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by __MatrixMan__ 665 days ago
Or you participate in some activity which provides a service, like filecoin. Or you get somebody's approval of the block's contents, like in a permissioned blockchain.

I think we'll also see something where you do key-signing parties all at the same time as a way of providing sybil resistance. Or proof of having voted on whatever it is (the outcome of the vote would then go into the block).

Stake and work are just the easy ones to implement because they don't even try to be simultaneously useful.

Personally I'm not very excited about blockchains because I think global consistency is overkill for pretty much everything, and is in many cases harmful. But it's hard to take anyone seriously who classifies a technology as by-definition-useless. Its current forms are weak enough to defeat at face value, no need for propaganda.

As for the future ones... Maybe they be useful, we'll see.
2 comments
jazzyjackson 665 days ago
Hm, thanks for the argument, I guess I'm turning it into semantics; filecoin and "permissioned block chains" sound more like reputation / web of trust systems. So to me it only becomes blockchain when there's some consensus mechanism not based on people making choices (because then we're just back to having a DB with auth...)
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__MatrixMan__ 664 days ago
It's a little different than a DB with auth. They have to make those choices in the clear, and they have to follow whatever rules are enforced by the protocol while they do it.

Unlike a DB with auth, if the process is trustworthy then the people don't have to be. Can such a thing exist? I dunno, but there's no evidence yet that it can't, and golly it would be cool if it did.

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cyberax 664 days ago
"Permissioned blockchains" are basically isomorphic to git repositories. They certainly are useful, but they aren't "blockchains" in the regular sense.
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__MatrixMan__ 664 days ago
Well... git repositories with only one branch. But yeah, I'd argue that such things are blockchains in ever sense that matters. Or should we go ask the permissioned blockchains start calling themselves permissioned merkle linked lists?
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