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Indexing the blockchain with Elastic Ethereum
One of things that can't really be done yet in a decentralized manner is search. In an Ethereum smart contract it is possible to maintain some elementary lookup tables, but more advanced features such as full text search are generally not possible due to excessive processing and storage requirements on-chain. Eventually it may be possible to use Ethereum to coordinate a network of search oracles that would profit financially if the network determines them to be operating correctly, but I am not currently aware of any such project. This sort of solution would be analogous to how Swarm is being proposed to work.
Posted January 5, 2016 by Jonathan Brown ‐ 3 min read