[erlang-questions] Blockchain and Erlang

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 9:38 PM, Martin Hedberg <skribent_har@REDACTED>
wrote:

> Anyway  I wonder if the blockchain method of keeping track of every node
> could be applied to a sort of Erlang-blockchain combination? If every
> Erlang node would be a blockchain-like supervisor would that make things
> unnecessary complicated or is there some potential stability to gain?


What property do you want to gain from that? Blockchains are:

* A chain of blocks. Usually where each block sign/content-address its
predecessor
* A proof of work algorithm for producing a new block

The nice property is that the chain allows you to go back in time and ask
about historical data, while providing integrity: the chain opposes
historic rewrites as time passes. They have other nice properties as well,
but I must admit I fail to see where those properties fit into the idea of
supervision. For (loose) consensus it may work, but there are other
algorithms which tend to fare better for this situation, because a typical
Erlang cluster doesn't require the integrity properties of the blockchain.

Note: I don't dismiss the idea, but I fail to see where it is applicable.
Can you possibly elaborate?


-- 
J.
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