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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

> has exactly one purpose: prevent any single entity from controlling the contents.

I'd like to propose a different characterization: "Blockchain" is when you want unrestricted membership and participation.

Allowing anybody to spin up any number of new nodes they desire us the fundamental requirement which causes a cascade of other design decisions and feedback systems. (Mining, proof-of-X, etc.)

In contrast, deterring one entity from taking over can also be done with a regular distributed database, where the nodes--and which entities operate them--are determined in advance.

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Sure, blockchain development has always been deeply tied to ideas of open membership and participation. I like those ideas too.

But that's a poor definition of a blockchain. A blockchain is merely a distributed ledger with certain properties from cryptography.

If you spin up a private bitcoin network, it's a blockchain even if nobody else knows or cares about it. Now, are non-open blockchains at all useful? I suspect so, but I don't know of any great examples.

The wide space between 'membership is determined in advance' and 'literally anyone can make a million identities at a whim' is worth exploring, IMO.

> A blockchain is merely a distributed ledger with certain properties from cryptography.

If we charitably assume "blockchain" has some engineering meaning (and it isn't purely a word for marketing/scamming) then there's some new aspect which sets it apart from the distributed-databases we've been able to make just fine for decades.

Uncontrolled participation is that key aspect. Without that linchpin, almost all the other new stuff becomes weirdly moot or actively detrimental.

> If you spin up a private bitcoin network, it's a blockchain even if nobody else knows or cares about it.

That's practically a contradiction in terms. It may describe the ancestry of the project, but it doesn't describe what/how it's being used.

Compare: "If you make a version of Napster/Gnutella with all the networking code disabled, it's still a Peer-to-Peer file sharing client even when only one person uses it."

I interpreted "private" from the comment above yours to mean membership determined by some authority. So your example doesn't hold well, because networking would still be enabled in the file sharing fork, but on a private network rather than the open internet.

You misunderstand. The analogy wouldn't be Napster with networking code disabled. The analogy is Napster on a LAN. Only those on the LAN can access it so it's not open to the world, but nonetheless you've still got a p2p file-sharing client.

And yes. I'm using the engineering definition. I don't believe in letting a gaggle of marketers and scammers define my terms. A blockchain is a specific technology. It doesn't mean 'whatever scam is happening this week', even if said scam involves a blockchain.

I don't blame you for associating blockchains with scams and fully open projects, that's undeniably what we've seen it used for. But that's not what defines a blockchain.

"A scalpel can only be used for surgery"

"If you use a scalpel to cut a steak, it's still a scalpel."

"There must be some new aspect to scalpels! We've been able to make steak knives for decades!"

On reflection I was incorrect to mention Napster, which (at least in its most-popular incarnation) was still centralized for indexing and searching, with P2P only for bulk file data. Please pretend said "Gnutella" alone.

> The analogy is [the P2P application] on a LAN.

The analogy is the P2P application where regular clients can only discover a Special Master Client that must be running on a fixed IP, which only permits connections if you have credentials for a user-account arranged in advance.

In each case, the system's centerpiece feature is being voided, but that feature is different between them.

1. For "Blockchain", the centerpiece is unrestricted participation. (Other decentralization is an indirect effect.)

2. For P2P file sharing, the centerpiece is how nobody needs to run an expensive/vulnerable central server, but it wasn't a contradiction in terms to have a private peer-network.

This is a debate over semantics, let's conclude by presenting our competing definitions.

A blockchain is ledger shared between multiple computers. Entries in this ledger contain the cryptographic hash of the previous entry, creating an append-only data structure where existing records cannot be modified.

While blockchains are generally used in p2p and open networks, this isn't a requirement. Bitcoin was a blockchain when Nakamoto was the only node. Popularity and openness are not required to meet this technical definition.

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