The Blockchain in a Historical Perspective

A better title would be <i>Ledgers</i> in historical perspective. The hypothetical he ends with (what if ledgers could be decentralised) is a classic example of blockchains looking for a problem. In recent history have there been examples of banks changing their own ledgers? As a civilisation we have already solved the problem of trust in a much more efficient way.

You may enjoy &quot;Programmable Blockchains in Context&quot; - the 2015 Ethereum launch post. I wrote it when I was release coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;humanizing-the-singularity&#x2F;by-the-end-of-this-article-youre-going-to-understand-blockchains-in-general-and-ethereum-a-next-e11df6a1d7cf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;humanizing-the-singularity&#x2F;by-the-end-of-...</a>

I think if you want to talk historical predecessors to the blockchain, the rai stones of Yap are arguably the closest example. The monetary system embodied by the stones even features proof of work (the value of the stones is derived in part from the enormous effort necessary to hew the stones and move them to their present locations; stones with an interesting history, such as people dying while moving them, are also more valuable) and a distributed ledger (Yapese oral tradition records the present owner and all past owners of the stones; when a stone changes hands, the transaction is simply added to the oral history, much like a blockchain transaction).

Yes, but why were ledgers the first examples of writing? Because it was expensive in the beginning.<p>As blockchain data storage rates decrease, its available applications will increase.<p>Blockchains are innovative because they change the pricing model for web hosting from recurring payments for things like server rental to fully upfront costs for storage and distribution of data.

Going back to ancient Sumer and looking at how ledgers got updated before the blockchain. Remember the blockchain is a shared ledger and related systems have a deep history.