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I suppose we could look at consensus as means by which multiple blockchains are collapsed into a single chain which contains the "truth" for multiple entities o
by kordless 10y ago
I suppose we could look at consensus as means by which multiple blockchains are collapsed into a single chain which contains the "truth" for multiple entities or aggregates. Once a collapse or consensus occurs, the chain, regardless of who holds it, would contain the truth.
- throwaway91111 10y agoWithout consensus, what distinguishes a block chain from a Merkle tree?
- saurik 10y agoThe Merkle tree is only used within a Bitcoin block to store transactions in an efficient manner; it isn't part of the block chain. A block chain without consensus isn't even a tree: it is just a singly-linked list with cryptographic guarantees that given a linked list node, all previous entries can be "verified". However, as other people have pointed out, this implementation is so incorrect that it fails to even do that: it contains only the hash of the previous data, not the hash of the previous node, so this actually only manages to verify the previous one entry of the chain :/. This is essentially just a linked list :(.
- andirk 10y agoIsn't calculateHash() creating a hash from the whole block, not just the data part of it? If not, how should that function calculate the hash so that it satisfies what it needs to to be a real blockchain?
- saurik 10y agoAh! I was being confused by the diagram and another comment :(. It seems really strange to assume that the previous block's hash field is accurate, but I guess that is being verified as the chain is built; if you just remove that field you could calculate that hash and verify it that way. I now agree: it at least has the ability to verify the list's history. (Sorry for the confusion.)
- throwaway91111 10y agoWell, a merkle tree provides verification, too. You can only reach the hash given a certain chain of parents. What am I missing?