What’s That? … It’s a Blockchain!

I presented at an industry-focused blockchain event a few years ago, and shared the stage with the lead for blockchain at a major company. As I was flicking through my slides before the start of the presentation, he said to me, “What’s that? It looks interesting”, I looked at my slide, and said, “It’s a Merkle Tree”. “And, what’s that?” I paused for a few seconds as I considered what Ralph Merkle would have said in reply, but blurted out, “That’s a blockchain!”. “Ah, that’s nice. Never heard of that before”, he said.

I knew then, that the whole area of blockchain has in trouble of existing in a world which some people — even the head of blockchain chain at one of the major technology companies in the world — just used the word (/term) without really knowing what was undernealth. For me, it was like an electrical engineer asking me what the colours on the wires are, “Is blue live or neutral? I always get mixed up with them”.

Blockchain isn’t really a thing. It is part of our tool kit that we use to implement trust in our flawed digital work. It’s Merkle Trees, public key signing, identity checking, zero knowledge proofs, Pedersen commitments, and so much more.

In five pages, create a blockchain

It was Ralph Merkle, who, in five short pages, laid out the method that has become what we…