Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
A blockchain is just a list of records. You put data in it, and you have some script that ensures the data is internally valid. For example, with cryptocurrencies you can’t allow a transaction that causes a balance to be less than 0. A blockchain containing such transaction is invalid.
This is nothing particular. You can do this with most data records.
What’s unique about blockchain is that if you have two blockchains, both are internally valid but have records that disagree with each other, then you have a way to decide entirely by yourself which one you should prefer. For example, with Bitcoin you choose the blockchain with most “work”. No need to ask some third party about which one you should prefer.
And that’s where it falls apart. These situations are rare. There might be a few niche cases. I haven’t heard of any use case that’s particularly convincing to me.