The software verification example is contrived and not at all realistic IMO.
>My plane could compare the code generated by its wing with the code stored on ledgers in the other 99 planes.
So you don't trust the code of your "wings" but you trust the code that verifies it?
And why do you need a decentralized architecture for this? Just ask the plane software vendor to certify a version of your software and use that? What does bringing the blockchain into the mix give you?
If you're in a truly decentralized scenario (e.g. a lot of open source software) then what he's describing is basically "web of trust" as implemented in PGP for instance. A lot of software is released with a PGP signature to identify the source. Again, blockchain is pointless here.
>If the plane was autonomous it could decide not to take off unless all the other 99 planes gave it the ok.
What? Why? How? How could the other planes validate that this plane is not lying about its code checksum? And how is the blockchain involved in any of this?
>And it's in contrast with how we'd solve this today. The plane would have to have communicated with a central server, a single point of failure, vulnerable to fault and tampering. This central server would be a closed system, owned by one company making it hard for other devices to inter-operate.
Ah, so we're going full FUD now. Clearly distributed and redundant architectures are impossible without the blockchain. Well, I'm dumping my retirement fund into Dogecoin, you've convinced me.
More seriously, the one thing the blockchain is good at is "timestamping" events. If I wanted to prove that I had written a certain doc right now for instance I could compute its sha256 and store it in the blockchain. Later that'll be very strong evidence that I actually did have this document at the time. That's the "immutable ledger" feature.
You could also have this certified by a notary or held in a bank vault or something. Basically it's Proof of Work (blockchain) vs. Proof of Stake (bank/notary, who would have a lot to lose if caught lying, especially for relatively small amounts of money as we use day-to-day).
>My plane could compare the code generated by its wing with the code stored on ledgers in the other 99 planes.
So you don't trust the code of your "wings" but you trust the code that verifies it?
And why do you need a decentralized architecture for this? Just ask the plane software vendor to certify a version of your software and use that? What does bringing the blockchain into the mix give you?
If you're in a truly decentralized scenario (e.g. a lot of open source software) then what he's describing is basically "web of trust" as implemented in PGP for instance. A lot of software is released with a PGP signature to identify the source. Again, blockchain is pointless here.
>If the plane was autonomous it could decide not to take off unless all the other 99 planes gave it the ok.
What? Why? How? How could the other planes validate that this plane is not lying about its code checksum? And how is the blockchain involved in any of this?
>And it's in contrast with how we'd solve this today. The plane would have to have communicated with a central server, a single point of failure, vulnerable to fault and tampering. This central server would be a closed system, owned by one company making it hard for other devices to inter-operate.
Ah, so we're going full FUD now. Clearly distributed and redundant architectures are impossible without the blockchain. Well, I'm dumping my retirement fund into Dogecoin, you've convinced me.
More seriously, the one thing the blockchain is good at is "timestamping" events. If I wanted to prove that I had written a certain doc right now for instance I could compute its sha256 and store it in the blockchain. Later that'll be very strong evidence that I actually did have this document at the time. That's the "immutable ledger" feature.
You could also have this certified by a notary or held in a bank vault or something. Basically it's Proof of Work (blockchain) vs. Proof of Stake (bank/notary, who would have a lot to lose if caught lying, especially for relatively small amounts of money as we use day-to-day).