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> I also think that relatively few real-world problems are made easier by blockchain's strengths - and many of them are situations where you're seeking to avoid

> I also think that relatively few real-world problems are made easier by blockchain's strengths - and many of them are situations where you're seeking to avoid some kind of censorship. I think avoiding censorship is important and I'm glad we have a technology that is useful there - but by volume most human interactions do not have to worry about censorship. What's funny about that is China is adopting blockchain technologies specifically to bind together databases for tracking social credit scores across different provinces because they've previously been silo'ed and unable to communicate with each other in a straightforward way (for whatever reason). China is banking on blockchain technologies precisely because it's can be such a powerful censorship tool. https://decrypt.co/39905/blockchain-now-powers-parts-of-chinas-social-credit-system https://decrypt.co/39905/blockchain-now-powers-parts-of-chin...

jeremyjh 4y ago
Same question that comes up with nearly every such application of crypto-tech in business or government: Why can't they just do that with a database?
- judge2020 4y ago
  Blockchain adds a level of certainty that history hasn’t been changed, and you can at least audit any undo-type actions; it’s the same reason certificate transparency logs and git are built on blockchain-esque technology.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    So when does something stop being “git” and start being “blockchain technology”? When the latter sounds better to investors?
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
      When there are multiple actors incentivized to ignore any history-rebasing. Of course if you're running your own git repo, you know your githashes will change if you go back in history and change something, and it doesn't matter. When multiple people want to ensure that history hasn't changed, they can compare their hashes with yours, and have good evidence of who tampered with the history and ignore them / prosecute them.
  - WJW 4y ago
    `git push -f` can absolutely do the type of "history changing" that you claim it can't though. CT logs are also quite vulnerable to attacks where the root of the certificate chain gets compromised, for example because they are being threatened by their government. Even blockchains are only protected from history rewriting as long as no 51% attack takes place, and all but the largest blockchains are quite vulnerable to this.
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      Additionally a bit flip in a CT (cert transparency) log rendered it invalid and dead. This cannot happen in a peer to peer consensus protocol as the bad block would have been rejected by the working nodes. CT is good tech but it superficially is a private issued blockchain without most of the benefits of public peer to peer electronic cash and digital asset systems.
    - Clent 4y ago
      I question this idea of history writing and it being a huge problem. How far down the chain could a 51% blockchain rewrite occur before consuming all of the computation power of the universe? I have seen arguments in which the 51% steals all of the new coins but how long can that be maintained, the other 49% needs to pay their bills and audits would inevitably out the bad players. Eventually, the last bitcoin will be minted, making the whole issue mute.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      51% attacks don't rewrite history, they rewrite accepted history (with accepted further narrowly defined to mean "accepted for transactional purposes"). It's not like the other 49% are under any sort of obligation to delete the alternative chain from their hard drives.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Corruption. They don’t trust their own people with data.
stevesimmons 4y ago
But how does blockchain help here, compared with other ways of syncing data?
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Anti-Corruption tech. If everyone's scores are just stored in a SQL databse, people can pay off officials to change their grade, Ferris Bueller-style. Blockchain prevents any province or official from having superuser power over the data.
  - frostwarrior 4y ago
    That would make sense if: - There weren't other methods to prevent tampering - Governments didn't want anti-corruption methods without having admin powers to exclude themselves.
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    This doesn't really make sense. We have SQL databases with permissions to prevent tampering, and audit logs, and myriad other solutions. In addition, I don't see what prevents an "official" from writing a social credit transaction (disclaimer that I have no idea how China's "social credit" system works or even what it is) to the blockchain. Nodes validate to solve disagreements where one node says a transaction happened that did not. This does not appear to be the same type of dishonesty being referred to here.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    You can achieve this in a SQL database with proper processes, auditing and controls. The world has functioned up until the magical dawning of the blockchain.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  You'd be stupid to use, say, ETH to do it when you can simply have multiple parties sign and publish events in a distributed append-only log, which they keep syncronised. That doesn't need PoW or to be a currency.
namdnay 4y ago
I’m unable to find a single article that actually details what “blockchain technology” they’re using, and why. Every English article seems to be a rehash of the same press release - Can anybody find something better in mandarin ?
lubesGordi 4y ago
Department of Homeland Security also likes blockchain tech, for various 'transparency' reasons: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/blockchain-portfolio https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/blockchain-portfo... There are many anti-fraud and enhanced supply chain tracking notions associated with blockchain tech. Of course, those are all enabled with this form of 'surveillance.'
nyolfen 4y ago
this post makes absolutely no sense. blockchains are useful in situations where you need consensus between potentially adversarial parties. the benefits of trustless coordination have tradeoffs that make blockchains less efficient than traditional databases or computational systems. there is zero advantage and significant additional cost & complexity for a centralized body (the CCP), which has direct control over all subsidary participants, using a blockchain to collate disparate databases. this is a meaningless PR release. > tracking social credit scores across different provinces because they've previously been silo'ed and unable to communicate with each other in a straightforward way (for whatever reason). does this sentence mean something to you? what does a blockchain do in this situation?
- not2b 4y ago
  China's provincial officials are potentially adversarial parties vs the central government. Officially they must do as they are told, but unofficially they have considerable independent power as long as they aren't caught. Only a guess, but I suspect that Covid got as bad as it did partly because Wuhan officials didn't want the central government to know how bad things were (at least at first).
  - vkou 4y ago
    This is partially correct, China is not a monolithic entity that fully marches in lockstep with Beijing. But the solution to the problem of uncooperative governors is the application of soft power (media, agitprop, appointments, rewards, threats, denunciations and disappearances, liquidation of problem people, their families, their friends, their pets, etc), not some over-engineered technological non-solution that still relies on the cooperation of all the parties in question to work. A blockchain can't enforce that anyone actually enters data into it, or that the data that is entered isn't garbage. A snail-mail package containing data sent to Beijing has the exact same immutability property for the only party that cares about it - the national government. Something like a blockchain is useful when peers don't trust eachother, but all care to build a shared consensus. When the peers don't care about consensus, and a central authority with the power of pit and gallows exists, none of those usecases hold.
1MachineElf 4y ago
Based on what you've described, they are using blockchain for their censorship tool, but that's different from the blockchain being a censorship tool in and of itself.

jeremyjh 4y ago

Same question that comes up with nearly every such application of crypto-tech in business or government: Why can't they just do that with a database?

judge2020 4y ago
Blockchain adds a level of certainty that history hasn’t been changed, and you can at least audit any undo-type actions; it’s the same reason certificate transparency logs and git are built on blockchain-esque technology.
- namdnay 4y ago
  So when does something stop being “git” and start being “blockchain technology”? When the latter sounds better to investors?
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    When there are multiple actors incentivized to ignore any history-rebasing. Of course if you're running your own git repo, you know your githashes will change if you go back in history and change something, and it doesn't matter. When multiple people want to ensure that history hasn't changed, they can compare their hashes with yours, and have good evidence of who tampered with the history and ignore them / prosecute them.
- WJW 4y ago
  `git push -f` can absolutely do the type of "history changing" that you claim it can't though. CT logs are also quite vulnerable to attacks where the root of the certificate chain gets compromised, for example because they are being threatened by their government. Even blockchains are only protected from history rewriting as long as no 51% attack takes place, and all but the largest blockchains are quite vulnerable to this.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    Additionally a bit flip in a CT (cert transparency) log rendered it invalid and dead. This cannot happen in a peer to peer consensus protocol as the bad block would have been rejected by the working nodes. CT is good tech but it superficially is a private issued blockchain without most of the benefits of public peer to peer electronic cash and digital asset systems.
  - Clent 4y ago
    I question this idea of history writing and it being a huge problem. How far down the chain could a 51% blockchain rewrite occur before consuming all of the computation power of the universe? I have seen arguments in which the 51% steals all of the new coins but how long can that be maintained, the other 49% needs to pay their bills and audits would inevitably out the bad players. Eventually, the last bitcoin will be minted, making the whole issue mute.
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    51% attacks don't rewrite history, they rewrite accepted history (with accepted further narrowly defined to mean "accepted for transactional purposes"). It's not like the other 49% are under any sort of obligation to delete the alternative chain from their hard drives.
eurasiantiger 4y ago
Corruption. They don’t trust their own people with data.

stevesimmons 4y ago

But how does blockchain help here, compared with other ways of syncing data?

jazzyjackson 4y ago
Anti-Corruption tech. If everyone's scores are just stored in a SQL databse, people can pay off officials to change their grade, Ferris Bueller-style. Blockchain prevents any province or official from having superuser power over the data.
- frostwarrior 4y ago
  That would make sense if: - There weren't other methods to prevent tampering - Governments didn't want anti-corruption methods without having admin powers to exclude themselves.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  This doesn't really make sense. We have SQL databases with permissions to prevent tampering, and audit logs, and myriad other solutions. In addition, I don't see what prevents an "official" from writing a social credit transaction (disclaimer that I have no idea how China's "social credit" system works or even what it is) to the blockchain. Nodes validate to solve disagreements where one node says a transaction happened that did not. This does not appear to be the same type of dishonesty being referred to here.
- threeseed 4y ago
  You can achieve this in a SQL database with proper processes, auditing and controls. The world has functioned up until the magical dawning of the blockchain.
radicalbyte 4y ago
You'd be stupid to use, say, ETH to do it when you can simply have multiple parties sign and publish events in a distributed append-only log, which they keep syncronised. That doesn't need PoW or to be a currency.

namdnay 4y ago

I’m unable to find a single article that actually details what “blockchain technology” they’re using, and why. Every English article seems to be a rehash of the same press release - Can anybody find something better in mandarin ?

lubesGordi 4y ago

Department of Homeland Security also likes blockchain tech, for various 'transparency' reasons: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/blockchain-portfolio https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/blockchain-portfo... There are many anti-fraud and enhanced supply chain tracking notions associated with blockchain tech. Of course, those are all enabled with this form of 'surveillance.'

nyolfen 4y ago

this post makes absolutely no sense. blockchains are useful in situations where you need consensus between potentially adversarial parties. the benefits of trustless coordination have tradeoffs that make blockchains less efficient than traditional databases or computational systems. there is zero advantage and significant additional cost & complexity for a centralized body (the CCP), which has direct control over all subsidary participants, using a blockchain to collate disparate databases. this is a meaningless PR release. > tracking social credit scores across different provinces because they've previously been silo'ed and unable to communicate with each other in a straightforward way (for whatever reason). does this sentence mean something to you? what does a blockchain do in this situation?

not2b 4y ago
China's provincial officials are potentially adversarial parties vs the central government. Officially they must do as they are told, but unofficially they have considerable independent power as long as they aren't caught. Only a guess, but I suspect that Covid got as bad as it did partly because Wuhan officials didn't want the central government to know how bad things were (at least at first).
- vkou 4y ago
  This is partially correct, China is not a monolithic entity that fully marches in lockstep with Beijing. But the solution to the problem of uncooperative governors is the application of soft power (media, agitprop, appointments, rewards, threats, denunciations and disappearances, liquidation of problem people, their families, their friends, their pets, etc), not some over-engineered technological non-solution that still relies on the cooperation of all the parties in question to work. A blockchain can't enforce that anyone actually enters data into it, or that the data that is entered isn't garbage. A snail-mail package containing data sent to Beijing has the exact same immutability property for the only party that cares about it - the national government. Something like a blockchain is useful when peers don't trust eachother, but all care to build a shared consensus. When the peers don't care about consensus, and a central authority with the power of pit and gallows exists, none of those usecases hold.

1MachineElf 4y ago

Based on what you've described, they are using blockchain for their censorship tool, but that's different from the blockchain being a censorship tool in and of itself.