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comment by organicAnt
organicAnt  ·  3706 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Julian Assange: Bitcoin and the control of history

I don't like that mining has become more centralized, but it's understanding since the reward for mining is so big that has incentivated rich people have invest in it. The advantage is that it means the network has more hashing power as result which means it's hard to subvert. Despite this, the blockchain is still preferable to the regular banking system in my view.

I never heard of GIT as an alternative to keep an un-hackable decentralized ledger of records over time. I'd love to learn how it works in comparison to bitcoin if you could explain. The link as gibberish to me.





alpha0  ·  3706 days ago  ·  link  ·  

See reply to mk. Not entirely sure what a "ledger" has to do with a system that prevents "memory holes" ala "1984".

git pull from 'authority x' and mod, commit, and publish on your own (or an alternative) server. What is the issue?

organicAnt  ·  3706 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The Blockchain uses cryptography and its decentralized nature means that one would have to not only crack the crypto but corrupt all copies of the blockchain to successfully change its past records. How does GIT prevent past records from being modified?

alpha0  ·  3706 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, Git uses SHA-1. It is a cryptographic hash, but of course vulnerable to collisions and already a bit deprecated. But a Git like system with a more robust hash (SHA-3, if you will) addresses that.

(That paper that was gibberish explains it.)

[p.s. Same with git re. 'copies'. If someone somehow manages to hack the SHA-1 sig for a commit on github for repo x, all the extant clones of the repo still maintain the original records and can challenge it.]