Talk:Blockchain

Disputed Accuracy

"A blockchain facilitates secure online transactions."

This statement, and many others within the article, are misleading. The primary benefits of the distributed database model "blockchain", with its consensus algorithms, in a PUBLIC space, can drastically improve integrity. When speaking about security its usually through the viewpoint of the CIA triad and the mccumber cube. The prioritization of integrity is why most of blockchain's implementations have been within a financial scope where the issue of accurate ledgers is heightened. Additionally, within security as a whole, there has been a shift in prioritization within the CIA triad to integrity over confidentiality.

Its important to note that even in a public setting; global electricity cost discrepancies can cause centralization. Beyond that; "computational expense" with respect to altering the ledger post transaction publication is exponential but not impossible. This means that in practice and reality that the ledger is alterable within a certain time frame. This becomes more important when wrapped within the context of a nation-states' capabilities and computational power at hand. This means that most of the security claims here are just that; claims. We need to remove the adverts within this article as they can be extremely misleading.

I'll be making edits shortly as I amalgamate research and summarize these into better lay explanations. This specific post is to create a heading for those moving forward in terms of getting this article straightened out.

(Karmeow (talk) 13:03, 19 June 2017 (UTC))

Things to consider

What does the system inherently provide versus other systems?

How does context change these inherent capabilities? (centralization when electricity is cheap in a country; public versus private; secondary indicators w/ respect to node identification and targeting; etc.).

Is this security claim overly broad in comparison to the systems capabilities?

Request for revision

At this time, this article is terribly hard to read. For example, the first two paragraphs of the Description section are filled with jargon, and sentences seem to be put one right after another with no connection between them. In other words, it looks like a bunch of people had something to say and stuck their sentences in wherever they could, resulting in a confusing mess. Can someone fix it up? 67.200.201.137 (talk) 14:28, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

On that subject, the description has the claim "Variants of this format were used previously, for example in Git. The format is not by itself sufficient to qualify as a blockchain.[35]" It's not clear what format the second sentence is referring to, or why it's not sufficient to qualify as a blockchain, so I watched the talk in the reference to find out why Git couldn't be considered a blockchain But in the talk, Torvalds doesn't mention Git's format or blockchains, especially not at 2:30, so it's still not clear. Also, the question of whether Git is a blockchain or not is controversial 67.200.201.137 (talk) 15:45, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

References

The lack of commercial deployments

I was going to add the following however I note that it was written 10 months ago. Include or not? The lack of commercial deployments for blockchains has been attributed to their expense, complexity and inefficient energy use.

References

Alternative blockchains

The section "Alternative blockchains" contained the example "Proof of Existence an online service to verify documents" which I just removed because it's definitely wrong as that service only uses the main chain. Other examples may be wrong, too, but I don't enough about them to find out for sure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by McGucket (talk • contribs) 18:48, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I also dont understand the purpose of this section. What is an alternative blockchain? Is it a blockchain that is defined differently? Or is it a sidechain? Or is it a project that has a token that is running on Ethereum? Ethereum#Applications has a section that has uses in it, and it will eventually grow into a list of all kinds of stuff on the blockchain (maybe that is ok and uses becomes a stand alone page eventually). Anyhow, this could certainly grow into a section that people want to add their pet projects to and becomes unmanageable unless we define what it is for. Thoughts? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I didn't notice the term wasn't fully defined. Otherwise, I would've added the definition yesterday. Anyways, I added it now and you can read it up in the main article or in the Bitcoin wiki. I agree that this section shouldn't be cluttered up with small projects but think it's important that it exists so people know that altchains are a thing. Furthermore, some diversity should be maintained so people see that blockchains can have different uses (though by far not as many as portrayed by mass media because companies attempt to get attention by throwing the word "blockchain" around, during press statements / press conferences, from time to time). I'd like proof of existence to be in the article because it represents a use of blockchains I don't see anywhere in the article (now :D) but the altchain section is clearly the wrong one for this as the service doesn't use an altchain. This is, of course, not to say that the others should be removed, too. If the examples listed do in fact use altchains or are altchains and are either major ones or represent potentially important uses of blockchains not represented by any other one, they should be listed. McGucket (talk) 21:13, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

So what is an altchain an alternative to? Is litecoin an alternative to bitcoin, or is Ethereum Classic an alternative to Ethereum, or is Steemit an alternative to blogger.com ? This is a general article about blockchain, so how could anything that uses a blockchain be an alternative to it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:55, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

They aren't really alternatives to each other. It's a term coined by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and all other cryptocurrencies are called altcoins. Bitcoin's main chain is the original blockchain and all other blockchains are altchains. McGucket (talk) 14:04, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

So is the idea to make a long list of all the 'notable' blockchain projects in this section? There must be hundreds.Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:09, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

7 of the 9 altchain projects currently listed have Wikipedia articles. There should be a list containing the notable non-cryptocurrency altchain projects (but I think it should be made clear that these are all non-cryptocurrency altchains) as people reading this article are likely to be interested in them, it should either be part of this article or linked to by it. 9 items don't quality as enough to create a dedicated list. Furthermore, I don't think there will be enough actual projects to create a dedicated list anytime soon but time will show this. Do you want to just delete the existing list? McGucket (talk) 18:09, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, I understand now... no I don't want to delete the list, I just wanted to understand the purpose. I also read above on this talk page that shiftchange (talk · contribs) had also suggested a list of non-cryptocurrency blockchains. I will look around and see if we can find an WP:RS with a definition, as I don't think we can use the wiki over at bitcoin.it as a RS for a definition... Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

In 2010/2011 the term Altchain or Alternative chain was put into use along with Altcoin to segregate "blockchain" (as in bitcoin) from other networks (such as litecoin) because (in theory) when people said "blockchain" they thought of bitcoin. The term blockchain pretty much meant bitcoin until last year 2016 when other (mostly commercial) efforts started using the term for everything, in fact Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne made that exact statement in a speech given at the "Policy Challenges of a Decentralized Revolution" conference in Washington DC... OnePercent (talk) 20:18, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if examples as Counterparty are blockchains. It is on top of Bitcoin blockchain, so I guess it is a Meta Coin. A Meta Coin is a coin that is launched on top of another blockchain, as a “meta” layer. For example a small ammount of bitcoin is “marked” and can represent an ounce of gold or a share in a company or even points in a video game. Other words for meta coins that are also used are: Tokens, Cryptoequity, Assets, Crypto Assets, Colored Coins and more Raceman (talk) 10:03, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

References

Forks

I marked the section as needing citations. The claims in the section are not just uncited, they are plain wrong. For example, the first sentence in the section:

If two groups of users disagree about a proposed change to a public (permissionless) blockchain protocol or algorithms, the two groups are free to each run their own versions of the blockchain software, which creates two descendant blockchains with their own separate histories from that point forward.

messes up two separate issues:

• software forks - the situation when two versions of the network software exist
• chain splits - the situation when two descendant chains with their own separate histories are created

Network software forks do not cause chain splits in general. Only when there is a disagreement between users, a chain split can occur. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

"Old consensus rules" versus "new consensus rules"

The text of the section uses the terms "old consensus rules" and "new consensus rules" without any explanation. In my opinion, if there is a chain split, it occurs due to a lack of consensus, so, speaking about "old consensus" versus "new consensus" is self-contradictory. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 05:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Neutrality

The entire section on the "Stigmergy Age" is cited, but is making some wild futuristic claims. While I don't oppose the fact that this article should state why blockchains are important, saying that "the blockchain may allow human beings to evolve to a Stigmergy Age with leaders without orders, order without law" is a wild claim that can't possibly have supporting evidence. Jw12321 (talk) 02:01, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• Agree - Thank you for deleting the whole section propagating the "Stigmergy Age" theory. I do agree with you that it should have been deleted. Reasons:
  • The cited sources were questionable, self-published and have been marked as such for some time.
  • The whole "Stigmergy Age" theory was fringe and futuristic without respecting WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL.
  • There are other objections such as the placement trying to make it more important than the description of the subject of the article, the use of all caps formatting, lots of grammatic errors, etc. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 03:09, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
• Agree per above Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
• Agree Thank you for deleting. But most of the cite sources were academic research. These supporting evidences told us that the blockchain ecosystems of bitcoin and Ethereum are stigmergy approaches with "leaders without orders, order without law and communities without borders". "The blockchain may allow human beings to evolve to a Stigmergy Age." Please edit the restored "governance" section.

References

Picture relevance

Nothing personal about the author of the IEEE conference picture...Just it does not contribute anything interesting to the article and it is not of good quality either :( MarmotteiNoZ 15:05, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I am not the editor who contributed the picture, but am for keeping it to illustrate the research. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 21:56, 6 June 2017 (UTC)