4 ms·

I think Merkle got there first, in about 1979 or so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

by pacaro 9y ago

jacquesm 9y ago
It's a nice strike against software patents though, probably every programmer interested in data structures goes through a whole series of these independent inventions. To award a patent to someone just because they thought of it first is ridiculous.
- fergazen 9y ago
  I'm no lawyer, but they really need to outlaw patents on 'general purpose' technologies. Adam Carolla famously got sued for owning a podcast company, when someone claimed to have a patent on the entire concept of "downloadable audio". I think there should be a one year jail term for anyone who files a suit about something that ends up being determined "general purpose" technology. Would end the nonsense overnight.
fergazen 9y ago
Very interesting, thanks. I had never heard of Merkle Tree. Since a linked list is merely a special case of a 'tree structure' (i.e. one where there is always only one child), we can consider Merkle to be the true 'inventor' of blockchain. However, really the concept is so simple and obvious that I wouldn't be surprised if Babbage/Lovelace era folks had written papers on it. I'm sure there's at least one arse who'll tell me the DIFFERENCE between a tree and a linked list. lol. Gotta love social media.
- komaromy 9y ago
  He'd also be the true inventor of Git then. It's a widely useful data structure.
  - fergazen 9y ago
    Merkel WAS a genuine innovation, and it DOES collapse into plain blockchain if all 'nodes' on a given tree have one child, because in this case the directed graph (tree) is a linked list. If the key innovation in both structures were not the same then your snarkyness would have been appropriate.
    - sbmassey 9y ago
      The point is that there is more to blockchain technology than just Merkle trees, I think. Just focussing on the underlying datastructure is like saying filesystems are just B trees or something.
      - pacaro 9y ago
        Yes. I think that there a bunch of interesting ideas in blockchain technology, not all of which are necessarily new, but they are often new to the blog writer and/or audience. So introductory articles often focus on those basic concepts, which leads to this confusion
      - fergazen 9y ago
        The Wikipedia article on blockchain has this sentence: "From the technical point of view a blockchain is a hashchain inside another hashchain", and that sums it up. The actual blockchain algorithm itself is as simple as that. Period. Full stop. Of course, most actual APPLICATIONS of blockchain also ADD ON a lot of other concepts, like distributed ledger, distributed consensus, etc. Trust me, i'm not the guy in this conversation confusing algorithms with applications.
- benchaney 9y ago
  A linked list is a special case of a tree structure, but a blockchain is not a special case of a Merkle tree. If you considered the special case of a Merkle tree that was just a list it would be both useless, and not a blockchain. Edit: Its worth pointing out that the main innovation of the 2008 paper by Nakamoto introducing the concept of blockchain's wasn't just storing things in a linked list based on hashes. It was the Sybil tolerant distributed consensus algorithm. Most people include that in the definition of a blockchain.

I think Merkle got there first, in about 1979 or so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

by pacaro 9y ago

I think Merkle got there first, in about 1979 or so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

jacquesm 9y ago

It's a nice strike against software patents though, probably every programmer interested in data structures goes through a whole series of these independent inventions. To award a patent to someone just because they thought of it first is ridiculous.

fergazen 9y ago
I'm no lawyer, but they really need to outlaw patents on 'general purpose' technologies. Adam Carolla famously got sued for owning a podcast company, when someone claimed to have a patent on the entire concept of "downloadable audio". I think there should be a one year jail term for anyone who files a suit about something that ends up being determined "general purpose" technology. Would end the nonsense overnight.

fergazen 9y ago

Very interesting, thanks. I had never heard of Merkle Tree. Since a linked list is merely a special case of a 'tree structure' (i.e. one where there is always only one child), we can consider Merkle to be the true 'inventor' of blockchain. However, really the concept is so simple and obvious that I wouldn't be surprised if Babbage/Lovelace era folks had written papers on it. I'm sure there's at least one arse who'll tell me the DIFFERENCE between a tree and a linked list. lol. Gotta love social media.

komaromy 9y ago
He'd also be the true inventor of Git then. It's a widely useful data structure.
- fergazen 9y ago
  Merkel WAS a genuine innovation, and it DOES collapse into plain blockchain if all 'nodes' on a given tree have one child, because in this case the directed graph (tree) is a linked list. If the key innovation in both structures were not the same then your snarkyness would have been appropriate.
  - sbmassey 9y ago
    The point is that there is more to blockchain technology than just Merkle trees, I think. Just focussing on the underlying datastructure is like saying filesystems are just B trees or something.
    - pacaro 9y ago
      Yes. I think that there a bunch of interesting ideas in blockchain technology, not all of which are necessarily new, but they are often new to the blog writer and/or audience. So introductory articles often focus on those basic concepts, which leads to this confusion
    - fergazen 9y ago
      The Wikipedia article on blockchain has this sentence: "From the technical point of view a blockchain is a hashchain inside another hashchain", and that sums it up. The actual blockchain algorithm itself is as simple as that. Period. Full stop. Of course, most actual APPLICATIONS of blockchain also ADD ON a lot of other concepts, like distributed ledger, distributed consensus, etc. Trust me, i'm not the guy in this conversation confusing algorithms with applications.
benchaney 9y ago
A linked list is a special case of a tree structure, but a blockchain is not a special case of a Merkle tree. If you considered the special case of a Merkle tree that was just a list it would be both useless, and not a blockchain. Edit: Its worth pointing out that the main innovation of the 2008 paper by Nakamoto introducing the concept of blockchain's wasn't just storing things in a linked list based on hashes. It was the Sybil tolerant distributed consensus algorithm. Most people include that in the definition of a blockchain.