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> The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. I don't understand why even this is sensibl

> The most sensible thing to do with blockchain is to track produce from when it's picked to when it's sold for QC. I don't understand why even this is sensible. Why not just use a database? The only miners/validators on a produce blockchain are likely to be agri-companies anyway.

insanitybit 4y ago
I also find it to be a confusing use case. The point of blockchain is that it's useful if you assume that some parties are malicious. Who are we protecting against in the produce supply chain?
- lupire 4y ago
  Fraudulent suppliers, of course. But Blockchain can't prevent against that.
- junofan 4y ago
  It’s cheaper than lawyers for some things.
yellowapple 4y ago
> I don't understand why even this is sensible. Why not just use a database? Who's gonna run it? Any individual company in the chain has a vested interest in fudging the data, and the technical means to do so. A private third-party lacks oversight (and thus could also be given a vested interest in fudging data). A government agency could do it (assuming one's government is trustworthy, which is often a poor assumption), but that would likely preclude international cooperation unless it's something like the UN running it (and even then). > The only miners/validators on a produce blockchain are likely to be agri-companies anyway. Preferably you'd use an existing public blockchain rather than spinning up an entirely new one. Even if there was such a blockchain solely for tracking produce, the fact that no individual agri-company has control over its data makes it more trustworthy/impartial than some centralized database.
- acdha 4y ago
  The problem is that blockchains cost more and add significant performance reliability problems without adding trust. You could solve this problem using PKI with orders of magnitude lower computational and storage cost, and that'd remove the requirement to have an always-on network service. However, that's still missing the point that this is fundamentally a problem about humans in the real world and the technology can't magically change that. The problems with supply chain authenticity aren't a question of record keeping but whether those records are accurate. If my inspector is being paid off, he'll do the same thing for the blockchain record that he was doing with paper. If things are being tampered with in shipping, the same people will do the same things and you'll have the same dodgy goods arriving at their destination except they'd now have valid but inaccurate blockchain records. As usual, the blockchain solution isn't adding anything except creating a market for the people selling it. It doesn't solve the real problems and if you spend time tackling those, you won't derive any benefit from diverting more your revenue to some VC's yacht fund.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > The problem is that blockchains cost more From each participant's perspective they cost far less, both in terms of implementation and ongoing maintenance, than attempting to build and run a centralized database oneself (and if you're gonna match a blockchain's trustworthiness, every participant would indeed need to run a database oneself). > and add significant performance reliability problems 1. Nothing beats the performance of /dev/null. 2. They do the precise opposite of adding reliability problems; they're in fact notoriously difficult to bring down given the sheer degree of data replication. > without adding trust. The comment to which you replied describes at length how they add considerable degrees of trust. They only "don't add" trust if - again - every participant is running one's own database, at which point - if they're expected to agree with each other - you've got an ad-hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, ludicrously expensive version of half of a blockchain. > If my inspector is being paid off, he'll do the same thing for the blockchain record that he was doing with paper. Which would then be public and uncensorable evidence against that inspector. > If things are being tampered with in shipping, the same people will do the same things and you'll have the same dodgy goods arriving at their destination except they'd now have valid but inaccurate blockchain records. And that inaccuracy would - upon detection - become public and uncensorable evidence against those tamperers.

insanitybit 4y ago

I also find it to be a confusing use case. The point of blockchain is that it's useful if you assume that some parties are malicious. Who are we protecting against in the produce supply chain?

lupire 4y ago
Fraudulent suppliers, of course. But Blockchain can't prevent against that.
junofan 4y ago
It’s cheaper than lawyers for some things.

yellowapple 4y ago

> I don't understand why even this is sensible. Why not just use a database? Who's gonna run it? Any individual company in the chain has a vested interest in fudging the data, and the technical means to do so. A private third-party lacks oversight (and thus could also be given a vested interest in fudging data). A government agency could do it (assuming one's government is trustworthy, which is often a poor assumption), but that would likely preclude international cooperation unless it's something like the UN running it (and even then). > The only miners/validators on a produce blockchain are likely to be agri-companies anyway. Preferably you'd use an existing public blockchain rather than spinning up an entirely new one. Even if there was such a blockchain solely for tracking produce, the fact that no individual agri-company has control over its data makes it more trustworthy/impartial than some centralized database.

acdha 4y ago
The problem is that blockchains cost more and add significant performance reliability problems without adding trust. You could solve this problem using PKI with orders of magnitude lower computational and storage cost, and that'd remove the requirement to have an always-on network service. However, that's still missing the point that this is fundamentally a problem about humans in the real world and the technology can't magically change that. The problems with supply chain authenticity aren't a question of record keeping but whether those records are accurate. If my inspector is being paid off, he'll do the same thing for the blockchain record that he was doing with paper. If things are being tampered with in shipping, the same people will do the same things and you'll have the same dodgy goods arriving at their destination except they'd now have valid but inaccurate blockchain records. As usual, the blockchain solution isn't adding anything except creating a market for the people selling it. It doesn't solve the real problems and if you spend time tackling those, you won't derive any benefit from diverting more your revenue to some VC's yacht fund.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > The problem is that blockchains cost more From each participant's perspective they cost far less, both in terms of implementation and ongoing maintenance, than attempting to build and run a centralized database oneself (and if you're gonna match a blockchain's trustworthiness, every participant would indeed need to run a database oneself). > and add significant performance reliability problems 1. Nothing beats the performance of /dev/null. 2. They do the precise opposite of adding reliability problems; they're in fact notoriously difficult to bring down given the sheer degree of data replication. > without adding trust. The comment to which you replied describes at length how they add considerable degrees of trust. They only "don't add" trust if - again - every participant is running one's own database, at which point - if they're expected to agree with each other - you've got an ad-hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, ludicrously expensive version of half of a blockchain. > If my inspector is being paid off, he'll do the same thing for the blockchain record that he was doing with paper. Which would then be public and uncensorable evidence against that inspector. > If things are being tampered with in shipping, the same people will do the same things and you'll have the same dodgy goods arriving at their destination except they'd now have valid but inaccurate blockchain records. And that inaccuracy would - upon detection - become public and uncensorable evidence against those tamperers.