Blockchains

[mc776]

Christine Lemmer-Webber explains what a "blockchain" is - or, perhaps, what she thinks is the sine qua non in the middle of that "roguelike"-like murky cluster of concepts implied by the overall usage of that word. (Which, I suppose is the most we can ever really expect as an answer to any question of "what" "something" "is".)

Blockchains are not magic pixie dust, putting something on a blockchain does not make it work better or more decentralized... indeed, what a blockchain really does is converging (or re-centralizing) a machine from a decentralized set of computers. And it always does so with some cost, some set of overhead... but what those costs and overhead are varies depending on what the configuration decisions are. Those decisions should always stem from some careful thinking about what those trust and integrity needs are... one of the more frustrating things about blockchains being a technology of great hype and low understanding is that such care is much less common than it should be.

I feel like I understood this better before all this cryptocurrency discourse became a thing.