• fubo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    What you want in that situation is called a “replicated database”, not a “distributed ledger” and certainly not a “blockchain”.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      99.999% of the time what people imagine when they say blockchain is good is effectively just the matrix protocol, which can be summarized as federated eventually consistent databases (and that’s pretty dang neato).

      • fubo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        If a single organization owns all the servers, there’s not even in theory a reason to prefer blockchain over a plain replicated database. And in practice anyone who’s pushing blockchain is either an ideologue or a scammer; either way they don’t have the user’s best interests at heart.

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I haven’t seen a replicated database that operates over the same scale of failure domains as distrubuted ledgers, do you have good examples of that?

      • fubo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        They don’t have to. If you don’t have database replicas that are actively trying to subvert the system, inject bogus transactions, etc. then you don’t have the set of failure domains for which blockchains are in theory useful for.

        If you’re running backups for a single organization, you just need replicated data storage on servers owned and operated by that organization. If you’re running backups for a set of users who all trust your organization (e.g. if you’re Dropbox or the like), you also don’t need blockchain.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It’s pretty reasonable not to implicitly trust an organization to always get things right or always be honest about what they are doing. Couldn’t there be theoretical value in spreading backups across multiple organizations and having cryptographic evidence they are all doing their jobs correctly, to reduce the need for that trust?

          • fubo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            Theoretically? Sure. But in reality, blockchain pushers are fanatics, scammers, or both, so no real organization should trust them.

            • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              IMO that’s a pretty limiting perspective. The existence of a lot of noise around a technology isn’t a great reason to take a hard stance against ever using it.

              • fubo@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                1 year ago

                If you think you’ve found the one honest snake-oil salesman, you’re almost certainly wrong. That’s part of reality.

                • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I can agree that it’s a bad idea to trust a salesman trying to market a blockchain product or service, but part of the point of open standards and techniques is that you can evaluate them on their own merits and implement them without needing to trust anyone.