[hnthrow1010]

I've seen those and I wouldn't describe them as "blockchains" in the same sense that cryptocurrencies use it. The word seems to only be used for marketing purposes. Those are just an ordinary ledger with some sharding/mirroring.

[waoush]

Blockchain itself just refers to a linked list (the chain) of cryptographically hashed items such as a timestamp and the data it is time-stamping (the block), which is based on previous elements in the chain. This is also how how it is also described in the original Bitcoin paper.

Blockchain doesn't rely on crypto, crypto was implemented using blockchain. Blockchain was invented long before crypto in the early 90s at Bellcore. Crypto may emphasize transactions and combating double-spending (due to nodes being on a public network), but no one is held to crypto's use of blockchain to be blockchain. The Bitcoin paper cites both the original Bellcore paper and its follow-up discussing the use of Merkle Trees, and the Bellcore paper cites patent documents as a potential use-case. So I think what S&P Global and Walmart are doing are valid use of the technology.

Now whether or not cryptocurrency itself or the networks they run on have value is a different story. For what it's worth, one of the use-cases for Corda that I found basically advertised itself as "we are better than transacting with paper" lol.