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I ask this question because I want to facilitate a workflow that utilizes a managed blockchain service such as the Azure or AWS blockchain service.

Is the true purpose attestations, provenance and interoperability?

In that aspect, aren't regular (legacy and or current) methodologies sufficient for data interoperability and the transfer and consumption of said data?

Lastly, if all this effectively is doing is creating a ledger account of data flow would a true advantage be the encryption of the data existing on the entire flow including up unto the edge?

If it cannot be encrypted up to the edge so that it is not readable at any point in time of the data flow into the data archive/traditional store is effectively worth any of the previous described gains of provenance and interoperability?

Christian Matthew
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I think there is some nuance to this answer. The purpose of Azure Blockchain Service is to allow enterprises to build networks (consortiums) that enable the business workflows. The unique value that blockchain is adding to business workflows is a logical data model/flow with infrastructure shared to the participants (businesses). That is not easy to do with a traditional database model.

With regards to the encryption you mentioned above, the value with blockchain is providing a digital signature for every change in the system that is shared between enterprises. The typically is done at the client to provide the least chance for manipulation. Privacy, which can use encryption techniques, is something that can be used to allow participants to control access to change details. The fact that changes were made is still cryptographically verifiable, without sharing all the data details with everyone.

If you look at something like EDI that is done today with supply chains, this essentially is a complex network of enterprises, synchronizing databases. This typically suffers breakage of keeping all these things in sync. With a blockchain based system, the "syncing" is abstracted and the focus is more about the business logic, which is always cryptographically signed and verifiable. So it functions like a single "logical" data store, but is actually distributed.

Cale Teeter
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  • 2 questions. Why is the syncing abstracted. That is interesting and where can I read more about that. And 2. What about B2P. What if I want to transact on an application of a user to give sensitive information to that user i.e. like banking information? It's not a supply chain but the importance of the transaction is just as great – Christian Matthew Mar 17 '20 at 21:31