
The World Food Programme’s “blockchain” has one participant–i.e. it’s a database - davidgerard
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/11/26/the-world-food-programmes-much-publicised-blockchain-has-one-participant-i-e-its-a-database/
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tboyd47
I suspect this is how most "blockchain" projects will end up in 5 years; no
utility from the fact that it's a blockchain and practically just a database.

~~~
davidgerard
I found Bitfury's Exonum blockchain quite reasonable in its claims in this
regard:

[https://github.com/exonum/exonum-doc/blob/master/src/get-
sta...](https://github.com/exonum/exonum-doc/blob/master/src/get-started/what-
is-exonum.md)

> Like distributed databases, such as Cassandra, MongoDB or MySQL Cluster,
> blockchains are replicated on multiple nodes. However, compared to ordinary
> distributed DBs, blockchains are resistant against much wider range of
> attacks:

> 1\. Blockchains are resistant against failures of any single node (or even
> multiple nodes at the same time). The threat model includes nodes being
> switched off, isolated from the rest of the network, or even completely
> compromised (say, by a hacker)

> 2\. Blockchains can be deployed in a decentralized network, where there is
> no single administrator managing all nodes. This significantly reduces risks
> of data corruption and the bias in the system (e.g., preferential treatment
> of some participants)

so, they posit Exonum as a particularly resilient distributed database. Which
is fine, y'know.

I've said for a while that I think the one good outcome of Blockchain(tm) hype
is going to be businesses discovering the usefulness of transaction ledgers
tamper-proofed with hashes of everything. Developers of course know this as
git.

~~~
gaius
_Developers of course know this as git._

Well, except for the history rewriting "feature".

~~~
davidgerard
Which turns out to be a highly marketable feature for "blockchains" to
organisations who actually have money to pay for this. _e.g._ ,
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-blockchain-
accenture...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-blockchain-
accenture/accenture-breaks-blockchain-taboo-with-editing-system-idUSKCN11Q1S2)
Remember, in this context we're talking about business use, not cryptocurrency
use.

