But "the" blockchain, as in Bitcoin blockchain, the most infamous one.
Title is misleading, but blog post is clear in being about Bitcoin.
I think the author's heart is in the right place and I'm thankful that it's being discussed on HN, as blockchain discussions can be a bit hit or miss here.
Bittorrent would be a cool way to do it. The trials I've seen with other networks over tor work in practice, however, its more fit for slower proof of work block driven networks with slower block times and less expectation for fast finality.
The shift away from PoW is largely driven by the need/expectation for semi-instant finality, which isn't feasible in 1st generation networks, systems where your transaction goes to a tx pool, waits for fee market acceptance, and then is mined into a block in an interval based in minutes with multiple confirms needed. There are pros and cons and use cases for both strategies, however the trend in defi, which is our niche, is finality in under a second, so that's the motivator behind that design decision. It's not without its faults, you're trading mining and difficulty adjustment algorithms for deterministic leader selection and absence/latency plans.