Bitcoin Forum

If the 'miners' are paid with tax money - much like how the DNS servers work.

No it is not. The blockchain needs a currency to get paid and incentive the mining.

Exactly, if there is no value/incentive in supporting the network, then the network will become weak and vulnerable. While it would be technically possible to create a blockchain without bitcoin, it would defeat the point of having a blockchain in the first place.

EDIT: If the miners were paid with tax money, then the blockchain would become centralized, and therefore pointless.

It's possible...

Let's say a group of companies, for whatever purpose, require a blockchain to survive. Said group of companies then pool together resources to mine their own blockchain.

The reward, for the miners (aka themselves) would be the continued existence of their company, since we assumed that the company requires blockchain technology to survive, for whatever purpose.

It would be interesting to know what purpose that would be.

they are tied together and the block reward for the miner need both to work

and this could also lead us to think why banks don't love bitcoin, becuase they are aiming at doing their own corrency, seeing how they are working on blockchain technology

there is no blockchain without tokens(bitcoin)

we can pay "miners" dollars directly.

Then what will these "miners" do if we pay them with dollars? What will be the point of their "mining" if there will be nothing to mine at all? That would be meaningless and pointless per se.

Who is gonna pay? A central entity. This means that such a blockchain is no longer decentralized.

Who will pay the "miners" directly? The governments? With tax dollars?
Your talking about a Government Owned Controlled Crypto-Currency. If that happens, there will be no individual miners.
It will either be all pre-mined or only certain institutions will be allowed to mine (ex. banks, treasuries, agencies).

That would be the likely case - it does make sense for governments to consider replacing the antiquated SWIFT system (which is anything but swift) with an inter-government blockchain (if they don't want to use Bitcoin itself for this).

There're good stuff here about this topic, you should check it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/316sdy/to_ibm_stop_this_blockchain_nonsense_it_will/

What people are not understanding is that to trust an RDBMS means to trust a single server (or a cluster if you want to complicate the meaning but it doesn't really change it).

The entire point of a blockchain is that there is "no central server".

Banks could find blockchains useful for international money transfers/settlements (but they would be of no interest for banks to use domestically as blockchain systems are very inefficient compared to just using an RDBMS).

If you just think about it for a second it should be obvious that no bank from one country is going to want to trust a bank from another country so if you have a system that requires zero trust (and is not reversible) then that is actually quite helpful to the banks (they have been a bit slow to realise this so far).

thanks, good and helpfull response  :)

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: Andreas Antonopoulos explains why we can't have the blockchain without Bitcoin (http://BitcoinAnswered.com/4/myth--blockchain-technology-is-important-and-bitcoins-are-not).

Of course you can have a blockchain without bitcoin,blockchain is considered one of the most revolutionary technologies of last years.
You don't have why having miners,you can have POS systems for example

I might be going against the flow here. I believe you can have a secure blockchain without rewards in crypto currency. Miners just need a reward. Doesn't have to be a crypto. Miners can be paid in fiat or coupons, in OP's case, goverment fiat money. It's like submitting hashes to a pool, the pool pays fiat, not crypto.

Maybe yes, bitcoin can die but the "technology" under it the blockchain can be adjusted and bitcoin (BTC) can be replaced with another one (maybe better than the actual, who knows).

We will know what will happen to blockchain after the next block reward halving, if there is not incentive to mine .... why the miner should "mine"? Only to support the network, and who will pay the bills?

you'd have to change its core obviously, it'd be a different thing then

Some of you are missing the point. I am not talking about a crypto currency blockchain, but a blockchain with other storage uses.

Not really possible, the only reason the Bitcoin blockchain is maintained is because there is an incentive for miners to keep it running. As for a blockchain that doesn't relate to cryptocurrency, again, there has to be some sort of incentive to keep it running.

Why do the masses need a blockchain, if it does not have a decentralized currency (or a decentralized utility)?
Why doesn't the companies/governments just use their current systems?

The blockchain (or the public ledger) exists because you need to prove ownership in a decentralized and trustless way.
Companies and Goverments are centralized and considered trusted. Why blockchain their business?

Please provide a real world example, including the benefit to the masses and the actual mechanics.
I seriously do not know a real world scenario.

Companies have secretly been using blockchain technology behind the scenes for many years. Blockchain technology is a peer-2-peer service that stores unchangeable data. Within a closed system it can used quite efficiently to maintain records that no one person has control over.

An excellent tool to prevent corruption within large organizations.

You have made some reasonable points.

It has also occurred to me that there is no need for a government funded blockchain if the bitcoin one already exists.

I concede.

An altcoin with zero coin generation? ;D

What is the motivation to participate?

Securing blockchain ( Public ledger ) is for the benefit of the behind cerntralized party. The mentioned blockchain without bitcoin is like some kind of database including the required information such as personal detail, product detail, sale record etc. The behind cerntralized party keeps the database running.

probably not

It depends on the purpose of the chain. It could be used to decentralise and secure voting polls for democracy, if you see what kind of money and thus incentive is pushed into bringing democracy to other countries, that could be used. You can donate your computer time to mine for proteins or genes without any incentive, people are doing it. Supporting democracy and a fair voting system with a ledger and openness could be incentive enough to get people to mine. Mining started small, you do not need big rigs and money as an incentive for a blockchain to be usefull. To think it does is narrow minded.

Blockchain can have a lot of uses not only just for cryptocurrencies but other things too...so I see no point in having a cryptocurrency without a blockchain because there wouldn't be anyway to support it either...blockchains are kind of important in a way to support the network...

Blockchain is just a (smart, decentralized, ... ) database after all.
You can make it support the data you need, maybe you make it more like PoS than PoW and .. you make all the branches of your organization "keep the wallet open".
All the data is safe, which is the actual reward for the organization to maintain and keep the blockchain alive.

Is it a good model? Some organizations / corporations may already use this.

Blockchain is a communication protocol + database technology and it can survive as long as there are two nodes exist on the network, broadcasting and confirming transactions. You can have small micro controllers built-in to every smart device in the world using blockchain tech (generic term) where everything is interconnected and talking... Possibilities here are unlimited.

So far Bitcoin blockchain is by far the most stable and powerful maintained by thousands of independent nodes across the world, but this does not mean it can not survive just two miners running full Bitcoin clients on their old laptops if necessary. Brilliance of the blockchain is it's scalability among other things. The Elders here can correct me if I'm missing something.

A "functional" blockchain where the main purpose is something other than money transfer can exist but some form of "token" system is usually required to a.) provide an incentive for miners to maintain the network and b.) to prevent people from abusing the network's functionality since things like storage and bandwidth are a limited resource. The first reason has already been mentioned by others in this thread but the second reason is also quite important.

Take Namecoin for example. It works pretty well as a decentralized DNS system but there must be a cost associated with registering domains in order to prevent people from spamming the network and claiming all the domains. A token or currency with a limited rate of generation is the most suitable solution since things like nodes, IP addresses, etc. are not limited and if used, they can make the network vulnerable to Sybil attacks. Datacoin uses the blockchain as a store of data but since storage is a limited resource, it must be bought with coins which are limited in number.

The blockchain is a effectively a decentralised database. It is kept secure by the number of miners. There incentive to mine is a reward, fiat or crypto. You can store any data you want on the blockchain, the downside is the size of the blockchain.

If you are asking if it is possible to have a blockchain wihtout ANY financial reward, the only reward is the fidelity of the data. Yes, it is possible, but there will not be many miners and the security is weak.

Maybe IBMs next OS will have required online and a mining program built in.  There's their block chain.  Otherwise if they control it in-house its not decentralized and pointless.

No, it is not possible. No blockchain, no Bitcoin.

Information could be a purpose.
Let's take NSA for example.
They want to spy on everything and have information on everything.

Yes, it exists.
There are several companies with blockchain-like systems so that their employees can access and update some important data all over the world.

Of course,I mean it is possible a blockchain without the purpose of an economic system,called coins.
Just have your own miners and using blockchain for other things

 A blockchain (Bitcoin -but without coin) model should be decentralized and opened to ALL. If it is limited to only few people than it is not a real blockchain.



Yes of course, but in this case the coins give value to the blockchain itself. If we remove the economic part, do you really think someone will use that system?

Not very likely with a PoW implementation as the economics of the "coin" is what enables the "work" to get done (unless of course the mining is all government provided).

But with other low-cost consensus systems (and so far none have really being proven to be anywhere near as reliable as Bitcoin) the motivation could be the value of what else the system can provide (e.g. a decentralised "blogging" implementation) so assuming the cost to participate is negligible then the utility of the software platform could provide the reason for people to support the network (much like the motivation for running a ToR node).