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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 eco
by 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 agoThat 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 agoYou can't remove the consensus mechanism part and still call it a blockchain.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoTell that to IBM.