Blockchains for supplychains

BEGINNERS & HELP
#1

Hi,

I was wondering, do blockchains for supply chains or other non-cryptocurrency applications have miners? I am assuming that they don’t as they are not mining new utxos. Say for example I am building houses and each of the suppliers iis using the blockchain to track assets, running a node, adding information about products they have created, and what they were made from and where they went to, How would you refer to the nodes on the network, would you still have nodes that hold the blockchain, read it and validate it and separate miners that add new blocks, or would there be no reason to have miners?

Thanks :slight_smile:
Kiki

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#2

There still has to be a good consensus in my opinion, as that is the only thing that will ensure that the data that has been entered cannot be changed. We could imagine it without a consensus but without an incentive for companies to keep telling the truth it may eventually get manipulated in some way, especially if we are talking about a permissioned blockchain.

Mining isn’t the only consensus that can be used. Maybe something like proof of stake or delegated proof of stake could be used for such an application. Great questions for sure.

I think blockchains for supply chains will be less secure than a bitcoin but maybe enough so we can trust the data to a certain point. Interested in others opinion tbh.

Also if I maybe misunderstood something feel free to correct me. :smiley:

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#3

This is a great explanation of the process flow in Hyperledger:

https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-2.0/peers/peers.html

What I’m still unclear of is WHO the peers are. What seems clear though is that the peers host the smart contract and the ledger. There doesn’t seem to be room for “interpretation” by the peer itself.

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#4

Thanks, that was an interesting read :slight_smile:

#5

I think maybe you have misunderstood my questions.

I get that there will be a consensus mechanism, I was just asking if there would be a separation of nodes and miners in the same way there are with cryptocurrencies.

From the information on hyperledger that @FaierPlay very helpfully posted, I would assume that there are nodes with IDs that are allowed to write to the system, through consensus. I would imagine, given that proof of work would be expensive and unnecessary, I would imagine that it would operate in a manner closer to proof of stake, but I obviously don’t know.

I was also interested in the correct terminology. I am guessing that, given we are not mining on a supply chain, we don’t refer to nodes that write to the network as miners.