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>What we're really talking about is a database that competitors can share

>BFT Raft-like for consensus

exactly. Blockchain right now is just the most "simple" and open format of sharable append-only-log-structured database and consensus protocol for it.

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It's still a blockchain though. Bitcoin is also a database-backed BFT consensus, with a fixed transaction batch size, a fixed data schema, and a probabilistic consensus/BFT algorithm.

Deterministic BFT consensus systems that maintain linear, incrementally-hashed logs are blockchains with a block size of 1. Since they are so much faster, the block concept is unnecessary.

If the block size is 1, is it still a chain?

Of course. If Bitcoin dropped the number of transactions per block to 1 tomorrow would it stop being a blockchain?

I must have misinterpreted the statement. It felt like block count rather than size in the context of the sentence.

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