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Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by tylersmith on Thursday March 08, 2018 @11:43AM (#16545515)
Yeah it's really weird to me because while you can do cool things with blockchains, on their own they're just a data structure. Without a trustless, decentralized, and permissionless consensus model it's basically just a big git repo. The blockcahin data structure, a tree of blocks of state changes, is not at all a recent innovation. And not something that would typically get hyped by the average non-programming related media.
Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by tomtheelder on Thursday March 08, 2018 @12:11PM (#16545787)
When people use the term blockchain they don't just mean a chain of state changes, they mean one that is backed by the sort of decentralized consensus model you described. The nomenclature isn't ideal, but the convenience of having one word to describe a somewhat complex topic wins out.

I mean even the Wikipedia article on blockchain treats it this way [1], mentioning the consensus model in the initial blurb, and asserting that Satoshi invented the blockchain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by tylersmith on Thursday March 08, 2018 @12:50PM (#16546112)
"Distributed ledger" [1] is a far better term for here IMO. If there's quibbling about "distributed" or "decentralized" then just change those terms as appropriate for the system under discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger

Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by betawaffle on Thursday March 08, 2018 @11:52AM (#16545588)
Why can't we get hype for my friend Sparse Merkle Trees!
Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by vinniejames on Thursday March 08, 2018 @11:59AM (#16545662)
I'm hyped! When is the ICO?!
Re:‘Blockchain’ is meaningless by nkristoffersen on Thursday March 08, 2018 @02:51PM (#16547099)
I almost spit out my coffee.