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posted by martyb on Friday October 12 2018, @07:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the Betteridge-knows-the-answer dept.

This is a review by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) of the hype around blockchain. They conclude that most people, surprise surprise, don't need a blockchain. There is a very simple graphic of the flowchart and a summary of their report here:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dont-bother-with-blockchain-databases-or-even-email-could-be-better-513814

Enjoy the actual review here:

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf

As usual, KISS wins the day.


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Friday October 12 2018, @07:41AM (2 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Friday October 12 2018, @07:41AM (#747811)

    Just as much as every fish needs a bicycle. It's just common sense, you don't need a NIST report to tell you that.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @08:01AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 12 2018, @08:01AM (#747816) Journal

      If it doesn't have AI, it's useless. The blockchain fish, I mean.

      (grin)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 5, Funny) by sgleysti on Friday October 12 2018, @01:50PM

        by sgleysti (56) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 12 2018, @01:50PM (#747893)

        Something tells me that your AI-driven blockchain fish is also 3D printed. Please confirm.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:29PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:29PM (#747865)

    MongoDB is a NoSQL DB with sharding, which gives it those kickass performance metrics. Piping it to /dev/null makes it even faster. All of this puts the performance of Blockchain to shame. On a side note, nothing is more secure than /dev/null. Nothing. Not even Blockchain.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:01PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:01PM (#747875)

      You mean NoBrain database, right?

      Once upon a time databases had to be designed. Then somebody came up with sql databases that even a retard can design. But fear not - even that is too complicated for complete idiots so nosql concept was born.

      No wonder we can't get to space any more and soon the main American business will be a while liberal whore house network for Chinese customers.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:12PM (#747881)

        Tsk, tsk. Clearly you are not familiar with the truth about MongoDB. Feast your eyes [youtube.com] and maybe you'll learn something.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @01:01PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 12 2018, @01:01PM (#747877) Journal

      On a side note, nothing is more secure than /dev/null

      More secure? No.
      Equally secure? Plenty, any form of write-only memory will be as secure. monodic memory for instance.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:09PM (#747921)

      I ejaculated into your /dev/null.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:57PM (#747873)

    Does anyone care what these people say? It took them 10 years to even comment upon "blockchain", clearly you will miss out if you listen to them.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday October 12 2018, @02:46PM (4 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday October 12 2018, @02:46PM (#747906) Journal

    The report is much more extensive than the summary decries, and looks like a good citable resource for many aspects of blockchain. (As opposed to "hey I got this from Ars, or Engadget, or Wikipedia, or ")

    I think the lede was missed and the most valuable part of the report was in describing the limitations and misconceptions of blochchain. They include that a blockchain is immutable, that a blockchain is ungoverned, QA of data recorded, blockchain death (the most interesting IMVHO but also the most brief), aspects of security and trust (both still exist in blockchain just differently from centralized systems), resource usage, and a couple of others.

    This looks like the document to refer people to who want to know on higher to middish levels more about blockchain. It also shoves back the notion that Satoshi Nakamoto first came up with blockchain as Wikipedia would have you believe - the roots of blockchain go much deeper than that. Nakamoto was just the first to come up with an (at least temporary) viable application for it.

    --
    This sig for rent.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:22PM (#747928)

      Personally, I didnt really understand blockchain until I wrote my own parser for a coin that didnt have a block explorer yet, you can see the results here if you want: https://www.xaya-gaming.net/. [xaya-gaming.net] It isn't that complicated to extract the basic info (getting all the TX info out efficiently gets more messy), people who know how to code should be able to do it in a week or so.

      https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_documentation [bitcoin.it]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @12:22AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @12:22AM (#748127)

        Blockchain is basically a name for something bankers call a ledger. Or in compsci terms. An immutable list. You add to it and never remove. The 'blockchain' bit is the cryptographic bits to insure lack of tampering. Some blockchains also have the idea of work. In the case of the most famous one you 'guess' the next in the chain and its yours. Some bright sparks decided that the payload is also money. Money can be anything from rocks to gold to bits. Just so long as everyone agrees it is worth something.

    • (Score: 1) by Mainframe Bloke on Saturday October 13 2018, @06:12AM (1 child)

      by Mainframe Bloke (1665) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 13 2018, @06:12AM (#748191) Journal

      thanks AYLABTU, it was my first ever submission...I'll take your points on board for next time. Always good to receive constructive criticism.

      • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:50PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:50PM (#750469) Journal

        No, it was a GREAT submission! And that was just my opinion of the best thing in the report since what is reported in the popular press about what blockchains are so frequently uncritical about what they aren't. (Unless that one thing it isn't is the focus of the article). Having all those "A blockchain isn't....." is helpful to understanding what blockchains are by via negativa.

        Keep pitching, you're in the strike zone!

        --
        This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 12 2018, @03:11PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 12 2018, @03:11PM (#747924) Journal

    I wouldn't know what to do with a block chain, but I've used a few chain blocks. Actually, I call them chain hoists, but a lot of people call them chain blocks.

    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:56PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:56PM (#750474) Journal

      Yeah, but if your chain block wasn't distributed with at least 51% of the chainmaking nodes concurring on which link just added should take the load then you have to wait for two or three more links to be added before you know which one will be used. Then your engine block crashes to the floor because you should have used the other link which eventually proofed better after you already used the chain.

      And next time, get paid for your hoisting by the number of links you personally added to make it possible, too! And make sure that the underlying steel has been properly crypto-scrambled with the right alloy too.

      --
      This sig for rent.
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