Accenture Patents a Blockchain-Editing Tool (techweekeurope.co.uk)

A blockchain "produces a permanent ledger of transactions with which no one can tamper," reports TechWeekEurope. "Until now." Slashdot reader Mickeycaskill quotes their report: One of the core principles of Blockchain technology has potentially been undermined by the creation of an editing tool. The company responsible however, Accenture, says edits would only be carried out "under extraordinary circumstances to resolve human errors, accommodate legal and regulatory requirements, and address mischief and other issues, while preserving key cryptographic features..."

Accenture's move to create an editing system will no doubt be viewed by some technology observers as a betrayal of what blockchain technology is all about. But the company insisted it is needed, especially in the financial services industry... "The prototype represents a significant breakthrough for enterprise uses of blockchain technology particularly in banking, insurance and capital markets," said Accenture.
They're envisioning "permissioned" blockchain systems, "managed by designated administrators under agreed governance rules," while acknowledging that cyptocurrency remains a different environment where "immutable" record-keeping would still be essential.

Comments

E.g. We can't use it if we can't cheat

[ninthbit]

All I read here, is that finance can't use a system that is 100% accountable. They need a way to create scape goats and reverse bad decisions.

Re:E.g. We can't use it if we can't cheat

[ls671]

I read: we require a backdoor into everything...

Come on, ledgers are never edited, correction transactions are written when a mistake happens.

In other words

[bickerdyke]

"permissioned" blockchain systems,"

"managed by designated administrators under agreed governance rules,"

In other words: They are doing something completely different, but still call it "blockchain" because that's the current buzzword.

Reminds be a bit of what "cloud" should have stood for until it became a generic moniker for simple online storage.

Re:E.g. We can't use it if we can't cheat

[MightyMartian]

It's interesting, but some of the earliest accounting software I used, which was COBOL-based, didn't allow you to change any ledger once a month was posted and closed. I suppose it was possible to go into the actual database and directly alter records, but the underlying concept was that once a fiscal period was complete, it was inviolate, and the only way you could alter any closed ledger was to post adjusting entries in this period. This could be rather ugly, so you tried really hard not to do any major mistakes. Even end of the year adjusting entries were posted in the next fiscal year.

Since then I've seen a number of accounting systems that allow all sorts of monkeying around, including posting adjusting entries for a fiscal year within that fiscal year, even though you may be a couple of months into the current fiscal year. It seems common practice now, but a quarter of a century ago that was viewed as completely inappropriate, as it opened the door for fraud.

Signed patches

[John Allsup]

So basically they've taken a bitcoin like distributed ledger, restricted who can do the mining work, and allowed certain privileged entities to produce some form of signed patch. Effectively it's just taking something like bitcoin and adding a new transaction type. As such, it's a blockchain counterpart to the way that UDF allows modifying and deleting on WORM media (that is, a convention for saying 'x was deleted', or 'x replaces y'), perhaps with the means to prevent the erased information being recovered from the updated blockchain.

Immutable is THE key feature of blockchains

[um... Lucas]

The entire purpose of blockchains (the tech behind bitcoin) is that is an immutable ledger, trustless. First off, accenture's tool is useless for Bitcoin (the main use case of blockchains today) because editing transactions within the blockchain will cause that block, and every block after it, to be unable to be validated. Making a new tech and calling it a blockchain while allowing for edits in previous blocks is basically using the term "blockchain" but creating a bastardization of the technology.

If after the fact edits do need to be made, and they're actually above board, then the simplest solution is to simply publish new transactions that reverse the transactions that were made in error, NOT to allow any transaction to be arbitrarily altered after the fact.

Accenture

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the remnants of the company which facilitated the Enron scandal. Are we really to trust they will use this crack "responsibly"? Who determines when a block chain should be edited? Them? Why?

Re:E.g. We can't use it if we can't cheat

[SvnLyrBrto]

Remember who "Accenture" really is: the post-scandal-renamed Andersen Consulting, aka: Arthur Andersen. Accounting fraud is their very purpose for existing. And corrupting blockchains to destroy accountability is exactly the sort of thing you expect out of those people.