3 ms·
Blockchains create scarcity among bits, enforced by a distributed network. The most well-known usage is in Bitcoin, but there are many different applications. M
by msvan 13y ago
Blockchains create scarcity among bits, enforced by a distributed network. The most well-known usage is in Bitcoin, but there are many different applications. Many systems that were previously very difficult to create without a central authority/point of failure can now be built in a distributed fashion. See Namecoin [1], Ethereum [2], or Protoshares [3] for examples.
1: https://www.namecoin.org/ https://www.namecoin.org/
2: https://www.ethereum.org/ https://www.ethereum.org/
3: http://protoshares.net/ http://protoshares.net/
- ForHackernews 13y agoIsn't it horrendously inefficient to be copying the entire blockchain around all the time? What happens if any of those projects achieve mainstream adoption? Are we looking at potentially petabyte-sized blockchains being copied around everywhere?
- wmf 13y agoYou don't need to store the whole blockchain as long as some CDN is willing to serve the pieces you need. In a well-designed blockchain you can verify that pieces are legitimate without downloading the whole thing.