David Gerardblockchain technology is STUPENDOUSLY REAL WORLD USEFUL FOR
1. thing nobody actually wanted or cared about
3. if they ever did, a non-blockchain implementation would already exist and be vastly superior
3. scams
Space Hobo@davidgerard I mean, there's git.
That's about it, though?
@spacehobo and that only applies if you call everything with a merkle tree "blockchain technology"
@davidgerard I mean, they do, so who *isn't* calling it that?
🏴☠️ MC Pablo ∴@spacehobo @davidgerard You can't call anything a blockchain if you want to be able to discuss the subject seriously. Words need to have meanings. Blockchains have been invented in 2008 for Bitcoin, so things that were there before that weren't blockchains. A blockchain also needs a consensus mechanism, not just a merkle tree. Otherwise why not call any system that uses hashcash a blockchain too? Or any distributed storage system?
@p4bl0 @davidgerard I mean, git predates that, but whatever.
@spacehobo @davidgerard That's my point. Git is not a blockchain.
Yes it can be used as a distributed immutable ledger, but it has no consensus mechanism. It's only a part of what makes a blockchain a blockchain.
@p4bl0 @davidgerard Words have meanings you say, and yet a chain of blocks is not a blockchain. Got it.
@spacehobo @p4bl0 Words do not necessarily mean their components either
@davidgerard @p4bl0 You seem extremely invested in ceding semantic ground to cryptocurrency bros, for some reason.
@spacehobo @davidgerard Quite the opposite. Blockchains need to be radically criticized for what they are: an entirely useless technology whose only actual role is to spread libertarianism's ultra-individualistic economic and political thinking, and make it look normal.
We can't do that effectively if we start labelling anything and everything as a blockchain, even things that are actually useful, such as Git, just because they share some of the properties of blockchains.
@p4bl0 @davidgerard I first heard the term used to describe git, and only later to describe stupid ponzicoins. But do go on.
@spacehobo @davidgerard Are you seriously saying you saw someone calling Git a blockchain prior to 2008? 🤔
@p4bl0 @davidgerard Yep. And when buttcoin started to become a thing they used git as the example to explain it to people.
@spacehobo @davidgerard {{Citation needed}}
@p4bl0 @davidgerard Okay, well you have fun defending buttcoiners' marketing out there. I'm sure they need your golden shield to protect their honour.
@spacehobo @davidgerard There is _no_ honor in blockchain tech. None. That's the point. By extending the meaning of the word so that it can be used to talk about non-blockchain, actually-useful tech such as Git, YOU are giving honor to it. Is it that hard to understand?
Ashton@spacehobo @p4bl0 @davidgerard i always explicitly interpret responses like these as an admission that the poster has no further evidence for their claim.
@spacehobo @Ashton @p4bl0 @davidgerard either you have badly misread me, or you think you’re more clever than you are.
@spacehobo @Ashton @p4bl0 @davidgerard
The fall back onto childish antics reinforces my point. You made the assertion that you’d heard of git as a blockchain before 2008, and when asked for a source you respond with this.
You apparently have no evidence. And you also lack the wit to successfully wriggle out of this situation too, despite your beliefs to the contrary.
“I can’t find my old source” would be far less humiliating in the long run.
rakoo@spacehobo
They used git to explain what a ledger is, not what a blokchain is, because they invented it.
Git is not a blockchain. There is no proof of anything, nodes are not adversarial agents looking only for their own interest. No one using words with their meaning would argue the contrary.
@p4bl0 @davidgerard
They used git to explain what a ledger is, not what a blokchain is, because they invented it.
Git is not a blockchain. There is no proof of anything, nodes are not adversarial agents looking only for their own interest. No one using words with their meaning would argue the contrary.
@p4bl0 @davidgerard
@rakoo
Hmm, except git isn't a ledger, while it *is* an append-only data structure of cryptographically-signed blocks of data.
@davidgerard @p4bl0
Hmm, except git isn't a ledger, while it *is* an append-only data structure of cryptographically-signed blocks of data.
@davidgerard @p4bl0
@spacehobo @rakoo @davidgerard Since you insist: "signed" isn't the right word here. Commits can be but are rarely actually signed. I guess you meant content-addressed (i.e., named by their own hash), and thus that the integrity is verifiable. Yes indeed, but again as it has already been said multiple times in this conversation: that's just a merkle tree, a distributed one if you want, but it's still not a blockchain. It still lacks a consensus mechanism to be called that.
@p4bl0 @rakoo @davidgerard Words have meanings, you said. "Blockchain". Clue is in the words. They mean something.
You can do these semantic dances for some reason, but the only reason I can think of is that you want to defend the validity of cryptocurrencies as a technical endeavour.
@spacehobo @rakoo @davidgerard Okay you're just freaking nuts. Or stupid. I don't have any interest in continuing this discussion with someone so obtuse they accuse others of what they're guilty of. Again and for the very last time: YOU are the f*ing one legitimating blockchain by extending the meaning of the word to encompass actually useful, but in reality non-blockchain tech.
I've been spending a lot of my time for years to literally fight blockchains. I don't need your approval.
@spacehobo
It doesn't even make sense. Everyone including you is saying cryptocoins are shit, don't you see it ?
@p4bl0 @davidgerard
It doesn't even make sense. Everyone including you is saying cryptocoins are shit, don't you see it ?
@p4bl0 @davidgerard
@rakoo @davidgerard @p4bl0 No, I'm saying they're shit. I'm just saying that they took some ideas from systems like git, which were basically only useful in a very limited arena, and rebranded them as cryptoscam shit only. What the folks in this thread are arguing is that git doesn't count because the crypto scammers were right.
This is little different to the way they took the abbreviation "crypto", which has pretty much only ever been used to mean "cryptography", and decided it meant "cryptocurrencies". I am not going to let them have these words, and you shouldn't either.
lonjil@spacehobo @davidgerard @p4bl0 the term Blockchain was literally invented to describe Bitcoin. No one ever used it to describe git until they wanted to legitimize Bitcoin by comparing it to older technologies. So, in fact, you are only ceding semantic ground if you decide to start calling all sorts of stuff Blockchain.
Ben Aveling@lonjil
There is a difference between blockchain and bitcoin, in the same way that there is a difference between blockchain and merkel tree.
Put another way, every blockchain is a chain of blocks, but not every chain of blocks is a blockchain.
@spacehobo @davidgerard @p4bl0
There is a difference between blockchain and bitcoin, in the same way that there is a difference between blockchain and merkel tree.
Put another way, every blockchain is a chain of blocks, but not every chain of blocks is a blockchain.
@spacehobo @davidgerard @p4bl0
Jorge Stolfi@lonjil @spacehobo @davidgerard @p4bl0
Actually "blockchain" does not occur in whitepaper. The word "chain" and derivatives occur 27 times; "chain of blocks" occurs once, otherwise it is just "chain".
I don't know who was the first to use "blockchain". Presumably it was in a post to bitcointalk.org or other forums. Was it Satoshi himself?
@JorgeStolfi @lonjil @spacehobo @p4bl0 "block chain" in a comment in bitcoin 0.1 code, apparently? then the subculture started using that word
@davidgerard @lonjil @spacehobo @p4bl0
"Block chain" there is still a purely descriptive phrase, like "chain of blocks" -- not a new word. I wonder who first used the single word "blockchain" to mean specifically "the chain of blocks used by Bitcoin".
@davidgerard @lonjil @spacehobo @p4bl0
As for "blockchain technology", I believe that the term and concept came up much later. Not long before Tim Swanson invented the terms "permissioned blockchain" (previously known as "distributed database") and "permissionless blockchain" (a fuzzy concept "uh, like, say, the bitcoin one, but different")
Flounder Mode@spacehobo @p4bl0 @davidgerard
Diogenes [dashing in, out of breath, holding some wooden blocks held together with a bathplug chain]: Behold, a blockchain!
d@nny disc@ mc²@spacehobo @davidgerard anyone who works on git, hg, darcs, pijul, or any other version control system