A Patent For "An Editable Blockchain"? Well, If It's Editable, It's Not A Blockchain, Dude, It's A Database
A company called Accenture got a patent for "an editable blockchain" according to a story published by CoinDesk. The word that got my attention (apart from the whole "patent" thing, which I think it's quite toxic in the crypto area) was "editable".
The patent allows for some "master accounts" that will be able to reverse transactions. According to the same story:
Depending on the circumstances, a secret that controls the key may be held by one or many parties. In some cases, multiple individuals could possess parts of a secret, meaning the whole group would have to sanction any access to the ledger.
That means that in case of error or fraud, somebody will be able to reverse that transaction to a previous state of the blockchain, without generating a hard fork. What that means, though, is that we're getting rid of one of the blockchain's most fundamental features, which is immutability of the data.
But on the other side, I can see some use cases for such a technology.
Some of the things that we take for granted with the blockchain are 100% uptime and 100% availability, which means you can query the data store always and you are guaranteed to always get an answer. So if you don't care about the immutability of the data, you can just set up a blockchain that is editable and get - for FREE - the aforementioned features. In a traditional distributed database environment these features (100% uptime and availability) are usually extremely costly, and by all means not guaranteed. I mean, they can be guaranteed, as in a marketing campaign, but behind them are just stacks of monolithic servers which can fail.
Anyway, although initially I thought this was a mistake, I now think it's just an interesting application of the blockchain technology.
The only mistake is to call this "editable" thing a blockchain, because it may create confusion.
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Accenture is a consulting company that works with governments and big businesses and I think this is a brilliant move for them. Governments and big businesses are very interested in and want to use blockchain technology - but with the caveat that they want to have control over it.
I can't see any big corporation or government using a blockchain technology that they don't have 100% control over. If they make a mistake (which they will) they need to be able to go in and fix it. They don't care about decentralization or the philosophical goals behind cryptocurrencies or really anything else other than making money (which, in the case of a business, is their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, whether we like it or not).
If Accenture can patent this then they can become the go-to consultant for businesses and governments who want to get in on "blockchain" technology which will be a huge business for them.
Let's hope they don't make an "editable" blockchain patent database, because a lot of people are gonna be super pissed.
'Master accounts' doesn't this hint at centralization?
Nevertheless, would be curious to see where they can use an editable blockchain.
Considering how many frauds have happened and how many ethers have been lost because of ICOs being hacked, I think the ability to reverse such a fraud is an incredible step. It is a need and solves a big problem.
However, editable is not a word to use with a technology that stands for immutability of data. I agree that the word could have been better.
my thoughts exactly
I just edited this post on the blockchain (4 times) :)
Seriously though, I had a little bit of BTC stolen the other day, my own fault - but it's moments like that you realize "immutable" and "decentralized" are just buzz words, they aren't automatically good. What I love about this technology is being able to send money all over the world instantly with no fees. The other stuff seems more routed in ideology than anything else.
If people start hosting kiddy porn on D-Tube is decentralization really that great? What about Patrice and co running around like headless chooks trying to keep Steem clean via various overly convoluted methods?
I wouldn't let your theft experience influence the 'goodness' of 'immutable' and 'decentralized'. I could seriously go on about both of these buzz words. As payment can now be done through computational trust, it is equally important to see the audit and legal power of 'immutable'. Every edit you have done on your comment is a separate entry in the blockchain, your original comment is not overwritten. Decentralization is another topic on itself. On your subject, i prefer a community decision on what is ok above a central authority's decision. New issues are inherent to new technologies, we have to trust we are ourselves able to deal with them without central authority. Anyway, what i like about the de-centralization part is that i prefer my data is spread out for security and catastrophe scenario's + it is morphable, look at how the China ban issue is dealt with, just moving the nodes, it's beautiful :-)
You're mixing governance (what's permitted and not) with implementation (how we do stuff). Immutability is an implementation thing. A mistake or a fraud is a governance thing. There are use cases for immutability (the case you mentioned, you want to know what happened with your stolen BTC, you want to trace the transactions and be sure they haven't been tampered with) and there are use cases for mutability (again, the case you mentioned, you want to be sure you can roll back your transaction).
That's the biggest challenge of humanity: how to mix governance and implementation right.
That's some great discussion and a lot to learn from different perspectives. Well, just like freedom of speech, decentralization can be used for bad purposes. There has to be some check and balance.
Even on Steemit, there's a way to flag content and downgrade an account to zero and even negative. When money is involved, having fraud protection measures cannot be bad.
Ha Ha - he IS the man - lets ask for help!
Any company that needs a 'patent' rather than having a valuable and competitive service is immediately suspect. Real value is based on people, not government pieces of paper.
I laughed out loud when I saw the story yesterday :) The fact that they feel the need to "protect" this wonderful "invention" with a patent shows a lot. Is there a patent for the real blockchains? No. That's old thinking that leads to old methods of getting things done. Irreversibility is the building block of trust.
If that database goes live it will be of little value to the world and of tremendous value to the few who still believe centralization actually benefits users.
I wouldn't trust a database that can change in the blink of an eye with anything of mine. imagine if Steem was editable. You wake up one day and see that your 1,000 STEEM is now 100. And all records of your transactions have been divided by ten.
or someone reduces everyone's balance by 0.1% and makes off with the balance. I think this editable thing will pose even greater risks of "things going wrong"
Genius idea! Right up there with square wheels and edible houses.
But it's good we know it's editable, so we know not to use it.
:))))
Post of the day.i love you blog.
I resteem and upvoted your post.
LoL
editable blockchain
what's next
proof of edit?