4 ms·

Ask HN: Is there a Neutral Book on Blockchain Technology?

• ggwp99 4y ago
  Regarding the last part, I would encourage you to look into ZK Proofs in blockchain, Merkle Trees and sharing private data on the blockchain. That may possibly change your mind on the idea of publishing private health data to a public blockchain.
  • mjburgess 4y ago
    Private data should be held by a trusted third-party who is able to interpret it (eg., doctors subject to regulation) and who are accountable for its proper use. This data expires, and should be deleted entirely if inaccurate; and should never be usable "against me". The absence of trust is not a selling point here, it's a severe issue. "Trustless" is a worsening of the "trust ecosystem", not an improvement.
    • ggwp99 4y ago
      The goal of "trustless" is for the patient to be able to hold his own data rather than third parties. Since although regulations does exist, corruption exists as well and the inherent trust you are building with a third party. You can hold your own medical data and share access or remove access for certain third parties when needed. This is the difference.
      • mjburgess 4y ago
        That isnt what blockchains do; nor is that what "private" data is for -- private data is "private" in the sense that it's about you in ways that shouldnt be public, but it's not data that you own credit data is held by credit reference companies about you, but cannot be actually held by you; that defeats the point likewise medical recourds are held by hospitals about you, because they need them to provide their service, but cannot be plausibly held by you what if you're seriously ill and people need access to your medical records? this doesnt make any sense. The people who create medical records, credit records, etc. are other people, and they create them about you These people typically have a professionally duty to own that data.
        • ggwp99 4y ago
          I understand your point. But we may have different terms for "owning data". For example, you can own a house but everyone can look at it but you can decide who can enter it. Imagine in the future data storage that keeps track of insulin levels of a diabetic every 5 minutes. This data should be owned by you, the data could be shared with necessary third parties, but owning it and deciding what to do with it should be your choice.
          • smoldesu 4y ago
            > This data should be owned by you Correct. In the status-quo, it can be. > the data could be shared with necessary third parties Correct, in the status-quo it already is. > but owning it and deciding what to do with it should be your choice. Remind me again why we need Blockchains to provide this? I'm not going to rip into your example, but I think it's a perfect idea of how far I need to suspend disbelief to see a practical crypto implementation. People have lost the script entirely and just think crypto is a trustless database, and we need to pivot away from this currency thing to target a market that crypto will always be disadvantaged in. There is no practical reason to store my health data in a public blockchain. It is a security liability even if encrypted, merely because another copy of my personal info exists. Even assuming you make it to market with an open-source blockchain with zero fees, maintainers from God himself and hourly airdrops, you'll just get poached by someone who can do this faster, easier and cheaper on a single database. Darwin eats socially-conscious startups for breakfast.
• mjburgess 4y ago
  For future reference, Imran Bashir's "Mastering Blockchain" seems serviceable. I'm persuaded by its comprehensiveness, as well as it listing actual downsides.
  • tromp 4y ago
    It can be misleading in places, like when it confuses the general notion of Proof-of-Work [1] with one PoW algorithm in particular (Hashcash) [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work [2] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-blockchain/9781788839044/bfd6cb04-9767-45e0-bf92-bf96f1884b3e.xhtml https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-blockchain/97...
    • mjburgess 4y ago
      Yes, i've discovered, after reading more, it's not very good
• JoeMayoBot 4y ago
  I recently read the O'Reilly report "NFTs, the Metaverse, and Everything Web 3.0". Blockchains are a part of that discussion; though what I gained from it was a broad perspective of what Web 3.0 is and how it is different. It's around 65 pages and sounded credible to me.
• hayst4ck 4y ago
  I would start with merkle trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree Here's a blog post which is probably basically what you want: https://medium.com/system-design-blog/merkle-tree-and-its-applications-47b4128e2a0 https://medium.com/system-design-blog/merkle-tree-and-its-ap...
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  Not all details, but you could start here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Then look at the Bitcoin source code.
• keiferski 4y ago
  As someone else said, I highly recommend reading the original Bitcoin paper. It is straightforward and while obviously pro-blockchain, almost entirely devoid of marketing hype.
• FeistySkink 4y ago
  Not a book, but Gary Gensler's Blockchain and Money MIT course is pretty good. Recordings are available on YouTube.
• ezedv 4y ago
  Hi, there! At Rather Labs, we have cutting-edge Blockchain projects, we help people and companies to launch their Web3 projects: https://www.ratherlabs.com/ https://www.ratherlabs.com/ And, we also have a Blockchain blog, it has an interesting read about Blockchain: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog Don't hesitate to ask me any questions!
• rainytuesday 4y ago
  Blockchain is maybe casting too wide a net. Each implementation will have different technical details. In the ethereum space I think the highest level of technical analysis you will find is in the domain of MEV-bots.