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Extremely relevant simple chart: NIST's answer to "Do you need a blockchain?": https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed https://m.imgur.com/a/RlUj9Ed

influxmoment 4y ago
This is wrong. Blockchains validate data. Their purpose isn't to store it. Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no
- cowtools 4y ago
  The purpose of bitcoin, for example, is not to store a list of transactions?
  - tux3 4y ago
    Storing the list is the easy part. I have a usb drive that can store the list. You want people to agree on which chain is the main chain, so that you can only add things to the list, and you can't go back or substitute it with another list without breaking proof of work. The purpose of bitcoin is to make people agree that a spent transaction is irrevocably spent.
    - testesttest 4y ago
      Have you tried storing the list lately? I don't think you have a 10TB plus flash drive. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive Crypto is more and more centralised because the hardware to run your own node is now thousands of dollars. That is without even getting into miners...It is kinda failing.
      - influxmoment 4y ago
        That's Ethereum. Largely was consider a bad ideas because it's too large to independently validate
        testesttest 4y ago
        Name a main stream one that is easy? I run archive nodes for SOL, ETH, Polygon, others.
        mhluongo 4y ago
        Bitcoin.
        MBCook 4y ago
        You’re right. 324 GB is far more manageable. Their point is totally invalid.
        influxmoment 4y ago
        Agreed. 324GB and this level of growth is manageable and can be done with a raspberry pi and an ssd
      - yokem55 4y ago
        This chart is kind of dated and misleading at the moment. 1) You don't need an archive node to fully verify the current state of the chain. A full geth node in full sync mode (about 600gb) will process every transaction of every block and get you the current state. You only need an archive node if you want the history of each account and contract separately indexed. 2) Folks that do want an archive node can now use much more space efficient clients then geth such as erigon (1.4tb) or besu (1.2 tb) if they want to run a block explorer or query the state of an account in the past.
        testesttest 4y ago
        1) you need an archive node to get historical events which is the only way to do lots of things. E.g. scrape all NFTs 2) Erigon has horrible bugs and is missing data. I filled a ticket against one such issue and they "fixed" it by making the exception go away and returning null. Their lack of attention to detail made me abandon the project. If you know someone in the project I can produce MANY examples and would be willing to do so because running an archive geth node sucks.
        yokem55 4y ago
        I don't know any of them directly. But they do have an email on their github readme that you can send a request to for an invite to their discord. And if they don't respond on that, you can reach many of them in the Eth R&D discord.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - influxmoment 4y ago
    For the purpose of validation. If the transactions didn't need to be stored in full for validation they wouldn't be stored. You can see with newer upgrades to the Bitcoin blockchain like taproot you can have validation without storage
  - influxmoment 4y ago
    There were actually blockchain updates proposed that didn't store transactions (see mimblewimble) but they had other issues so were not used
- jjulius 4y ago
  >This is wrong. Okay. >Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no. But... that's the same thing that the wrong chart says...
  - influxmoment 4y ago
    Sure. But it's interesting how little information about the tech is accurate
mindcandy 4y ago
In the last few steps, going from “Yes, you need trust-less updates” to “<tiny distraction>” to “Meh whatever, just use a regular database!” seems a bit lacking in short-term memory…
kanzure 4y ago
Well, if you need more proof that you don't always need a blockchain, Webcash ( https://webcash.org https://webcash.org ) might be it because Webcash just uses a central database for double spending detection. A few of the early users were commenting that the project has put lots of altcoins to shame from an architectural standpoint.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jiggawatts 4y ago
A combination of a cryptographically-chained ledger such as this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/ledger/ledger-overview?view=sql-server-ver16 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/se... ... together with a trusted third party covers something like 90-95% of the supposed applications if blockchain. It's insufficient for typical mass-adopted, international currency, but for damned near everything else it is "more than good enough". In the real world, before blockchain, what mutually distrusting corporations or people would do is set up a distinct third party organisation to keep the "ledger" (or whatever). For example, banks use non-bank companies like Experian to do cross-bank fraud analysis. Similarly, many industries send their sales stats to a third-party non-competitor org that aggregates the data, and then sells back industry-wide anonymised sales stat reports. This lets companies that don't trust each other exchange data, etc... This was a solved problem centuries ago, and technologies like Azure SQL Database Ledger make it nearly as robust as blockchain, with none of the downsides. In other words, the NIST flow chart needs more steps towards the bottom pointing to both existing and new non-blockchain solutions.

influxmoment 4y ago

This is wrong. Blockchains validate data. Their purpose isn't to store it. Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no

cowtools 4y ago
The purpose of bitcoin, for example, is not to store a list of transactions?
- tux3 4y ago
  Storing the list is the easy part. I have a usb drive that can store the list. You want people to agree on which chain is the main chain, so that you can only add things to the list, and you can't go back or substitute it with another list without breaking proof of work. The purpose of bitcoin is to make people agree that a spent transaction is irrevocably spent.
  - testesttest 4y ago
    Have you tried storing the list lately? I don't think you have a 10TB plus flash drive. https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive https://etherscan.io/chartsync/chainarchive Crypto is more and more centralised because the hardware to run your own node is now thousands of dollars. That is without even getting into miners...It is kinda failing.
    - influxmoment 4y ago
      That's Ethereum. Largely was consider a bad ideas because it's too large to independently validate
      - testesttest 4y ago
        Name a main stream one that is easy? I run archive nodes for SOL, ETH, Polygon, others.
        mhluongo 4y ago
        Bitcoin.
      - MBCook 4y ago
        You’re right. 324 GB is far more manageable. Their point is totally invalid.
        influxmoment 4y ago
        Agreed. 324GB and this level of growth is manageable and can be done with a raspberry pi and an ssd
    - yokem55 4y ago
      This chart is kind of dated and misleading at the moment. 1) You don't need an archive node to fully verify the current state of the chain. A full geth node in full sync mode (about 600gb) will process every transaction of every block and get you the current state. You only need an archive node if you want the history of each account and contract separately indexed. 2) Folks that do want an archive node can now use much more space efficient clients then geth such as erigon (1.4tb) or besu (1.2 tb) if they want to run a block explorer or query the state of an account in the past.
      - testesttest 4y ago
        1) you need an archive node to get historical events which is the only way to do lots of things. E.g. scrape all NFTs 2) Erigon has horrible bugs and is missing data. I filled a ticket against one such issue and they "fixed" it by making the exception go away and returning null. Their lack of attention to detail made me abandon the project. If you know someone in the project I can produce MANY examples and would be willing to do so because running an archive geth node sucks.
        yokem55 4y ago
        I don't know any of them directly. But they do have an email on their github readme that you can send a request to for an invite to their discord. And if they don't respond on that, you can reach many of them in the Eth R&D discord.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- influxmoment 4y ago
  For the purpose of validation. If the transactions didn't need to be stored in full for validation they wouldn't be stored. You can see with newer upgrades to the Bitcoin blockchain like taproot you can have validation without storage
- influxmoment 4y ago
  There were actually blockchain updates proposed that didn't store transactions (see mimblewimble) but they had other issues so were not used
jjulius 4y ago
>This is wrong. Okay. >Mostly the answer to do you need a blockchain is no. But... that's the same thing that the wrong chart says...
- influxmoment 4y ago
  Sure. But it's interesting how little information about the tech is accurate

mindcandy 4y ago

In the last few steps, going from “Yes, you need trust-less updates” to “<tiny distraction>” to “Meh whatever, just use a regular database!” seems a bit lacking in short-term memory…

kanzure 4y ago

Well, if you need more proof that you don't always need a blockchain, Webcash ( https://webcash.org https://webcash.org ) might be it because Webcash just uses a central database for double spending detection. A few of the early users were commenting that the project has put lots of altcoins to shame from an architectural standpoint.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jiggawatts 4y ago

A combination of a cryptographically-chained ledger such as this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/ledger/ledger-overview?view=sql-server-ver16 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/se... ... together with a trusted third party covers something like 90-95% of the supposed applications if blockchain. It's insufficient for typical mass-adopted, international currency, but for damned near everything else it is "more than good enough". In the real world, before blockchain, what mutually distrusting corporations or people would do is set up a distinct third party organisation to keep the "ledger" (or whatever). For example, banks use non-bank companies like Experian to do cross-bank fraud analysis. Similarly, many industries send their sales stats to a third-party non-competitor org that aggregates the data, and then sells back industry-wide anonymised sales stat reports. This lets companies that don't trust each other exchange data, etc... This was a solved problem centuries ago, and technologies like Azure SQL Database Ledger make it nearly as robust as blockchain, with none of the downsides. In other words, the NIST flow chart needs more steps towards the bottom pointing to both existing and new non-blockchain solutions.