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

Following this discussion suddenly makes it more attractive to rad test the kit. As a hook to understand the use cases, pro's and con's mentioned here.

My Solution Architects were often coming up with great ideas for rolling out Blockchain for clients but the vast majority would not benefit from such technology - it's inherently unscalable for online (by which I mean, not batch) transactions and volumetrics just grow and grow.  So things like identity confirmation or Land Registry solutions etc etc were often put forward but because these are 'owned' (and thus have a trusted party involved) they are a much better fit for existing RDBMS technology which can be made read-only and distributable if needed.  Sounds to me like your example re: version control fits into that as well - there's definitely a trusted owner here, and that's who owns the IT department, those changes aren't tradeable and have no value outside the organisation!

I think a non-blockchain application would be useful to sit alongside blockchain applications too.  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.  That would actually make this card pretty useful - a wallet/purse portable key store for transaction signing could provide a standard identification mechanism for all financial institutions instead of them distributing different number-pad devices: I await the day when I need one for my bank, one for Amex, one for barclaycard, one for Halifax, one for my savings account etc etc and I have a drawer full of the blasted things.

I have a One Account from RBoS and the IT is abysmal, truly, truly abysmal.  I can't change my passphrases without calling them up and giving a new one, in full, to the call centre person who answers!  It started so well: back in the day when I opened it (20 years ago or so) they provided a credit card size card with a 13-character code on it which was needed to sign in, along with a passphrase and pass number (3FA!).  Now we've passed fraud risk back to the banks (quite rightly) they are coming up with all sorts of solutions to protect themselves.  Feels a bit like this smart meter rollout - great if you stick with the one supplier for the rest of your life.

Hi Andrew,

I've not explored it myself, so you'll know more if it sounds useful or not, a couple of years ago I heard about a company that was investigating using blockchain for version control type scenarios, with servers or networks where different people may make configuration changes, and they didn't want people to be able to sneak in modifications and then deliberately or accidentally wipe the record of it. Their example was banks etc., and in that case it would be a corporate owned blockchain, perhaps one handling an entire data center or network. But I do not know if it got anywhere, or got killed.

Anyway since it seems there's nothing blockchain-specific about the card (apart from any label on it or on the box maybe), like you, I'm curious if the key-pair uses the same algorithms that normal pre-shared key infrastructure uses, so I'm going to use it as an opportunity to refresh myself on it. The last time I explored it a little bit, was way back when TLS 1.2 was released.

If I apply my application will state I don't intend to do anything blockchain related at all, since the entire functionality that the card supports is functionality that can be used for authentication/authorisation. I hope that gets accepted.

Despite having an Android phone, personally I might not use Android for the RoadTest, I'm hoping to use a NFC eval board (not decided on which one.. I may have an NXP one, but I won't use it if the chip is particularly ancient, since then there's less benefit writing up using an obsolete chip : (

I hate those bank number-pad devices too : ( Recently however, I mentioned that in passing to the staff-member at the bank, and he looked at me in a surprised way as if I was the only one that used it, and wondered why I wasn't using their app and throw away the number-pad. He said that's what all the cool kids are doing. So, I let him guide me in setting that up, and it's surprisingly fantastic : )  Secured with a password plus the numeric or fingerprint phone lock.

On the other hand, it could all be a disaster-in-waiting : ) because I've no idea how I'm supposed to do banking when/if the phone gets lost : ) I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I Looked at blockchain as part of my work sometime back and determined it has a very narrow set of use cases that must conform to 3 basic principles:

1. ALL parties involved must be untrusted to each other and thus no control must rest with any one or more of those parties.
2. it has to be based around an asset that has intrinsic value.
3. that asset has to be tradeable and a marketplace for doing so exists.

so, for example, a blockchain for identity is not a valid use case - identities are not tradeable and, ultimately, one party has to have an overriding say (I.e. the government).  Existing technology is better suited for such a use case.

I lost interest quite quickly because of the hype and nonsense being generated around the technology as being ‘generally’ useful.  I think time has borne that decision out.

Infineon would have been better promoting these for use cases such as on-line banking/credit card anti-fraud mechanism.  My bank has sent me a calculator-sized device which is inconvenient to carry around so I don’t. 
It struck me that these things, with no means to export the private key, are long term (or perhaps even short term) unviable.  A ‘user’ must have at least two for backup purposes and what happens when Infineon decide not to make them anymore?  Can the private key be re-generated outside this ecosystem - does it use a standard readily implemented algorithm for key pair generation?

Basically though, I’m not interested in Blockchain to RoadTest these and Infineon are front-and-centre positioning them for blockchain and no other purpose.  Having said that, I actually think that in order to keep RoadTests going that it’s worth applying for anyway if you have the skills and capability to do so - you could always mention your application as a low priority for selection if there aren’t enough candidates.  Keeping the RoadTest program going and active is an important part of this community.

In this case I have the impression I’d need to acquire some more hardware or an Android phone, and that makes it expensive.  I’d also have to get to grips with a BC implementation to try it out and I don’t have the base knowledge to do that and the RoadTest within two months, and do it the justice products deserve.  It really suits someone developing BC as part of their job or hobby.

Maybe the solution is for rscasny to follow the approach he took with PSoC6 and the Honeywell pressure sensing kit. i.e. he put out a request for people to simply create a novel project out of the kit to demonstrate application... and to generate interest, maybe he could include a small incentive upon completion etc.

https://www.element14.com/community/message/244842/l/need-someone-for-a-project-cypress-psoc6-ble-kit-honeywell-pressure…

From what I can tell, the card is more general, and Blockchain is just one scenario, and cryptocurrency applications (which are what are mentioned in the datasheet) are a subset (albeit big and popular subset) of that.

The card can be used for key-pair generation, key storage and signing content, so that has other uses, e.g. as a generic building-block for things that need authentication, i.e. not as exciting as cryptocurrency apps maybe, but more like plumbing that could be used to create solutions with security, which for sure could be handled in other ways too, but this is one more option.

Although personally I don't have a use-case planned for it, it's the type of technology that could be useful to explore, so that it is in the back-pocket for when such a function is needed in a design.

I'd like to apply, my use-case might be a bit contrived, but maybe in this case that's no bad thing, since technologies like these have multiple purposes and the act of us brainstorming as we are here I hope could help uncover more realistic ideas eventually.

Here is a good article explaining a bit more about Blockchain:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp

But it is still far away from giving clues on how to use Infineon Tags in a Blockchain solution.

This is a great opportunity for government bureaucracy to creep in... can you imagine, "we're busy verifying this blockchain verified document. Please come back in 6 years time for the answer..."

well in theory bitcoin breaks into 2100 trillion transactions recorded. That (and to be financial value) is part of why the calculations are so resource intensive. It could be a much simpler (and thus less data intensive) blockchain. So i think actually difficulty decreases significantly vs the "this is worth $8000" bitcoin

True... and that's something I couldn't be able to fully conceive. Government applications that will be distributed, making them less/no government. If distributed, Who will be part of the network? Who will assume the costs of supporting the network? Who will provide the means for it?

In the bitcoin case, the motivation for verifying transactions and add them to the block is to earn (mine) bitcoins. Difficulty increases and rewards, decreases. In other non-cryptocurrencies scenarios, why would be someone interested in "supporting" the blockchain? I may have some lack of concepts still...