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by 8organicbits 1159 days ago
I struggle to find examples that "require" decentralized workflows. Money seems like the most successful example, although cryptocurrecy works worse than fiat in practice for most use cases.

CA DMV records? Loyalty programs? What's wrong with a database? What's the requirement for decentralized workflows?
1 comments
vntok 1159 days ago
> I struggle to find examples that "require" decentralized workflows

Storing factoids that (1) can't be repudiated by anyone (including the initial reporter), (2) can support attestations in the future (I can prove to anyone that I bought something years ago without showing the thing or making myself known), and (3) can only be deanonymized if and when the user wants it to happen.

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8organicbits 1159 days ago
These all sound very cool, but they still sound like solutions in search of problems.

1 - Non-repudiation can be done with cryptographic signatures. Storing signed data doesn't require a blockchain. I think the major improvement is related to time-stamping, although there's lots of prior work there.

2 - When would someone ever need to prove this? If you can't prove the "what" or the "who", how is this useful?

3 - For Bitcoin, no, there's lots of tools to de-anonymize users. For others, I think that's true, but what's the use case beyond money laundering?

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