Hey,
I hope I am not too late to reply to this post but would love to add my 2 cents on the topic
- Blockchain provides an immutable ledger to record transactions happening on the chain i.e records once entered cannot be removed or updated. Each record is saved as a transaction and the transaction has the necessary details of the task performed between parties on the chain that need to be verified.
- The record can only be updated after at least 51% consensus in the case of Bitcoin and ⅓ consensus in the case of some networks like Cosmos running proof of stake network. Validators running on each blockchain network both POS and POW are trusted with this task.
- Large data or external data on the blockchain needs to be saved responsibly due to its tamper-proof nature. The piece of information or data which needs to be recorded is verified prior to the input to the blockchain via the providers called Oracles. These providers follow their own data stream and validation process in order to feed verified information to the blockchain if the data to be recorded was not created on the chain itself and needs other external sources for functioning. This ensures only the verified data is put to the blockchain.
- Some blockchain itself doesn’t have capabilities to save a large amount of data on-chain but there is application-specific blockchain just for storing data permanently such as Filecoin and IPFS. Interoperability is now making it possible for other blockchains to use services provided by these blockchains.
- For the statement, “As far as we know, blockchain and similar distributed ledger technologies may make sense for building transaction and settlement systems in some contexts, but there are no large scale problems that blockchain has been used to solve with significant tangible benefits 1 compared to existing technologies.” This is clearly an understatement in regards to Blockchain technology capabilities, Blockchain is still in the infrastructure building phase, and new ways to solve the problems are discovered regularly. There are far more applications to blockchain other than settlement. This statement is like saying the internet was created just to send emails(Though it felt like it was in the early 90s, we all know now what the internet has achieved).
- Since this post is from the past year, We all know that the legal binding to a blockchain is under process and is given a thought by the regulators all over the world. Many countries have now started using blockchain to solve problems such as record keeping.
Lastly, there are far more applications to blockchain technology than the one mentioned in the post for eg: We at Gitopia are building the next-generation Decentralised Code Collaboration Platform fuelled by a decentralized network and interactive token economy. Gitopia is designed to optimize the software development process through collaboration, transparency, and open source incentivization. We are trying to solve the most underestimated problem of the internet through blockchain i.e helping find the business model of the open-source. Gitopia too has a token called LORE token which would help in incentivizing opensource contributions. There is no sale planned for the LORE token of Gitopia and the supply will be distributed to developers to migrate their repositories to Gitopia and also contribute to other opensource projects. This distribution will help us move ahead of the token hype cycle and concentrate on building the solution for the community along with promoting the creator economy in open source.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback on Gitopia!