Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
by retox on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @01:11PM
(#12637148)
This trend of proposing a blockchain to solve every problem is hilarious to me. Hammer/nail syndrome.
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
by erichocean on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @01:40PM
(#12637476)
> Hammer/nail syndrome.
Blockchains address that problem too.
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
by indolering on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @02:53PM
(#12638211)
Bitcoin: the slowest, most expensive key/value store in history.
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data
by valarauca1 on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @09:22AM
(#12643544)
Also if you look at it in terms of the CAP Theorem:
Consistency (every read receives the most recent write or an error): Not True for block chains. All reads are dirty. The further back in time you go the higher the probability the read isn't dirty.
Availability (every request receives a response, without guarantee that it contains the most recent version of the information): 100% true.
Partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite arbitrary partitioning due to network failures): Yes the system will continue to function. But you can suffer data loss when the partition is healed.
In most cases a DHT is far simpler. But naturally some nodes can be evil and log metadata. This is just a risk, but it also exists in block chains. Furthermore DHT's are lower latency then block-chains.
Blockchains aren't a magic fix all solution for network consistency/privacy models. Outside of currency transactions it is a horrible distributed system model.