This Is Your Company on Blockchain(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
This Is Your Company on Blockchain
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/this-is-your-company-on-blockchain
24 comments
Dumb question time: Aren't 95% of these use cases more
easily implemented with a single central source of truth,
possibly with distributed read-only replicas?
It's probably fashion much of the time. Two friends of mine who work for big conslutancies already asked me what this 'blockchain' thing is because they heard some internal system is going to be using it. I both cases I couldn't really figure out why they'd not do as you suggest.
I agree that yes there's plenty of hype in the blockchain/crypto world and those companies who can afford setting up "blockchain departments" :) very often do so to keep up with the joneses.
That said though - when trust is not an issue, the whole POW thing goes away and txs are getting processed very fast with "distributed, read only replicas" getting set up out of the box as soon as the system is up and running. Which it is super easy to get going with some of the "free + we charge for consulting" implementations out there.
That said though - when trust is not an issue, the whole POW thing goes away and txs are getting processed very fast with "distributed, read only replicas" getting set up out of the box as soon as the system is up and running. Which it is super easy to get going with some of the "free + we charge for consulting" implementations out there.
That's the only place where blockchains are genuinely useful - when there isn't a single trusted party to maintain a ledger. In this case everybody participating in transactions (which don't have to be monetary in nature) can be sure that their transaction is both unrevocable and untamperable.
that is just the story. In reality powerful actors can tip the balancein their favor and even revoke and tamper with old transactions
Good to see there is still room for the high-concept blockchain puff piece article.
Can someone explain how blockchains work outside of Bitcoin? My poor understanding is Bitcoin only works because you get paid to mine (compute the chain). Since so many people want money there's enough people computing the chain to check for consensus
How will there be any incentives to mine in non financial chains?
How will there be any incentives to mine in non financial chains?
These blockchains shouldn't use mining at all; they should use algorithms like PBFT or SCP. Such algorithms require out-of-band agreement on who is and isn't running a node, but once that has been set up they are similarly secure as POW.
It's a great point that often gets lost in the blockchain hype. Basically, the "coins" have to have some value, which comes from the intrinsic value that the blockchain in question provides - which may not be financial as such, though of course money is generally fungible with value. Namecoin is an example of an appropriate non-Bitcoin, non-"financial" use of a blockchain; the "coins" allow you to "purchase" space on a global namespace, which becomes more valuable as the namespace grows in popularity.
[edit: having read wmf's sibling comment, I was not aware that blockchains could be separated from mining. So take all of the above with a grain of salt.]
[edit: having read wmf's sibling comment, I was not aware that blockchains could be separated from mining. So take all of the above with a grain of salt.]
>How will there be any incentives to mine in non financial chains?
You could could pay miners with some other blockchain's assets. Say zoos trading animal tokens (because they don't believe in buying and selling animals) with a small Bitcoin transaction processing fee to pay the miners.
You could could pay miners with some other blockchain's assets. Say zoos trading animal tokens (because they don't believe in buying and selling animals) with a small Bitcoin transaction processing fee to pay the miners.
"Gobs of accountants, bankers, lawyers, and company bureaucrats would vanish."
Oh what a world this would become! What other "necessary evil" could we add to this list?
Oh what a world this would become! What other "necessary evil" could we add to this list?
As someone who works at a Bitcoin/Ethereum company, and has passionately followed Bitcoin since 2011, every time I hear "blockchain" as a proper noun a piece of me dies inside. It's like saying "This Is Your Company on Website."
Blockchain, on the cloud. Synergised and vertically integrated for streamlined UX.
> Blockchain, on the cloud. Synergised and vertically integrated for streamlined UX.
Shit! Where's my checkbook?! I have to cut these guys a seed round before they try to actually build anything.
Otherwise it'll become apparent that this series of words have nothing to do with each other!
Shit! Where's my checkbook?! I have to cut these guys a seed round before they try to actually build anything.
Otherwise it'll become apparent that this series of words have nothing to do with each other!
[un]fortunately this is no longer the case in the blockchain/vc world, which is the main reason you don't really hear much about new blockchain/bitcoin (or some other crypto) companies popping up and getting funded.
These days the blockchain world revolves around large companies(or groups of companies) setting things up for internal consumption and consulting companies trying to get in on the action to help those large companies with the setup.
These days the blockchain world revolves around large companies(or groups of companies) setting things up for internal consumption and consulting companies trying to get in on the action to help those large companies with the setup.
Welcome aboard!
I dunno. To someone like me who is all up into Bitcoin but not too serious about it, it sounds okay. Faddish, but okay.
I think the crucial distinction is whether you're pointing at an approach versus some specific implementation. 'Blockchain', as I understand it, is a particular approach that isn't linked to some particular instance.
"Your company on website" doesn't work because there's really only one 'web'. "Your company on Facebook" does work, as does "Your company on SCRUM/NoSQL/AOL/Mobile/etc."
I'd prefer "on a blockchain", personally, but "on blockchain" doesn't strike me as too egregious.
I think the crucial distinction is whether you're pointing at an approach versus some specific implementation. 'Blockchain', as I understand it, is a particular approach that isn't linked to some particular instance.
"Your company on website" doesn't work because there's really only one 'web'. "Your company on Facebook" does work, as does "Your company on SCRUM/NoSQL/AOL/Mobile/etc."
I'd prefer "on a blockchain", personally, but "on blockchain" doesn't strike me as too egregious.
Just because it doesn't have "the" doesn't mean it's a proper noun. In this case I think it's being used as an abstract noun.
That's what I was trying to say in another comment, but I don't grammar very well :-/.
"This is your company on Agile" or "This is your company on Slack" doesn't sound too bad. So why not "blockchain"?
Agile and Slack are proper nouns; names people use to refer to things. "Bitcoin" isn't "blockchain", "Bitcoin" is "a blockchain".
Would it be better in the plural, as in: "This is your company on Blockchains"? Why is this any different from "This is your brain on drugs"?
And what about making it more specific, as in: "This is your company on blockchain technology"?
And what about making it more specific, as in: "This is your company on blockchain technology"?
Maybe you could say "This Is Your Company on Web", which could imply plenty of things made possible by web technologies, like remote, distributed teams and cheap cloud infrastructure.
I think the blockchain innovation is amazing in the context where you have no trusted party. Bitcoin, for example. But almost all the other blockchain uses I see discussed have obvious central parties that people trust. E.g., Nasdaq already knows exactly how to run a very reliable registry at low computational cost and very low latency. [1]
So what cases actually benefit, and which ones are more (mis)applying the latest fashion?
[1] As an example, look at the LMAX architecture, which is orders of magnitude faster and cheaper to run than a distributed blockchain: http://martinfowler.com/articles/lmax.html