[tylersmith]

Yeah it's really weird to me because while you can do cool things with blockchains, on their own they're just a data structure. Without a trustless, decentralized, and permissionless consensus model it's basically just a big git repo. The blockcahin data structure, a tree of blocks of state changes, is not at all a recent innovation. And not something that would typically get hyped by the average non-programming related media.

[tomtheelder]

When people use the term blockchain they don't just mean a chain of state changes, they mean one that is backed by the sort of decentralized consensus model you described. The nomenclature isn't ideal, but the convenience of having one word to describe a somewhat complex topic wins out.

I mean even the Wikipedia article on blockchain treats it this way [1], mentioning the consensus model in the initial blurb, and asserting that Satoshi invented the blockchain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

[tylersmith]

"Distributed ledger" [1] is a far better term for here IMO. If there's quibbling about "distributed" or "decentralized" then just change those terms as appropriate for the system under discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger

[betawaffle]

Why can't we get hype for my friend Sparse Merkle Trees!

[vinniejames]

I'm hyped! When is the ICO?!

[nkristoffersen]

I almost spit out my coffee.