[z3c0]

And you've set yourself up for an answer;)

I think any adversarial system has something to gain from blockchain. When participants of a system are naturally pitted against one another due to being competitors (a la engaging in a zero-sum game), the solution is usually to agree to auditing by a third-party. However, this method is easily corruptible by replacing the auditors with biased parties[1]. This is not an uncommon problem. Try searching "biased auditors", and you'll get a wealth of literature and perspectives on the issue.

A lot of blockchain proponents are majorly against the idea of "private blockchains", but I'm not. I believe private blockchains hold a lot of promise as a way of auditing an adversarial system, in place of a corruptible third-party. Plus, auditors don't amount to much more than middle-men, and thus add an additional layer of complexity to the system, meaning more can go wrong. Redirecting the cost of auditors to maintaining a system hosted by the adversaries would result in a more lean system (by less nodes) with little chance of bias corrupting the audit process (because you can't inject former employees into a blockchain). Instead of the SEC having to oversee both the members of the network and the auditors to prevent trusts from forming, they would just need to monitor the blockchain updates.

What the technical implementation of this would look like would vary wildly by industry, and thus would require some brainstorming to ensure feasibility, but no such brainstorming would ever begin if the members of an adversarial system are convinced that blockchains are "dangerous nonsense".

Of course, such a technology would take a massive chunk from a very profitable industry, so I expect a lot of people (employed auditors) to be averse to the idea, but maybe those people need to do some soul-searching. When your job depends on the continued existence of a problem, you aren't really incentivized to diminish the problem. Rape-whistle companies sell less rape-whistles if people rape less.

[1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/ernst-young-auditors-to-pay-...

[FabHK]

1. How do you solve the oracle problem? Blockchain can only deal with things that are on the blockchain already. Any interface to the real world suffers the trust and bias issues you described. You're just shifting the problem ever so slightly. (That's why the only real application is crypto currencies so far, because those can be realised wholly within the blockchain.)

2. How do you incentivise expending the PoW work without cryptocurrencies?

3. Why not have one central/permissioned authority issue chains of blocks, and everyone that wants can verify them cheaply? That is millions of times more efficient than PoW.

[z3c0]

All great questions, and I'll preface my response to saying that the true answers to these problems would have to be addressed in the "industry-specific brainstorming" that I mentioned. The results could look wildly different based on the problem the blockchain is addressing.

That said, the movement of "tangible assets" to "blockchain assets" is without a doubt a huge challenge for blockchains, but usually only when dealing with "real things" vs "systemic things", eg exchanging fiat for cryptocurrency. Integration into a private blockchain can be wholly systemic (so system-to-system vs reality-to-system). Integrating a new company into the system could be done by a joint effort between the members of private blockchain (who are all incentivized to help, because it's in their interest to ensure that no member of their industry goes unchecked.)

The economic incentive to commit to PoW is intrinsic to the adversarial network itself - basically, the desire of a company to survive the zero-sum game (success in such is typically measured by market share.)

To revert to a centralized authority is not an invalid approach, and may very well be the "happy medium" that allows this concept to solidify into something feasible. However, it is a "half-in, half-out" solution and is still vulnerable to corruption.

This is -of course - all speculative, but my overall point is that the discussion to reach solutions to these challenges will not be had if blockchains are written off as "dangerous nonsense".

[5h]

Short comment to say I appreciate the thoughtful response here, and that implications of public vs private blockchains in real world contexts is something I've not given enough thought to - thanks for the homework :)