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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Poll: Blockchain is Hot, but I Haven't Gotten Much Interest in the BlockChain Kit Roadtest. Any Ideas Why?

If you quickly search through the web, it's clear that blockchain technology is considered as one of the hot new technologies that will find application in a wide number of industries. Some people call it a game changer, which I personally am reluctant to declare. But it definitely is something worth learning more about and understanding how it works. So, when I was approached by a sponsor to launch a roadtest on its new blockchain kit: Infineon Blockchain Starter Kit I thought it was a great idea to roadtest this kit. Now, I will admit I roadtested this a few months ago and I didn't get much interest. I had 5 more kits so I am trying again. I still am not getting much interest. My poll here is to take a sense of why people don't find it interesting. Thanks.

  • in reply to neilk

    Neil, the blockchain itself is inherently secure because to make changes requires agreement from over 50% of participants and, because entries are chained cryptographically, then any change in a historic record would be detected straightaway as everything downstream of it would become invalid (actually, the Blockchain would appear broken at the point of change rather than the downstream records being invalid.)  Additionally, making a change to the Blockchain replicates across all instances (once agreed it is a valid change) - any manual manipulation would require the same manual manipulation to be done across all distributed instances (not via replication which would fail), clearly something that is highly unlikely.  The biggest worry, last time I checked, was if some actor (particularly a state actor) had control of over 50% of mining activity - they could then 'agree' changes that can't be disputed by others.  The concern arose because China had a lot of miners and was steadily investing in mining technology.

     

    Exchanges (and wallets) are just that and not part of the core Blockchain infrastructure - they exist to transfer bitcoin to/from fiat currencies.  As such, they can be hacked like any other bit of software, but wouldn't compromise the blockchain itself.  The problem arises because once hacked, and access to wallets or funds is gained, they can transfer bitcoin to their own wallets which once written into the Blockchain becomes immutable - there's no way back without the malicious actors signing reversing transactions.

     

    As for the sort of issues to resolve, I agree with you there.  I posted above how to identify suitable use cases for Blockchain without meeting such, alternate technology is better suited (e.g. RDBMS.)  The hype surrounding this has led to ideas for implementations that really won't work long term.  Blockchain technology is inherently non-scalable at any level which requires reasonable (i.e. fast) response time.

     

    Jan's idea to look at Blockchain as a technology is the right approach here - it's important to understand the technology and what it was designed for, not what it could be inappropriately shoehorned into.

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    Maybe... But as things are going, IOT and Industry 4.0 are picking up pace. I do think iota will soon be toppling the various cryptos ahead of it... It's 10th i think currently... Let's see... I believe it's significantly different from others and tangle can provide iot a standard that i feel is very much needed in that domain, otherwise things will soon become dispersed, chaotic and incompatible.

  • in reply to thebluephoenix

    I think both are valid ways to solve tractability/identification.

    I lack the skills to determine what solution has the best security.

     

    As a path to learning what's out there and what can be done to leave a trace of activities, I'm going to study the blockchain approach now.

    Any bet is good. In the video era, no-one could predict whether it was going to be Betamax or VHS. Turned out both are obsolete now ...

  • I just couldn't think of something innovative to do with this... And I am a more of an IOTA *** Tangle believer...

  • in reply to neilk

    It's one of my goals, when selected, , to find out how to use these in real world scenarios. Making ledger postings traceable; work together with someone else with distributed blockchain signed contracts ...

  • I've read a number of articles about blockchain and none of them really got to grips with explaining the sorts of issues it would be ideal to resolve - except, of course, crypto currency.

     

    However, that in itself confuses me greatly - if blockchain is so inherently secure, how come we are continually hearing about crypto currency exchanges being hacked??

     

    Neil

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    This discussion has been an eye-opener. Submitted a proposal...

  • I am Roadtester for Blockchain2go, with some experience.

    The most difficult part is ecosystem. There have been too much e-coins and public/private DIstributed Ledger. One can not dig them all. I spend  times and still far from expert.

    And hardcore math is basic requirement. Difficulty ++.

    But it still worth efforts to go , since blochchain tech is inevitably drawing near to everyone. Like it or not, Facebook is opening the pandora box.

  • in reply to Andrew J
    It would be interesting to see if the phrase used to generate the key-pair could be used to generate the same key-pair elsewhere.

     

    Although possible, you would be able to do that only if you knew the key derivation function used on the card for the key generation (and obviously knew the passphrase). Infineon's cards generate keys "in situ", therefore I imagine they can provide users with sets of cards that share the same (pre-canned) key derivation function for generation, so they can all generate identical private keys, in case you need to replicas. I doubt that getting hold of the algorithm used would be much easier than cracking the key in the first place, otherwise the whole solutions would be very vulnerable, hence useless.