[axelrosen]

Blockchains are really unimpressive technologically. I think this is why so many in tech are pretty negative towards them. It's a crappy database, it's an inefficient payment system and so on...

However the few interesting properties that they do have make for a big difference at scale if you look at it in a broader context.

> Its a datastore with some cryptographic identity checks and tamper proof guarantees. It can't prove that a package made it from A to B or that it stayed at some ambient temperature IRL. It only records that someone attested to that, not whether its true. An ordinary database will do for an audit trail.

Sure, there are no inherent features which directly enable that. However with a regular database can you give access to absolutely everybody (even if you have complex access control rules)? Can you incentivize people to interact with this database in a given way? Will people trust the data? Can you make people believe that your system is going to be around for long enough? Can your system be safe from regulatory risk?

The answer to all these question is a very qualified yes. However when you think about them it's pretty obvious it's going to be hard. Say incentivizing people. You can surely assign rewards to people, have a little virtual currency/credit system. But you can see how the more sophisticated it gets the more you're creating something blockchain like. Which is also why private, hybrid blockchains or non-blockchain decentralized shared database systems are interesting btw.

The point is - none of these features or problems are inherently technical. They're more social than they are technical. The questions I posed are just food for thought, there are so many more aspects one could consider.

[whttheuuu]

Uhm, from reading your post I don't think you fully understand how any of it works..