>Blockchain technology shares transaction records with multiple computers. Stock trading is typically saved in servers at bourses, but records cannot be referenced when communications infrastructure fails.
>Using blockchain systems, brokerages can continue a minimum of operations, such as checking past transaction records and outstanding balances even when failures occur, although new transactions cannot be checked.
The "blockchain as a distributed transaction DB" concept is more interesting than I thought, and it's probably really easy to get started given all the bitcoin tech around.
Not particularly. It's using the wrong tool for the job. A distributed database is helpful in many ways, but you don't need an attached proof-of-work system.
Blockchain doesn't imply PoW. You could consider each block minted with e.g. a M of N signature scheme, in the case of a stock-trading system you don't need open anonymous/participation and it's quite fine to rely on trusted parties.
For distributed databases, when there are multiple conflicting transactions that touch the same data, I could see the proof of work as a method to determine which transactions win, especially in a global, multi-master model. When the proof of work puzzle is solved during conflicts, the transaction is accepted as truth and moves to a COMMITTED state. It seems kind of wasteful if you are paying for resources to solve challenges, but maybe there's a better way to decide who wins for trusted vs untrusted environments.
As an aside, Spanner I think acquires locks globally before writing. Maybe there's an interesting global-lock free model that just works using block chain, even if it's just for trusted parties (I.e. Google-internal).
The main advantage of a blockchain is with the ledger price advertising between exchange members comes free.
I guess they can even implement OTC markets between peers, but I am not sure how do they plan to work with dark pools where parties want anonimity. Maybe they will just implement an internal blockchain with APIs for anonymous trading.
If you just used flat-file CSVs, and don't want to re-download the entire DB twice a day, you want to now come up with syncing strategies, merging strategies, and probably conflict resolution. If you just have a blockchain, then you get all of this for free (so long as your data fits the blockchain shape).
Though I imagine there's something else that can be used here as well...
