Robert Barrow RobertBarrow
Quote: "The Difference between DLT and Blockchains" by Brian Behlendorf of the "HyperLedger" project (by "The Linux Foundation")
Okay... there actually... I mean, so, the difference between the term distributed ledger and the term blockchain has gotten pretty muddy out there in the broader world.
For me, personally, distributed ledgers are a great, very specific way to talk about this new kind of decentralized database, right, this system, so that you, and I, and everyone else out there, have a copy of a series of transactions that is kept absolutely in sync.
The specific term for that data structure used to be called blockchain, but now, everybody seems to be applying the term blockchain to anything on the spectrum, from cryptocurrencies to enterprise deployments of DLTs. >
The Merkle tree, also known as a binary hash tree, is a data structure that is used to store hashes of the individual data in large datasets in a way to make the verification of the dataset efficient. It is an anti-tamper mechanism to ensure that the large dataset has not been changed. The word 'tree' is used to refer to a branching data structure in computer science, as seen in the image below.
According to Andreas M. Antonopoulos, in the Bitcoin protocol:
"Merkle trees are used to summarize all the transactions in a block, producing an overall digital fingerprint of the entire set of transactions, providing a very efficient process to verify whether a transaction is included in a block."
On 22nd May 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz made the first documented purchase of goods using bitcoin when he exchanged 10,000BTC for two pizzas supplied by Jeremy Sturdivant (which he had bought from Papa John's). Back then - when the technology was just over a year old - that equated to roughly $25 per pizza.
Here is a link to the original "Pizza for bitcoins?" post on bitcointalk.org.
Here is a link to the transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Unlike the physical versions of global currencies, such as the British pound or U.S. dollar, cryptocurrencies predominately exist in the digital world. Despite this difference, a cryptocurrency can be divided into smaller units, just as the pound is broken into pence and the dollar into cents. In the case of bitcoins, the smallest unit available is called the satoshi.
The satoshi unit is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, published a paper in 2008 that jumpstarted the development of the bitcoin cryptocurrency. The paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, described the use of a peer-to-peer network as a solution to the problem of double-spending. The problem – that a digital currency or token can used in more than one transaction – is not found in physical currencies, as a physical bill or coin can, by its nature, only exist in one place at a single time. Since a digital currency does not exist in the physical space, using it in a transaction does not remove it from someone’s possession.