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Lots of others mentioned key downsides of QR codes that make them generally unsuitable for this purpose (they are stateless, trivially copied, easily fouled from repeated use, too slow because of fundamental optical constraints, require a 100% available centralized ledger/don't work while the reader is offline, etc. etc.) but I'd just point out that decades of R&D have gone into making these systems work well at scale at the busiest train stations in the world, and QR codes came up short. Here is a glimpse of early R&D efforts that went into this: https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/development/tech/pdf_6/tec-06-40-... - it covers some of the technical requirements these systems fulfill.


Is that a paper from 2005 about a system designed in 1997? History is excellent for research but in the decades since, many things have changed.

Some of those downsides are positives (immutable, easily copied) others aren’t accurate, for example here’s the Mumbai metro in 2023 with qr entry gates https://youtube.com/shorts/TxbEgEzY9J8?si=s3gE-7_xbCbDoQ1d

Or that a 100% available central ledger is needed (it’s not).

That Qr code systems are in use today in some of the busiest locations would probably be the most succinct counterpoint though.




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