3 ms·
Note that blockchain in its technical essence is not a ledger, as ledger is not a cryptographic primitive. Blockchain is a document timestamping system, and as
by dozzie 9y ago
Note that blockchain in its technical essence is not a ledger, as ledger is
not a cryptographic primitive. Blockchain is a document timestamping system,
and as such allows one to order documents. It's just that ledger happens to
require some means to order the transactions (and make them unmodifiable),
each of which can be easily described by some sort of document (message).
Meaning, you didn't "abstracts the concept of a transaction to that of
a message". You just moved back to the underlying cryptographic primitive.
More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping
- memoized 9y agoGood point and thanks for the clarification. Glad to know I moved in the right direction. :) I used the term "ledger" simply because that is the common term used to describe blockchains. My reason for writing the code was to explore how a hashed transaction "ledger" fits together at a more technical level, instead of as a marketing buzzword. Plus it is there in case others want to understand just that piece of it. That link is very straightforward. I have a copy of Haber & Stornetta's 1991 paper on timestamping but haven't read it yet.