[trentmc]

To me, "blockchain-like" is about getting the benefits of decentralized, immutability (tamper-resistance), and assets.

How one goes about getting those characteristics is wide open. Most blockchain systems do have a full copy of the database at each server node, i.e. fully replicated. Also, they are "peer to peer" which means there is no distinction between clients and servers. (They do have SPV wallets though which is kinda similar.)

BigchainDB's focus has always been about scale. We're partly there but not fully: we are currently fully replicated but are targeting sharding to address that [1]. Where we do get scale already is properly distinguishing between between clients and servers. Servers are "super peers", decentralized among themselves. They do the heavy lifting, i.e storage. Apps don't need to run a server node; instead they simply are clients to the network, and of course can query >1 node.

[1] https://blog.bigchaindb.com/bigchaindb-developer-update-2d32...