[ellius]

I think for large, dysfuctional corporations, it could potentially act as a single source of truth for certain data sets. In theory you could just use any database, but in practice a lot of times different departments get different setups from different parts of IT at different times. I work for a bank and our data is all over the map. I'd like it if everyone had to operate on and report from the same system, and that system was inherently auditable and unified.

[floatrock]

The "single source of truth" is what people have been calling the Corporate Data Warehouse since the dot com era. The realities of that approach -- centralized gatekeepers, too hard to keep everyone on the same schema, different subgroups need different variations on the schema, slowness to iterate since everyone needs to accept the smallest change, etc. -- all those realities is what has largely given up on that Single Source of Truth vision in favor of microservices or data lakes or choose your buzzword du jour.

Blockchain solves problems around auditability, but it doesn't really solve the practical difficulties around the original CDW vision. If you weren't able to make a centralized data store work with a sql database, you're not going to make it work with a distributed ledger.

[ellius]

Yeah I think that's fair. Certainly the hardest problem is the human one. I don't think blockchain is a silver bullet, just maybe it will help. I wouldn't dump millions of dollars into it or anything without some sort of pilot / proven model.

[rl3]

>... all those realities is what has largely given up on that Single Source of Truth vision in favor of microservices or data lakes or choose your buzzword du jour.

>If you weren't able to make a centralized data store work with a sql database, you're not going to make it work with a distributed ledger.

The solution is clear: blockchain microservices. Each microledger is localized to the team using it, allowing for individual ledgers to be reused and composed to facilitate organizational agility across the enterprise. Stakeholder mindshare will soar.

[nathancahill]

Had me at agility. Where do I invest?

[codeisawesome]

Thanks, this helps answer the same question ("why not just any database?") when I read about it Walmart implementing a blockchain based solution to tackle food tampering.