[sk221]

I think blockchains can help minimize trust even if it's dealing with assets outside the blockchain.

Let's use your beef example. The beef might come from a farm. It's certified organic. It gets shipped off to a distributor. The distributor sells it to a store. You go to a store and buy it.

In the current system, if the store is a bad actor (e.g. selling beef it claims is organic, when it's actually not) then you don't really have a way of knowing.

However, if the beef was tracked on the blockchain and transferred to you on the blockchain at the point of purchase, then you are no longer relying on just the store telling you it's organic. The claim is verified by chain of custody on the blockchain. So now multiple parties (the farm, distributor, and store) would have to cooperate to dupe you. You can still get defrauded by the store if they completely swap the beef. But, they would STILL have to purchase legitimate beef and transfer it on the blockchain to you. It would be harder to get away with it vs. just changing the label.

That's just one example of where it can minimize trust. But once more assets are tracked on the blockchain, you can start to do REALLY COOL things with them.

For example, imagine using real estate to get decentralized collateral backed loans on MakerDAO.

I can go on and on about this stuff...but it's really cool and we're just getting our feet wet with the technology.

[qyv]

Replace the word blockchain with database and describe how your example works any differently. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't. There is nothing in your example that requires the use of a blockchain. If that beef was tracked in a standard database they would still need to buy beef that was "legit" as far as the database is concerned if they wanted to make a legit claim.

Tracking external assets requires trust, period. And that being the case, what advantage does blockchain bring to the solution?

[arez]

actually it does, in a blockchain it's theoretical impossible to change past values, in a database one or many actors could easily change past events and nobody could proof that they did (If you say, ok then let's apply checksums or hashes to past events you just ended up with making it (kind of) a blockchain again

[Dylan16807]

There are people that will argue any form of sequential data signing is a "blockchain". But now secure messengers are blockchaining, ZFS is blockchaining, bitcoin had no technical novelty... I think it's a bad definition. If the system can still run without a consensus algorithm, it's far from being a blockchain.

[arisAlexis]

"I'll give you a hint: it doesn't"

It surprises me how much anger and claims of authority people that don't like blockchain show. Just be modest and open to potential uses of a technology. Are you a coder? Have you ever used Javascript? If yes then it's creator is a big proponent of blockchains. Take a moment to think about this. Numerous other examples too.

[Thiez]

Its creator also opposes same sex marriage. Perhaps creating a programming language doesn't mean you're right in all other contexts.

[arisAlexis]

you are confusing social with technical

[Thiez]

I'm not confused. Do you honestly believe that all programming language creators agree on all technical subjects? They can't even agree on curly braces vs whitespace sensitive. And blockchain is a different subject than programming languages, they can't make an argument from authority.

[Dylan16807]

Answering a rhetorical question to the detriment of the other person's argument isn't anger.

[philliphaydon]

This already exists without blockchain. And blockchain adds nothing. China has a huge issue with fake milk powder. That milk powder now comes in a container with a unique identifier that you can look up and vertify that it’s come from the manufacturer and not some other source. There is no added value in tampering with the container and if it’s faked it cannot be verified.

[joshwa]

Nothing about the blockchain can tell you whether somebody switched the labels, or who did it. And the not-guilty parties probably have no way of verifying what they received, either.

Having movements logged in a federated database has all the same properties.

[arisAlexis]

What do you think is easier: making several companies run on their servers a federated databases or using a worldwide publicly available one?

[kllrnohj]

What do you think is easier: convincing farms to send a cheap message to a federated database when they ship out products, or have them buy up insane quantities of computational power to compute crypto hashes, using insane amounts of power to do it?

Blockchain is crazy expensive to run. Why would anyone pay for that when there's dirt cheap alternatives that are every bit as effective at solving the problem?

[arisAlexis]

who is paying for the federated database? i didn't know there are free ones.do you actually know the cost of an ethereum transaction? I'll help its 0.01$ and you don't have to do it all the time if you just run a side chain

[lilbobbytables]

Could you elaborate on the real estate one. Sounds like you're talking about home equity loans.

[tim333]

The idea of real estate on the blockchain runs into a bunch of problems interfacing with the real world. For example if Russian hackers get your private keys do you now have to move out of your house so they can let it? If you are lending against property tokens how do you know if the person in physical possession of the property has not quietly sold it or mortgaged it or burnt it down and so on? Not that it's impossible but there are a lot of complications.