Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Further Discussions => Blockchain Technology => Topic started by: sirty143 on October 24, 2018, 03:12:17 AM
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There are countless blockchain explainers in text, audio, and video around the web. Almost all of them are wrong because they start from a false premise. There is no universal definition of a blockchain, and there is widespread disagreement over which qualities are essential in order to call something a blockchain.
THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL DEFINITION OF A BLOCKCHAIN
The Bitcoin system is considered the first blockchain — the epiphany that launched the blockchain industry that proponents say will revolutionize money, government, and beyond.
Bitcoin was designed to be public and allow anyone to join, and its blockchain was born out of the need to keep people honest in the absence of a central authority. The design sacrificed efficiency in order to ensure that theft wouldn’t pay because rewriting the ledger would require so much computational power that it would be more costly than any potential upside. In order to achieve this effect, the Bitcoin blockchain consists of a digital ledger that records all transactions from the beginning of time to the present. Copies of the ledger are not stored in a central place; instead, they are kept by superusers called “nodes.” Some of these nodes, called “miners,” batch transactions and add them to the ledger in “blocks,” cryptographically linking each block to all the previous blocks. Miraculously, this system, combined with stewardship from the core Bitcoin #DevelopmentTeam , has functioned for almost 10 years.
Bitcoin, which debuted in the wild in 2009, “is the first implementation of blockchain technology,” according to IBM. And yet, many of the technology designs that are labeled “blockchain” today bear little to no resemblance to Bitcoin’s blockchain.
DIFFERING DEFINITIONS
Google’s definition of “blockchain” is “a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.” While most people would agree that a blockchain is a digital ledger, many blockchains do not have an associated cryptocurrency and are not recorded publicly. Some would even argue that a blockchain needn’t be digital.
Investopedia says, “A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions.” Again, many blockchains are not public, and many others are not decentralized.
IBM’s definition says, “Blockchain technology is used in a peer-to-peer network of parties, who all participate in a given transaction.” Except that at least for one well-publicized blockchain, the one built by World Food Programme, there is only one participating party: itself. IBM goes on: “Because the ledger is distributed, everyone involved can see the ‘world state’ at any point in time and can monitor the progress of the transaction.” Mastercard’s blockchain, however, is not viewable by anybody (and seems to have no function outside of marketing since Mastercard admits that payments are still running through its existing system).
SOME WOULD EVEN ARGUE THAT A BLOCKCHAIN NEEDN’T BE DIGITAL
Highly marketed efforts in Estonia provide a good example of how the term “blockchain” has been stretched and diluted. “Since 2007 Estonia has been operating a universal national digital identity scheme using blockchain,” the Harvard Business Review wrote last year. The New Yorker wrote in December 2017 that “the backbone of Estonia’s digital security is a blockchain technology.”
Estonia’s system actually predates the Bitcoin blockchain, and there is some disagreement over whether it should be called a blockchain technology.
Source: THE VERGE (https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17091766/blockchain-bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-meaning)
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For my point of view even though blockchain doesn't have universal definition.
For the fact that blockchain is solving the global financial and economic needs and other means of communication I think blockchain is meanfull.
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The blockchain technology is not meaningless as it is the technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies currently in use. The Bitcoin has a great impact in many aspects of our lives such as
1.Supply chain management
2.Quality assurance
3.Accounting
4.Smart contracts
5.Voting
6.Stock exchange
7.Energy supply
8.Peer-to-peer global transactions
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In my own point of view, I don't think Blockchain is meaninglessness simply because there is no universal definition of Blockchain. There are a lot of terms that have been defined differently by different people. Yet it does not reduce the relevance of such terms.
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In my opinion blockchain is distributed ledger to which everyone has access and all the transactions are recorded in a block without regulations or with regulations has no sense . To call it meaningless something harsh to it.