Blockchain: Next tech juggernaut?
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Reading this book about Blockchain technologies and it is convincing me that blockchain is a juggernaut (unstoppable). Blockchain: A Practical Guide to Developing Business, Law, and Technology Solutions [^] It really is going to be used everywhere (identity, finance, healthcare, file storage/sharing, supply chain). If you check out Hyperledger Projects - Hyperledger[^] you will see that there are major blockchain projects being backed by major corps (SawTooth = Intel, Fabric = IBM) And everyone has heard of Bitcoin but Ripple (Company - Learn About Ripple)[^] is getting huge and backed by large corps. A nice summary of the technology:
Blockchain book said:
Simply put, a blockchain is a database encompassing a physical chain of fixed-length blocks that include 1 to N transactions, where each transaction added to a new block is validated and then inserted into the block.
The concepts behind the blockchain really are interesting.
While I really like the idea of blockchain I do think it's being hyped a lot. Sure, some bigger companies are hopping on the hype train, but I don't see a lot of value for regular businesses. It's not as secure as they make you believe. BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do. More importantly, it's really expensive to generate those hashes (or nonces to be precise)! The fact that mining them can make you money says enough. It's like saying "we need ID's for our database, let's ask consumers to rent us their computers so we can get those ID's!" Not going to happen for about 99.999999% of the businesses. Maybe I just don't know blockchain well enough, but I know a lot of people talking about blockchain, but no one who's actually doing it.
Best, Sander Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
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Reading this book about Blockchain technologies and it is convincing me that blockchain is a juggernaut (unstoppable). Blockchain: A Practical Guide to Developing Business, Law, and Technology Solutions [^] It really is going to be used everywhere (identity, finance, healthcare, file storage/sharing, supply chain). If you check out Hyperledger Projects - Hyperledger[^] you will see that there are major blockchain projects being backed by major corps (SawTooth = Intel, Fabric = IBM) And everyone has heard of Bitcoin but Ripple (Company - Learn About Ripple)[^] is getting huge and backed by large corps. A nice summary of the technology:
Blockchain book said:
Simply put, a blockchain is a database encompassing a physical chain of fixed-length blocks that include 1 to N transactions, where each transaction added to a new block is validated and then inserted into the block.
The concepts behind the blockchain really are interesting.
raddevus wrote:
It really is going to be used everywhere (identity, finance, healthcare, file storage/sharing, supply chain).
Nothing is used everywhere. And the bigger the system, the more disparate the sub-systems will be. And that is guaranteed by economics, not technology.
raddevus wrote:
you will see that there are major blockchain projects being backed by major corps (SawTooth = Intel, Fabric = IBM)
And Oracle had support for Object Oriented Databases in the 90s (if you will the precursor to NoSQL) and yet it was used very little.
raddevus wrote:
Reading this book about Blockchain technologies...
If you check it out you will find the author (at least the first one) is specializing in providing legal support for companies that use blockchain. So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential. To be fair pretty much any technology that reaches even a small audience is going to attract cheerleaders that seek to promote the technology while basing their own financial future on the success of what they are promoting. And there could be success stories. But there will be failures as well. Guaranteed since some of those have already happened.
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While I really like the idea of blockchain I do think it's being hyped a lot. Sure, some bigger companies are hopping on the hype train, but I don't see a lot of value for regular businesses. It's not as secure as they make you believe. BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do. More importantly, it's really expensive to generate those hashes (or nonces to be precise)! The fact that mining them can make you money says enough. It's like saying "we need ID's for our database, let's ask consumers to rent us their computers so we can get those ID's!" Not going to happen for about 99.999999% of the businesses. Maybe I just don't know blockchain well enough, but I know a lot of people talking about blockchain, but no one who's actually doing it.
Best, Sander Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Sander Rossel wrote:
BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do.
I believe you may be misinformed. Bitcoin maybe. Not sure if something happened there. But do you know that each node in the blockchain has a SHA-256 hash of the next node, etc? Quite difficult to hack. There is a time-based part to the value also and then the decentralized check that goes on. So not sure if you've just heard it was less secure or something. You'd have to bring more facts to this story that it is insecure than just that it's not as secure as they say. I'm not sure either though, but if you read the part of how a blockchain is a merkle tree you would probably agree it would be quite difficult to alter the data. But I do understand that nascent tech (and especially overhyped nascent tech like blockchain) often makes people think it is just a bunch of noise. Maybe it is, but the details behind it are very interesting.
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raddevus wrote:
It really is going to be used everywhere (identity, finance, healthcare, file storage/sharing, supply chain).
Nothing is used everywhere. And the bigger the system, the more disparate the sub-systems will be. And that is guaranteed by economics, not technology.
raddevus wrote:
you will see that there are major blockchain projects being backed by major corps (SawTooth = Intel, Fabric = IBM)
And Oracle had support for Object Oriented Databases in the 90s (if you will the precursor to NoSQL) and yet it was used very little.
raddevus wrote:
Reading this book about Blockchain technologies...
If you check it out you will find the author (at least the first one) is specializing in providing legal support for companies that use blockchain. So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential. To be fair pretty much any technology that reaches even a small audience is going to attract cheerleaders that seek to promote the technology while basing their own financial future on the success of what they are promoting. And there could be success stories. But there will be failures as well. Guaranteed since some of those have already happened.
jschell wrote:
Nothing is used everywhere.
How about atoms? I believe they are even used in the most distant suns and at the far edges of the Universe. :rolleyes:
jschell wrote:
So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential.
And yet, where is there an unbiased view of anything? Many people like chocolate and yet other fools do not. And people who sell chocolate like it even if they don't eat it themselves, all because they are trying to make money. I have yet to find the human who has an unbiased view of anything. Whether they know it or not. :rolleyes: But, that's just my biased opinion. :laugh: I get your points though. I know there will be vast challenges for blockchain tech but that is what struck me the most -- the huge corps who are getting behind it. I'm not really _for_ blockchain since there are some inherent dangers in it. I just think the technology behind it (merkle trees) is interesting and since I don't like large systems I find it to be interesting that so many large companies are backing it so strongly already.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do.
I believe you may be misinformed. Bitcoin maybe. Not sure if something happened there. But do you know that each node in the blockchain has a SHA-256 hash of the next node, etc? Quite difficult to hack. There is a time-based part to the value also and then the decentralized check that goes on. So not sure if you've just heard it was less secure or something. You'd have to bring more facts to this story that it is insecure than just that it's not as secure as they say. I'm not sure either though, but if you read the part of how a blockchain is a merkle tree you would probably agree it would be quite difficult to alter the data. But I do understand that nascent tech (and especially overhyped nascent tech like blockchain) often makes people think it is just a bunch of noise. Maybe it is, but the details behind it are very interesting.
While it is true that hacking a SHA-256 is practically impossible, the problem with blockchain is elsewhere: 1. The HASH at any node is the combined HASH of all the nodes below it, all the way down... It makes the HASH creation a time and computation consuming when the blockchain (tree) grow... 2. The second security measure of a blockchain structure is distribution. You can not temper with the chain at one position, as the other instances will refuse to that... But that immediately rises the problem of the owner of the chain... Let take a bank - it moves to blockchain, but - obviously - all the instances will be owned by the bank, so that can give larger security against attacks from the outside, but can be hacked still from the inside... Not to mention a blockchain owned by a private company to store your data...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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jschell wrote:
Nothing is used everywhere.
How about atoms? I believe they are even used in the most distant suns and at the far edges of the Universe. :rolleyes:
jschell wrote:
So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential.
And yet, where is there an unbiased view of anything? Many people like chocolate and yet other fools do not. And people who sell chocolate like it even if they don't eat it themselves, all because they are trying to make money. I have yet to find the human who has an unbiased view of anything. Whether they know it or not. :rolleyes: But, that's just my biased opinion. :laugh: I get your points though. I know there will be vast challenges for blockchain tech but that is what struck me the most -- the huge corps who are getting behind it. I'm not really _for_ blockchain since there are some inherent dangers in it. I just think the technology behind it (merkle trees) is interesting and since I don't like large systems I find it to be interesting that so many large companies are backing it so strongly already.
raddevus wrote:
How about atoms?
They were not invented by humans, only discovered. ;P
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote:
solution looking for a problem.
I remember hearing that about iPads when they came out.
Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway. (Glenn Reynolds)
Point proven.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do.
I believe you may be misinformed. Bitcoin maybe. Not sure if something happened there. But do you know that each node in the blockchain has a SHA-256 hash of the next node, etc? Quite difficult to hack. There is a time-based part to the value also and then the decentralized check that goes on. So not sure if you've just heard it was less secure or something. You'd have to bring more facts to this story that it is insecure than just that it's not as secure as they say. I'm not sure either though, but if you read the part of how a blockchain is a merkle tree you would probably agree it would be quite difficult to alter the data. But I do understand that nascent tech (and especially overhyped nascent tech like blockchain) often makes people think it is just a bunch of noise. Maybe it is, but the details behind it are very interesting.
raddevus wrote:
I believe you may be misinformed.
Insider News to the rescue :laugh: Hackers find creative way to steal $7.7 million without being detected | Ars Technica[^] Since it's a cryptocurrency I assume they use blockchain as well. A simple "blockchain hacked" Google brings me to the following page: Yes, the Blockchain Can Be Hacked | CoinCentral[^] I get it, blockchain is great and awesome and super secure, but it's still "just" technology and I simply refuse to believe any technology is "unhackable" no matter how secure it is. However, for most practical uses it's not security that's the issue, but, as said, the mining of hashes :)
Best, Sander Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
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While it is true that hacking a SHA-256 is practically impossible, the problem with blockchain is elsewhere: 1. The HASH at any node is the combined HASH of all the nodes below it, all the way down... It makes the HASH creation a time and computation consuming when the blockchain (tree) grow... 2. The second security measure of a blockchain structure is distribution. You can not temper with the chain at one position, as the other instances will refuse to that... But that immediately rises the problem of the owner of the chain... Let take a bank - it moves to blockchain, but - obviously - all the instances will be owned by the bank, so that can give larger security against attacks from the outside, but can be hacked still from the inside... Not to mention a blockchain owned by a private company to store your data...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
You can not temper with the chain at one position, as the other instances will refuse to that
Unless you flood the network with bad actors. I guess it's fortunate we don't have massive countries like China and Russia with masses of resources and an active interest in disrupting such a thing. I mean when blockchain runs everything, even American government systems, thank God there are no Chinas or Russias. People saying blockchain is "secure" is like people saying Apple Macs are secure. They're not, it's just that no-one has the motivation to attack them. Yet.
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Blockchain book said:
Simply put, a blockchain is a database encompassing a physical chain of fixed-length blocks that include 1 to N transactions, where each transaction added to a new block is validated and then inserted into the block solution looking for a problem.
FTFY.
I very much agree. While the tech itself looks promising, everybody and their grandma try to shoehorn blockchain into everything, no matter how it fits. And let's be frank, with all the issues surrounding Bitcoin, we have a better precedent on blockchain having issues than on blockchain solving them.
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
You can not temper with the chain at one position, as the other instances will refuse to that
Unless you flood the network with bad actors. I guess it's fortunate we don't have massive countries like China and Russia with masses of resources and an active interest in disrupting such a thing. I mean when blockchain runs everything, even American government systems, thank God there are no Chinas or Russias. People saying blockchain is "secure" is like people saying Apple Macs are secure. They're not, it's just that no-one has the motivation to attack them. Yet.
F-ES Sitecore wrote:
People saying blockchain is "secure" is like people saying Apple Macs are secure. They're not, it's just that no-one has the motivation to attack them. Yet.
There are a LOT of people with motivation to attack it; even verbally, arguing from ignorance. There is a financial interest in manipulating it, as well as a political interest. It is hard to "hack" the hash; it is nigh-impossible to attack a chain of hashes on different computers, regardless of your (computing) power. Doesn't mean that it cannot be stolen or taxed, but that was not your premise :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
BitCoin (and blockchain) can be hacked or tampered with or whatever it is they do.
I believe you may be misinformed. Bitcoin maybe. Not sure if something happened there. But do you know that each node in the blockchain has a SHA-256 hash of the next node, etc? Quite difficult to hack. There is a time-based part to the value also and then the decentralized check that goes on. So not sure if you've just heard it was less secure or something. You'd have to bring more facts to this story that it is insecure than just that it's not as secure as they say. I'm not sure either though, but if you read the part of how a blockchain is a merkle tree you would probably agree it would be quite difficult to alter the data. But I do understand that nascent tech (and especially overhyped nascent tech like blockchain) often makes people think it is just a bunch of noise. Maybe it is, but the details behind it are very interesting.
Like any security system its only as good as its weakest link - Somewhere there will be one, irrespective of the technology used and usually it will be at the human interface! Hi Welcome to your super secure Blockchain protected bank account Please can I have your first and third pin number Sorry didn't quite catch that, please say again your second and fourth pin numbers.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote:
People saying blockchain is "secure" is like people saying Apple Macs are secure. They're not, it's just that no-one has the motivation to attack them. Yet.
There are a LOT of people with motivation to attack it; even verbally, arguing from ignorance. There is a financial interest in manipulating it, as well as a political interest. It is hard to "hack" the hash; it is nigh-impossible to attack a chain of hashes on different computers, regardless of your (computing) power. Doesn't mean that it cannot be stolen or taxed, but that was not your premise :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
It is hard to "hack" the hash; it is nigh-impossible to attack a chain of hashes on different computers, regardless of your (computing) power.
It's ironic you talk about ignorance yet clearly don't understand what I mean by using many bad actors to take over the network. I'm not talking about using computer power to hack the hashes.
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raddevus wrote:
I believe you may be misinformed.
Insider News to the rescue :laugh: Hackers find creative way to steal $7.7 million without being detected | Ars Technica[^] Since it's a cryptocurrency I assume they use blockchain as well. A simple "blockchain hacked" Google brings me to the following page: Yes, the Blockchain Can Be Hacked | CoinCentral[^] I get it, blockchain is great and awesome and super secure, but it's still "just" technology and I simply refuse to believe any technology is "unhackable" no matter how secure it is. However, for most practical uses it's not security that's the issue, but, as said, the mining of hashes :)
Best, Sander Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Sander Rossel wrote:
Since it's a cryptocurrency I assume they use blockchain as well.
Their own hand-rolled version, yes.
Sander Rossel wrote:
I get it, blockchain is great and awesome and super secure, but it's still "just" technology and I simply refuse to believe any technology is "unhackable" no matter how secure it is.
Believing is done in church, as a programmer we do not believe but research. The hashcode itself would be hard to crack; please explain how you would replace the lists of hashcodes on multiple computers that you have no acces to? Write one, and you'll get a much better idea what you are talking about. Start here: A blockchain in 200 lines of code – Lauri Hartikka – Medium[^]
Sander Rossel wrote:
However, for most practical uses it's not security that's the issue, but, as said, the mining of hashes :)
That's not an issue; if mining was cheap, then BC would not work. It takes less resources than getting gold out of the ground and is a lot less polluting.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
It is hard to "hack" the hash; it is nigh-impossible to attack a chain of hashes on different computers, regardless of your (computing) power.
It's ironic you talk about ignorance yet clearly don't understand what I mean by using many bad actors to take over the network. I'm not talking about using computer power to hack the hashes.
Take your argument and prove it; shouldn't be too hard to get a lot of bad actors to influence BC :laugh:
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Like any security system its only as good as its weakest link - Somewhere there will be one, irrespective of the technology used and usually it will be at the human interface! Hi Welcome to your super secure Blockchain protected bank account Please can I have your first and third pin number Sorry didn't quite catch that, please say again your second and fourth pin numbers.
That link you described (the human factor) is present in all currencies; it is even there for gold. Doesn't make crypto's more secure or insecure than gold. Your argument is therefore m00t.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Take your argument and prove it; shouldn't be too hard to get a lot of bad actors to influence BC :laugh:
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
I don't have the resources, but governments do.
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Reading this book about Blockchain technologies and it is convincing me that blockchain is a juggernaut (unstoppable). Blockchain: A Practical Guide to Developing Business, Law, and Technology Solutions [^] It really is going to be used everywhere (identity, finance, healthcare, file storage/sharing, supply chain). If you check out Hyperledger Projects - Hyperledger[^] you will see that there are major blockchain projects being backed by major corps (SawTooth = Intel, Fabric = IBM) And everyone has heard of Bitcoin but Ripple (Company - Learn About Ripple)[^] is getting huge and backed by large corps. A nice summary of the technology:
Blockchain book said:
Simply put, a blockchain is a database encompassing a physical chain of fixed-length blocks that include 1 to N transactions, where each transaction added to a new block is validated and then inserted into the block.
The concepts behind the blockchain really are interesting.
Jokes and interesting facts aside, we shouldn't gloss over the fact that it almost doesn't solve anything. Pragmatically speaking, it's just a persistent data-store. Noteworthy characteristics are: - it's highly distributed - data authenticity is expected to be safe, as long as no bad actor owns ~40% of the distributed parts - it's not high volume - it's not high capacity As a result, it's an expert-system than only works when you have a lot of users and can't trust anyone, and these need to be your primary concerns. The only profitable market that has these requirements is the illicit drug trade. And mayhaps cyber warfare, in 2 or 3 years time. In all other circumstances where you could apply a distributed design, you're better of with a trust-based system (= certificates) and support for high volume and capacity. This is like data-mining all over again. People who don't understand profit and the practical application of software are writing books and giving seminaries about things that no-one will pay for. Marketing to idiots doesn't count, because that's short-term only. Idiots don't have a long attention span. To be honest, It just annoys me that enterprise is faking interest again and fanning the flames. Intel and IBM have a track record of publicly investing during hype cycles and then abandoning those projects when their stakeholders stop noticing. I'm still pissed-off about Edison.
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That link you described (the human factor) is present in all currencies; it is even there for gold. Doesn't make crypto's more secure or insecure than gold. Your argument is therefore m00t.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
True the weakness is in other systems as well , but the point is that having a more supposedly 'secure' system is irrelevant if there are other weaker links! Plus the big downside of Blockchain on a large scale is the sheer cost of all those transactions in monetary as well as infrastructure and environmental costs. Without some other technology break through Blockchains are going to be problematic for most applications.
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jschell wrote:
Nothing is used everywhere.
How about atoms? I believe they are even used in the most distant suns and at the far edges of the Universe. :rolleyes:
jschell wrote:
So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential.
And yet, where is there an unbiased view of anything? Many people like chocolate and yet other fools do not. And people who sell chocolate like it even if they don't eat it themselves, all because they are trying to make money. I have yet to find the human who has an unbiased view of anything. Whether they know it or not. :rolleyes: But, that's just my biased opinion. :laugh: I get your points though. I know there will be vast challenges for blockchain tech but that is what struck me the most -- the huge corps who are getting behind it. I'm not really _for_ blockchain since there are some inherent dangers in it. I just think the technology behind it (merkle trees) is interesting and since I don't like large systems I find it to be interesting that so many large companies are backing it so strongly already.
raddevus wrote:
And yet, where is there an unbiased view of anything?
You get an unbiased view when people share theoretical implications and practical applications. You get a biased view when people are sharing an emotional stance about something. Some people employ both and expect you to discern between the two. Some people only employ the latter.
