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I see. It's a blockchain without calling it a blockchain, so people who hate blockchain can use it without having to realize they use a blockchain.

f38zf5vdt 5y ago
And with git being the most superior blockchain of them all.
- ric2b 5y ago
  Except it has no way to achieve consensus automatically. That's left as an exercise to the reader.
jacquesm 5y ago
Blockchain is just a special case of Merkle trees, there isn't anything original about them other than that Bitcoin served as a marketing engine for the term blockchain because some people made a ton of money with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- decodebytes 5y ago
  Rekor is just that. It's a merkle tree implementation (with extras such as timestamping) https://github.com/sigstore/rekor https://github.com/sigstore/rekor
- joshuak 5y ago
  No block chains are different than Merkle trees entirely. Block chains include previous hashes in each block, whereas Merkle trees, as the name implies are trees of hashes. In Merkle trees blocks do not include the previous block's hash.
  - aboodman 5y ago
    In git each "block" includes the previous "block"(s)' hash. Is it a blockchain or a hash tree? I would say that in practice what differentiates a blockchain from other applications of hash trees is a mechanism for consensus, not whether the blocks being formed into a trees conceptually represent time or not.
    - joshuak 5y ago
      Git is a block chain. Block chains require a previous block's hash to denote sequence. The hash for any block of data can be appended to Merkle tree, even duplicate blocks. In a block chain it is easy to find history because the link to the history is included. Merkle trees require n-1 additional hashes.
      - aboodman 5y ago
        Disagree. There are not formal definitions for these terms, but I don't think your definition here is what most people would think of as a blockchain.
        joshuak 5y ago
        Looking at the wikipedia article I can see where one might be confused. A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree). The Merkle tree referenced here is with respect to the organization of the transaction data contained within a block, not the blockchain itself. Merkle trees are used in various ways within cryptography in general and cryptocurrencies specifically, but blockchains and Merkle trees are distinct data structures with different uses. The colloquial use of "blockchain" has perhaps made the word somewhat ambiguous in some contexts but not in the context of cryptographic data structures, and Merkle trees are in fact formally defined.
- dmacvicar 5y ago
  You can visualize how immudb Merkle tree grows as you insert data on https://play.codenotary.com https://play.codenotary.com
- ric2b 5y ago
  > there isn't anything original about them Cool, so let's say we're using this to track financial transactions. Server A has an Immudb at some state x and server B has an Immudb at some state y. Which one is correct, how do I decide?
ForHackernews 5y ago
It's only the actually-useful bits of a "blockchain" without the planet-cooking proof-of-waste consensus algorithm brute-forcing sha256 over and over again.
- ric2b 5y ago
  And also without the useful "automatically achieve consensus between untrusted parties" bit.

f38zf5vdt 5y ago

And with git being the most superior blockchain of them all.

ric2b 5y ago
Except it has no way to achieve consensus automatically. That's left as an exercise to the reader.

jacquesm 5y ago

Blockchain is just a special case of Merkle trees, there isn't anything original about them other than that Bitcoin served as a marketing engine for the term blockchain because some people made a ton of money with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
decodebytes 5y ago
Rekor is just that. It's a merkle tree implementation (with extras such as timestamping) https://github.com/sigstore/rekor https://github.com/sigstore/rekor
joshuak 5y ago
No block chains are different than Merkle trees entirely. Block chains include previous hashes in each block, whereas Merkle trees, as the name implies are trees of hashes. In Merkle trees blocks do not include the previous block's hash.
- aboodman 5y ago
  In git each "block" includes the previous "block"(s)' hash. Is it a blockchain or a hash tree? I would say that in practice what differentiates a blockchain from other applications of hash trees is a mechanism for consensus, not whether the blocks being formed into a trees conceptually represent time or not.
  - joshuak 5y ago
    Git is a block chain. Block chains require a previous block's hash to denote sequence. The hash for any block of data can be appended to Merkle tree, even duplicate blocks. In a block chain it is easy to find history because the link to the history is included. Merkle trees require n-1 additional hashes.
    - aboodman 5y ago
      Disagree. There are not formal definitions for these terms, but I don't think your definition here is what most people would think of as a blockchain.
      - joshuak 5y ago
        Looking at the wikipedia article I can see where one might be confused. A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree). The Merkle tree referenced here is with respect to the organization of the transaction data contained within a block, not the blockchain itself. Merkle trees are used in various ways within cryptography in general and cryptocurrencies specifically, but blockchains and Merkle trees are distinct data structures with different uses. The colloquial use of "blockchain" has perhaps made the word somewhat ambiguous in some contexts but not in the context of cryptographic data structures, and Merkle trees are in fact formally defined.
dmacvicar 5y ago
You can visualize how immudb Merkle tree grows as you insert data on https://play.codenotary.com https://play.codenotary.com
ric2b 5y ago
> there isn't anything original about them Cool, so let's say we're using this to track financial transactions. Server A has an Immudb at some state x and server B has an Immudb at some state y. Which one is correct, how do I decide?

ForHackernews 5y ago

It's only the actually-useful bits of a "blockchain" without the planet-cooking proof-of-waste consensus algorithm brute-forcing sha256 over and over again.

ric2b 5y ago
And also without the useful "automatically achieve consensus between untrusted parties" bit.