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Then we, as engineers, have failed in explaining things. A blockchain is a linked list where each element of the list contains the hash of the previous element

Then we, as engineers, have failed in explaining things. A blockchain is a linked list where each element of the list contains the hash of the previous element. It's basically a degenerate Merkle tree. That is all that it is. It isn't a metaphor. It isn't throwing off the shackles of an overreaching government, nor is it a takeover of our society by militant right-wing conspiracy theorists. It's a data structure.

zeroxfe 6y ago
A Merkle tree is just one component of a blockchain. It also requires: a byzantine consensus mechanism, a p2p network stack, public key crypto, and a set of economic incentives to keep it going. You can't build a public database on a Merckle tree without being able to agree on what goes into it.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  That is a cryptocurrency. The work coming from the people at Hyperledger, who are also using blockchains, is an ordinary database complete with access controls. It uses the same data structure but without any of the political goals and with many different design decisions. A blockchain is just a data structure. It isn't even a very interesting one. In common parlance "blockchain" isn't well-defined: it just refers to something that's, like anarchy, dude, whoa....
  - jobigoud 6y ago
    You can't remove the consensus mechanism part and still call it a blockchain.
    - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
      Tell that to IBM.
theamk 6y ago
Maybe it meant that for some people sometimes, but the general public never knew about that meaning. Even Wikipedia claims: > The first blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. So "degenerate Merkle tree" is not enough, it also needs consensus mechanism, byzantine failure tolerance and so on. Insisting on meaning of "blockchain" which is different than commonly accepted will just make all arguments more confusing.

zeroxfe 6y ago

A Merkle tree is just one component of a blockchain. It also requires: a byzantine consensus mechanism, a p2p network stack, public key crypto, and a set of economic incentives to keep it going. You can't build a public database on a Merckle tree without being able to agree on what goes into it.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
That is a cryptocurrency. The work coming from the people at Hyperledger, who are also using blockchains, is an ordinary database complete with access controls. It uses the same data structure but without any of the political goals and with many different design decisions. A blockchain is just a data structure. It isn't even a very interesting one. In common parlance "blockchain" isn't well-defined: it just refers to something that's, like anarchy, dude, whoa....
- jobigoud 6y ago
  You can't remove the consensus mechanism part and still call it a blockchain.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    Tell that to IBM.

theamk 6y ago

Maybe it meant that for some people sometimes, but the general public never knew about that meaning. Even Wikipedia claims: > The first blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. So "degenerate Merkle tree" is not enough, it also needs consensus mechanism, byzantine failure tolerance and so on. Insisting on meaning of "blockchain" which is different than commonly accepted will just make all arguments more confusing.