[LINK] LAT: Blockchain ... suffers a slowdown

Sun Aug 5 12:34:34 AEST 2018

At 11:19 +1000 5/8/18, Dr Bob Jansen wrote:
There was an thought provoking article in this weekends Financial Review about using block chain for managing sales of art. What they mentioned, and I hadn't thought of, was that when an artwork is destroyed, say by a fire, how does the block chain know? It requires someone to upload this information which merely moves the authority from a central organisation, like a bank, to an individual and thus does not remove the need for a trusted authority. If we can not trust someone like a bank, how can we trust a conflicted individual?

Agreed. 

The way I put it in my 2016 notes was:
>A key weakness in some of the claims is the assumption that access to reliable digital data will solve related real-world problems. It may be feasible to effectively evidence ownership of a digital asset such as electronic cash through digital records. It is far more challenging to achieve the same outcome in respect of physical assets such as real estate and chattels, and even in respect of share-holdings. These require reliable links between the digital world on the one hand, and, on the other, the real world of things and people and the semi-real world of organisations. Blockchain does nothing to address these key challenges.

Johann Kruse wrote on Sun, 5 Aug 2018 12:10:16 +1000
>Another BlockChain, to track conflicted individuals.

Ah, the old 'snake-head swallowing snake-tail' or 'disappearing up one's own fundamental orifice' trick.  Quick, where are the cartoonists??

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On 5 Aug 2018, at 08:08, Roger Clarke <<mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au>Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au> wrote:

I was a bit slow in getting around to commenting on the blockchain notion:

   Deconstructing Blockchain  (Feb 2016)
   <http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/BCD.html>http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/BCD.html

It seems that the vacuousness is finally becoming more widely apparent:

Blockchain, once seen as a corporate cure-all, suffers a slowdown

<http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-blockchain-corporations-20180801-story.html>http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-blockchain-corporations-20180801-story.html

Funnily enough, over a beer the other night, a chap I was talking to came up with a problem that actually has a structure for which a public blockchain is a fit.  (Third beer, can't currently remember the details).

The conversation took place in Adelaide.  So the example I'd given him was old-system land-title, which is - but fortunately is no more - a long series of items of evidence, linked chronologically.  It was replaced by Torrens title - invented in South Australia - which is registry-based, such that there is no chain.  

Blockchain-shaped problems exist.  There just aren't all that many of them.

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