That "glorified linked list" solves a lot of problems in peer to peer computing. In fact, blockchains are arguably the biggest breakthrough that subfield of computer science has ever seen.
Meh, bitcoin is an interesting solution to a difficult to solve problem, but "biggest breakthrough" is rediculously hyperbolic. The applications beyond decentralized trustless tradeable tokens have mostly been toy examples.
Examples of bigger breakthroughs in the field of p2p communication: the internet. Distributed hash tables.
- resistance against many classic failure modes (e.g. Sybil attacks)
- peer to peer source of truth (e.g. Namecoin/DNScoin)
- verifiable code execution (smart contracts)
- immutability/ tamper proof
- and (obviously) peer to peer payments
Granted, some of these overlap with each other, but the point still stands. The pearl clutching over cryptocurrency seems extremely inauthentic when you consider the vast sums of energy tech giants expend to target us with ads.
> The pearl clutching over cryptocurrency seems extremely inauthentic when you consider the vast sums of energy tech giants expend to target us with ads.
The amount of energy they expend on ads is dwarfed by the amount of energy spent on doing the amount of "distributed computation" that can be run on a Raspberry Pi ten times over.
Most of the problems that this "breakthrough" supposedly solves are solved either extremely poorly, inefficiently, or not at all.
And the reason is simple. Blockchain is a distributed append-only log with an extremely inefficient and expensive way to append logs to it. And that's it. Anything else you ascribe to this breakthrough is wishful thinking.
Excuse me? The only concept blockchain introduced was a distributed ledger. Most of those advantages you listed were already present in distributed computing way before blockchain paper was out, it's what blockchain was based on, not what it brought about. Distributed databases like Cassandra were using those even before bitcoin, please educate yourself before spreading misinformation.
It's a kademlia based app, this shit was around in the 90s. I'd argue the biggest breakthrough was the Turing machine but sure the consensus math is interesting.
Examples of bigger breakthroughs in the field of p2p communication: the internet. Distributed hash tables.