4 ms·

I was talking about nodes as independent machines which have the full history (full nodes). Maybe you were thinking of nodes in a mathematical sense like blocks

I was talking about nodes as independent machines which have the full history (full nodes). Maybe you were thinking of nodes in a mathematical sense like blocks in a blockchain. My point stands that if each block ID is computed from: 1. A hash of all the transactions inside the block. AND 2. The hash from the previous block. Then you can verify that the block is legit without a merkle tree. Tampering or substitution of any block would result in the hash not being consistent with the neighboring blocks.

saagarjha 7y ago
I mean, isn't that literally a Merkle Tree?
krcz 7y ago
But in order to prove that to someone that doesn't have full history, they would have to synchronize it, by downloading all the data and verifying all the transitions. With Merkle tree (identified with its root hash, just as blockchain is identified by hash of its head) it is possible to verify there is a value inside without full synchronization.
pests 7y ago
It's not about Bitcoin or blockchains and nothing about zero knowledge proofs or anything. You did just describe a merkle tree though. Here is another example. BitTorrent uses merkle trees for torrent and piece identification. You request peer list from a tracker via the torrents merkle tree root hash. These are visible in torrent files and sometimes magnet links. That root hash corresponds to a certain tree of piece hashes whose data that when reassembled will recreate the torrent. The tree of piece hashes is included with the torrent file. You can now ask peers for those pieces by their hash and know the peer sent you the correct data because it hashes correctly. Furthermore you can know you reassembled the original torrent because you can verify all the piece hashes hash back up to the merkle tree root this verifying the torrent was downloaded correctly.

4 ms·

I was talking about nodes as independent machines which have the full history (full nodes). Maybe you were thinking of nodes in a mathematical sense like blocks

by cryptica 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago
I mean, isn't that literally a Merkle Tree?
krcz 7y ago
But in order to prove that to someone that doesn't have full history, they would have to synchronize it, by downloading all the data and verifying all the transitions. With Merkle tree (identified with its root hash, just as blockchain is identified by hash of its head) it is possible to verify there is a value inside without full synchronization.
pests 7y ago
It's not about Bitcoin or blockchains and nothing about zero knowledge proofs or anything. You did just describe a merkle tree though. Here is another example. BitTorrent uses merkle trees for torrent and piece identification. You request peer list from a tracker via the torrents merkle tree root hash. These are visible in torrent files and sometimes magnet links. That root hash corresponds to a certain tree of piece hashes whose data that when reassembled will recreate the torrent. The tree of piece hashes is included with the torrent file. You can now ask peers for those pieces by their hash and know the peer sent you the correct data because it hashes correctly. Furthermore you can know you reassembled the original torrent because you can verify all the piece hashes hash back up to the merkle tree root this verifying the torrent was downloaded correctly.