Not a case of Cardano specific question, more like a blockchain question. But since I’m a member of this community I feel like I would like to ask this here.
As said previously, hypothetically speaking. In the case of a worldwide catastrophe, let’s say the internet signal would shutdown (sort of a Y2K scenario but minus the drama killing robots).
Some EMP waves (or whatever) would shut down the internet, briefly or definitely, what would happen to the blockchain technology? Would all the data be lost forever? Or as long as we still had a node/operator we would be able to reconstruct the blockchain and the data?
Is there anyone who has insight on how this would work out.
As long as the nodes could connect again at some point, I don’t see how it would destroy the chain. The internet is more or less just a big network. Messages and signals might be lost in transit at the time of the event, but unless the (numerous) drives that hold the chain were damaged, they could just reconnect later.
I suppose sidechains might be lost or manipulated if tampered with by a bad actor during a period of vulnerability. Also, I think that if certain nodes acting in concert could connect earlier than everyone else they could do a reorganization, either leading to multiple chains or to reversed transactions.
If this is a roundabout criticism of blockchain technology, just remember that when the catastrophe hits, you can’t eat your dollar bills or gold bars either, and the bank won’t let you withdraw anything. We are back to bartering resources with our neighbours. (A backup disk tucked away in a bunker is not a bad idea)
I’m sure it won’t be long before we have starlink running cardano stakepools.
You might also be interested in these links to add some downloads to your backup: https://www.oshwa.org/
I am aware of what could mean if a catastrophe happens. Money and financial systems would be ruined, as most of the electronics out there would be too. I imagine that a way to protect the system from such an event is not bad to consider. The problem is that most people will not have a way to access the network anymore maybe for a long time, but it would be nice to trust the fact that when things will be back online, you still have your assets.
Using starlink for nodes is not enough security.
It is a system that will serve billions of people at some point, so having a way to ensure the integrity of the data is useful.
A system could me made that creates a backup every few hours on a ledger that will be powered out and stored in a Faraday cage, and if all hell breaks loose, restore the entire system from that. You could have multiple places that have something like this in place, and you store every hour on a different device, and you have several devices, so whatever happens, you always have the data for the last few hours and maybe lose 1 hour of data. There are ways to do it and at some point, especially if the system will be used for huge corporations and governments, something like this should be required.
Doesn’t have to be disaster either, can be countries start “acknowledging” free internet as a threath and sets up firewalls against it. Internet communications are purposely restricted causing a man-made crypto disaster, after which people flee crypto - big corps enter in - sanctions are lifted - rinse and repeat.
I think the bigger question is, once it’s down can who’s ever left dictate the blockchain alone?
If only one person is left, isnt’ he always choosen to mint the next block?
If someone could set up a firewall that was actually effective enough, I could see that, but for the most part decentralized p2p interactions are hard to track and/or restrict. It’s one of the reasons that the dark web gets used for reporting information in countries that already have incredibly strict internet. If you’re trying to track one person, and you devote enough resources, you could manage it. Trying to block an entire ecosystem of financial and other transactions? I don’t know about that.