Big data tools are just one example of distributed systems. I suggested looking into them because there are a lot of open source ones you can play with, not bec

Big data tools are just one example of distributed systems. I suggested looking into them because there are a lot of open source ones you can play with, not because I think big data isn't a buzzword (though Spark is definitely used a lot in industry). Crypto is of course a distributed system too (at least, many are) but in practice it's a bit different than anything you'd see in industry because it's trustless.