that matter when you have hostile participants, which only matters if you're decentralizing your system, which you probably don't want to do for a lot of things (like tracking ownership of a car).
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Your username kind of goes nicely with your point here.
- lottin 5y ago
  But is this blockchain-like technology better than the alternatives? What advantages does it have over a simple checksum, for example?
- hectormalot 5y ago
  Yes, but is it a problem worth solving beyond what we have today? What’s the last time we saw an database integrity failure at the DMV/… leading to cars being owned by people that shouldn’t?
  - notahacker 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure it wasn't more recently than the last time people lost control of assets on a blockchain! Replacing databases which afaik have never been manipulated anywhere in the world (despite representing legal ownership of high value assets) with tokens similar to those people lose access to or are duped out of on a daily basis is very Web3
    - 5y ago
chucke 5y ago
Not to say your completely wrong, just that the purpose of car tokens on the blockchain is to replace perhaps your insurance, but not the keys.
- tomputer 5y ago
  I don't see why something like insurance needs a token on a decentralized blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain needs a token because the token itself represents the value (BTC) inside the network. The token is also needed because it adds an incentive for nodes (miners) to support the network. Note: this is my current view of it. If someday it turns out it is useful, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.
  - chucke 5y ago
    You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. Blockchains can solve problems. Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays.
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      You’d have to get those countries to agree on a common set of governance rules, and inevitably some bloc of countries would eventually fork and go it on their own because they want a different set of rules (e.g. mandatory biometric data, inability to update passport data like gender, etc). I’m not sure it solves any problems that the diplomatic system doesn’t already solve. This also ignores that the costs and delays associated with passports are frequently the point — you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with, and doling out those kinds of patronage positions to the right people is often how you build a winning political coalition domestically.
      - chucke 5y ago
edem 5y ago
You're totally off. All those things you said _can_ go on the blockchain including the private key that they could use to start the car. Of course they can sell it for parts...if the parts didn't have private key protection too...
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Someone has to do the data entry into the blockchain. You end up having to trust this person, which completely negates the purpose of the blockchain: trustlessness. For supply chain issues the Oracle problem is very apparent. How does your smart contract know if the shipment has actually reached its destination?
- tim333 5y ago
  So do I need to deliver my car to Russia when they hack my computer?

axg11 5y ago

Couldn’t you say the same thing about the deed for a house?

duskwuff 5y ago
Physically possessing the deed to a house doesn't make you its owner either.
- bratwurst3000 5y ago
  The law makes me the owner… good we have something to trust that my house is my house… the law and not crypto ;)
  - arlcode 5y ago
    Well the law and the fact that (eventually) someone will come and physically remove whoever claims to own your house. A Blockchain without the ability to initiate (and complete) such a process is worthless for questions of real world ownership. Of course a Blockchain could be empowered to do that....through a law.
    - cinquemb 5y ago
      A blockchain (or the contracts that run upon any particular one) could also incentivize a distributed group of participants to take it upon themselves to temporarily and physically enforce some ones else's real world claims (a signed tx from the same addr with the on chain claim putting their owner ship up as collateral to be liquidated at a discount conditional if the buyer can secure the premises by any means necessarily, some onchain decentralized AMM prediction markets already have alot of this functionality and more), esp if those up for the task already have the means to do so and the potential payout is enough… irrespective of a particular jurisdiction laws. Gets even more interesting when people can buy puts and calls on someones liquidation via options dex. A few of the ex-mil people in a DAO i'm apart of are really interested in this space growing for services like that, for obvious reasons.
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        > if the buyer can secure the premises by any means necessarily How does the blockchain know that said access has been secured? Is it up to the original requestor to confirm this? If so, what if they're malicious and don't want to do so as to not give up their collateral? If it's down to a neutral third-party acting as an oracle, what prevents said third-party from being bribed/coerced/hacked into providing false data to the blockchain? All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain? Blockchain only works for assets that live entirely on the blockchain, such as cryptocurrencies. Anything that lives in the real-world is a bad use-case for blockchains as you now need a centralized, trusted third-party to sync the state of the blockchain with the state of the real world, at which point you may just do away with the blockchain entirely and let the third-party run a good old database.
        cinquemb 5y ago
        > How does the blockchain know that said access has been secured? Is it up to the original requestor to confirm this? If so, what if they're malicious and don't want to do so as to not give up their collateral? If it's down to a neutral third-party acting as an oracle, what prevents said third-party from being bribed/coerced/hacked into providing false data to the blockchain? Auger[0] has something like this: "Reputation (REP) and (REPv2) is a cryptocurrency, used by reporters during market dispute phases of Augur. REP and REPv2 holders must perform work, in the form of staking their REP or REPv2 on correct outcomes, to receive a portion of the markets settlement fees. If you do not report correctly, you do not get the fees. If you report incorrectly, you lose your REP or REPv2. If you don’t participate in a fork (when the network has a very large dispute over an outcome), you permanently lose your ability to migrate your REP or REPv2 to a forked universe, making it functionally useless within the used version of the Augur Protocol, and in theory making it worthless. Passive holders of Reputation (REP or REPv2) that are not using their Reputation (REP or REPv2) within the Augur protocol to stake on disputes and forks are penalized. The treatment of REP and REPv2 within the Augur protocol is governed not by the Forecast Foundation but by the protocols smart contracts as described in the Augur white paper and documentation." Other protocols may handle things differently. > All of this can be solved by the law (eventually escalating to people allowed to use deadly force), but at that point why do you even need a blockchain? Assuming if the law in all jurisdictions around the world were as sufficient for all cases presently and into the future. Also this assumes that its not the enforcers of a particular law aren't also the ones that the on chain claimant wants to take action against (again, the payout would need to be high enough for those to incentivize action against a particular jurisdictions enforcers, which need not necessarily mean engaging on the property, but anything to get the enforcers to back off even going after friends and family and their property in retaliation [which is more doable in jurisdictions who databases with such sensitive information have been compromised]) [0] https://augur.net/faqs/ https://augur.net/faqs/
throwawaylinux 5y ago
The government enforces property rights though, so it's not a matter of distributed consensus, it's a matter of who the government views as the rightful owner. In a property dispute, a court might look at a number of factors: occupation and use, maintenance and upkeep of the property, paying bills associated with the property, registration of a deed with a title office, etc. A digital signature on a blockchain somewhere means nothing. How do you connect it with the real property? All of the other above things go some way to demonstrating a real connection to the property. A block chain does not. It's the same problem all blockchain solutions have: verifying the data at the point of entry to the block chain. If that is distributed and can not be trusted and verified remotely, then the existence of it in a block chain does not help. I'll create PropertyBlock™ blockchain tomorrow and sign a block with your property address it over to myself. Worthless.
nly 5y ago
Deeds aren't a thing anymore in many countries. In the UK ownership is determined by a centralised land registry, and it must be registered if ownership is to change hands.
- arlcode 5y ago
  Exactly, and while the government database "land registry" could, of course, be replaced with a government "HouseChain" it wouldn't actually solve any Problem but would introduce a ton of new ones.
  - aflag 5y ago
    However, if you have no government, the housechain could be a way for a decentralized society to implement the concept of a land registry. Once everyone agrees that the housechain is proof of ownership, then measures can be taken to enforce that without necessarily evoking a central government. I'm not sold on the idea of a society without a central government, but I think the blockchain would help — or even enable — such an experiment.
    - giaour 5y ago
      In the absence of a governing authority, property disputes would revert to being settled by violence or the threat thereof. Why should my band of armed thugs defer to what it says on the blockchain when they could instead hit you with a $5 wrench until you vacate the premises? https://xkcd.com/538 https://xkcd.com/538
      - aflag 5y ago
        Because everyone else around them would help defend the validity of the deeds, as they all own property in the same way. Like I said before, I'm far far away from having all the answers about how to set up a decentralized society and I'm not even sure I would like to live in such a society. However, issuing deeds and currency is an important job that currently you need a central government you trust to do. With a blockchain that problem is solved. There are plenty of other problems besides that. But it is one less item in the checklist.

Galanwe 5y ago

> one day someone steals your private key which represents your car ownership, that person is now the owner of your car. Why take such a naive blockchain as example? You could very well have a proof of authority blockchain so that 3 notary have to sign a car transaction. You could also very well have revocation lists published on the blockchain by a further authority if keys are stolen. There are hundreds of ways to make this work. At the very least, that would allow me to know that I'm not buying a stolen car.

robjan 5y ago
Who appoints the notaries?
- beertoagunfight 5y ago
  This. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer to how centralization is prevented in such cases.
  - kikimora 5y ago
    Vote with your (imaginary) citizen token to appoint a notary. And have a right to vote against it at any time. With blockchain you can elect new notaries every day if this is how you want to manage it.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      How many votes does it take to appoint a notary? If one or a few, I can set up a corrupt notary (or several) to notarize my fake deal with you. If many, I can't get rid of the corrupt notary (or notaries) you have set up to notarize your fake deal with me. Is either of these particularly great?
      - kikimora 5y ago
        I don't see your point. You attack an outline of a system. Fun system will be complex and I won't describe it here in full. In the same way as today notary appointment procedure is complex and involve multiple organisations. I claim that blockchain solves Byzantine generals problem (BGP) in a scalable way and no other such solution exists. I also claim that this very problem (BGP) is being solved right now in multiple instances by using a trusted middleman, usually appointed, controlled and often funded by the government. I also claim that maintaining trust is not free and often paid from tax money (as in DVLA example). And my last claim that partial or full automation of a middleman function with blockchain is cheaper than running it traditional way (considering all costs involved). Potentially unexpected corollary from the first and second claims - a software without blockchain cannot automate a trusted middleman function because of trust issues. Feel free to attack any of the claims.

conradev 5y ago

This problem exists with cash. We teach people to not keep too much cash on them, but to keep it in a bank where it is safer. You could get a credit card, and then it’s not even your money that you are spending! or your money that you lost to fraud. I can see both of these existing in the crypto world in some form, the same way they exist in the fiat world as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure

lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
> as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure No, that used to be a real-world problem for banks until laws were passed that more tightly regulated financial institutions... e.g. in the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking

conradev 5y ago

This problem exists with cash. We teach people to not keep too much cash on them, but to keep it in a bank where it is safer. You could get a credit card, too, and then it’s not even your money that you are spending! or your money that you lost to fraud. I can see both of these existing in the crypto world in some form, the same way they exist in the fiat world as for the banks and institutions and companies losing all of their money? that’s a new blockchain problem for sure

lawfulSteadfast 5y ago

andreskytt 5y ago

That said, blockchain-like technologies (ksi, more specifically) can be used to assure the integrity of databases storing the relationship between you and your car.

staticassertion 5y ago
Databases have been doing that for a long time. Blockchains only add additional guarantees that matter when you have hostile participants, which only matters if you're decentralizing your system, which you probably don't want to do for a lot of things (like tracking ownership of a car).
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Your username kind of goes nicely with your point here.
lottin 5y ago
But is this blockchain-like technology better than the alternatives? What advantages does it have over a simple checksum, for example?
hectormalot 5y ago
Yes, but is it a problem worth solving beyond what we have today? What’s the last time we saw an database integrity failure at the DMV/… leading to cars being owned by people that shouldn’t?
- notahacker 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure it wasn't more recently than the last time people lost control of assets on a blockchain! Replacing databases which afaik have never been manipulated anywhere in the world (despite representing legal ownership of high value assets) with tokens similar to those people lose access to or are duped out of on a daily basis is very Web3
  - 5y ago

chucke 5y ago

Not to say your completely wrong, just that the purpose of car tokens on the blockchain is to replace perhaps your insurance, but not the keys.

tomputer 5y ago
I don't see why something like insurance needs a token on a decentralized blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain needs a token because the token itself represents the value (BTC) inside the network. The token is also needed because it adds an incentive for nodes (miners) to support the network. Note: this is my current view of it. If someday it turns out it is useful, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.
- chucke 5y ago
  You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. Blockchains can solve problems. Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    You’d have to get those countries to agree on a common set of governance rules, and inevitably some bloc of countries would eventually fork and go it on their own because they want a different set of rules (e.g. mandatory biometric data, inability to update passport data like gender, etc). I’m not sure it solves any problems that the diplomatic system doesn’t already solve. This also ignores that the costs and delays associated with passports are frequently the point — you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with, and doling out those kinds of patronage positions to the right people is often how you build a winning political coalition domestically.
    - chucke 5y ago

edem 5y ago

You're totally off. All those things you said _can_ go on the blockchain including the private key that they could use to start the car. Of course they can sell it for parts...if the parts didn't have private key protection too...

cuteboy19 5y ago
Someone has to do the data entry into the blockchain. You end up having to trust this person, which completely negates the purpose of the blockchain: trustlessness. For supply chain issues the Oracle problem is very apparent. How does your smart contract know if the shipment has actually reached its destination?
tim333 5y ago
So do I need to deliver my car to Russia when they hack my computer?