Hello,

I have been researching about blockchains and stuff and it all seems like a big scam. It’s not sustainable and can be replaced by a simple database.

is there any legitimate use cases of blockchains or it is all just a big scam?

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Personally I’d say the distinction comes with the decentralisation being enforced. Git has it as a feature but each copy of a git repository isn’t reliant on every other copy. It’s asymmetric.

    • thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 days ago

      Git uses signed blocks for centralization… you can see that the official linux kernel is signed by linus torvalds… but all of this is irrelevant because blockchains are a datastructure that is indepenant from the concept of centralization. It is just a chain of blocks… proof-of-work and signing are about centralization but they are different concepts.

      • steeznson@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        I’m not sure I follow how (de)centralisation can be a different concept from blockchains when the definition of a blockchain is something like a ledger-like data structure which is immutable, decentralised and distributed.

        Meanwhile with git, one user can unilaterally change the history by hard resetting and force pushing; then the other “nodes” just have to accept the changes.

        • thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          21 days ago

          Idk where you got that definition… a block chain is just a chain of blocks…

          If someone unilaterally forces a history change, that will be apparent to everyone and they can choose to reject those changes…

          • steeznson@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            Ok, I think we’ve established that we disagree what a blockchain is. Doesn’t really matter I suppose, nice talking with you!