Which "blockchain" based database sounds promising?

[syskall]

Recently, there's been a few books and some startups based on the idea of "blockchain" based databases (not altcoins). Some people talk about private blockchains. Microsoft has a "Blockchain as a Service" offering (I read the marketing page and still couldn't figure out what that was). Factom bills itself as a "scalable data layer" for the blockchain. MediaChain is building a "blockchain" for media attribution. "The Business Blockchain" by William Mougayar talks at length about how blockchains will revolutionise business without ever addressing the technical challenges. Chain.co " partners with leading organizations to build blockchain networks that transform markets" (what does that mean?).

I read the Factom paper and wasn't convinced. I like the "anchoring to the Bitcoin blockchain" approach but without a decentralised consensus mechanism of the Factom chain itself, it doesn't seem like much more than a glorified Bitcoin based time stamping system.

MediaChain is even worse in that it hasn't even addressed the consensus problem in their white paper at all, arguing that such a thing will only be needed for "scaling". As far as I understand, MediaChain is the central authority which decides which chain is valid, which is kind of the anti thesis of a blockchain. They might as well have written a REST API.

I don't mean to sound so pessimist. Notable exceptions are Ethereum which has interesting technology and addresses the decentralised consensus problem. Or "colored coins" which leverages the Bitcoin blockchain and has interesting applications.

Anyways, I'd love if someone could convince me otherwise. Am I wrong in my analysis? Are there "blockchain" based database that sound promising?

[Anduck]

Have you checked Storj.io? I don't know which of these is the best, but that's one more to check out. I think Storj is pretty near to release..

[manselr]

I don't think any of those type of proposals is going t be a success unless they are somehow attacked to bitcoin as probably a sidechain or something. I mean who wants to mine a blockchain just for that when you can benefit from bitcoin? I think that is why FCT is being a success, it does not try to reinvent the wheel.

[syskall]

Have you checked Storj.io? I don't know which of these is the best, but that's one more to check out. I think Storj is pretty near to release..

Thanks, I have heard about it but haven't read the white paper. If I understand correctly it seems to be similar to IPFS but with a built in mechanism to reward peers for bandwidth/storage. It looks interesting and seems to solve a real problem.

Could it serve as a "data layer" for an arbitrary "blockchain" database however? Seems like this would only be possible if the Storj blockchain maintains some sort of ordered index of all files stored within the network (and ensures that unavailable files are removed from the index when they become unavailable). Is that the case?

[syskall]

I don't think any of those type of proposals is going t be a success unless they are somehow attacked to bitcoin as probably a sidechain or something. I mean who wants to mine a blockchain just for that when you can benefit from bitcoin? I think that is why FCT is being a success, it does not try to reinvent the wheel.

The idea behind sidechains is interesting, it solves the "transferring value off Bitcoin" part but it doesn't solve how hypothetical sidechains would be secured however. The sidechains don't benefit from Bitcoin's large mining network.

FCT = factom? I'm not convinced about Factom. It doesn't achieve decentralised consensus AFAICT and requires trust in a specific network of Factom servers. It is federated at best.

That being said, I'd love to be proved wrong.