• hark@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Using a blockchain to maintain their internal ledgers means they have complete control over that blockchain, so they can manipulate it all they want. Blockchains aren’t magic.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Who are “they” in the above message?

      If you trust all your employees then an internal blockchain is useless, but do banks really totally trust their employees?

      • hark@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        A blockchain won’t solve incorrect transaction information any more than an audit log in this case. This is an entirely internal process controlled by the bank and access would be restricted, so they couldn’t just edit audit logs. How do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this?

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The actions that an employee could perform would be limited by their private key’s abilities. Blockchain can be preventative. It’s not only for retrospective analysis.

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            The actions that an employee could perform in any database would be limited by their account permissions. Blockchain doesn’t change this. I pointed out a retrospective mechanism because a completely internal blockchain wouldn’t prevent tampering either.

            • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              You end up with a very complex database account management.

              I agree in general. Fully internal databases should not be blockchains.

              But if external access is required at any point then there may be a blockchain use case.

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                It’s not complicated at all. It’s basic database access management and it’s been a thing for decades without issue. If external access is required then those parties are given restricted access appropriate for their job and their actions are logged in the audit log in case any inappropriate actions were taken by them and need to be reviewed/reversed. These are solved problems and blockchain adds nothing there. The only case that blockchain helps is in a system where you have a large number of random participants and you want transactions to be enforced by work done/computing power or stake. This is why cryptocurrency has been the only practical use case for blockchain, with the word “practical” doing a lot of work, hence the diagram in the post we’re all discussing.

                • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  If external access is required then those parties are given restricted access

                  So a human needs to get involved.

                  inappropriate actions were taken by them and need to be reviewed/reversed.

                  Lack of finality slows processes.

                  These are solved problems and blockchain adds nothing there.

                  Two improvements/use cases given above.

                  The only case that blockchain helps is in a system where you have a large number of random participants

                  I.e. Access without human authorisation

                  and you want transactions to be enforced

                  Finality.

                  This is why cryptocurrency has been the only practical use case for blockchain,

                  Supply chain tracking

                  Royalty payments

                  Renewable energy tracking

                  Ticketing

                  Etc.

                  • hark@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    A human only needs to get involved for manual database changes. The vast majority of database transactions are carried out by code. The same would be true for blockchain. Again, it’s not magical. I will ask you once again: how do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this? The blockchain as used by bitcoin allows everyone the same access, but uses compute power as a consensus mechanism in the hopes that statistically most participants would be running the same code to keep things legitimate.

                    How do you propose a bank does this internally? You’ve yet to answer this question I asked a few posts before and instead opted to list proposed use cases like a brochure advertising blockchain. This is what I usually see with blockchain evangelists, repeating talking points that they themselves don’t understand. Like seriously, what is “renewable energy tracking” supposed to mean?