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by runeks 3289 days ago
What's the point of using a blockchain in this way?

Bitcoin's blockchain is necessary because newer blocks need to inherit the proof-of-work done on previous blocks, since the correct chain will be the one with the most cumulative work in it (presuming it's also valid). So it needs to be a sequential list of blocks, where each new block references the previous one.

But I can't see why this is useful when a) proof-of-work isn't used and b) blocks are separate databases. Why not just have one, big database and accept commits into this if they're signed with the expected private keys?
2 comments
imtringued 3289 days ago
You could probably probably get away with putting a single sqlite database on IPFS and using IPNS to point to the latest version and achieve the same thing. IFPS' block level deduplication means you'd only have to download the changes if the database receives a new update.

I'd like to see a decentralised database that doesn't require downloading the entire dataset. It should be possible to implement index-only queries that don't need to do a full table scan and therefore could run entirely in a browser. The only problem is that having an index for every possible query means the indices require more data than the dataset itself.

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tveita 3289 days ago
Something like https://github.com/lmatteis/torrent-net ?
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johnbellone 3289 days ago
I was thinking the same but you were able to articulate it much better!

This is interesting enough for me to dig into and read the code, but what am I going to use this for? Now if transactions were blocks in a single database I could see more use for this.

Maybe it's too early and too little coffee for me to have a brilliant thought!

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runeks 3289 days ago
Shameless plug: I've tried to articulate what Bitcoin is, and hence why the blockchain data structure was invented, in this article (hint: it's all related to proof-of-work)[1].

I think a lot of people see that 1) Bitcoin uses a blockchain and 2) Bitcoin creates digital money seemingly out of nowhere, and feel fascinated with the technology without being able to explain exactly why. So we're left with a lot of people using blockchains without really understanding the reasoning behind it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14553146

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