[merrickread]

Yes, right now it is completely a glorified database. It's always been a database. It's a different database.

We're using it for compliant sharing of and collaboration on private information records between non trusting organizations and businesses. You could do this with something like a highly distributed Cassandra cluster. But some of the inherent rules to a blockchain allow us to provide higher security, higher data persistence and availability between nodes, auditable records, and accountable participants / contributors.

And it's not centralized, it's completely distributed - just not publicly available to anyone who can download a mobile app.

[ufo]

If there is no mining isn't this just like git and other systems that use merkle-trees under the hood?

[merrickread]

This does a pretty good job of explaining the differences if you're curious: https://medium.com/@philippsandner/comparison-of-ethereum-hy...