
Ask HN: What does a blockchain give you that a database doesn't? - RingwormOne
I&#x27;m always told that one of the main benefits of a blockchain is that it enforces trust, or something to that extent. But enforcing trust in databases is not an open problem. Databases successfully store data. Therefore blockchains seem like a &#x27;solution&#x27; to a problem that doesn&#x27;t exist.
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sova
Do you need a decentralised way to ensure consensus among nodes? If not,
blockchain is overkill for you!

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RingwormOne
What applications does decentralized consensus enable creation of, aside from
cryptocurrencies, that are infeasible to make with a database?

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malux85
Trust is an important aspect. Especially at scale. If you were designing a
large scale energy trading platform for example, that is trading hundreds of
million or billions of dollars a day, a centralised database controlled by a
third party is prone to corruption - when you get to that level of wealth,
it’s basically guaranteed.

Or what about recording tax documents, or political promises, storing them on
an immutable chain that’s unhackable (to the point that once it’s on chain the
only way to modify it is to hack _every_ copy on _every_ node)

These are very large scale problems, and there’s lots of uses where databases
will do just fine, but I see the key benefits as decentralised trust

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sova
Today I participated in voting (put your energy in the system!) in local
elections and I must say, voting is something that would benefit immensely
from blockchain ideas. Cryptographically secured ballots that are verifiable
but also don't expose individual's voting preferences, it's very possible!
Very intriguing.

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nnn1234
if we are talking public blockchains, Immutablity, decentralized trust and
censorship resistance

Private blockchains can be anything the owner wants them to be.

