4 ms·

In what sense is blockchain revolutionary? Merkle trees are many decades old.

• x86x87 4y ago
  Distributed consensus with zero trust.
  • dale_glass 4y ago
    Only in an extremely limited sense. You have to trust the developers, for one. Also it's only trustworthy as far as everything happens on the blockchain. Once you step off it for even a second, it doesn't help. Eg, witness the absolutely amazing number of scams happening in the area, and the number of well known, and supposedly trustworthy services suddenly crashing and burning.
    • x86x87 4y ago
      There are a set of rules that applies to everyone and are enforced by everyone. Re: trust the devs: do you trust the electricity in your house? What about the wires in the wall? Do you trust others to follow traffic rules?
      • dale_glass 4y ago
        The point is that blockchains have different incentives for different parties, and the interests of the most influential people don't necessarily align with those of the users. So the vast majority (users) are just really switching to a different master. Eg, I had a passing interest in BTC, but I my interest was in the very old school "buy pizza with it" kind of use. That usage is of no interest or importance to the current BTC system, and it doesn't matter one bit how many of me there are. The people who matter are the people who commit to the repo, the people who run miners, and the people who run exchanges. The desires of the 99.9% who aren't any of these are nearly irrelevant.