The U.S. Department of Commerce said it issued its gross domestic product data via nine blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto-world pathways.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said it issued its gross domestic product data via nine blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto-world pathways.

archive: https://archive.ph/RDgRJ

  • towerful@programming.devEnglish
    44·
    2 days ago

    Yay, decentralised and immutable!

    Data integrity at source: If the BEA’s initial data is wrong (as sometimes happens with revisions), blockchain only makes the error permanent until corrected with new updates

    Oh, so… Like previously just publishing a pdf on a website, then.
    I guess it means they can’t hide revisions. Which is what archive.org (and the us government equivalent that archives government sites) provided when the government just published the pdf.

    At least it’s decentralised!

    Over-reliance on oracles: Chainlink and Pyth are powerful, but their centrality creates new concentration risks. If they malfunction or face attacks, critical data feeds could be disrupted.

    Gotcha, still has centralised services.

    Quotes taken from https://www.ccn.com/education/crypto/gdp-on-blockchain-us-government-data-bitcoin-ethereum-other-networks/ which seems to have the best technical info I could find

    Still not much information. I’m presuming an “oracle” is something that gives you a hash of the “immutable” data, so you only have to pay to get that hash recorded on a blockchain instead of however many kB of PDF.

      • towerful@programming.devEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        Yes. I was laying on the sarcasm heavily.
        I presume that’s what these oracle services provide.
        Essentially hosts the us governments GDP NFT, so you can right click and download it just like every NFT crypto bro hates you doing.
        Whether its actually the US Government hosting the file, or these oracle services hosting it… It doesn’t matter.

        Why not just host the files on a government website with appropriate file hashes (so users can verify the file is still the same), let the internet archive and the national archives take a snapshots of the files and pages and hashes etc… ? That’s a well regarded site archival system, and the governmental archival system. Has redundancy, pedigree and public acceptance.
        Fuck it, publish just the hash on some block chains so the “fingerprint” of the report is immutable. But call it what it is.

        The report isn’t “published on the Blockchain”.
        It is linked from some blockchains.
        There is still a file hosted by some servers.
        You can’t download your favourite blockchain, take it to the top of Mount Rushmore with no internet and inspect the US GDP figures without first downloading the file linked in the block chain.

        Blockchain oracles are entities that connect blockchains to external systems, allowing smart contracts to execute depending on real-world inputs and outputs. Oracles give the Web 3.0 ecosystem a method to connect to existing legacy systems, data sources and advanced calculations.

        https://cointelegraph.com/learn/articles/what-is-a-blockchain-oracle-and-how-does-it-work