Imagine if Google called certificate transparency blockchain? Journalists would lose their shit. Such an easy article to write. In fact, Google explicitly say on their website that they're kinda against the hype: http://www.certificate-transparency.org/general-transparency "These technologies are strongly related to the much-hyped blockchain. The reality, of course, is that there isn't a "the" blockchain, and that decentralisation is not always the answer. We are not making "the" blockchain, and we do not claim to support decentralisation."
I'll never forget my first job the business people wanted to investigate "the blockchain" and the yes men came up with a bunch of PoCs. I just asked "how is this different to Git?" Such an awkward moment.
Funny enough, "blockchain" as a term wasn't defined in the Bitcoin white paper at all.
All you need is 1) a reverse linked list of entries and 2) have the list be cryptographic in nature. Even git can be used for a blockchain since it uses a cryptographic hash for commits and can use GPG signing.
Validation, consensus and decentralizations are additional properties that you can add on top that make it useful for certain use cases.
This is one of the problems with the generic use of “blockchain”. People think you just need Merkle roots including previous blocks, like you do, but that’s useless and pointless without the rest.
That doesn't mean it isn't a blockchain. A inefficient or poor implementation of something is still an implementation of that thing.
>People think you just need Merkle roots including previous blocks, like you do, but that’s useless and pointless without the rest.
I'm well aware of the additional properties required to get it to behave like bitcoin or have cryptographic safety. But those are to my knowledge not a must-have for a blockchain nor defining characteristics.
As the name implies, it's a chain of blocks, the less obvious part is you link them with something cryptographic.
And just because Blockchain was first used and defined in Bitcoin doesn't mean the definition or methodology cannot be separated from Bitcoin, in fact, I consider it heavily separated from Bitcoin by now.
And again, just because they are factors in making Bitcoin work doesn't mean you need them to make a Blockchain.
A reasonable definition might be that a blockchain is a decentralized merkle tree.
A blockchain is a chain of blocks. Tautological, but the words mean something; it isn't just a name. If you hash blocks that contain hashes of previous blocks, you have a blockchain.
At most it might be argued that a centralized blockchain has no reason to exist, but I doubt that's true.
It wasn't- there's one mention of a "chain of blocks" in the white paper. The term "blockchain" appears to have been coined by Hal Finney.
No, it doesn't work like that. "Blockchain" is understood to mean something and you can't decompose the compound word and say "well, here's a block. Oh, and here's a chain. I guess this is a block chain." Your description, e.g., applies to a Merkle tree [0], which git uses, and was published in 1979. But no one has ever or will ever call it a blockchain.
Is a Ford F-150 that's been lit on fire a firetruck? How much straw is in a strawberry?
That might be a losing battle, but not sure the battle is over yet...