Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sparkie 3118 days ago
That's a Merkle Tree. A blockchain is an application of a Merkle tree in which each node contains transaction data, and a majority of clients agree that the longest chain of blocks is the correct one.

Git also uses a Merkle-DAG, but it is not a blockchain.
2 comments
mbrock 3118 days ago
a majority of clients agree that the longest chain of blocks is the correct one

If you squint, that's kind of true for Git repositories, too.

The version with the most "proof of work" on it is likely the master branch.

Of course the incentives are very different... but still, the similarity is somewhat illuminating, I think.

link
misnome 3118 days ago
But this ‘definition’ seems to needlessly tie the definition to the kind of data you are transmitting. And if that were the case, couldn’t a software diff be considered a kind of transaction?
link