Forget the Hype and See the Sheer Beauty of Blockchain: Merkle Trees, Schnorr Signatures, Fiat Shamir and Pedersen Commitments

I strongly believe that if we started the internet again, we would select all the best elements of blockchain methods, and we would get rid of our 1980s viewpoint of our digital world. Servers, ports, operating systems rights, SQL databases, and so on, have all been built on flawed models of trust, and which do not mirror the world we actually live in.

I kinda worry, too, that the world does not see the true beauty of blockchain.

And so I will outline three things that I see as sheer beauty, and outline how they will change our world: Merkle Trees, Schnorr Signatures and Pedersen Commitments.

Forget the hype, there’s maths down there

In the world of physics, we see the beauty of Maxwell’s equations and of gravity, but for some reason, many fail to get beyond the ‘hype’ of blockchain and Bitcoin. Blockchain has become a word … a hype term … add it to anything you want, and it perks it up. And so, some people now use DLT, but it still — to me — sounds hollow. It is almost as if it has lost its meaning.

And why, when you see presentations on blockchain these days do so few people delve below the surface and…