McKinsey’s blockchain warning irks crypto hipsters

I recently took part in a Blockchain trial with emusic.com and I think I feel the same way now. Their intention behind it is to "fundamentally change" the music business so that the people making the art are adequately and fairly rewarded, rather than the VCs spunking cash into Spotify et al. Laudable intentions, but even after going through the trial, I can't figure out how it's actually going to work, if at all; it seems that everyone is just shouting Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain and hoping something sticks.

In terms of the actual process, I had to set up a digital wallet, fill it with currency (provided by them, kindly) then use it to purchase music on their test site. Whilst only a demo, it was a nightmare; clunky, confusing and for what? I've been happily paying for music online with them since 2001 with no bother and, other than this nebulous concept of rewarding the artists more fairly (because Blockchain!) it gave me no benefits and only lots of hassle. If I as a tech found it difficult for no benefit, there's no way anyone less engaged would bother. The infrastructure (tarmaced roads) definitely isn't there yet.

Peak moth burn?

I've always been highly sceptical that blockchain had viable applications outside crypto-currencies but I recently read an article giving examples where trustless (or decentralised) trading would be enabled by blockchain. Fair enough, I'm convinced. But that article didn't explain how these non-crypto-currency applications replaced the Proof of Work concept to provide something like access-control. Is that why the article says "It added that blockchain solutions required a dedicated network."? Anyone? Sorry - I'm intrigued... but not enough to go and actually read the damned report.

I'm quickly coming to love blockchain - it serves two purposes - given the right rules around it, it can offer a trustless immutable ledger. It also draws snake-oil sales-persons like moths to a flame.

While I'm sceptical of blockchain as of yet,

I am at least as sceptical of McKinsey.

Blockchain

It's 2019, and it's still a solution looking for a problem???

The Emperor's New Clothes ...

As an engineer I was astonished and frustrated for a long time by the success of the make-believers that claimed blockchain to *somehow* be an universal solution to decentralized data transer.

The why could never be answered, the how never demonstrated and questions into the matter resulted mainly in hand-waiving and references to 1) no need for centralized infrastructure and 2) my somewhat advanced age ....

While both observations are true these alone do not make blockchain a viable solution for data transfer in any given context.

With all due reservations against McKinsey resarch reports - it will be interesting to see what happens, now that the first noteworthy party claims the emperor is naked...

"McKinsey is confused about the reasons blockchain isn't ramping that quickly. Their main reasons are related to ALL digital transformation projects, not just blockchain."

Would that have something to do with snake-oil?

I do see a use for immutable ledgers...

....but probably only in industries where the probity of the production chain (farm to fork etc.) is a tangible benefit. I those cases the number of parties would be small, potentially only the manufacturer but more likely (in the Farm to Fork scenario) the farmer, transport companies, wholesaler, retailer, packager etc., but still unlikely to get very far into double figures and thereby reducing the impact of performance on very large blockchains. If there is a market for goods with excellent environmental or regulatory credentials (Organic, fair-trade, Child labour free, whatever floats your personal boat) then this seems like a useful tool. For massive scale deployments it's still not quite there IMHO, YMMV

Blockchain is the new PKI

I used to be a consultant at one of the Big 4 firms and one of my areas of specialism was asymmetric key cryptography, Public Key Infrastructures and Trusted Third Parties. It was a fascinating field. It was technically challenging, which I loved and there was a huge number of potential uses.

Fortunately, I went on to specialise in information security more generally because despite all the hype, PKI never took off in the way that many people (including me) hoped.

The issue with a lot of crypto technology is that the underlying principles are often elegant and reasonably easy to explain as long as you don't get into the maths. The same could not be said for the implementation. Cryptography is often extremely hard to implement in such a way as not to break anything. The implementation details mattered and in the long run, they were very often a major stumbling block when going from a simple POC to a full implementation.

Blockchain looks very similar to PKI from where I'm sitting.

Mandatory use.

Lawyers.

Would it prevent the following (actual) case :

Lawyer : "M'lord, here is a letter i sent to the defendant on dd.mm.xxxx"

M'lord : "Yes, i hear you, but could you please explain why then it differs from the genuine letter that you actually sent to the defendant, as submitted in your bundle one month ago?"

As with the music industry (wider entertainment industry too?), the basic processes should be tidied up long before any fancy tech should be applied to it.