this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of a grain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeiters::Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are using microchips to verify the authenticity of their products and thwart scammers.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The chips use blockchain technology and trace the wheel of cheese back to where the milk that was used came from.

Cryptobros, Unite! We finally found a way for blockchain tech to be relevant for more than just ransomware! We authenticate cheese!

Someone's gonna make a ton of money on CheeseCoin

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Blockchain is also good for solving the Ship of Theseus problem. You can encode the entire history of the object into the object.

Blockchain has many cool uses and none of them are currency.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, the ship of Theseus isn't a problem, nor is there a solution, but I get the joke anyway :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There was a joke in there?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I thought there must be, otherwise it would be a deep misunderstanding of what the ship of Theseus is

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Blockchain =/= crypto

Crypto uses blockchain, but blockchain is just a different type of database that generally tracks data through a decentralized network. It has a lot of real uses beyond crypto like identity verification, transcript/records management management, and iot data sharing. It’s nothing that can’t be done in a centralized manner, it’s just a different way of going about it that, in some cases, is much more secure and/or much more easily accessible.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s nothing that can’t be done in a centralized manner,

and thats the main problem with basically all blockchain related solutions, theres pretty much always a centralized alternative thats more efficient

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

and much more.... centralized? But let's also just ignore the part where it's described as generally more secure as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The cheese makers are not concerned about decentralization. Presumably they trust themselves, because they are the only ones trusted to write to the database. If they are the only ones allowed to put something on the chain, it's a central database, regardless of how many computers/places they run it on.

Blockchain is not magically more secure than any other equivalent cryptographic solution.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Most commercial non-crypto blockchains I've seen only have a couple of nodes connected, usually held by a single entity. In these cases it's no less centralised than any alternative write-only DB.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

and much more… centralized?

it being centralized dosent mean its bad. theres also the fact that many processes are centralized by the nature of how they work.

it’s described as generally more secure as well.

why would that be?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What corporation which validates their supply chain for authenticity is not already centralized? It literally makes no sense when the official manufacturer and logistics partners are all known, at that point you may at best want "transparency logs" but not blockchains. They're not even intended to stay authenticated on a second hand market, so there's no need to be able to keep tracking their movements after first sale

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know, can you make a JPEG of the cheese wheel and then put the hyperlink on the blockchain? Maybe make it so I can import the cheese in a shitty MMO that nobody actually wants to play?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It probably is, for ants