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Blockchains have been overloaded by a bunch of people bringing modern technology to ancient industries as a sort of buzzword. So to an extent you are right the

Blockchains have been overloaded by a bunch of people bringing modern technology to ancient industries as a sort of buzzword. So to an extent you are right the author's definition is narrow, and on the other hand the author is right in that their narrow definition is the correct one. Blockchains are generally defined by the original paper for bitcoin: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf these would have a couple of key properties. They are trustless, distributed, and public through the use of cryptographic and computational algorithms. Most modern "blockchains" (that aren't currencies of some form) violate one of these properties. > When I think "blockchain", I basically think of a git branch: history is verifiably immutable and using some external tools like a public rng, one can prove that a block was not created before a certain time. The system you describe here involves trust. "Public RNG" implies we are talking about some sort of SSL certificate company's time server. Proof of work is stronger than that. It says it's impossible for someone to misrepresent the shared ledger unless they have more computational power than the entire system put together. And it's a fundamental part of how the ledger is structured (it's not external). > When I think "distributed ledger/distributed consensus" I think of the practice of using basically properties of statistics to get a bunch of nodes to agree on the state of something. Again proof of work is stronger than this. The nodes agree because the given branch is provably the strongest branch of truth. Distributed consensus is about getting the nodes to work together when you can trust they all want to, not when they are all trying to compete with each other. > Neither of those things really seem to make sense as the author's definition of "blockchain". What is he referring to? Because neither of your definitions fit a blockchain. Your definitions fit the broader cases of technology being passed off as "blockchain" in (the best light) an attempt to get these old companies to modernize (in a worse light) and take their money because they are idiots. Things like distributed version control systems, distrusted consensus systems, and cryptographic ledgers are all useful, but they involve trust. And for a lot of these applications that's fine. A company putting out a cryptographic ledger (e.g. provable) for cosmetic item transactions is an improvement, but it's not a block-chain (it's not distributed or it's not trustless). I mean the author discusses this: "Be careful! Today, digital signatures are often sold as blockchain. Perhaps a digital signature is all you really need and blockchain does not really suit your requirements." a digital signature system of arbitrary complexity (perhaps with a ledger of issued signatures, or an external time server, or agreement on which signature is the winner) is all most people in this space need. The only reason one needs a block chain is if they are making a currency.

strfrthwb 8y ago
> The only reason one needs a block chain is if they are making a currency. I agree with that. Besides, if some particular blockchain succeeds as a currency, it will inevitably host a social networking protocol where the whole network's state (e.g. who follows whom, who likes what posts etc.) is always available to anyone interested. That will let many various social networks flourish, and all of them will just present the same data differently. For prototypes check memberapp dot github dot io or memo dot cash, or peepeth dot com. And that makes sense if you think for a minute. Social networking is the basic skill of every human, and small social networks (50-150 people) existed for hundreds of thousands years. Once we transitioned to agricultural based society, we had to develop financial technology to sustain growth and scale the society to billions of people. The basic technology needed to do finance is obviously writing, so for the past five and a half thousands years we existed in a society where we write to centralised medium, whether it is a clay table hosted by a temple or a visa datacenter. Blockchains change that, so that we can write to a shared medium to do financial transactions and eventually form more honest and opens social networks. Once social networks fuse with financial networks, that is kinda nuclear fusion. What we will have then -- let's call it civil network -- is extremely powerful technology of free expression and trade. Civil is, first of all, for civilisation, as writing is what makes civilisation possible, and new technology of writing (blockchain) is what allows civilisation to transition to a new level.
- SolarNet 8y ago
  > Besides, if some particular blockchain succeeds as a currency, it will inevitably host a social networking protocol where the whole network's state (e.g. who follows whom, who likes what posts etc.) is always available to anyone interested. I find that unlikely. The volume of social media far out classes that of financial networks. They also have competing concerns. A blockchain is only secure because it uses up lots of resources to ensure that the network is secure hence it costs money to use the network. Social networks are useful because they are low friction: very easy to use, any time, freely, as much as you want. Blockchains are like credit card networks in this respect, you (currently) pay 9 cents to have a transaction committed within an hour (or 35 cents for a few minutes), credit card companies offer a similar service in the 20-25 cent range. I don't see anyone paying 20 cents to have a post committed within a few minutes, or even 9 cents to like a post. That just doesn't track. (Let alone the storage space concerns...) However, a federated social media service (think email) is a much more viable alternative. And it already exists. Such systems could easily publish public cryptographic ledgers, the joining of which would provide one with a state of the network at any given time. Again, no need to pull a block chain with proof of work into this, there is no reason we need to worry about that because trust can come from us knowing other people in the social network. As a final aside, publishing the entire social network isn't even a feature most people want. Not really. Why do you think Facebook has privacy controls? No one really wants to post their entire social media profile on the web in some sort of provable immutable way.

strfrthwb 8y ago

> The only reason one needs a block chain is if they are making a currency. I agree with that. Besides, if some particular blockchain succeeds as a currency, it will inevitably host a social networking protocol where the whole network's state (e.g. who follows whom, who likes what posts etc.) is always available to anyone interested. That will let many various social networks flourish, and all of them will just present the same data differently. For prototypes check memberapp dot github dot io or memo dot cash, or peepeth dot com. And that makes sense if you think for a minute. Social networking is the basic skill of every human, and small social networks (50-150 people) existed for hundreds of thousands years. Once we transitioned to agricultural based society, we had to develop financial technology to sustain growth and scale the society to billions of people. The basic technology needed to do finance is obviously writing, so for the past five and a half thousands years we existed in a society where we write to centralised medium, whether it is a clay table hosted by a temple or a visa datacenter. Blockchains change that, so that we can write to a shared medium to do financial transactions and eventually form more honest and opens social networks. Once social networks fuse with financial networks, that is kinda nuclear fusion. What we will have then -- let's call it civil network -- is extremely powerful technology of free expression and trade. Civil is, first of all, for civilisation, as writing is what makes civilisation possible, and new technology of writing (blockchain) is what allows civilisation to transition to a new level.

SolarNet 8y ago
> Besides, if some particular blockchain succeeds as a currency, it will inevitably host a social networking protocol where the whole network's state (e.g. who follows whom, who likes what posts etc.) is always available to anyone interested. I find that unlikely. The volume of social media far out classes that of financial networks. They also have competing concerns. A blockchain is only secure because it uses up lots of resources to ensure that the network is secure hence it costs money to use the network. Social networks are useful because they are low friction: very easy to use, any time, freely, as much as you want. Blockchains are like credit card networks in this respect, you (currently) pay 9 cents to have a transaction committed within an hour (or 35 cents for a few minutes), credit card companies offer a similar service in the 20-25 cent range. I don't see anyone paying 20 cents to have a post committed within a few minutes, or even 9 cents to like a post. That just doesn't track. (Let alone the storage space concerns...) However, a federated social media service (think email) is a much more viable alternative. And it already exists. Such systems could easily publish public cryptographic ledgers, the joining of which would provide one with a state of the network at any given time. Again, no need to pull a block chain with proof of work into this, there is no reason we need to worry about that because trust can come from us knowing other people in the social network. As a final aside, publishing the entire social network isn't even a feature most people want. Not really. Why do you think Facebook has privacy controls? No one really wants to post their entire social media profile on the web in some sort of provable immutable way.