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'Blockchain' is literally the least interesting part of cryptocurrencies and their applications. its a boring flat file structure that is an artifact of needing

'Blockchain' is literally the least interesting part of cryptocurrencies and their applications. its a boring flat file structure that is an artifact of needing many clients independently deriving a shared ledger, nothing more and nothing less. the interesting part is how you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units.

elmigranto 9y ago
My layman understanding is that blockchain is literally singly linked list, except of "nextNode" you have "parentNode" pointer (which actually checks that parent is valid for "parenting" :) The important part is how blocks get added over network, and decentralized consensus of the addition. (Well, socioeconomic phenomenon of adding monetary value to all that jazz is pretty cool too!)
- avaer 9y ago
  There's a bit more to it. Proof of work hashing and ledger consensus rules and difficulty targets and fee schedules and forks. It's still all standard bachelor's degree algorithms, and I agree with the gp that it's not the interesting part. The interesting part is using these algorithms for social consensus on value.
  - goatofhehills 9y ago
    This. Seriously I was talking to a neighbor just the other day about how the most interesting aspect is the application!
  - kobeya 9y ago
    I disagree those are essential. Federated chains like Elements Alpha are also considered block chains but lack many of those properties. I think it really is the case that a "block chain" is merely a singly linked list with hash linkages.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      But that's just an hash chain, it has existed for longer than the blockchain. For example, all digital invoices in my country are hash-chained, to prevent the merchant from swapping one for another, and this standard was published before Bitcoin.
      - DennisP 9y ago
        That sounds interesting. What is the standard called? I'd love to read more about it.
        icebraining 9y ago
        SAF-T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T It's not that special, each invoice gets assigned as hash of (invoice number + total amount + date of emission + hash of previous invoice). Besides having to send that XML file to the IRS each month with all the issued invoices, the hash also gets printed on the invoice given to the client (paper or PDF), so it gets tricky to change the past without getting caught.
      - kobeya 9y ago
        I don't disagree with anything you said. Even generously most of the "blockchain" hype is an excuse for cryptography that has already existed without application for some time.
- tylersmith 9y ago
  It's more of a tree with single root and a function returning the longest tip by some distance method. Bitcoin uses amount of work proved as the distance. Bitcoin ignores other tips unless/until one of them becomes longer than the current tip but some systems like Ethereum leverage stagnant branches for their length function. But yes, dynamic-membership multi-party signature schemes and their use for creating permissionless systems is the real innovation.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    Straight question for the uninformed (me): Do you (or anyone else) have a technical reference for differences between the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain length function?
    - DennisP 9y ago
      Bitcoin's method is detailed in Satoshi's classic paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Ethereum uses a variant of the GHOST algorithm, which was introduced in the paper Accelerating Bitcoin’s Transaction Processing: Fast Money Grows on Trees, Not Chains. https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf The Ethereum white paper mentions how they modified it: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#modified-ghost-implementation https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#modified-g... Full detail is in their infamously difficult Yellow Paper: https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper
      - delhanty 9y ago
        Thank you for all those links! I had some idea about the Bitcoin blockchain - also succinctly summarized by @tylerswift. But the Ethereum material is all new to me. It at least sounds more interesting than "the least interesting".
mtgx 9y ago
You call it boring, others call it the most important invention in the last 500 years: https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-important-invention-in-the-last-500-years-c90b0151c169 https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-importan...
- arthurcolle 9y ago
  I'm a huge fan of cryptocurrencies and related decentralized technologies, but that is immaterial to the fact that anyone who acts obsessively focused on the blockchain data structure is missing an appreciation of what the actual underlying innovation is - please re-read my previous comment, it seems clear you didn't spend time thinking about the actual words I wrote. > the interesting part is how you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units.
  - akhosla 9y ago
    Hi! Blockchain at Berkeley executive here, we totally agree with you, and with all the buzzwords being thrown around these days, skepticism is understandable. At the end of the day, we see blockchain as a general term. We have humble roots as the Bitcoin Association of Berkeley, but we wanted something agnostic and recognizable for the future, so we ended up with this. Sure, blockchains are just a data structure but the cryptographically enforced units wouldn't exist if it weren't for blockchain, or something like it (IOTA Tangle). I can assure you that the people here are only interested in the real stuff. :) Some of the things we do here are related to teaching ([1]), Ethereum Dapp Development, and whitepaper talks. [2] [1] https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/decal https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/decal [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sgoRfoSp3jeX4DEqKLwKg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sgoRfoSp3jeX4DEqKLwKg
- Buge 9y ago
  More important than the Internet? More important than computers? More important than electricity? That's ridiculous.
simias 9y ago
I don't think you can really split one from the other, the blockchain and its surrounding algorithms is how "you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units". I find the blockchain technology very interesting because it solves a very hard problem in an inventive way and at the same time once you hear how it works it sounds almost obvious. All the individual parts have been known for ages but they're combined in an innovative way. I'm personally not convinced by the "political" side of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies but on the technical side it's one of the most inspiring piece of software in the past decade IMO.
- xg15 9y ago
  If you talk about the general idea of an append-only distributed database with no central point of control, I agree with you. However the proof-of-work/auto-adjusting-difficulty method of asserting truth still seems horrible to me from a technical perspective. Politically, I don't want to live in a world where this principle catches on and an ever-growing % of energy production would be spend on solving meaningless math problems.
  - simias 9y ago
    Yeah the proof of work is probably the less elegant aspect of it all, I can agree with that. But theoretically you could replace by any other function that's difficult to compute but easy to verify. Maybe it's just a solution in search for a problem.
    - ufo 9y ago
      I don't understand how that would fix proof of work. The whole point is that the voting power is proportional to how much computational power you are willing to burn away, in order to protect against Sybil attacks.
      - simias 9y ago
        I was thinking that eventually we may discover a proof of work that would actually compute something useful instead of burning electricity away. One can hope at least.
wslh 9y ago
Sorry, but I don't think you understand what a public blockchain is and the improvements/innovations that it requires to sustain a higher volume with faster blocks creation. This is connected to what you said about issuing tokens: last week Status.im (shameless plug: security audited by my company) related transactions caused a DDoS over the Ethereum network, which it means that we need to improve the current blockchains to support the kind of innovations you like. On the other hand, lowering the barrier for issuing equity or app coins make creating scams or tempting people to run with a lot of money trivial. A recent Fred Wilson's post[1] about this makes the point very clear. Lastly, not everything can be descentralized because you are challenging computation limitations and/or you need oracles outside the network that are the weakest point of the whole system. [1] Buyer Beware - VC Fred Wilson on ICOs https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6h7d0j/buyer_beware_vc_fred_wilson_on_icos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6h7d0j/buyer_bewa...
throwaway5752 9y ago
Well, that is your opinion. I personally think that all public cryptocurrencies are eventually worth precisely zero because of the of the nature of probabilistic data loss due to hardware failure or otherwise, and the only thing holding them up is the honeymoon phase of the mining gold rushes. Blockchain (and associated distributed consensus systems) is interesting, though, for no-trust distributed workflows.
- x30u9340 9y ago
  The whole "cryptocurrencies are lame, but blockchain is worthwhile" argument is so dumb. Any blockchain could be used as cryptocurrency or a distributed consensus system

elmigranto 9y ago

My layman understanding is that blockchain is literally singly linked list, except of "nextNode" you have "parentNode" pointer (which actually checks that parent is valid for "parenting" :) The important part is how blocks get added over network, and decentralized consensus of the addition. (Well, socioeconomic phenomenon of adding monetary value to all that jazz is pretty cool too!)

avaer 9y ago
There's a bit more to it. Proof of work hashing and ledger consensus rules and difficulty targets and fee schedules and forks. It's still all standard bachelor's degree algorithms, and I agree with the gp that it's not the interesting part. The interesting part is using these algorithms for social consensus on value.
- goatofhehills 9y ago
  This. Seriously I was talking to a neighbor just the other day about how the most interesting aspect is the application!
- kobeya 9y ago
  I disagree those are essential. Federated chains like Elements Alpha are also considered block chains but lack many of those properties. I think it really is the case that a "block chain" is merely a singly linked list with hash linkages.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    But that's just an hash chain, it has existed for longer than the blockchain. For example, all digital invoices in my country are hash-chained, to prevent the merchant from swapping one for another, and this standard was published before Bitcoin.
    - DennisP 9y ago
      That sounds interesting. What is the standard called? I'd love to read more about it.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        SAF-T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T It's not that special, each invoice gets assigned as hash of (invoice number + total amount + date of emission + hash of previous invoice). Besides having to send that XML file to the IRS each month with all the issued invoices, the hash also gets printed on the invoice given to the client (paper or PDF), so it gets tricky to change the past without getting caught.
    - kobeya 9y ago
      I don't disagree with anything you said. Even generously most of the "blockchain" hype is an excuse for cryptography that has already existed without application for some time.
tylersmith 9y ago
It's more of a tree with single root and a function returning the longest tip by some distance method. Bitcoin uses amount of work proved as the distance. Bitcoin ignores other tips unless/until one of them becomes longer than the current tip but some systems like Ethereum leverage stagnant branches for their length function. But yes, dynamic-membership multi-party signature schemes and their use for creating permissionless systems is the real innovation.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Straight question for the uninformed (me): Do you (or anyone else) have a technical reference for differences between the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain length function?
  - DennisP 9y ago
    Bitcoin's method is detailed in Satoshi's classic paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Ethereum uses a variant of the GHOST algorithm, which was introduced in the paper Accelerating Bitcoin’s Transaction Processing: Fast Money Grows on Trees, Not Chains. https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf The Ethereum white paper mentions how they modified it: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#modified-ghost-implementation https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#modified-g... Full detail is in their infamously difficult Yellow Paper: https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper
    - delhanty 9y ago
      Thank you for all those links! I had some idea about the Bitcoin blockchain - also succinctly summarized by @tylerswift. But the Ethereum material is all new to me. It at least sounds more interesting than "the least interesting".

mtgx 9y ago

You call it boring, others call it the most important invention in the last 500 years: https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-important-invention-in-the-last-500-years-c90b0151c169 https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-importan...

arthurcolle 9y ago
I'm a huge fan of cryptocurrencies and related decentralized technologies, but that is immaterial to the fact that anyone who acts obsessively focused on the blockchain data structure is missing an appreciation of what the actual underlying innovation is - please re-read my previous comment, it seems clear you didn't spend time thinking about the actual words I wrote. > the interesting part is how you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units.
- akhosla 9y ago
  Hi! Blockchain at Berkeley executive here, we totally agree with you, and with all the buzzwords being thrown around these days, skepticism is understandable. At the end of the day, we see blockchain as a general term. We have humble roots as the Bitcoin Association of Berkeley, but we wanted something agnostic and recognizable for the future, so we ended up with this. Sure, blockchains are just a data structure but the cryptographically enforced units wouldn't exist if it weren't for blockchain, or something like it (IOTA Tangle). I can assure you that the people here are only interested in the real stuff. :) Some of the things we do here are related to teaching ([1]), Ethereum Dapp Development, and whitepaper talks. [2] [1] https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/decal https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/decal [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sgoRfoSp3jeX4DEqKLwKg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sgoRfoSp3jeX4DEqKLwKg
Buge 9y ago
More important than the Internet? More important than computers? More important than electricity? That's ridiculous.

simias 9y ago

I don't think you can really split one from the other, the blockchain and its surrounding algorithms is how "you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units". I find the blockchain technology very interesting because it solves a very hard problem in an inventive way and at the same time once you hear how it works it sounds almost obvious. All the individual parts have been known for ages but they're combined in an innovative way. I'm personally not convinced by the "political" side of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies but on the technical side it's one of the most inspiring piece of software in the past decade IMO.

xg15 9y ago
If you talk about the general idea of an append-only distributed database with no central point of control, I agree with you. However the proof-of-work/auto-adjusting-difficulty method of asserting truth still seems horrible to me from a technical perspective. Politically, I don't want to live in a world where this principle catches on and an ever-growing % of energy production would be spend on solving meaningless math problems.
- simias 9y ago
  Yeah the proof of work is probably the less elegant aspect of it all, I can agree with that. But theoretically you could replace by any other function that's difficult to compute but easy to verify. Maybe it's just a solution in search for a problem.
  - ufo 9y ago
    I don't understand how that would fix proof of work. The whole point is that the voting power is proportional to how much computational power you are willing to burn away, in order to protect against Sybil attacks.
    - simias 9y ago
      I was thinking that eventually we may discover a proof of work that would actually compute something useful instead of burning electricity away. One can hope at least.

wslh 9y ago

Sorry, but I don't think you understand what a public blockchain is and the improvements/innovations that it requires to sustain a higher volume with faster blocks creation. This is connected to what you said about issuing tokens: last week Status.im (shameless plug: security audited by my company) related transactions caused a DDoS over the Ethereum network, which it means that we need to improve the current blockchains to support the kind of innovations you like. On the other hand, lowering the barrier for issuing equity or app coins make creating scams or tempting people to run with a lot of money trivial. A recent Fred Wilson's post[1] about this makes the point very clear. Lastly, not everything can be descentralized because you are challenging computation limitations and/or you need oracles outside the network that are the weakest point of the whole system. [1] Buyer Beware - VC Fred Wilson on ICOs https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6h7d0j/buyer_beware_vc_fred_wilson_on_icos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6h7d0j/buyer_bewa...

throwaway5752 9y ago

Well, that is your opinion. I personally think that all public cryptocurrencies are eventually worth precisely zero because of the of the nature of probabilistic data loss due to hardware failure or otherwise, and the only thing holding them up is the honeymoon phase of the mining gold rushes. Blockchain (and associated distributed consensus systems) is interesting, though, for no-trust distributed workflows.

x30u9340 9y ago
The whole "cryptocurrencies are lame, but blockchain is worthwhile" argument is so dumb. Any blockchain could be used as cryptocurrency or a distributed consensus system