I mean, technically SSA data might be a legitimate use of the blockchain. I am one of the biggest opponents of the whole mess, but there are use cases for a persistent immutable data record, and social security numbers would be one of them.

[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Distributed blockchains are useful when all of the below are fulfilled:

Need for distributed ledger
Peers are adversarial w.r.t. contents of transactions in the ledger
Enough peers exist so that no group can become a majority and thus assume control
No trusted central authority exists

Here, we have a single peer creating entries in a ledger. We can get away with a copy of the ledger and one or more trusted timestamping authorities.

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't say distributed. You are absolutely correct though. I was more observing that of all the BS tech bro babble that our Oligarch in Chief could spew into the universe, blockchain would be one that could be implemented reasonably.

[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If your blockchain isn’t distributed, it doesn’t need to be a blockchain, because then you already have trust established.

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There are actually other comments on this thread that provide other benefits besides trust, like modification tracing. There is more to it than just trust.

[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You mean a transparency log? Just sign and publish. Or if it’s confidential, have a timestamp authority sign it, but what’s the point of a confidential blockchain? Sure, we han have a string of hashes chained together á la git, but that’s just an implementation detail. Where does the trust come from, who does the audit? That’s the interesting part.

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Obviously all good questions that those much more informed should weigh in on. I know just enough about blockchain to recognize reasonable vs scam uses for, but I also know enough to not Dunning Kruger the topic.

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