So I take it you agree blockchain solution is not trustworthy in itself, then?
Data internal to the blockchain is 100% trustworthy, otherwise new blocks could not be verified.
Verifiability is not the same thing as trustworthiness. I believe I already said that.
External data added to a blockchain is transparent and traceable, but requires additional verification to be considered trustworthy. Fraud is identified by these additional non blockchain processes.
Which is a long way of saying organisational solutions are needed for organisational problems like trustworthiness.
By the way, again somewhat unsurprisingly, nothing stops centralised system from being verifiable and immutable. There’s one massive example of this: Git.
Git is decentralized. Everyone has a copy.
But not every Git repository that is cloned elsewhere is meant to stay identical. If anything, it’s more of a federated system than a decentralised monolithic system, with each of the clones just doing their own thing.
Git repositories can work independently and local branches can do local things. Nothing in it forces everything to be committed to a “single ledger”. Nothing about Git works on technically enforced “consensus”. It just gives users the ability to make sure that if they choose a common branch, then they have the ability to build on that.
If you enforce signing of git commits and only accept data in commits that follow strict rules linked to signers public keys, and create a mechanism to eliminate forks, then you have a blockchain.
But nobody implements it that way. Especially the part about eliminating forks. The ability to create forks and branches in Git repositories is considered a feature.
In blockchains, they’re considered undesirable, yet they happen anyway, because of bugs and users and developer meddling.
Again, you really shouldn’t be going “well, this solution based on decades old technology kinda looks like blockchain if you squint a little bit.”
Follow this thinking to its logical conclusion for an industry wide database/computer where actors can join at will, and you will end up designing a blockchain.
Or you don’t! Based on the above, if someone manages to build a system like that without blockchain, I’m sure you’ll be there saying either “well they should have built a blockchain” or “it kinda vaguely looks like blockchain to me”.
[Continued from the other reply]
Verifiability is not the same thing as trustworthiness. I believe I already said that.
Which is a long way of saying organisational solutions are needed for organisational problems like trustworthiness.
But not every Git repository that is cloned elsewhere is meant to stay identical. If anything, it’s more of a federated system than a decentralised monolithic system, with each of the clones just doing their own thing.
Git repositories can work independently and local branches can do local things. Nothing in it forces everything to be committed to a “single ledger”. Nothing about Git works on technically enforced “consensus”. It just gives users the ability to make sure that if they choose a common branch, then they have the ability to build on that.
But nobody implements it that way. Especially the part about eliminating forks. The ability to create forks and branches in Git repositories is considered a feature.
In blockchains, they’re considered undesirable, yet they happen anyway, because of bugs and users and developer meddling.
Again, you really shouldn’t be going “well, this solution based on decades old technology kinda looks like blockchain if you squint a little bit.”
Or you don’t! Based on the above, if someone manages to build a system like that without blockchain, I’m sure you’ll be there saying either “well they should have built a blockchain” or “it kinda vaguely looks like blockchain to me”.