Thread by @smdiehl

This "but the blockchain" or #NotAllBlockhains is a silly petty argument that I don't have time for anymore.

So let's talk about the Tesco Blockchain. (1/)

A while back Tescos (i.e the British supermarket) did some misguided blockchain project involving tracking the provenance of vegetables from the EU. Was a terribly silly project that could have been done better other ways, but alas that's software. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (2/)

It consisted of a bunch of internal permissioned servers that would pointlessly replicate a bunch of data for no purpose other than to say "on the blockchain". It didn't really work, but neither did the project it replaced. (3/)

Now let's separate criticism of this project into two categories.

1) Technical problematic
2) Ethically problematic

(4/)

Technically this project made zero sense, in fact it's quite abusrd. However tracking the origin a Spanish tomatos using a Merkle tree harms literally no one. There's no price setting, no illegal security offering, and there's no customer in the blast radius if it fails. (5/)

When crypto skeptics criticise token projects, we're criticising projects that directly harm customers, enable outright scams, money laundering, pump-and-dumps, etc.

We might criticise blockchain technology on technical merits, but that's a different criticism all together. (6/)

People are directly harmed by investments in unregulated financial scheme perpetuated by crypto bros looking to defraud the public. And that's what really deserves criticism, not data structures or supply chain databases for grocery stores.

Let's not confuse the two.
/fin