Is Git a Block Chain? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Git a Block Chain?

#51

Post by _prometheus » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 1:16 AM UTC

natrius wrote: post #15

rictic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea, and some bright folks are working on it! http://ipfs.io/

I want to make sure people don't overlook this IPFS link as just a decentralized GitHub. IPFS is building a content-addressable web. Think about how BitTorrent magnet links work—it's a hash of the actual movie (or Linux distribution) you're trying to download, and using that hash, you can connect with all the people who've already downloaded it to get it from them. On a content-addressable web, pulling up the New Yor…

Thank you for taking the time to write this explanation :)

Re: Is Git a Block Chain?

#52

Post by _prometheus » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 1:18 AM UTC

natrius wrote: post #23

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPFS does look interesting, but how does it provide updateable references? What's the equivalent of "give me today's headlines", which is pointedly not content-addressible because you don't know the content yet?

I suspect that there's a way to identify the latest content built into IPFS, but if not, it's easy to build that on top of something like Ethereum. If you're new to Ethereum, it's a global, trustless, blockchain-based coordination platform—it gives us the ability to determine what "The New York Times" is, without having to trust someone else to tell you. The New York Times would have an Ethereum contract with storage…

> I suspect that there's a way to identify the latest content built into IPFS

Yeah-- the IPNS records have a notion of recency, as well as being able to write version history datastructures (e.g. git)

Re: Is Git a Block Chain?

#53

Post by _prometheus » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

samatman wrote: post #44

northben wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how cool it would be if I could share a guid for my repo - and then your bit client (let's call it gitcoin, or maybe just bit) can fetch new commits from a distributed block chain (essentially the git log). Github is no longer an intermediary or a single point of failure. Private repo? Don't share the guid.

That sounds like gittorrent[0]. Never went anywhere, unfortunately. [0] https://code.google.com/p/gittorrent/

though it may sounds similar, it's very, very different. take a deeper look at the demo on http://ipfs.io

Re: Is Git a Block Chain?

#54

Post by _prometheus » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #2

Consensus seems like an essential property that distinguishes a blockchain from a Merkle tree, and git does not provide consensus.

Yep! entirely agreed.

Re: Is Git a Block Chain?

#55

Post by EazyC » Sun, Apr 26, 2015, 11:22 AM UTC

As others have mentioned, the one main distinguishing factor between blockchains and git (at least in practice because bitcoin's POW makes rewriting the chain expensive) is the consensus among its general users and in inability to actually change the history of the blockchain. Mathematically they are very similar, but git repos aren't "secure" in the same way. That's why I would argue against the author that git isn't the most valuable blockchain in use today although it could very well be the biggest.