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by JackC 2757 days ago
A useful term here is "Nakamoto consensus," which I think refers to the proof of X thing you're talking about -- consensus schemes that are resistant to sybil attacks among anonymous validators.

And I think you're right -- adding Nakamoto consensus to private blockchains makes no sense, because by definition they don't have arbitrary validators. And without Nakamoto consensus, "blockchain" is just rebranding of old and boring tech.
1 comments
jacobr1 2757 days ago
> rebranding of old and boring tech

A distributed merkle-chain database is still pretty innovative. A good example is git. I think what many private groups want is a "binary git for transaction data". Everybody can review their own copy of the shared chain with signing of new links in the chain.

Now that isn't really a full blockchain, but is a different kind of thing from a central RDMS.

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sfescape 2757 days ago
That is a blockchain, and provides the validation and history integrity that is core to (and where the name 'blockchain') comes from.
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hn_throwaway_99 2757 days ago
Except the issue is that Git, which includes validation and history integrity, was invented in 2005 and predates the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper by 3 years.

The point being that all the hype about "blockchain everywhere" came about because of bitcoin. If people are now starting to refer to just the "hash of blocks with previous blocks" (i.e. the "Timestamp Server" section of the original bitcoin whitepaper) as blockchain withOUT the proof of work/stake part, well then you really are just rebranding old tech as blockchain, because it was the proof of work part that was really the new thing in bitcoin.

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mcguire 2756 days ago
Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?

Proof of work is required for distributed consensus; without that you need a centralized repository like GitHub or Linus to bless the current state of the database?

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tim333 2756 days ago
Well proof of work is used to get consensus and prevent double spend in cryptocurrency though there are other mechanisms being tried like proof of stake.

With Git for code you don't really need consensus - I can have my fork and you can have yours.

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marmadukester39 2753 days ago
Unless what you're trying to do is actually achieve and maintain consensus without a single entity controlling the database?
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