... | ... | @@ -22,4 +22,21 @@ The P's are Processes, the Ag's are Agents, The A's are Artifacts (Resources). |
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Provenance goes backward from the end of a flow, just like [value equations](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aYSwHlz5FASAmFvBE9Z4dfOdHWKJCM5s1VZEGI0Dbn0/edit?usp=sharing).
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## Provenance as a business, or provenance + blockchains
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https://www.provenance.org/whitepaper
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Trying to figure out how to think about this. While they are vague about it, looks like they are building on Ethereum. Which I actually like. I sent an email to ask if they are open source. No response so far; thus so far I doubt it. Most of the blockchain stuff is open source, and most of the serious security stuff is. So if they're not, it's a big downgrade.
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I can see how it might work, though. I know you can track the provenance of a single asset (resource) via blockchains. You can read about that [here, about tracking diamonds](http://www.everledger.io/). That was the first credible use of blockchains that I ever saw, except for currency speculation and criminal activity.
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But Provenance promises to track processes with their inputs and outputs, as well as the history of a given resource. They want to attract large corporations. They want to track every economic event with barcode readers, RFID thingies, etc. They want each economic event to be digitally signed. So some agent (presumably a business) will digitally sign the log of a process and its inputs and outputs. And all of that will exist in the Ethereum blockchain.
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I think that is all interesting. Even ingenious. Might even work, within some boundaries.
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But my questions about that whole scenario include:
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* Doesn't that give you a hard dependency on Ethereum and its singular blockchain?
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* What if the other events in the provenance graphs were digitally signed and logged on some other blockchain?
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* Can we do better with signed Linked Open Data on the open Web?
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What do you all think? What am I missing? |