Amazon Enters Blockchain Market With Cloud-Computing Services (bloomberg.com)

Amazon.com is jumping on the blockchain wave with new cloud services that help customers build the technology needed to record transactions. From a report: Amazon Web Services Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy on Wednesday announced Amazon Managed Blockchain, a new service underpinning blockchain networks that record millions of transactions. The company spent the past year studying the needs of customers interested in blockchain solutions before creating the new products, Jassy said.

The service can be used to manage peer-to-peer payments, process loans and help businesses transact with distributors and suppliers, Jassy said. AWS announced a string of other new or updated cloud offerings, seeking to maintain its lead in the market for internet-based computing. The company also announced a new service called Amazon Quantum Ledger Database or QLDB, which is a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority. The service, which is launching into preview today, offers an append-only, immutable journal that tracks the history of all changes, Amazon said. And all the changes are cryptographically chained and verifiable.

Comments

Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is just in time to catch the final dead cat bounce. ASICs are being dumped at less than scrap value and tulip fields are fallow.

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blockchain doesnâ(TM)t equal crypto currency

Re:Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many ASICs that were recently rendered useless by the SiaCoin and Monero Forks. They are worth basically nothing.

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Killall -9 Bash]

Maybe not, but crypto currency is the only application of Blockchain that makes sense.

In what other industry is it desirable to have a distributed ledger?

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[chiefcrash]

In what other industry is it desirable to have a distributed ledger?

Supply chain and inventory management come to mind...

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. It's about recording something that cannot be altered and no-one involved has to trust the other parties as to the veracity.

Anything that needs such properties can perhaps benefit from Blockchain. Someone mentioned supply chains - lots of companies (often rivals) coordinating their activities.

A lot of work involves using a lawyer as a trusted third party. All that can vanish if all the parties can mathematically prove what was agreed and no-one could have altered it.

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Killall -9 Bash]

You would want a 3rd party to share records of your supply chain and inventory management? Because that's the whole point of blockchain... that's what a distributed ledger means. The whole point of blockchain and the distributed ledger is to non-centrally authenticate the veracity of records.... which is why it is FUCKING INSANE that banks and factories are interested in this. Are banks, farms, and factories going to distribute their internal info to third parties? If not, it's not blockchain. Blockchain is also encryption.... but if it's entirely INTERNAL, you can rewrite history, as no one is checking in real-time, and there is ZERO FUCKING POINT.

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Bengie]

You don't need to recheck the entire chain. Only blocks after the last trusted hash. Any block chain that does not contain the last trusted hash cannot be trusted at all.

Re: Welcome to 2001 dot com stocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't.

You can record info that the two parties have encrypted.

You can record the hash of information that the two parties have shared. The biggest news in recent years around blockchain HAS BEEN EXACTLY THIS PROCESS OF USING THE BLOCKCHAIN AS A ROOT OF TRUST.

Fucking hell... idiot.

If you're going to mouth off at least try and understand what the technology is.

You anti-blockchain clowns are as vapid and cretinous as the pro-blockchain loons pushing it for everything.

STOP. ADVERTISING. STUPID. BASIC. SHIT. HERE.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a fucking AD. If you don't know why this isn't newsworthy maybe you need to take a sabbatical for a few weeks. Not to mention it's a fucking DUPE.

BaaS

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! Blockchain in the cloud!

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the blockchain being useful was because it was a distributed computing platform between multiple sources. If the blockchain is run by a single company, then how is it effectively different from a cloud that is run by the same company?

This is pointless bullshit buzzword mashup.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

They're selling the "tools" to "facilitate" blockchain currencies on their platform, but that doesn't mean "they run them" - although when AWS inevitably goes down, they will own that part of it.

Basically AWS being AWS and trying to swell its user base. Non story Advertisement.

Re: I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to do with currency. Itâ(TM)s a ledger for businesses that need this style of ledger but donâ(TM)t want to build it themselves.

Re: I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of blockchain is to correctly log information. Where that information is stored is hardly relevant to anyone but the storage facility.

Distributed blockchain

[PPH]

Doesn't this run contrary to one of the benefits of a blockchain? That being it's distributed, decentralized nature. The ledger isn't maintained by one entity that can fiddle with it. Or be arm-twisted by authorities to back out transactions that they don't like.

Re:Distributed blockchain

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this run contrary to one of the benefits of a blockchain?

If you're talking about the second product, Amazon Quantum Ledger Database, then yes. But it's not a blockchain.

If you're talking about the first product, Amazon Managed Blockchain, it sounds like Amazon is just providing some higher level building blocks to work with blockchain rather than Amazon creating their own, centralized, authoritative blockchain. It looks like they're targeting Ethereum and something called Hyperledger Fabric

https://aws.amazon.com/managed-blockchain/

Re:Distributed blockchain

[Draconi]

Not really.

Enterprise Blockchain focuses more on business needs that don't require the decentralization but do need the "journalistic" integrity blockchain offers.

For example, take security log files on a webserver: by storing new entries in a QLDB vault you can ensure that they become tamper proof should a malicious third-party gain access to them. They won't be able to reconstruct the underlying hashes at a given historical point moving forwards.

Re:Distributed blockchain

[Anonymous Coward]

by storing new entries in a QLDB vault you can ensure that they become tamper proof should a malicious third-party gain access to them. They won't be able to reconstruct the underlying hashes at a given historical point moving forwards.

What's the security based on? In a distributed blockchain it's simply a consensus model. If 51% of the people agree on what a block is, it's a block. An attacker would have to hack 51% of the nodes to be successful, which would be near impossible.

In a central authority blockchain, what prevents an attacker from simply reconstructing the chain however they see fit?

Re:Distributed blockchain

[bangular]

Yes. The more I read about large tech corporations entering the blockchain space the more I realize they just don't get it. Their solution is to centralize and add authentication and authorization. At that point, why even use blockchain?

For anyone actually paying attention, we are in the most interesting times in blockchain's short history. We are starting to see layer 2 and sharding mechanisms speed up the networks by several orders of magnitude. Zero knowledge proofs are allowing smart contracts to interact with encrypted data. It's a very exciting time. Most of the interesting research is being done by startups and international researchers. It feels like the web in about 1995.

And large corporations just don't get it. The whole point of blockchain is to cut out the large tech middlemen. A blockchain network with centralized middlemen is just a worse system than what it attempts to replace.

Re:Distributed blockchain

[tricorn]

I've been trying to figure out what the term "blockchain" (as a "technology") is supposed to mean in a non-bitcoin context (or similar proof-of-work system) since it started being hyped.

What I think it really means, and what I think Amazon is providing here, is not distributed work, but distributed trust.

Specifically, the blocks and hashes (which includes the hash from the previous block) are published, and all interested parties have access. All they really need to record is the hash of the last block they saw, then confirm the chain after that point and record the final hash. For efficiency, they can also record hashes from the past (to make it easier to validate a range of earlier blocks).

Signing hashes would not be necessary, but can be used to assign responsibility for the content of a range of blocks (e.g. the accountant who did an audit).

The contents of a block are arbitrary. It can be signed, encrypted, plain text, what the blockchain aspect does is make it easy for others to verify that it hasn't been changed.

It's not very different from a Git repository with only one branch.

That's what I imagine it to be. Nothing to do with finding a value to be inserted into a block that makes the hash meet specific criteria (which is what bitcoin is about).

Re:Distributed blockchain

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Blockchain has one benefit - and it is a BIG ONE. Distributed trust. No-one has to trust anyone else. It's a fantastic breakthrough.

However, once you take that away (perhaps you don't need it for your app), you are left with a very slow database.

Amazon is selling "blockchain" magic buzzwords.

Re:Distributed blockchain

[Bengie]

The main benefit of a block chain isn't that it can be decentralized, it's that that all of the consumers can validate on their own that it hasn't been tampered with. Even if the only service that can change it is centralized, as long as all consumers can access the chain, they can keep a copy or even just the hash of some block and know if anything has changed. It's verified trust.

blockchain enterprise

[Gandoron]

Enterprises will need blockchain solutions. Good to see AWS joining the fray, though much of their offering is centralized.

However they took their time given where players like Microsoft and IBM are doing.
https://www.abiresearch.com/pr...

Re:blockchain enterprise

[AuMatar]

No, they're the last people to need blockchain. You use blockchain because there's no central source of truth. Inside a company, the company has a central source of truth- itself. Blockchain might, possibly, make some sense in a distributed system with multiple members who can't afford or don't trust a neutral 3rd party. It makes no sense in an enterprise, and is far more difficult and expensive than other systems.

Re:blockchain enterprise

[AndrewFlagg]

if i know AWS, they will make it so slick and fast and blow away microsoft and ibm in one fell swoop. i did a comparison analysis on aws versus azure and my scorecard much to my friend directors and vps dislike, i went with aws ec2.. let the games begin.

Blockchain and restructuring of the Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissociated Press (DP) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Physicists identify new fundamental particle

May herald a new particle family and restructuring of the Standard Model

Geneva, Switzerland — August 2018

Keywords: hypino, shinyon, blockchain

High energy particle physicists at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nullité) facility have confirmed the existence of the long-conjectured hypino (hy-PEE-no). It is thought to be the first member of a new class of particles known as shinyons (SHY-nee-ons), distinct from bosons and fermions.

Unlike other subatomic particles, hypinos carry no charge, and have neither rest nor relativistic mass. Their only defining quantum property is spin. Hypinos are thought to be the fundamental unit of marketing hyperbole. To date, hypinos are the only known members of the proposed class of shinyons, which are of especial interest to tech investors and holders of the MBA degree. Dr. Martin Waugh, of the Institute for Advanced Squander, further posits that the hypino may be the carrier of the so-called “weak-minded force”, a mutual repulsion between fools and their money. It is theorized that, upon sufficiently accelerated spin, hypinos transform into super-excited hyperinos, detectable only by Chief Information Officers.

The discovery of the hypino is recounted by Drs. Robert Crawford and Robert Jensen as follows:

“It was a Friday afternoon, and we and our colleagues were returning from a long lunch. Maintenance on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was scheduled to start Saturday morning, and the apparatus would be unavailable for two months. We were in a ‘what the hell’ kind of mood, so we thought we'd take a fantasy shot, just for grins and giggles.

“We had a few leftover Higgs Bosons from 2012 on the shelf, so our lowly lab technician, Garth Dennis, breech-loaded them into the beast , set up a blockchain for the target, positioned the extremely sensitive Swindleometer at the intended point of collision, energized the superconducting electromagnets, and let it rip. Upon collision, the blockchain shattered into a shower of the elusive hypinos. Examination of the debris field revealed that the blockchain and all of our cash were gone! Apparently the hypinos were entangled with our funding.”

There may be natural sources of hypinos. The strongest natural emitters appear to be located in Redmond, Washington, and Armonk, New York.

Re: Blockchain and restructuring of the Standard M

[Anonymous Coward]

BRAVO

Not Quantum

[Draconi]

The term 'Quantum' in QLDB appears to be a marketing term and not related to post-quantum addressing schemes like XMSS/WOTS+.

That sort of "quantum" blockchain deals with the theoretical attacks on ECDSA addressing schemes; examples: Mochimo and QRL.

Amazon's appears to be an append-only journaling system based on SHA256. It's unclear from the documentation whether it just hashes each transaction and maintains a verifiable/uninterruptable chain of hashes, or whether it also injects a Proof-of-Work style iteration based on nonces to make "reconstructing" the blockchain unfeasible.

QLDB is an internal name

[Anonymous Coward]

QLDB was an internal name for an acronym that nobody remembers (it's built on top of AlfBus and nobody watches Sesame Street anymore). It's used internally by Amazon for a lot of critical stuff, like managing EC2 instances so it's not a new service.

One of the advantages of QLDB is that it's easy to use it to keep an in-memory coherent view of data across the whole cluster.

Amazon's own monetary system

[bigtreeman]

So dangerous,
Amazon is already eclipsing all other companies
but having it's own monetary system is just insane
one worldwide money, accounting, tax, trading

Re:Amazon's own monetary system

[chiefcrash]

Lots of companies have their own monetary system. They're called gift cards....

Re: Amazon's own monetary system

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s so sad that people think blockchain equals cryptocurrency

I'm sure they won't snoop on your private keys

[Anonymous Coward]

and they won't let the U.S. government do it either, right?