For a long time, I thought of the blockchain as almost synonymous with cryptocurrencies, so as I saw stuff like “Odyssey” and “lbry” appearing and being “based on the blockchain”, my first thought was that it was another crypto scam. Then, I just got reminded of it and started looking more into it, and it just seemed like regular torrenting. For example, what’s the big innovation separating Odyssey from Peertube, which is also decentralized and also uses P2P? And what part of it does the blockchain really play, that couldn’t be done with regular P2P? More generally, and looking at the futur, does the blockchain offer new possibilities that the fediverse or pre-existing protocols don’t have?
Hyperledger is a private “blockchain”. I write blockchain in quotes because it’s not really a blockchain. There’s not really a distributed consensus in a private “blockchain”. It’s like taking the concept blockchain, and strips not only down the bad parts but also all the good parts.
Sure, there are multiple actors signing each entry, but who has elected these actors? A central authority of course!
It’s decentralised in the same way a git repo is decentralised. Mostly because Hyperledger is basically a git repo.
Most of the times when a company says they’re using blockchain, they’re either:
- using a private “blockchain”, which is not really a blockchain.
- not actually using blockchain, but say they do for marketing reasons.
- a Ponzi scheme.
I think we are grasping for new words here really, its only been in the last few years orgs have been exploring actual deployments internally.
I do have a very reductive definition of “blockchain” as I believe it is what it says. what is considered “satoshi’s vision” includes a blockchain system but it does not define the word.
HL is a blank canvas that allows you to deploy whatever consensus you want including those commonly found in public chains, it is entirely possible to run a hyperledger instance that is compatible with any network you would like, presuming you would want that effort.
