Under this framing, the "linked list of hashes" is one partial way to achieve immutability. And "every node has this list" is one partial way to get to decentralization is achieved. But that's only part of it. Eg you need to address: what if a node acts badly? And you want a means to create & issue assets.
> every node has a copy AND the list is append only leads me to something that doesn't scale well.
Correct. That's why there is work to scale better, e.g. via sharding by BigchainDB and by others.
[1] https://blog.bigchaindb.com/three-blockchain-benefits-ae3a2a...
Then to answer your Q: a good sharding approach should let you see all digitally signed claims (including when those claims were made) with probability --> 1.0. I'm framing this probabilistically because many sharding approaches rely on that definition. (And even non-sharded blockchains like Bitcoin itself.)
So, what you are describing seems like a way to accomplish behavior of this kind of data structure with a different one so you may get bettee scaling out of it.
This is a much healthier framing, because it doesn't constrain the goals to a particular approach (e.g. a particular data structure).
[1] https://blog.bigchaindb.com/blockchain-as-a-field-47c9f45894...
[2] https://blog.bigchaindb.com/three-blockchain-benefits-ae3a2a...
As I understood blockchains, they are basically linked lists of hashes, yes?
And the decentralization means, that every node hast this list, not just parts of it, so everyone can always check if the list is consistent.
Also, these lists are append only.
The part were every node has a copy AND the list is append only leads me to something that doesn't scale well. It will always get bigger with every action that is appended AND it will always be multiplied by every node in the network.
I'm probably missing something here, but that is my current state of blockchains, haha.