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This article fails to mention one very fundamental property that makes blockchains interesting (and is the motivation for their design): The prevention of doubl

• henearkr 5y ago
  Only if you suppose a fully decentralized system. Else, you would just send a transaction updating the sender's and receiver's accounts, and there would be no double spent either. You can build robust currency systems that are only partially decentralized, and partially distributed.
• guax 5y ago
  Thats hardly its main motivation, banks have been preventing double spend for a long time now. The motivation behind the blockchain is to have a distributed ledger thats not controlled by a single party and thus cannot be taken down or controlled by governments. The problem is that it's very good at that but nothing else, so if you're doing something legal or supported by the banking structure of your country, the blockchain is by far a worse solution in every way. The best blockchain got so far was Bitcoin and such as a horse betting platform, basically another stock to bet on and thus its recent popularity. Aside from that Its hard to see a continued use, maybe as conservative governments keep increasing protectionism and divisiveness we'll get more use out of it.
• carlosrg 5y ago
  Yes, and developers should be able to read the original white paper, where the double-spend problem is discussed. I don't think separate "blockchain for developers" articles are needed.