[icebraining]

Besides shandor's point, the Blockchain didn't invent decentralized data sharing. I, along with every developer of accounting systems in my country, was writing hash-chained ledgers before the Bitcoin paper was even published.

The innovation brought by the Blockchain was using a proof-of-work to achieve consensus and avoid double-spending in a network of semi-anonymous peers.

The vast majority of proposed uses of the Blockchain for non-currency reasons that I've seen do not suffer from this problem, and therefore do not need the innovation brought by it.

[jasode]

>The vast majority of proposed uses of the Blockchain for non-currency reasons that I've seen do not suffer from this problem, and therefore do not need the innovation brought by it.

Then we've been exposed to different examples. I've not seen any non-trivial proposed uses for distributed consensus blockchain that can be exactly replaced by a central db. Replacement always involves relaxing a constraint (e.g. trust the centralized organization not to tamper, etc).

shandor's point can be generalized to "solutions looking for a problem" which I already agreed with. Where I differ is based on the actual debates on the serious uses of blockchain I've seen, I don't see that technology abuse as the overwhelming situation.

[icebraining]

Again, you keep pushing the false dichotomy of "blockchain vs centralized". Distributed and verifiable data sharing existed before the Blockchain!

[jasode]

>Distributed and verifiable data sharing existed before the Blockchain!

But I'm not talking about any distributed data sharing such as p2p bittorrent with hash verification, or git/github, or NNTP Usenet, or the distributed accounting system you worked on, etc. For purposes of this thread, "blockchain" is synonymous with decentralized trust which I believe is how it's usually used.

I can agree that blockchain didn't invent "decentralized data sharing" but that's not relevant to my point.

[icebraining]

Can you define "decentralized trust"?