[lixtra]

> "Blockchain" just stores the same stuff lots and lots of times in as many places as possible. Extremely wasteful and expensive, with all the overhead of doing that (and updating hat "database"), plus the consensus algorithm which may or may not be reliable/crackable.

No. Blockchain doesn’t have to be wasteful. In general is enough to store the hash of the data in the blockchain and the data itself somewhere where it can be accessed. This prevents manipulation. If at least one trusted party has access to the data it also would not just vanished. If you had an permissioned blockchain signed by the top universities of the world it could be done for very little money.

[tastroder]

There seems little upside between what this paper proposes and everybody just sending all data to all stakeholders of figure 1. The blockchain itself does not conserve confidentiality of placebo placements outside of this process and "Regulatory agency" and "Data safety monitoring board" are presumably two trusted parties that could, post hoc, compare their two databases and draw the same conclusions.

Adding a semi-public blockchain seems like a neat little tidbit but it mostly adds a formalization of the process (which would of course be a good thing) and buzzword-worthiness, thus warranting the "wasteful" label.

> permissioned blockchain [...] for very little money Is that a solved problem yet?