4 ms·

As I've learned a bit about blockchain, I feel cryptocurrency is distracting from the broader implications of the technology. It's going to be hard enough for n

• blattimwind 8y ago
  As we've seen many times now immutability is not a strong property (indeed, none of the properties provided by blockchains are) of them, so not all that useful. E.g. Ethereum's various hard forks to un-do things. In a manner of speaking, "history is written by the victors" applies to blockchains in more way than one (miners, orgs, hardforks, ...)
  • DennisP 8y ago
    Ethereum has had exactly one hard fork to undo something. All the rest were protocol upgrades.
• Mithorium 8y ago
  The technology has existed for many years already, and it has already made 'broader implications', see git. The only thing new about it is that people now call it 'blockchain' instead of a merkle tree. The reason banks and governments don't use better technology to track land titles or whatever other applications is that they're always slow to adopt technology, not because 'blockchain' is a new concept
  • davnicwil 8y ago
    But this isn't really the case. Both git and blockchain track a history of actions, true, the difference is that in git anyone can rewrite history at any time and there is then no way to agree amongst untrusted parties whose history is the true one. With blockchain, there is. That's the innovation, that's what makes blockchain novel.
• solean 8y ago
  Blockchain without Bitcoin is not an innovation. How do you incentivize people to secure the network?