The blockchain era is here but big biz, like most folk, hasn't a clue what to do with it As far as database giant Oracle is concerned, the October announcement of its Blockchain Cloud Service (BCS) was timed perfectly. After dabbling with blockchain internally for a year before joining the Hyperledger consortium in August, it had reached the point where its customers – and a market intrigued by what looks like …
> Who actually needs their transaction records to be distributed?
Maybe think of it as "shared" rather than "distributed." Here's an example of why that's useful...
A few months ago my cellphone provider threatened to cut off my service because I hadn't paid the previous month's bill. I logged into my bank's website and I was able to see that my check had cleared several weeks ago, and the phone company had cashed it, so this was clearly an error on the part of the phone company.
However, because the three of us have three different databases (me with my checkbook, the bank with my bank account info, and the cellphone company with their information about my account) and since one of the three databases disagreed with the others, it took two weeks and several phone calls and a bunch of emails to straighten things out.
A trustworthy shared / distributed database can help prevent this kind of thing. We got everything corrected in the end, but the dispute resolution process could have been streamlined pretty substantially if my bank and the cell provider had a shared database that they both trusted.
"but the dispute resolution process could have been streamlined pretty substantially if my bank and the cell provider had a shared database that they both trusted."
Currently the database they both trust is called a clearing house, and it's where your cheque transaction actually happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque_and_Credit_Clearing_Company
in the UK for instance.
The fact your cellphone company is a bunch of incompetent wankers won't change if they use blockchain.
... at a recent presentation/QA, when asked about Blockchain, paraphrased:
"While Amazon(AWS) is keeping a close eye on the technology, right now it's a solution in search of a problem. So far, we haven't found a problem that can ONLY be solved with blockchain."
He specifically excluded cryptocurrencies.
Make of that what you will. (Before you downvote: he said it! Don't shoot the messenger!)
Um... to correct many of the comments here - Blockchains DO NOT HAVE TO BE DISTRIBUTED!!!!
It just so happens that the most famous blockchain is distributed, and it is distributed for a particular set of reasons that may not apply in other circumstances. Blockchain is simply a way of providing a history/log of transactions.
Using blockchains in currency it probably is a dumb idea, since currency has a high volume of transactions and the blocks will get very large very quickly and require more and more processing to validate. However, in supply chains it makes sense, in large assets which change hands infrequently, it makes sense. But for rapid high volume, not so much.
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