I hate this so much because it’s absolutely false. Nobody needs cryptocurrency. But Blockchain has very real value that has nothing to do with currency, grift, or “proof of work”. Blockchain is NOT synonymous with crypto and the fact that everyone believes it is shows exactly how much damage the grifters have done :(
EDIT: Haters gonna hate. Hope everyone who down-votes reads the replies too.
EDIT 2: Here you go, everybody. I did the research for you…
Supply chain management
Food safety: Companies like Walmart and IBM Food Trust use blockchain to track food products from their source to the store shelf. This allows for a swift, precise response to contamination by tracing affected items, potentially saving lives and reducing waste.
Logistics and shipping: Shipping giant Maersk has partnered with IBM to create TradeLens, a blockchain platform that digitizes and automates shipping documents and processes. This increases transparency and efficiency across the global supply chain.
Healthcare and medical records
Secure data sharing: Blockchain can create a secure, interoperable system for storing and sharing patient medical records. Patients can use private keys to control who accesses their sensitive data, ensuring privacy while allowing authorized providers to get the information they need.
Pharmaceutical tracking: The MediLedger Project uses blockchain to secure the pharmaceutical supply chain, verifying the integrity of drugs and reducing the risk of counterfeit medications.
Clinical trial management: Platforms like TrialSite use blockchain to record clinical trial data securely and transparently. This helps maintain the integrity of results, building greater trust among researchers, regulators, and participants.
Government and public services
Land and property records: The government of Georgia has used blockchain to secure land and property records, creating an immutable and transparent public record. This reduces fraud and ensures the integrity of land titles.
Voting systems: The mobile voting platform Voatz uses a blockchain-based system to enable secure, transparent mobile voting for eligible service members and travelers abroad. This provides a resilient solution against fraud and data corruption.
Finance (non-crypto) and banking
Efficient transaction processing: Financial institutions like the Singapore Exchange Limited are using blockchain to streamline interbank payments. This reduces manual reconciliation and enables more efficient processing of thousands of transactions.
Supply chain finance: TradeIX uses blockchain to provide a transparent platform for supply chain finance, automating processes and streamlining transactions.
Education
Credential verification: Learning Machine uses blockchain for the secure issuance of digital diplomas and credentials. This provides a more trustworthy and efficient method for verifying academic achievements.
Intellectual property and media
Transparent ticketing: Companies like Guts use blockchain to create a transparent ticketing ecosystem that eliminates ticket fraud and the secondary ticket market.
Energy and utilities
Peer-to-peer energy trading: Homeowners with solar panels can use blockchain-based platforms to automatically sell their excess energy to neighbors. Smart meters record the transactions on a blockchain, automating the entire process.
I see this kind of comment on pretty much every thread about Blockchain, and yet those commenters aren’t ever able to share a use case where Blockchain solves a problem better than the existing technology. Maybe you have one though?
Immutable ledger for inter-branch bank transaction synchronization.
This is already in use at multiple financial institutions with significant value. It has increased the speed at which transactions can be verified and distributed across large networks of bank branches so that, for example, when you deposit your money at one bank branch it becomes available elsewhere on the network immediately without waiting for the end-of-day ledger reconciling. Previously, banks had to send just the transaction details and trust that it would be valid during reconciling (the “pending” status).
Want some more?
EDIT: Took the liberty of adding a bunch of examples to my original reply 👍
I don’t see how a blockchain is necessary there. Couldn’t they just use transaction databases and simple messaging between banks? Also, what is your definition of blockchain? Just a distributed linked list? Proof of work (the part I don’t understand the need for)?
It’s certainly not necessary, it just provides specific advantages in terms of tamper resistance, validation, etc. If you’re not working in a system where the integrity and authenticity is paramount and doing that validation over the wire constantly is prohibitive then there’s no significant benefit. But there are lots of scenarios where those are EXACTLY what you want to prioritize. Several of the examples I added to my initial reply offer clear use cases that benefit.
As for my definition, I’ll defer to the literal definition:
A blockchain is a decentralized, immutable digital ledger that records transactions chronologically in “blocks” linked together using cryptography. Each new block contains a hash of the previous one, forming a secure chain that is distributed across a peer-to-peer network of computers, making it tamper-evident and resistant to changes without network consensus. This distributed and transparent system eliminates the need for a central authority, allowing participants to verify and trust the recorded data.
Note that proof of work is NOT part of the definition. Proof of work is very specifically related to cryptocurrency, and exists only as a mechanism to prevent the arbitrary creation of additional currency (blocks). There is nothing about blockchain that requires proof of work. Often you use proof of stake instead of proof of work, but even that isn’t strictly necessary
P.s. this is exactly what I mean when I talk about how grifters have ruined a perfectly good technology by poisoning the public awareness of it. The fact that you considered proof of work to be a core element of blockchain is because of cryptocurrency, and the notoriety it has received because of the grift. Other examples of this phenomenon include Tesla and their impact on the perception of autonomous vehicles (which Teslas are not, but try very hard to make you think they are), and LLMs and “AI” and their impact on the perception of real AI projects and other forms of machine learning.
Sweet, genuinely thank you, my question came from a place of genuine curiosity and honest skepticism, so I appreciate the detail. I have a follow up question though. Most of those use cases seem like they’d require linking a specific identity to a given blockchain transaction. How does one go about doing that?
Blockchain itself is just, at its core, a method of cryptographically proving the authenticity of a ledger history. That’s it. What you DO with that technology is fairly boundless. You can embed anything in a block on the chain. We have lots of existing ways to handle proof of identity that can be inserted into a block (imagine if blocks contained the public key of block’s creator and then the entire block (including the public key) is signed with the private key)
Sure, you could do that, but all that would prove is that a block was signed with the private key associated with the included public key. That doesn’t necessarily say anything about someone’s identity though does it? It just says they know how to generate a public/private key pair and a digital signature. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your example?
I don’t mean to be rude but it sounds like you aren’t very familiar with digital identity management paradigms in the first place?
Proving who you are is always a relative operation. It’s always about the relationship between two things. “I am the person who generated this other message” or “I am the person whose face looks like this”.
Key/certificate issuance follows a variety of different models depending on the use case. Sometimes “this object was generated/signed by the person who controls this key” is enough, as is the case with things like secure emails (think gpg/pgp). Other times you need an authority to give relative meaning to a key/certificate (think SSL).
Immutable ledger for inter-branch bank transaction synchronization.
This is already in use at multiple financial institutions with significant value. It has increased the speed at which transactions can be verified and distributed across large networks of bank branches so that, for example, when you deposit your money at one bank branch it becomes available elsewhere on the network immediately without waiting for the end-of-day ledger reconciling. Previously, banks had to send just the transaction details and trust that it would be valid during reconciling (the “pending” status).
Want some more?
EDIT: Went ahead and added several examples to my original reply. 👍
That’s not better. Between two banks block chain adds nothing. Either side could alter it just as easily as they could alter a regular transmission, and more easily than they could for a signed encrypted transmission
You need many nodes to make block chain immutable
You only need a sender and receiver to make signed data packets immutable
Of course, if there’s a trusted party a conventional database is better. But that’s like saying that umbrellas are useless because it’s often sunny outside. Having or not consensus (or a trusted party) is usually not a choice, it’s an imposition. Conflicting interests exist and it’s difficult to work around them.
Using Blockchain in these situations provides clear advantages. The whole point is removing the need for trusted parties in yes scenarios because it introduced significant risk. Centralization has implicit dangers.
It can, but with something like a utility distribution there’s going to be centralisation anyway for practical, even graph-theoretic purposes. Trying to manage electricity sales over a line that someone in particular maintains with a decentralised system is a little silly.
That’s true to lesser degrees with other legal rights, which a sovereign government enforces, or in other scale industrial supply chains.
Even with something like diplomas, you kind of imply a gatekeeper to access to the chain existing. If I can issue myself a degree it’s basically an NFT market. If not, you have centralisation of some kind again, and you’ve just invented a more complicated way for Harvard to run an https API.
Sure but when the Blockchain is restricted to operation within a specific ecosystem that is kinda moot, no? Like, if I’m managing a supply chain but have concerns about the participants in that supply chain being compromised, then it’s okay for me as a central authority to define the standard and then use the decentralized nature of Blockchain to validate and distribute the use cases for that standard.
Take a company like Target as an example. They want to make sure that their supply chain ledger is immutable and trustworthy. They don’t want anyone within their organization, from the CEO down to the shipping dock workers, to be able to falsify or tamper with line items in the ledger. As a central authority they can define a standard using Blockchain that solves that problem AND doesn’t depend on a central authority to do it beyond the initial standard definition. That reduces attack surface significantly.
And hey, cryptocurrency also has utility outside speculative markets and grifters!
It can be used to move money freely and often times more efficiently, and some of it can be used for private payments, too. Ability to financially support someone anonymously is important for democracy.
It also allows you to get money directly without revealing sensitive payment information or relying on third party with giant fees. This is objectively good!
I hate this so much because it’s absolutely false. Nobody needs cryptocurrency. But Blockchain has very real value that has nothing to do with currency, grift, or “proof of work”. Blockchain is NOT synonymous with crypto and the fact that everyone believes it is shows exactly how much damage the grifters have done :(
EDIT: Haters gonna hate. Hope everyone who down-votes reads the replies too.
EDIT 2: Here you go, everybody. I did the research for you…
I see this kind of comment on pretty much every thread about Blockchain, and yet those commenters aren’t ever able to share a use case where Blockchain solves a problem better than the existing technology. Maybe you have one though?
Sure do! Quoting my other reply:
EDIT: Took the liberty of adding a bunch of examples to my original reply 👍
I don’t see how a blockchain is necessary there. Couldn’t they just use transaction databases and simple messaging between banks? Also, what is your definition of blockchain? Just a distributed linked list? Proof of work (the part I don’t understand the need for)?
It’s certainly not necessary, it just provides specific advantages in terms of tamper resistance, validation, etc. If you’re not working in a system where the integrity and authenticity is paramount and doing that validation over the wire constantly is prohibitive then there’s no significant benefit. But there are lots of scenarios where those are EXACTLY what you want to prioritize. Several of the examples I added to my initial reply offer clear use cases that benefit.
As for my definition, I’ll defer to the literal definition:
Note that proof of work is NOT part of the definition. Proof of work is very specifically related to cryptocurrency, and exists only as a mechanism to prevent the arbitrary creation of additional currency (blocks). There is nothing about blockchain that requires proof of work. Often you use proof of stake instead of proof of work, but even that isn’t strictly necessary
P.s. this is exactly what I mean when I talk about how grifters have ruined a perfectly good technology by poisoning the public awareness of it. The fact that you considered proof of work to be a core element of blockchain is because of cryptocurrency, and the notoriety it has received because of the grift. Other examples of this phenomenon include Tesla and their impact on the perception of autonomous vehicles (which Teslas are not, but try very hard to make you think they are), and LLMs and “AI” and their impact on the perception of real AI projects and other forms of machine learning.
Sweet, genuinely thank you, my question came from a place of genuine curiosity and honest skepticism, so I appreciate the detail. I have a follow up question though. Most of those use cases seem like they’d require linking a specific identity to a given blockchain transaction. How does one go about doing that?
Blockchain itself is just, at its core, a method of cryptographically proving the authenticity of a ledger history. That’s it. What you DO with that technology is fairly boundless. You can embed anything in a block on the chain. We have lots of existing ways to handle proof of identity that can be inserted into a block (imagine if blocks contained the public key of block’s creator and then the entire block (including the public key) is signed with the private key)
Sure, you could do that, but all that would prove is that a block was signed with the private key associated with the included public key. That doesn’t necessarily say anything about someone’s identity though does it? It just says they know how to generate a public/private key pair and a digital signature. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your example?
I don’t mean to be rude but it sounds like you aren’t very familiar with digital identity management paradigms in the first place?
Proving who you are is always a relative operation. It’s always about the relationship between two things. “I am the person who generated this other message” or “I am the person whose face looks like this”.
Key/certificate issuance follows a variety of different models depending on the use case. Sometimes “this object was generated/signed by the person who controls this key” is enough, as is the case with things like secure emails (think gpg/pgp). Other times you need an authority to give relative meaning to a key/certificate (think SSL).
Show one use case of Blockchain outside cryptocurrency. It must also be a better solution than a traditional database.
Immutable ledger for inter-branch bank transaction synchronization.
This is already in use at multiple financial institutions with significant value. It has increased the speed at which transactions can be verified and distributed across large networks of bank branches so that, for example, when you deposit your money at one bank branch it becomes available elsewhere on the network immediately without waiting for the end-of-day ledger reconciling. Previously, banks had to send just the transaction details and trust that it would be valid during reconciling (the “pending” status).
Want some more?
EDIT: Went ahead and added several examples to my original reply. 👍
That’s not better. Between two banks block chain adds nothing. Either side could alter it just as easily as they could alter a regular transmission, and more easily than they could for a signed encrypted transmission
You need many nodes to make block chain immutable
You only need a sender and receiver to make signed data packets immutable
I’d go the other way. Crypto has uses, and crypto works better when built on other Byzantine-resilient systems.
Most of your examples still would work better with a conventional database, because there’s an obvious trusted party and/or privacy needs.
Of course, if there’s a trusted party a conventional database is better. But that’s like saying that umbrellas are useless because it’s often sunny outside. Having or not consensus (or a trusted party) is usually not a choice, it’s an imposition. Conflicting interests exist and it’s difficult to work around them.
Using Blockchain in these situations provides clear advantages. The whole point is removing the need for trusted parties in yes scenarios because it introduced significant risk. Centralization has implicit dangers.
It can, but with something like a utility distribution there’s going to be centralisation anyway for practical, even graph-theoretic purposes. Trying to manage electricity sales over a line that someone in particular maintains with a decentralised system is a little silly.
That’s true to lesser degrees with other legal rights, which a sovereign government enforces, or in other scale industrial supply chains.
Even with something like diplomas, you kind of imply a gatekeeper to access to the chain existing. If I can issue myself a degree it’s basically an NFT market. If not, you have centralisation of some kind again, and you’ve just invented a more complicated way for Harvard to run an https API.
Sure but when the Blockchain is restricted to operation within a specific ecosystem that is kinda moot, no? Like, if I’m managing a supply chain but have concerns about the participants in that supply chain being compromised, then it’s okay for me as a central authority to define the standard and then use the decentralized nature of Blockchain to validate and distribute the use cases for that standard.
Take a company like Target as an example. They want to make sure that their supply chain ledger is immutable and trustworthy. They don’t want anyone within their organization, from the CEO down to the shipping dock workers, to be able to falsify or tamper with line items in the ledger. As a central authority they can define a standard using Blockchain that solves that problem AND doesn’t depend on a central authority to do it beyond the initial standard definition. That reduces attack surface significantly.
And hey, cryptocurrency also has utility outside speculative markets and grifters!
It can be used to move money freely and often times more efficiently, and some of it can be used for private payments, too. Ability to financially support someone anonymously is important for democracy.
It also allows you to get money directly without revealing sensitive payment information or relying on third party with giant fees. This is objectively good!
yup, the buying drugs part is the legit good use of crypto. Always cringe when people acts like that’s a negative when saying that’s their only use.