A company called Accenture got a patent for "an editable blockchain" according to a [story](https://www.coindesk.com/accenture-awarded-patent-editable-blockchain-tech/) published by CoinDesk. The word that got my attention (apart from the whole "patent" thing, which I think it's quite toxic in the crypto area) was "editable".

The patent allows for some "master accounts" that will be able to reverse transactions. According to the same story:

> Depending on the circumstances, a secret that controls the key may be held by one or many parties. In some cases, multiple individuals could possess parts of a secret, meaning the whole group would have to sanction any access to the ledger.

That means that in case of error or fraud, somebody will be able to reverse that transaction to a previous state of the blockchain, without generating a hard fork. What that means, though, is that we're getting rid of one of the blockchain's most fundamental features, which is _immutability of the data_. 

But on the other side, I can see some use cases for such a technology. 

Some of the things that we take for granted with the blockchain are 100% uptime and 100% availability, which means you can query the data store _always_ and you are guaranteed to _always_ get an answer. So if you don't care about the immutability of the data, you can just set up a blockchain that is editable and get - for FREE - the aforementioned features. In a traditional distributed database environment these features (100% uptime and availability) are usually extremely costly, and by all means not guaranteed. I mean, they can be guaranteed, as in a marketing campaign, but behind them are just stacks of monolithic servers which can fail.

Anyway, although initially I thought this was a mistake, I now think it's just an interesting application of the blockchain technology. 

The only mistake is to call this "editable" thing a blockchain, because it may create confusion.
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_I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at [Dragos Roua](http://dragosroua.com) where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua._
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_If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform)_:
* [Rewards: Were Does The Money Come From?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-rewards-were-does-the-money-come-from)
* [Netiquette: How To Avoid Being A Steem Douche?](https://steemit.com/steem/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-netiquette-how-to-avoid-being-a-steem-douche)
* [Witnesses: What Are They And Why Should You Care?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-witnesses-what-are-they-and-why-should-you-care)
* [How Can I Mine Steem And What CPU / GPU Power Do I Need For That?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-how-can-i-mine-steem-and-what-cpu-gpu-power-do-i-need-for-that)