How can you trust that the database is really append only? Blockchain provides a way to verify the state of the database and the ordering of the transactions. Beyond that, not much benefit to be had. However, for certain situations, that is a very big benefit!

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Name fucking one situation

[–] DaleGribble88@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sure! So some students of mine were working on a multiplayer video game that was started by a different group of students the previous semester. The first group of students made a design choice that, to over-simplify, basically tracked achievements and milestones on the client side and then synchronized those achievements to the server. Players could cheat the system by sending malicious packets of achievements to the server. Some achievements could only be completed by a single person in the game, so this was a big problem for the 2nd group of students to overcome. Faced with the choice of rearchitecting the game to be more authoritative on the server and less resilient to frequent disconnections, which affected some aspects of the game, or creating a logical and verifiable sequence of in-game events on the server side. The students went with the latter, and implemented a Lamport clock using a blockchain to verify the authenticity of the events, and prevent a rogue student from updating the game later to give themself a bonus. Basically, along with needing an authoritative sequence of events that is protected from user interference, it also needed to be protected from developer interference.

It was kinda similar to that situation a few years back of the EVE online developers playing the game and giving their guild members certain bonuses and special in-game items. The solution there was to fire the malicious developers, but I can't exactly fire an entire class of students from an educational project.

EDIT: What seems to be the problem here? I was asked to name a situation where a blockchain would be useful and I did? It's a computer data structure, there are pros and cons that are context dependent like any other data structure. It I so weird to me to receive downvotes because of the politics surrounding a data structure.

[–] hemmes@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

To your edit; it was a great example, but if you say anything positive about blockchain (or Apple, or capitalism, etc) you’ll likely be heavily downvoted on Lemmy.

[–] DaleGribble88@programming.dev 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I think that seems to be the case here. It just feels so weird to me to have a politicized data structure.

"Remember kids, only coke-fiends and meth-heads use Binomial Heaps."

[–] hemmes@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Ha!

But yeah, like others have said in this post, it had a bad light cast on it due to the jpg and gif NFTs. Folks started to realize: "wait... this token just contains a link to a web server hosting a jpg file??"

Well, yes. But also the rights.

"The heck you mean 'the rights'??"

I mean, your Drunk Monkey in Teal Color Theme artwork is yours to use, you've purchased the license in the form of an NFT.

"But it's just a link that anyone could just copy!"

Well, that would be stealing.

So NFTs in that regard are like any movie or TV show, or video game you rent or purchase. That utility may or may not seem to have any value to any one person, but it is a utility, and a pretty cool one if you ask me. But the usage, its implementation, is what matters. Whatever that usage requirement is for the individual or business, blockchain will do it well. Even if it is used to license junk.