4 ms·

A ledger is a database.

• denton-scratch 5y ago
  A ledger can be implemented using a database. A database is much more than a ledger.
  • notpachet 5y ago
    Or much less. With a ledger, you begin with an implied schema.
    • denton-scratch 5y ago
      Well, that's an interesting observation. The idea that the blockchain is something that can be used as a database seems to be one of the big Web3 claims. Clearly, it's a thing in which arbitrary data can be stored; but that's not it's primary purpose, and it seems to be an astonishingly-inefficient way to store data. If someone were to help me understand why it makes sense to use blockchain as a database (or as a webserver), maybe the scales would fall from my eyes, and I'd begin to grok "Web3". But as far as I can see, the only relationship between records in the blockchain is that each record has all earlier records as its parent. You can't establish any other relationship between two records, other than that each one contains a hash of all its parents. Yes, a ledger has an implied schema. But it's a single table, so it's not much of a big deal, as schemas go. And everyone who wants to use the blockchain as a database is obliged to use the same implied schema. A flat text-file would be more versatile.
      • notpachet 5y ago
        Heh, agreed. I'm a crypto skeptic on pretty much all fronts, so I'm not going to be the one to pry away the scales. I also feel like the move to shove all and everything onto distributed ledgers is misguided (and, as you say, massively ineffecient). I've been around long enough to see other similar storage fads come and go. Everything is relational! Everything is a document! Everything is a message in a queue! And so on.