'You Do Not Need Blockchain: Eight Popular Use Cases And Why They Do Not Work' (smartdec.net) 88
Ivan Ivanitskiy: People are resorting to blockchain for all kinds of reasons these days. Ever since I started doing smart contract security audits in mid-2017, I've seen it all. A special category of cases is 'blockchain use' that seems logical and beneficial, but actually contains a problem that then spreads from one startup to another. I am going to give some examples of such problems and ineffective solutions so that you (developer/customer/investor) know what to do when somebody offers you to use blockchain this way.
1. Supply chain management
Let's say you ordered some goods, and a carrier guarantees to maintain certain transportation conditions, such as keeping your goods cold. A proposed solution is to install a sensor in a truck that will monitor fridge temperature and regularly transmit the data to the blockchain. This way, you can make sure that the promised conditions are met along the entire route.
The problem here is not blockchain, but rather sensor, related. Being part of the physical world, the sensor is easy to fool. For example, a malicious carrier might only cool down a small fridge inside the truck in which they put the sensor, while leaving the goods in the non-refrigerated section of the truck to save costs.
1. Supply chain management
Let's say you ordered some goods, and a carrier guarantees to maintain certain transportation conditions, such as keeping your goods cold. A proposed solution is to install a sensor in a truck that will monitor fridge temperature and regularly transmit the data to the blockchain. This way, you can make sure that the promised conditions are met along the entire route.
The problem here is not blockchain, but rather sensor, related. Being part of the physical world, the sensor is easy to fool. For example, a malicious carrier might only cool down a small fridge inside the truck in which they put the sensor, while leaving the goods in the non-refrigerated section of the truck to save costs.
Blockchain use cases (Score:5, Interesting)
However, this quote from the article highly entertained me:
Oddly enough, even non-working cases may be useful. Say a corporation uses a long-outdated process/system. Instead of opting for a normal and obvious solution, management decides to invest in hype (blockchain/big data/AI/IoT) to gain a lead....If you are offered the chance to use blockchain, make sure it is actually blockchain. However, even if it is not, it could still be a sensible offer.
I am sure IBM [ibm.com] right now is selling people "blockchain" technology that doesn't have any blockchain at all, just like they sell Watson technology without and Watson. It's a brand.
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Sometimes you can find amusing uses for "blockchain" technology.
Just by adding the "-S" option with a git commit, one is technically now a blockchain developer.
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gpg signing makes much more sense to me than block chain. The message to sign should be the result of the previous messages + your new message. If you sign all that, then you're effectively getting the same value, but you don't really need to 'invest' in anything as the tools are well established.
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Digital signatures are great, some even call the asymmetric cryptography they are based on ‘the greatest invention of the 20th century’.
Who said that? Are they not aware of antibiotics, the polio vaccine, solar power, nuclear weapons, etc etc.
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They are aware of all of that.
They are also aware that they won't make money by calling the cryptography the 53rd greatest invention of the 20th century.
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I think the person who said that was searching for funding.
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Nuclear weapons are quite a technical achievement, but I don't think it would ever be okay to call nuclear weaponry "the greatest invention of the 20th century."
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Parts of the author's reasoning are deeply flawed.
. Proof of authorship
Letâ(TM)s say Artist A wants to use blockchain to register that a certain painting is his. He takes a photo of it, puts the photo hash in blockchain, and then uploads the photo to a blog. Now, if Artist B claims that the painting belongs to him, Artist A can easily prove his authorship by showing the photo and hash.
There are two potential issues in this case:
First, Artist B can say he did not know about blockchain and thus could not use it to register his authorship. Therefore, this procedure can only work if it becomes common practice.
Second, Artist B could break into Artist Aâ(TM)s studio, take a photo of the painting, and place the hash in blockchain before Artist A.
Neither of these is a rational argument against blockchain for this use case. Here, blockchain proves that the picture is the same picture registered by the individual at a particular date and time before passing through however many hands. Nothing more, nothing less. That's nine tenths of any proof of authorship process: proving that you possessed it first.
Money
Blockchain is perfect for handling money, primarily because it was created exactly for this purpose. Blockchain records and verifies statements like âParty A owned X amount; Party A transferred X amount to Party B; Party B owns X amountâ(TM) as all previous similar statements were recorded within the same blockchain.
Blockchain is terrible for handling non-trivial amounts of money. It has all of the problems of handli
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The real issue with blockchain registration isn't the blockchain or the registration. It's the way people stop thinking and start nodding once they hear the word "blockchain".
That is, they take the part that blockchain really does prove, John Doe registered this thing at this time and read way too much in to that fact. They assume for some reason that if it's on the blockchain, it must be true. That is, that John Doe MUST be the rightful owner because the blockchain says so. In fact, it doesn't mean John Do
Re: Blockchain use cases (Score:2)
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Neither of these is a rational argument against blockchain for this use case. Here, blockchain proves that the picture is the same picture registered by the individual at a particular date and time before passing through however many hands. Nothing more, nothing less. That's nine tenths of any proof of authorship process: proving that you possessed it first.
But Block chain adds essentially nothing here; over asymmetric cryptographic signature. With just a signature generated using a private key, anyone with the authors public key can verify authorship. As to if something is the original? Block chain lets you verify you got your copy from Bob who bought it from Ted the artist. Trouble is if Alice says she also got her copy from Bob who's is the original? Sure you claim might be stronger since Bob asserted he transferred the original to you and that's record
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Block chain proves the time of the assertion. The signature alone only proves that you have they key, not the time when you used it. Thus block chain lets you establish precedence.
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That's basically his point. Unless you specifically need that, then blockchain is probably not the technology you need. So (for instance) in the case of supply chain management, blockchain equivalently useful to the USPS "Your thing was here, at this time" tracking. It does not add anything new or better.
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Transactions must happen in about a second or so before they are usable in everyday use.
Re: Blockchain use cases (Score:2)
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its an open-ecosystem with Smartcontracts. This can be anything you want it, codeified.
What can you actually do with Smartcontracts in reality? The only plausible use case I have ever heard of was currency exchange, as that is both simple enough to put into a smart contract as well as useful to have in a fully automated form. But everything else seems pretty illusionary, as real world contracts concerning real world stuff are rarely simply enough to codify or robust enough that you would use them fully automated without a human in the loop.
Ledgers and chain of custody (Score:3)
The only usecase I've seen for blockchain that makes sense is the original usecase, a currency, and even then, only for some transactions, not for buying coffee at your local shop.
Blockchain conceivably is useful any time you might use a ledger [wikipedia.org] or a chain of custody [wikipedia.org]. I'm an accountant and there is active discussion among the accounting community if some version of blockchain might have utility over double entry bookkeeping [wikipedia.org] in some circumstances. (spoiler: not sure yet but good chance) This isn't to say that blockchain is some magic bullet that will solve every problem and is useful in every case. But it seems likely that the technology will find some utility and the most interest
Double Entry bookkeeping???????? (Score:2)
Are you sure you are an accountant or do you just play one on Slashdot? Kidding aside, what you just said that makes no sense at face value. It's like saying blockchain might replace type declarations in C-programming or validation of an XML document. That makes no sense right? Doubleentry is just a layout strategy for keeping books and it's a formal declaration process where one record backs another record just like a C-header file is to the C-code block declaration.
SO you have my interest now. Assumi
Re: Ledgers and chain of custody (Score:2)
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Blockchain is only useful when you need a (very slow) public database and no one trusts anyone.
Correct and there are a non-trivial number of use cases like that.
I still don't see the use case where you'd want to trust the guy with the most CPU cycles though, with known parties you could just ask for a mass PGP confirmation or something like that. Maybe your bank doesn't trust any one other bank, but if 100+ banks around the country all sign and verify that yep, we saw that too it's going to be pretty hard to argue it didn't happen even if you can't find one neutral third party everybody trusts. I mean the blockchain is a nice trick to get a certain level of trust o
Re: Blockchain use cases (Score:3)
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Well, it seems Agile didn't make my employer's product offering faster to market, more competitive, cheaper, less buggy, or more maintainable last year.
I was hoping I could convince them to revamp their processes to use Blockchain in order to achieve these goals, this year.
We also have Cloudified Eco-Devops we haven't gotten round to yet...
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No Silver Bullet (Score:4, Informative)
If you approach a technology thinking, "This will solve all our problems!" then you are going to have a bad time.
You need to think critically about how that technology will help you. What distinct advantages does the new technology have over the old. And, most importantly, what new problems will this new technology introduce.
The majority of problems I see have nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with poor planning, poor process, etc.
Hadoop has been a fantastic example of this. Everyone and their goldfish think they need hadoop because they have SO MUCH DATA! Does your data measure in petabytes? No? Then you don't have as much data as you think you do.
And now we're seeing the same thing with blockchain.
Re:No Silver Bullet (Score:5, Interesting)
Hadoop has been a fantastic example of this. Everyone and their goldfish think they need hadoop because they have SO MUCH DATA! Does your data measure in petabytes? No? Then you don't have as much data as you think you do.
The funny thing is when they have all this NoSQL or highly scaleable stuff and they are still having trouble. I saw a company recently that was having trouble getting more than a hundred open orders at a time, considering all kinds of exotic solutions. I wanted to be thorough and eliminate all potential problems, so I asked, "Do you have indexes on your tables?" They said, "Well, we recently started added in them." Alright then. Let me blow your mind with the mysql "Explain" command.
Re:No Silver Bullet (Score:5, Interesting)
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Don't get me started on MongoDB.
It may have it's uses in very specific workloads, but as far as I am concerned, 99% of the use of MongoDB are developers who have absolutely no understanding of how databases actually work and either can't be bothered to figure it out, or are too stupid to.
If you are a developer and don't understand basic database concepts, do everyone a favor and stop being a developer because you are not qualified for the job.
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But mongoDB is web scale.
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Or as I like to say: Those who cannot learn set theory are doomed to run slow reports.
--
.nosig
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I was working at a government office and one web based app was so slow when you went to see a list of transactions. Turns out that the developer who originally wrote the app got two sets of information and in the JavaScript in the client browser looped through the first set and for each item looped through the second set looking for the matching item. When you started to have hundred and even a thousand transactions it took minutes for the page to display. (It was 2005.) So I changed the select so that it j
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But MongoDB is web-SCALE!
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Deflation is really bad, causes depressions (Score:2)
Deflation is very much not a good thing. That's why central banks pretty much make sure it doesn't happen. The rare cases where deflation has occurred are generally associated with economic depressions.
There are several problems with deflation, involving different aspects, but here's one of the simpler problems, one that is easy to explain:
You go to work today and earn $100.
Two weeks from now, when you get paid, it's only worth $90.
You have to trim your spending by $10.
EVERYONE ELSE had the same thing happe
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Deflation is very much not a good thing. That's why central banks pretty much make sure it doesn't happen.
Note that deflation happens so rarely that you can't say much empirically about it. People theorize that it would be worse for the economy (which you did here), but no one actually knows.
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The rare cases where deflation has occurred are generally associated with economic depressions.
This is true (in the past hundred and fifty years or so), but there is no good reason to believe that disflation is causing the depressions. If you're interested, here [mises.org] is a nice short article on it.
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s/disflation/deflation
I apologize for the typo.
That's the weirdest thing I've read this week (Score:2)
Half of it reads as if it was made up on the spot and hasn't had any research done to see if people really use it that way, and the other half reads as if it was meant to be part of a counter proposal PowerPoint.
Their examples feel particularly dubious. Someone might use microclimate in their shipping truck or copy a token to assure providence. While I can't say I've been swept up in the blockchain miracle workshop, I do know enough that neither of those things were ever meant to be solved or protected by w
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I actually liked the article, flaws and all. On the temperature and providence thing, I remember when Dallas Semiconductor first came out with the 1-Wire iButtons, proposing to solve some of these very issues. I still smile when I see them in these applications some 20 years later-- they work. They are the right type of solution to the first two problems-- sufficiently low cost to embed in things, and integrate encryption.
Physical vs virtual is a pretty good dividing line. Cash, even low value transacti
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Doesn't matter (Score:2)
You think businesses need 'cloud' for everything? Or to rewrite their ERP systems every 5 years? The question is not whether blockchain is useful, the question is whether all the shiny suit wearing mono-rail salespersons can convince a business to give them money for their blockchain systems or consultancy work.
The blockchain use case is "get funding" (Score:3)
Using the word "blockchain" in 2018 was like using the word "internet" in 1999. It made every business venture "better". Lets see how 2019 goes.
That said, blockchain is useful, just like the internet. Useful as a public ledger, but not everything needs a public ledger.
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One trick I did when discussing stuff about blockchain based stuff is to replace the word "blockchain" with "ledger" or "distributed ledger", and see if things still made sense. If it didn't make sense, bail on the project.
Bitcoin is doing just fine ... (Score:2)
At least so far, bitcoin will likely be replaced by some other coin someday. Blockchain based technology ma
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"Blockchain" was the buzzword last year with VC and Angel investors. At trade shows / conferences / etc where entrepreneurs were demoing products / services many investors could not help themselves, they had to ask about and ponder if "blockchain" could somehow be "incorporated" into the product / service in order to make it a more viable investment.
Using the word "blockchain" in 2018 was like using the word "internet" in 1999. It made every business venture "better". Lets see how 2019 goes.
That said, blockchain is useful, just like the internet. Useful as a public ledger, but not everything needs a public ledger.
More like XML in 2000. It can do anything!!! But doesn't actually help outside of a few specific cases, and in those cases just reworking your storage format to something sane would help just as much.
Potential for block chain in supply chain... (Score:2)
As the author states, a lot of the supply chain stuff is garbage.
The only thing that might be useful is that if at any point where the product changes hands neither party trusts the other, a double-entry accounting of transactions can be useful. It can't prove what happened, but it can prevent a party from going back and changing what they had previously agreed happened.
I have 10 barrels of product I am handing over to a truck from a warehouse.
Let's say this is a traditional 'boring old database' and I agr
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Of course a traditional database with signatures *could* be used as well, but in practice it just isn't done
That's because either the problem doesn't happen often enough to justify trying to solve it, or the problem actually wasn't a problem in the first place.
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I will confess I was trying to find some defense for a blockchain role in supply chain, but the more I think about it, having traditionally signed transactions just makes so much more sense there.... Well, I tried...
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I don't think the 'pitch' includes making your blockchain available to people not involved in the transaction, as more often than not these companies would rather obscure the supply chain.
This is one reason why it takes some effort to justify blockchain for this, as the number of parties you want to be reading the data is very limited, and why signed transactions in a non-blockchain media is probably a better fit...
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Of course a traditional database with signatures *could* be used as well, but in practice it just isn't done.
If they can't be arsed enough to simply store an extra field in their table (the signature) for free, what makes you think that they will be prepared to expend money on a blockchain solution that doesn't give them anything more than the signature?
Speaking of signatures, yours is hilarious in this context:
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You do realise that changing it to:
Blockchain is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
is pretty much on the nail there, right?
At least XML solved some problems. The world has yet to see a problem that blockchain can solve.
Blockchain is the textbook definit
"But it's the very best butter" (Score:3)
This is crazy for so many reasons (Score:2)
1) I said so
NIST flowchart on deciding blockchain use case (Score:4, Interesting)
NIST has a good document on blockchain, see Section 8:
* Do you need a shared, consistent data store? If yes:
* Does more than one entity need to contribute data? If yes:
* Data records, once written, are never updated or deleted? If yes:
* Sensitive identifiers WILL NOT be written to the data store? If yes (i.e., public data only)
* Are the entities with write access having a hard time deciding who should be in control of the data store? If yes:
* Do you want a tamperproof log of all writes to the data store? If yes
* You may have a useful Blockhain use case
* https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf
That's a lot of "if yes" conditions to meet.
What am I missing? (Score:3)
What, exactly, does "blockchain" have to offer with regards to "proof of authorship" that conventional PKI and digital notarization doesn't already address perfectly well?
Seriously. If you're trying to establish ownership of something in court, the only opinion that matters is the legal system's. If one side's case is based upon the word of a government-recognized notary, backed up by PKI provided by Verisign in compliance with the required ISO certifications... and the other side's case is based upon the word of some crowdsourced blockchain... the side with the notary and Verisign behind them is going to win, every single time. Even if blockchain ultimately gained equal recognition by the government, Verisign is still going to either outgun it... or own it as a subsidiary, rendering the distinction moot anyway.