[fauria]

As I see it, Blockchain technology is based on some premises that are not easily achievable. This are the two I find most relevant:

1. A large user base (computational power) is needed to successfully run a blockchain backed product. If the network is small, a malicious attacker with enough resources could manipulate past transactions or prevent new ones (51% attack).

2. Blockchain was designed to be a trustless (no central authority) distributed ledger. In the case of Bitcoin, it prevents double spending of a virtual currency that only exists in the Internet. When applied to "real world" assets, sooner or later you will find a step in the process that involves trusting something or someone.

So far I haven't been able to identify a use case for anything but a digital asset with great traction.

[wmf]

Bankchains solve #1 by not using mining; they use something like BFT (which is basically Paxos for liars) so that only 51% of the companies in the consortium need to be honest at any one time.

[fauria]

I guess that invalidates by definition #2.

[wmf]

Ah, I forgot to mention that. Bitcoin is totally trustless, while bankchains require the participants to trust each other's identities but not their behavior. Whether this trust model is applicable in any real-world situation is debatable.

And yes, if you're using blockchain to track something like gold in a vault you might as well just have a database that is run by the same entity that runs the vault.