5 ms·
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. Bitco
by 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 agoStraight 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 agoBitcoin'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 agoThank 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".