Amazon Enters Blockchain Market With Cloud-Computing Services

Amazon.com is jumping on the blockchain wave with new cloud services that help customers build the technology needed to record transactions. From a report: Amazon Web Services Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy on Wednesday announced Amazon Managed Blockchain, a new service underpinning blockchain networks that record millions of transactions. The company spent the past year studying the needs of customers interested in blockchain solutions before creating the new products, Jassy said.

The service can be used to manage peer-to-peer payments, process loans and help businesses transact with distributors and suppliers, Jassy said. AWS announced a string of other new or updated cloud offerings, seeking to maintain its lead in the market for internet-based computing. The company also announced a new service called Amazon Quantum Ledger Database or QLDB, which is a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority. The service, which is launching into preview today, offers an append-only, immutable journal that tracks the history of all changes, Amazon said. And all the changes are cryptographically chained and verifiable.

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[Killall -9 Bash]

Maybe not, but crypto currency is the only application of Blockchain that makes sense.

In what other industry is it desirable to have a distributed ledger?

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[chiefcrash]

In what other industry is it desirable to have a distributed ledger?

Supply chain and inventory management come to mind...

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[Killall -9 Bash]

You would want a 3rd party to share records of your supply chain and inventory management? Because that's the whole point of blockchain... that's what a distributed ledger means. The whole point of blockchain and the distributed ledger is to non-centrally authenticate the veracity of records.... which is why it is FUCKING INSANE that banks and factories are interested in this. Are banks, farms, and factories going to distribute their internal info to third parties? If not, it's not blockchain. Blockch

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[Bengie]

You don't need to recheck the entire chain. Only blocks after the last trusted hash. Any block chain that does not contain the last trusted hash cannot be trusted at all.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. It's about recording something that cannot be altered and no-one involved has to trust the other parties as to the veracity.

Anything that needs such properties can perhaps benefit from Blockchain. Someone mentioned supply chains - lots of companies (often rivals) coordinating their activities.

A lot of work involves using a lawyer as a trusted third party. All that can vanish if all the parties can mathematically prove what was agreed and no-one could have altered it.

Distributed blockchain

[PPH]

Doesn't this run contrary to one of the benefits of a blockchain? That being it's distributed, decentralized nature. The ledger isn't maintained by one entity that can fiddle with it. Or be arm-twisted by authorities to back out transactions that they don't like.

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[Draconi]

Not really.

Enterprise Blockchain focuses more on business needs that don't require the decentralization but do need the "journalistic" integrity blockchain offers.

For example, take security log files on a webserver: by storing new entries in a QLDB vault you can ensure that they become tamper proof should a malicious third-party gain access to them. They won't be able to reconstruct the underlying hashes at a given historical point moving forwards.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Bengie]

The main benefit of a block chain isn't that it can be decentralized, it's that that all of the consumers can validate on their own that it hasn't been tampered with. Even if the only service that can change it is centralized, as long as all consumers can access the chain, they can keep a copy or even just the hash of some block and know if anything has changed. It's verified trust.

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[tricorn]

I've been trying to figure out what the term "blockchain" (as a "technology") is supposed to mean in a non-bitcoin context (or similar proof-of-work system) since it started being hyped.

What I think it really means, and what I think Amazon is providing here, is not distributed work, but distributed trust.

Specifically, the blocks and hashes (which includes the hash from the previous block) are published, and all interested parties have access. All they really need to record is the hash of the last block the

blockchain enterprise

[Gandoron]

Enterprises will need blockchain solutions. Good to see AWS joining the fray, though much of their offering is centralized.

However they took their time given where players like Microsoft and IBM are doing.
https://www.abiresearch.com/pr... [abiresearch.com]

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[AuMatar]

No, they're the last people to need blockchain. You use blockchain because there's no central source of truth. Inside a company, the company has a central source of truth- itself. Blockchain might, possibly, make some sense in a distributed system with multiple members who can't afford or don't trust a neutral 3rd party. It makes no sense in an enterprise, and is far more difficult and expensive than other systems.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Blockchain and restructuring of the Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissociated Press (DP) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Physicists identify new fundamental particle

May herald a new particle family and restructuring of the Standard Model

Geneva, Switzerland — August 2018

Keywords: hypino, shinyon, blockchain

High energy particle physicists at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nullité) facility have confirmed the existence of the long-conjectured hypino (hy-PEE-no). It is thought to be the first member of a new class of particles known as shinyons (SHY

Not Quantum

[Draconi]

The term 'Quantum' in QLDB appears to be a marketing term and not related to post-quantum addressing schemes like XMSS/WOTS+.

That sort of "quantum" blockchain deals with the theoretical attacks on ECDSA addressing schemes; examples: Mochimo [mochimo.org] and QRL.

Amazon's appears to be an append-only journaling system based on SHA256. It's unclear from the documentation whether it just hashes each transaction and maintains a verifiable/uninterruptable chain of hashes, or whether it also injects a Proof-of-Work style itera

Amazon's own monetary system

[bigtreeman]

So dangerous,
Amazon is already eclipsing all other companies
but having it's own monetary system is just insane
one worldwide money, accounting, tax, trading

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[chiefcrash]

Lots of companies have their own monetary system. They're called gift cards....

I'm sure they won't snoop on your private keys

[Anonymous Coward]

and they won't let the U.S. government do it either, right?