Blockchain vs Databases
This cluster debates the necessity of blockchain for applications where a centralized database would be more efficient and sufficient, arguing that blockchain's primary advantage is only in trustless, decentralized scenarios without a trusted authority.
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Public blockchain == glorified database too. What's your point?
How about if you need some central authority to verify everything going into the blockchain don't use a blockchain and use a database instead?
What does a blockchains buy here over a central database?
why would blockchain be excellent for that? why not just a regular db?
There are already technologies that work similarly to blockchain (such as Git) without needing blockchain to work. You can have distributed, immutable databases without blockchain.Blockchain's only real advantage is that it eliminates the need for trust. If your system doesn't need to be trustless, there are far more efficient (energy and otherwise) tools that already exist and accomplish everything else that blockchain does.
Can someone explain why you would want to use a block chain here and not just a "database"?
Blockchain is not required for that. You could just use a normal database.
Does it actually use a blockchain? Interesting. I would have thought a centralized database would be more efficient. What benefit does a blockchain provide here?
They can guarantee that some data that indicates it was recorded yesterday was in fact recorded yesterday and not changed at any point since yesterday.There's literally nothing a blockchain can do that a trusted central database couldn't do. So you only need a blockchain if you can't trust a central database. As a result, the answer to the question you've posed is always going to be a political one, not a technical one. ("It lets banks that don't trust each other
I will answer the question that is always asked in every post regarding blockchains on HN:"Why blockchain? Can't this be done with a database?"Blockchains are databases. They are distributed, append-only, tamper-proof databases. You could call them that, or instead you could just say "blockchain" as that is what type of database the word blockchain has come to be understood as.The reason to use a blockchain rather than a centralized database is bec