News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why blockchain is not yet working (2018) by zeroxfe on Sunday February 14, 2021 @02:18PM (#26135253)
A Merkle tree is just one component of a blockchain. It also requires: a byzantine consensus mechanism, a p2p network stack, public key crypto, and a set of economic incentives to keep it going.

You can't build a public database on a Merckle tree without being able to agree on what goes into it.

Re:Why blockchain is not yet working (2018) by xirbeosbwo1234 on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:27PM (#26136864)
That is a cryptocurrency. The work coming from the people at Hyperledger, who are also using blockchains, is an ordinary database complete with access controls. It uses the same data structure but without any of the political goals and with many different design decisions.

A blockchain is just a data structure. It isn't even a very interesting one.

In common parlance "blockchain" isn't well-defined: it just refers to something that's, like anarchy, dude, whoa....

Re:Why blockchain is not yet working (2018) by jobigoud on Monday February 15, 2021 @02:59AM (#26140251)
You can't remove the consensus mechanism part and still call it a blockchain.
Re:Why blockchain is not yet working (2018) by xirbeosbwo1234 on Monday February 15, 2021 @04:03PM (#26147350)
Tell that to IBM.