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Why are banks falling over themselves to open-source their blockchains? (reddheads.com)

reddibrek が 投稿

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[–]BGoodej 11ポイント12ポイント  (8子コメント)

This is very interesting news.

It means the banks are admitting Ethereum's open development model is doing better than their own closed model.
They probably want free testing like Ethereum is getting and more dev to work on their project to passively build a pool of skilled potential employees.

However, to get the free testing, they need high stakes in their blockchain.
And I don't see how they could get that except by opening their blockchain to the public (i.e.: tokens sale).

The brain drain is something to watch though.
But being myself a mercenary minded dev who's OK with working for corporations if pay well, I can tell you that I'm still way more interested in learning to build Dapps on Ethereum than these banks' chains.

[–]C1aranMurray 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's completely expected. Blockchains are network protocols. Network protocols need standards everyone agrees on to work efficiently. You only get standards by a) Having them enforced by government (never going to happen in the case of a global system) or b) Open-sourcing your code and allowing the market compare it to other options.

[–]BGoodej 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think blockchains are more similar to competing platforms than network protocols.

Network protocols are pretty neutral and don't carry financial stakes.
Everybody wins when a network protocol becomes dominant.
With blockchains, it's quite different.

Anyway... there's some paradox in what the banks are doing.
If they want something open source and tested in battle, why don't they promote and use Ethereum?

Maybe they want to keep control, and have a blockchain only for the inner circle of financial institutions.
Or maybe they want to gain control, by coming out with a dominant public blockchain.
Either way, there's no reason for a developer to work on their open source blockchains for free.

[–]HandyNumber 1ポイント2ポイント  (4子コメント)

Perhaps the "Red Hat" Linux model is a good blueprint.

Get all the benefits of the Linux philosophy, but feed back into the system and influence things the way you'd like them to be.

[–]hodlor 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

As a former linux sysadmin, ohmygodnopleasenotredhatitistheworstpleaseno.

Please note that all the best distros are based off Debian, not red hat. Debian won the distro wars by being open and free, and better.

[–]HandyNumber 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Irrelevant here.

The reason I mentioned RedHat is that it's a possible blueprint for enterprise/open source collaboration that's mutually beneficial. Big debate and lots of history. I'm not really interested in having a flamewar discussion or having this discussion in a non blockchain context.

[–]hodlor 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

You're right, you're right, it's not relevant to the blockchain discussion. Your point is well taken.

I just can't help it when somebody says Red Hat.

[–]HandyNumber 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I haven't got strong views on Red Hat/Debian to be honest.

I look after a mix of CentOS and Ubuntu boxes. Public facing boxes are generally RedHat, but not always.

[–]reddibrek[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

However, to get the free testing, they need high stakes in their blockchain. And I don't see how they could get that except by opening their blockchain to the public (i.e.: tokens sale).

Good point, I should have elaborated on that particular incentive in the article.

[–]HandyNumber 4ポイント5ポイント  (5子コメント)

What bank(s) have developed "their" own blockchains?

All I've seen is sketchy reports of a few banks running Ripple technology and/or Ethereum forks (i.e. vanilla Ethereum + a few token "features" running on a private network).

Maybe I'm completely underestimating this potential though... R3 looks interesting. But we haven't seen anything.

Why don't banks just buy up chunks of the major blockchains (Ethereum, Ripple and Bitcoin) and be done with it? They can have political influence by sponsoring events, development projects, etc.

In my opinion, trying to forcefully maintain tightly controlled, hegemonic payment networks ruled by monolithic entities (such as banks) is an impossible goal in the 21st century.

[–]reddibrek[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

What bank(s) have developed "their" own blockchains?

Point is, quite a few of them are clubbing together to develop a blockchain platform via R3, etc.

[–]HandyNumber 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I think everyone knows that they're involved in these kinds of projects. The question is is the usefulness of a private, centrally controlled blockchain limited? And does it work? And lots of other questions too...

[–]silver84 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Good question indeed, and in this context ( private, centrally controlled blockchain limited ) what is the incentive for me or other to participate in it? Obviously one can see they are after quality users over quantity, but in the game "grabbing the attention of the top fortune 500" could we actually believe that only one collaborative platform of private consortium is going to rule the world? ;)

[–]silver84 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

clubbing together with a fake smile until the next black event which will definitely break things apart. Can't wait to see R3 Gold, R3 classic, R3 unlimited and so on You don't change mankind even if he has billions $ already on their pocket

[–]twigwam 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Corda?

[–]Dunning_Krugerrands 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

What can we learn/adopt from Corda & Chain?

I skimmed the Chain docs and didn't see too much exciting and indeed it seemed to have issues. Corda on the other hand has some interesting concepts;

  • Recording and managing the evolution of financial agreements and other shared data between two or more identifiable parties in a way that is grounded in existing legal constructs and compatible with existing and emerging regulation. (Seems they have a kind "legal prose" language which is mapped to the code within smart contracts)
  • Choreographing workflow between firms without a central controller. (Not sure what this means in this context but it it means defining protocols and sequences of transactions in support of higher level business logic then that is interesting)
  • Supporting consensus between firms at the level of individual deals, not a global system. (The main gain here seems to be privacy. Can we achieve something similar with offchain transactions plus blockchain courts e.g Raiden/truebit? Can we achieve something with the scalability & privacy characteristics of a private permissioned chain though offchain mechanisms with final output being writen to public chain and enforcement of rules in the case of dispute? )
  • Supporting the inclusion of regulatory and supervisory observer nodes. (This is something we need to explore so smart contracts are compatable with existing legal systems and as adjuication/escape hatches in the event of contract flaws)
  • Validating transactions solely between parties to the transaction (For legal enforceability it is important that named validators (parties to transaction & regulators) approve the outcome. For privacy it is important that other parties do not see it.)

[–]silver84 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

With them the devil is always in the details for exemple: Choreographing workflow between firms without a central controller. Choreographing could mean compose the sequence of steps and moves for a dance :)
or plan and control (an event or operation)

So lets recompose the sentence: plan and control workflow between firms without a central controller. mmmm interesting indeed

Supporting the inclusion of regulatory and supervisory observer nodes. ( in a world divided by 150 official human languages, 196 different countries with each of them having different jurisdictions, history, logic, capacity to adapt technological changes I would love to see that )

[–]hodlor 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

I don't imagine there's much interest in giving free labor to private, for-profit projects belonging to major banks. It won't work.

[–]FlappySocks 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

No, but if R3 has any tech of interest, it might find it's way into other projects, and get improved upon. That then gets fed back to R3.

There are other motives to open source, other than to get free development. Transparency for one.

Sometimes code gets opened sourced, simply because it has no monetary value. Google has been good at that.

[–]silver84 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

don't be naive man since when a consortium backed by the most greedy institution on this planet is suddenly embracing the world of altruism, given instead of taking, sharing... I would advice everyone to question what is look to me a new PR campaign design "to look good" in the eyes of a new class of people

[–]FlappySocks 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It could be they want transparency, and global banking adoption. That's a good enough motive isn't it?

[–]joeychips 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

They will get as much done for free that can be tested in an open community. Then they will privatize and centralize it.

[–]HandyNumber 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Private and centralized? Sounds to me that they should just call IBM, install a mainframe, get an IT team in for six months and run an Oracle database on it. Like it's always been done.

[–]c3739 -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sorry, but I don' think banks are.