For a long time, I thought of the blockchain as almost synonymous with cryptocurrencies, so as I saw stuff like “Odyssey” and “lbry” appearing and being “based on the blockchain”, my first thought was that it was another crypto scam. Then, I just got reminded of it and started looking more into it, and it just seemed like regular torrenting. For example, what’s the big innovation separating Odyssey from Peertube, which is also decentralized and also uses P2P? And what part of it does the blockchain really play, that couldn’t be done with regular P2P? More generally, and looking at the futur, does the blockchain offer new possibilities that the fediverse or pre-existing protocols don’t have?
I have Excel spreadsheets at home though and you can be assured that they haven’t changed if you take a hash of them.
In fact, taking cryptographic hashes and signatures of people is automatic with Adobe signature products, and is how I signed for my house mortgage. You know, things that people really don’t want changing or someone doing shenanigans with. Just a click here and a send the .pdf over and… yeah, its not that hard in practice.
Signed, immutable proof of the transaction that nobody can manipulate. It also doesn’t require a legion of ASICs hashing numbers until the end of time. Because your “blockchain” is vulnerable to the 51% attack if the hashrate ever declines precipitously.