12th February 2019
Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don't have the above three elements.) In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the blockchain and its features. These are not anything new; they're distributed append-only data structures with a list of individuals authorized to add to it. Consensus protocols have been studied in distributed systems for more than 60 years. Append-only data structures have been similarly well covered. They're blockchains in name only, and -- as far as I can tell -- the only reason to operate one is to ride on the blockchain hype.
Recent articles
- sqlite-utils 4.0rc1 adds migrations and nested transactions - 21st June 2026
- Datasette Apps: Host custom HTML applications inside Datasette - 18th June 2026
- GLM-5.2 is probably the most powerful text-only open weights LLM - 17th June 2026