What would you say the "field" most related to blockchain would be? Distributed computing? Database administration? Or is it a general-purpose tool that any software developer might encounter more or less? Just wondering if you have a thought on that.
I've not thought too deeply on this, but it's an interesting tech from this perspective. I think it's more of a fundamental tool than field specific. Let's consider it from a few viewpoints:
Security - Block chain is about distributed trust in a data set. It's a way to maintain the integrity of data without a central authority. Most programming has a central authority, so a typical programmmer may not encounter it. Infrastructure work on the internet though will probably see it being used more (I imagine DNS would eventually switch over).
Database - It definitely stores data in a decentralized manner. It's qutite inefficient at this though. If you didn't need the security aspect I've yet to see a reason why you'd otherwise use it for a database.
Distributed computing - I know Ethereum adds calculation into their system, but again, it's a really inefficient system for computation. Without the "security" aspect there'd be no reason to use block chain for distributed computing -- it's more about distributed authentication and transaction validation. Unlike traditional distributed computing, block-chain reduces the computing power overall, and additional nodes don't increase it (there is no scaling).
Any app with a central authority, and/or private networks won't likely benefit from block-chain. This means about 99.99%+ of all apps won't benefit from it. In terms of security though it's fascinating, and will definitely feed new ideas in how to to do internet infrastructure. It remains to be seen if the term "block chain" will persist, or ends up just describing this one class of solutions.
I'll make an addendum for a non-traditional field, "governing". This is really part of the "security" aspect. Using block-chain may be a way for governments to open certain record pools (registrations, statistics, etc.) for public scrutiny.
Even with a central authority a block-chain can ensure the integrity of records, thus preventing corruption, both in the data sense and political sense. It gives the public a way to monitor the data over time.
For example, if your land registries were with an open-block chain (being done somewhere I think), the public would have a permanent record and would see all changes to the registry. It's a complete open log of all DB transactions in this sense.
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What would you say the "field" most related to blockchain would be? Distributed computing? Database administration? Or is it a general-purpose tool that any software developer might encounter more or less? Just wondering if you have a thought on that.
I've not thought too deeply on this, but it's an interesting tech from this perspective. I think it's more of a fundamental tool than field specific. Let's consider it from a few viewpoints:
Security - Block chain is about distributed trust in a data set. It's a way to maintain the integrity of data without a central authority. Most programming has a central authority, so a typical programmmer may not encounter it. Infrastructure work on the internet though will probably see it being used more (I imagine DNS would eventually switch over).
Database - It definitely stores data in a decentralized manner. It's qutite inefficient at this though. If you didn't need the security aspect I've yet to see a reason why you'd otherwise use it for a database.
Distributed computing - I know Ethereum adds calculation into their system, but again, it's a really inefficient system for computation. Without the "security" aspect there'd be no reason to use block chain for distributed computing -- it's more about distributed authentication and transaction validation. Unlike traditional distributed computing, block-chain reduces the computing power overall, and additional nodes don't increase it (there is no scaling).
Any app with a central authority, and/or private networks won't likely benefit from block-chain. This means about 99.99%+ of all apps won't benefit from it. In terms of security though it's fascinating, and will definitely feed new ideas in how to to do internet infrastructure. It remains to be seen if the term "block chain" will persist, or ends up just describing this one class of solutions.
I'll make an addendum for a non-traditional field, "governing". This is really part of the "security" aspect. Using block-chain may be a way for governments to open certain record pools (registrations, statistics, etc.) for public scrutiny.
Even with a central authority a block-chain can ensure the integrity of records, thus preventing corruption, both in the data sense and political sense. It gives the public a way to monitor the data over time.
For example, if your land registries were with an open-block chain (being done somewhere I think), the public would have a permanent record and would see all changes to the registry. It's a complete open log of all DB transactions in this sense.