Re:Walmart Is Getting Suppliers to Put Food on the Blockchain
by bildung on Thursday April 26, 2018 @03:54AM
(#16929816)
If you don't mine heavily, the blockchain essentially isn't immutable. The race for blocks is the only reason one can assume immutability. That is the core of the problem: If you don't have a chain that's heavily mined, you don't have the security a blockchain promises. Whats left is an unsecure database that feels like running on a C64.
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Re:Walmart Is Getting Suppliers to Put Food on the Blockchain
by pests on Thursday April 26, 2018 @04:01AM
(#16929866)
That is true for Bitcoin and other public blockchains. It is not always true for private chains.
Lets assume 10 suppliers each add 10 new 'produce transactions' on some day. It also occurs during work hours, so maybe between 9-5 there is 100 new transactions.
The miners are all known nodes, in fact, only 10 of them if we assume each supplier gets one.
Once the 100 transactions are minted into new blocks and the day ends...
What exactly are the miners supposed to mine into blocks? There are no transactions. Nothing to add.
Re:Walmart Is Getting Suppliers to Put Food on the Blockchain
by bildung on Thursday April 26, 2018 @04:08AM
(#16929903)
Scenario B: Walmart rents a $5 digital ocean VPS and installs postgres. Each producer generates a (e.g. GPG) key pair and sends the public key to Walmart. Each day, each producer creates a new entry in the db, signs it with his/her private key, and is done.
The mining is completely worthless in the scenario you described. Imagine either a rogue producer or Walmart having an interest in changing the database. In your scenario of 10 mining boxes the adversary would just have to buy 5 additional boxes and would have complete control over the blockchain.