
‘Blockchain’ is meaningless - wglb
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17091766/blockchain-bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-meaning
======
SeanLuke
Cryptocurrency, welcome to AI's long nightmare.

AI has forever had buzzword-complaint terms. Consider "Agent", which describes
a very specific thing (namely autonomy), but that didn't stop everyone and
their dog outside the field from calling their software a "database agent" or
a "compiler agent" or whatnot, equating "agent" with "program". Indeed there's
an entire non-AI _field_ called "Agent Based Modeling" \-- of which I am a
participant -- which completely misunderstands the term. So AI gave up and
switched to "Intelligent Agent", which was unfortunately an even _more_
buzzword-compliant word. Now we started seeing "intelligent graphics agent" or
"intelligent login page agent". Finally in the late '90s AI moved to
"Autonomous Agent", a word straight from the Department of Redundancy
Department. But it worked! Nobody outside of AI seems to use it: my theory is
that most people don't really know exactly what autonomous means.

~~~
camillomiller
I mean... "crypto" !!! Can you imagine what cryptographers had to witness
every day for a couple of years now, while the term was increasingly skewing
towards a completely misleading meaning?

~~~
nailer
It's like if people involved in:

\- ATMs

\- eCommerce

\- Foreign intelligence and signals

or any other similar field where crypto is essential started calling
themselves 'crypto'. Yes, these field use crypto, but no, they're not crypto.
Just like cryptocurrencies aren't crypto.

This is crytpo: [https://cr.yp.to](https://cr.yp.to)

This is crypto:
[https://crypto.stackexchange.com/](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/).

Things that use crypto are not crypto.

~~~
bdamm
The meaning of words change when the rest of humanity takes it for their own.
Claiming "crypto are not crypto" will just leave you behind as the guy with
his fist in the air cursing the world.

Nuclear. Hacker. Patriot. Rubber. The audience matters. Besides, I doubt that
any cryptanalyst would mind writing out cryptography any more than they'd mind
writing out TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256.

~~~
nailer
I'm stating crypto is cryptography. There's not multiple cryptographies as far
as I'm aware so 'crypto are' doesn't make sense.

And yes, words change over time, but in that case I can just refer to (all)
cryptocurrency as 'Bitcoin' since that's the common definition. In fact it's
far more popular to refer to cryptocurrency as Bitcoin than it is to call that
'crypto'. Short version: this one isn't settled yet.

How did nuclear, patriot and rubber change?

~~~
bdamm
Nuclear was a branch of physics, then became a weapon, then became a US senate
procedural change "going nuclear". Patriot was an anti-government rebel, then
a pro-government supporter, then a missile, then an act to boost government
and corporate controls within digital content, and sometimes an American
football player. Rubber was a tree, then a commodity, then a condom. "A
rubber".

~~~
nailer
Nuclear still means to do with nuclear energy: it being used as a simile
doesn't change that meaning.

'patriot' means someone who stands for what is perceived to be American
values. A missile being named after it doesn't change that.

Rubber is more interesting and perhaps a better comparison 'are you wearing a
rubber?' during sex or 'when the rubber hits the road' in a speech, or 'do you
have a rubber' during an exam.

So lets let's say someone says they 'specialise in rubber': it seems
reasonable to believe they mean the material: they don't mean condoms or tyres
or erasers.

------
sheepz
The blockchain hype is crazy.

My favorite truism that I see people spouting is that Bitcoin (or
cryptocurrencies are) is worthless, but blockchain is a huge innovation.

Little do these people understand that the true innovation is Bitcoin's proof
of work as a consensus mechanism with the economic incentive of mining. Most
of these "blockchains" are just distributed databases, which are not
trustless, decentralized etc.

~~~
tylersmith
Yeah it's really weird to me because while you can do cool things with
blockchains, on their own they're just a data structure. Without a trustless,
decentralized, and permissionless consensus model it's basically just a big
git repo. The blockcahin data structure, a tree of blocks of state changes, is
not at all a recent innovation. And not something that would typically get
hyped by the average non-programming related media.

~~~
tomtheelder
When people use the term blockchain they don't just mean a chain of state
changes, they mean one that is backed by the sort of decentralized consensus
model you described. The nomenclature isn't ideal, but the convenience of
having one word to describe a somewhat complex topic wins out.

I mean even the Wikipedia article on blockchain treats it this way [1],
mentioning the consensus model in the initial blurb, and asserting that
Satoshi invented the blockchain.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain)

~~~
tylersmith
"Distributed ledger" [1] is a far better term for here IMO. If there's
quibbling about "distributed" or "decentralized" then just change those terms
as appropriate for the system under discussion.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger)

------
Ajedi32
git has been using a blockchain for the last 12 years, since long before
Bitcoin:

Each commit includes the hash of its parent commit. These commits form a
chain. Changing the contents of any past commit would break the chain. Each
user of the repository keeps a copy of the blockchain on their PC, and they
can fetch new "blocks" from any other peer with `git fetch` or `git pull`. The
consensus model is based on human review of the underlying code; humans get to
decide whether to include a block in their version of the repository.

~~~
tomtheelder
Common usage of the term blockchain implies a trustless, distributed consensus
model. Even the Wikipedia article on blockchain references this in it's
opening blurb, and asserts that Satoshi invented the blockchain [1]. Google
trends also shows that the term practically didn't exist prior to widespread
recognition of Bitcoin (even if you adjust the window to hide the recent
spike, it was virtually unused) [2].

It's not the best nomenclature in the world, but that's just what it has come
to mean.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain)
[2]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=blockcha...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=blockchain)

~~~
Ajedi32
> trustless, distributed consensus model

Still sounds like git to me. The main difference is that Bitcoin's consensus
model is fully automated, whereas git's relies on humans making decisions on
which commits to include in their copy of the repo. (Though I suppose "trust"
can indeed be one factor humans use when making such a decision.)

~~~
spookthesunset
> The main difference is that Bitcoin's consensus model is fully automated

Except when it isn't. For example, the DAO "hack" resulted in humans
overriding the automation to roll back history to bail out certain
"investors". Or all the bitcoin forks. Or the fact that bitcoin mining is
largely done by about three mining groups in China.

So Bitcoin is "trustless", but really believing in bitcoin involves every bit
as much trust (or dare I say, faith) as any other thing in your life does.

> Though I suppose "trust" can indeed be one factor humans use when making
> such a decision.

Watching the bitcoin/blockchain hype-train has shown to me that humans require
trust to thrive. To thrive you need to trust that you have a stable
government, that you eat breakfast cereal doesn't contain lead, that you can
walk past 99.99999% of people without getting stabbed.

Take away trust and suddenly the world get massively more expensive.
Transaction costs go through the roof. You have to personally inspect every
aspect of your breakfast cereal maker and all their vendors (eg: the folks
that made the fertilizer used to grow the grain (don't want toxic chemicals),
the hygiene of the employees operating the production line (don't want piss in
your cereal),etc ). If you don't rigorously verify everything, you'll get
fucked and die. In bitcoin this happens all the time - you can't trust
_anything_ in bitcoin--you can't trust your wallet maker, the printer used to
print a paper wallet, the exchange you use, the software you use, the OS you
run on, you can't trust any of it. Any break in the system _will_ result in
total loss of your bitcoin (and then you'll be called a moron by other
bagholders because you didn't follow all 231 "simple" steps required to secure
bitcoin)...

In short, society can't exist without trust. Bitcoin and the blockchain are
attempts to remove the need to trust each other. The result is a cumbersome,
non-scalable, deliberately inefficient design that _still_ requires human
trust to function. Which is why I personally think they are worthless
technology in search of a problem. Every problem they try to solve still
requires human trust, which renders their use pointless... Might as well just
use git. It is far more efficient, can handle vastly more data, and doesn't
require more electricity than many countries use in order to operate.

~~~
wan23
This is sort of a strawman. No one is saying that trust should be removed from
society in general. Bitcoin proponents think it's desirable to have a way to
store and transfer money without having to trust a single party. Anyone who
has had Paypal freeze their funds or had a customer request a chargeback after
receiving service could tell you why that might be desirable.

------
wintom
It’s not meaningless. Saying Blockchain is meaningless is like saying the web
is meaningless or the internet is meaningless. Just because you either don’t
understand it or you feel it’s too broad does not make it meaningless.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that guarantees consensus without any
central party. It has many other properties, like making the transactions
public in most cases, and many other important things that are different from
centralized databases and non public databases we have been using for the last
30 years.

~~~
nailer
I don't know why you're being downvoted. That seems a reasonable definition of
blockchain, in much the same way one could give a reasonable definition of an
array as a sequence of items.

The article's premise that 'The term blockchain is misused and frequently
misunderstood' (which is true) means 'Blockchain is meaningless' doesn't hold
water and this is very typical for a Vox technology article.

~~~
jgh
I think gp's definition is still too broad. Consensus is not an inherent
property of blockchains, for example. You can make blockchains without any
consensus at all, or with some central authority prescribing reality. A
blockchain is simply a kind of data structure, like a linked list or a hash
map or an array.

~~~
seanalltogether
Exactly. Is "blockchain" just the data structure, or is it the data structure
+ the protocol for communication + the software to validate it?

Another example might be bit torrent. I personally wouldn't classify bit
torrent as just the data structure. I would say its the data structure, the
protocol and the end clients. However if someone used these technologies to
create a different format and a different protocol, I wouldn't think of it as
bit torrent.

------
AndrewDucker
_In general, if the transactions are gathered together in blocks, and it is
blocks that are secured on the chain using cryptography, and it is designed to
be tamper-resistant and produce immutable records, the system qualifies as a
blockchain_

That works for me.

~~~
tylersmith
"designed to be tamper-resistant and produce immutable records" is really the
only thing important here as far as most people are concerned. The part about
chaining blocks of data together is an implementation detail that may or may
not last long term.

------
Sangermaine
"Blockchain" means a 394% surge in your stock price:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/what-s-
in...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-27/what-s-in-a-name-u-
k-stock-surges-394-on-blockchain-rebrand)

~~~
rtkwe
It also potentially means trouble with the SEC:

[https://www.investopedia.com/news/sec-may-crack-down-
firms-u...](https://www.investopedia.com/news/sec-may-crack-down-firms-using-
blockchain-name/)

------
cornholio
"Blockchain" has come to designate a very well defined concept: any technical
and financial construction designed for speculative investment in unregulated
securities out of reach of traditional authorities, usually having a very
shady, deflationary or ponzi-like economic structure and strong money laundry
potential.

There is nothing fundamentally novel in distributed databases or their
application in finance, we knew how to build "blockchains" since the 70`s.
Satoshi's proof of work chains were the first anonymous implementation and
that's what started the "crypto revolution".

~~~
Theodores
I am of the same conclusion, however, the dreaded blockchain has those that
are true believers. They will cite the Estonia example and they will cite
Wikileaks and how that show was able to be kept on the road thanks to Bitcoin
payments that were provided when Visa and their ilk in 'fiat land' decided to
take their payment methods away. They will cite a land registry in some poor
African country and tell you how good it is that their evil government cannot
take the 'peasants' land away.

If that is not enough to suppress your questioning of blockchain they will
also roll out the commerce examples, e.g. the Walmart supply chain or whatever
it is.

You will be told about some of these '541t coins' (as you call them) in
venerated ways, as if the goals of their founders put the efforts of everyone
from Mother Theresa to Elon Musk in the shade as far as noble ambition for
humanity is concerned.

It is like they are trying to fool ninety percent of you for ninety percent of
the time.

Maybe you work in some computing discipline that is tediously dull compared to
the parsnip science that is blockchain. Perhaps you are a small cog in supply
chain management or maybe you are at the cutting edge of some new 3D printing
technology that is revolutionising something important, e.g. dentistry. Up
until now you have felt that you may have been pleasing your clients and
delivering value not just to your company but to the wider world. You think
deeply about any conceivable way that blockchain technology could
revolutionise things for you. Or maybe do what you are doing already but
better because of the magic blockchain.

Even though you know your sector inside and out and your industry pretty well,
your mind draws a blank. This is despite your code being used in many
different parts of business applications. Your only conclusion is that there
is no use whatsoever for blockchain in what you do.

The blockchain bore who has not spent 'a career' doing some useful industry
thing will be able to declare that you are just not getting it. Clearly your
mind is just too limited, you are old in the head and unable to grasp what
blockchain is about, how it works and how it is going to change everything. If
you can't even see one use with all that stuff you know and work with then
clearly you have not understood what blockchain is all about.

By now you have also had time to think about the examples of blockchain use
presented by the blockchain bore. With Wikileaks it was all a scam, it
conveniently kicked off the Arab Spring, confirmed a few things we knew
already, led to the Assange sideshow but lead to little change.

Plus how much does it really cost to host a few web pages? £200000 a year in
hosting fees? What fools they were to sell their bitcoinz!

So what remains?

As you say, gambling on unregulated securities. Paying for illegal things
online is the second use for the dreaded blockchain.

------
IncRnd
The world "blockchain" is not really meaningless. Originally, a blockchain was
a cryptographically chained chain of blocks in a proof of work system. It is
still used that way, but it is also repurposed by other marketing schemes of
many cryptocurrencies.

------
nixpulvis
I think we all agree it's some for of "secure" ledger. Otherwise yea, it's not
a super well defined term. Regardless it's obviously over hyped and buzzed.
Git for example could be called a blockchain if you really wanted to.

------
philipodonnell
> The term has become so widespread that it’s quickly losing meaning.

I mean, that's how language works, right? Words mean things at certain points
of time and then over time those things sometimes change and new words appear
to better distinguish between the new things. Or words get contextualized
within a specific industry and take on different meanings depending on your
perspective.

Such an evolution does not mean a word is "meaningless" it just indicates
you'll have to provide more context in order to communicate your idea, which,
again, is how language works.

------
CodexArcanum
"Blockchain" is a data structure, a pretty well defined one. The buzzword is
basically a synonym for "distributed (, decentralized?) system." Buzzwords arr
usually annoying and misused. Object-Oriented Programming as practiced isn't
really what was intended by the term. Memes with cat pictures are only vaguely
a subset of Dawkins' memes. "The Cloud," ugh, let's not even.

------
granaldo
The killer app of blockchain is people trading coins in and out speculating on
altcoins [https://www.coingecko.com/en](https://www.coingecko.com/en)

------
brwsr
Well, at least less meaningless than the widely used word "Economy"
representing our financial system of waste, where consumers have to keep
buying stuff to keep the system intact.

------
xg15
While the general gist is true, so far you could separate the buzzword uses
from the non-buzzword uses pretty well by checking whether or not they use an
article before the word "blockchain". Though this bit then kind of worries me:

> _Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies have entered the mainstream
> discourse, but they’ve also been joined by a concept that is widely
> circulated, but poorly understood: “the blockchain” or just “blockchain.”_

I fear they are learning...

~~~
bertil
I honestly can’t tell from context whether the article is a sign of
understanding. To be blunt, I’m not sure I can tell for people who talk about
“(the) (I/i)nternet” either, and I met some of those who invented it.

------
arisAlexis
Anyone remember newsweek title "Internet? bah" around 1995?

~~~
flukus
The internet is a communication platform that allows to send messages and
share files from millions/billions of machines in a global network. A simple
definition that explains it's capabilities, something blockchain lacks.

~~~
arisAlexis
a blockchain is an immutable ledger that keeps transactions transparent and
untampered. can be used for all money transactions and also for asset
ownership and log transparency by governents.

It is very simple.

------
_pmf_
Well, not meaningless ... it can mean whatever you want, and it will not be
strictly wrong.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
I think that is the point in the article; it is used in many different ways so
simply saying you're using the blockchain doesn't have much meaning and yet
people look at it as a sign of a forward facing company.

------
empath75
It's interesting that an article that provides at least 6 different meanings
for it says that it's meaningless.

~~~
rs86
Journalists suck

------
jacinabox
With all due respect, that's crap. Blockchain means exactly what Satoshi
Nakamoto defined it to mean in his seminal paper.

~~~
organsnyder
"Means exactly"... to whom?

~~~
astrodust
Coinbeards!

------
jbob2000
It's about as meaningless as the word "communism". Tough to come up with a
definition for that, but I still know what it "means".

I guess you just have to read a bunch of different sources to get the full
picture of what a blockchain is. It's kind of hard to communicate abstract
ideas, so you need a variety of sources to paint the picture in your head.

~~~
sheepz
I think communism is pretty well defined, in its ultimate form its the
abolition of private property. This is in strict opposition to capitalism.

