It's interesting how many problems the blockchain data structure solves for distributed systems. Bitcoin uses (and invented) the blockchain as a way to solve t

It's interesting how many problems the blockchain data structure solves for distributed systems. Bitcoin uses (and invented) the blockchain as a way to solve the double-spend problem of distributed e-cash systems. But the fact that the blockchain solves the consensus problem without any trust makes it a compelling data structure for many other use-cases as well. Even if bitcoin fails as a currency, academics will be referencing Satoshi Nakamoto's paper [1] for a long time to come. [1] http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf