4 ms·
I believe the comment you are responding is making a distinction between the public key cryptography used to authorize spending from a private wallet, and the a
by sirclueless 9y ago
I believe the comment you are responding is making a distinction between the public key cryptography used to authorize spending from a private wallet, and the act of including a cryptographic hash of the previous block in the current block creating a blockchain (which only requires a strong hash function, not asymmetric cryptography).
Blockchains as defined this way have existed long before there was a proof-of-work based consensus protocol to make Bitcoin a reality. In their more general form they are called "Merkel trees". Filesystems aren't generally structured this way but, for example, git repositories are Merkel trees.
- garmaine 9y agoMerkle. They were invented by Ralph Merkle, not the chancellor of Germany. This would be a Merkel tree: http://c8.alamy.com/comp/D5AYH7/german-chancellor-angela-merkel-waters-a-tree-inastana-kazakhstan-D5AYH7.jpg http://c8.alamy.com/comp/D5AYH7/german-chancellor-angela-mer...