[dcolkitt]

I agree that anything that can be done with a blockchain can technically be done with a database. But the practical challenge comes down to coordination problems. With blockchains you get credibly neutrality out of the box.

Different developers are comfortable building inside a shared execution environment. If Western Union built a smart contract execution system, you'd have a much, much harder time convincing developers to build inside of it than you would on Ethereum. It would be much less likely that Ethereum would shut off, change the rules, ban you from the platform, etc.

The advantage that gives blockchains is composability. Thousands of different applications can instantly talk to one another using standardized calls inside atomic transactions. Databases by contrast are siloed. So they work really well if you stay within the application that database was built for. But really poorly once you try to cross applications, and hence databases. Imagine how hard it would be and how many hoops you would have to jump through to be able to use Venmo to buy Nasdaq listed stocks. In contrast USDC and Uniswap work together seamlessly because they're both built on the same common credibly neutral layer, Ethereum.

[lazzlazzlazz]

This is totally correct and something that devs on HN seem to struggle to understand. There are many theories as to why, but it is an unending source of amusement.

[mNovak]

"credible neutrality" is a nice phrase for a concept I've struggled to articulate, thanks