• merc@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Nothing particularly useful though. It’s a very slow, inefficient, trustless, immutable database. There really aren’t many good applications for that.

    • Rustmilian@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      That highly depends on what blockchain implementation is being used and what it’s being used for. Blockchains used for craptocurrency are highly inefficient, which is the vast majority. But there are a small handful of specialized (proprietary) blockchains that are just efficient enough to be practical in their highly specific use case.

        • Rustmilian@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Walmarts proprietary food tracking system based on Hyperledger Fabric that they partnered with IBM to tweak & implement, enabling customers to track ingredients back to the farms within seconds, improving food safety, optimizing supply chain operations, enabling efficient tracking of stores and distribution centers, enhancing procurement management by collecting data on product origins, batch numbers, and quality parameters through QR codes and e-certificates.

          • Pizza_Rat@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            8 months ago

            How is that better than a database? Is someone concerned that Walmart will fabricate supply chain tracking?

            • Rustmilian@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              Their prior database lacked transparency, real-time tracking, & scalability making tracing take days.
              Just an FYI, Hyperledger Fabric is not like the blockchains for craptocurrency. It’s a highly modular, permissioned not permissionless, distributed ledger & it allows for pluggable consensus mechanisms. It’s very likely that Walmart uses a custom consensus algorithm and nothing like any of the public PoW, PoS, PoA, or PoET consensus algorithms.

          • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            8 months ago

            Hyperledger is just git but with fancy buzzwords. It’s like taking everything that makes blockchain, and then remove everything that makes blockchain special. All you have left is another centralized system.

            It’s just IBM’s excuse to stay relevant.

            • Rustmilian@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              That’s an incredibly wrong oversimplification.
              Git doesn’t have any consensus mechanisms, chaincode execution or ledger, is just a history tracker & manipulator. Neither Git or Hyperledger Fabric are centralized, they’re both distributed.
              Just because it’s for specialized non-financial related tasks using customizable specialized consensus mechanisms and often distributed only within a select few instead of being a big inefficient permissionless PoW/PoS craptocurrency blockchain with a bunch of clowns waisting energy mining nonsense doesn’t make it any less of a blockchain with smartcontacts and the works.

              with fancy buzzwords

              That’s literally just all blockchain technology ever.
              “Just blast them with buzzwords they don’t understand to distract from how fundamentally flawed our shit is and FOMO the shit out of them then rug pull every last dime from them” - NFTs.

              • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 months ago

                Git doesn’t need consensus mechanisms because it’s “permissioned”, like Hyperledger. All actors are known and given permission by some entity to contribute.

                You can’t contribute to the Linux kernel unless your changes have been approved by someone trusted with permission. You cannot contribute to whatever Walmart is doing, because you haven’t acquired permission to do so.

                • Rustmilian@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  8 months ago

                  And?
                  Hyperledger Fabric still uses a consensus mechanism, and I promise you Walmart uses one. You can’t trust China with food safety.
                  Permission is given out to various suppliers with various levels of trust.
                  “Permissioned” in the context of Hyperledger Fabric just means all participants are known entities with identities managed by a Membership Service Provider (MSP), which is likely Walmart in this case and have access control governed by policies ensuring that only authorized actors can interact with the network and its resources. It doesn’t mean that a consensus mechanism isn’t used or needed.
                  Shit, without using GPG and SSH to sign commits and outside identity verification mechanisms, you run the risk of git identity fraud.

                  • magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    In what way can blockchain ensure food safety? Just because participants use proof of work or whatever doesn’t mean the input data is more truthful. The oracle problem is a thing.