Blockchain

A blockchain is the technical underpinnings for crypto assets such as bitcoin and ethereum.

In computer science terms, a blockchain is an immutable data structure that maintains a list of transactions that are authenticated using public key cryptography and linked using a hash function. A blockchain is a partial ordering of transaction event into windows of discrete time by which the transactions are programmatically committed to a shared history which is synchronized via a consensus algorithm.

The term has been overloaded extensively and other data structures and topologies have been described as blockchain regardless of their use. See permissioned blockchain.

References

  1. Schneier, Bruce. 2019. ‘There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology’. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/.
  2. Jeffries, Adrianne. 2018. ‘Blockchain Is Meaningless’. The Verge 7: 2018.
  3. Rosenthal, David. n.d. ‘Stanford Lecture on Cryptocurrency’. Accessed 2 March 2022. https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html.
  4. Stinchcombe, Kai. 2017. ‘Ten Years In, Nobody Has Come Up With a Use for Blockchain’. Hackernoon. 22 December 2017. https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100.
  5. ———. 2018. ‘Blockchain Is Not Only Crappy Technology but a Bad Vision for the Future’. Medium (blog). 9 April 2018. https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec.
  6. Plant, Luke. 2022. ‘The Technological Case against Bitcoin and Blockchain’. Luke Plant’s Home Page. 5 March 2022. https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/the-technological-case-against-bitcoin-and-blockchain/.
  7. Weaver, Nicholas. 2018. Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It With Fire. Berkeley School of Information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCHab0dNnj4.
  8. White, Molly. 2022a. ‘Blockchain-Based Systems Are Not What They Say They Are’. Molly White (blog). 9 January 2022. https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchains-are-not-what-they-say/.
  9. ———. 2022b. ‘It’s Not Still the Early Days’. Molly White. 14 January 2022. https://blog.mollywhite.net/its-not-still-the-early-days/.
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