Re: Web 3.0 blockchains

On 12 March 2017 at 00:21, Timothy Holborn <timothy.holborn@gmail.com>
wrote:

> looks like progress.
>
> 1. semantic web is something bigger than RDF.  This is RDF?
>

What it boils down to is that semantic means, machine readable.

It turns out that pretty much all machine readable structured data amounts
to tying key value pairs to a subject.

RDF is a very flexible way to describe this using URIs for naming.

This is actually going the RDF route, but almost all systems can be
expressed as RDF.  The advantage of RDF is that you dont need a translation
step between different systems, which brings you one step closer to interop.


>
> 2. Did Satoshi's paper coin the term 'Blockchain'[1] therein noting the
> abstract;
>
> *Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow
> online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going
> through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the
> solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still
> required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the
> double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network
> timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based
> proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the
> proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence
> of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU
> power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are
> not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain
> and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure.
> Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and
> rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as
> proof of what happened while they were gone.  source: "*Bitcoin: A
> Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"[1]
>

I think it came a bit later:

"Nodes express their acceptance of the block by working on creating the
next *block in the chain*, using the hash of the accepted block as the
previous hash."


>
> 3.  Is this not therefore about RDF Ledgers?  Therein what may be denoted
> by the branding is either 'RDF' or 'linked data' and 'decentralised ledger'
> or 'ledger' (unsure whether its necessary for the thing to be
> decentralised, regardless of the quality of the solution to do so).
>

A block chain derives a ledger.  Meaning, if you add up all the
transactions you get a ledger.  Normally, you do not store the ledger in
the block, so that balances can be verified by miners.  Occasionally some
systems (such as ripple / xrp) do contain balances in blocks, but then you
cannot verify the balances from the transactions, indeed transactions stop
being immutable and you no longer have a block chain, which some (tho not
all!) find to be problematic.

It's putting together alot of concepts into the semantic web which leads to
great interoperability.  Block chains, ledgers, transactions, smart
contracts, ricardian contracts and a lot more.  But translating it to RDF
(which can be done for any system) you are allowing software a greater
chance to work together across different boundaries and domains, leading to
unexpected reuse.


>
> What am i missing here?
>

It turns out that unexpected reuse became the value proposition of the
web.  To date we've not really seen that in payments.  But new innovation
could change that!



>
> [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2017 at 01:54 Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> seeAlso
>>
>> https://www.slideshare.net/bengardner135/semantic-blockchain
>>
>> On 11 March 2017 at 10:42, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Super excited about the (draft) research into web 3.0 block chains
>>
>> IMHO it blows everything else out Ive seen (with possible exception of
>> Manu's work) out of the water
>>
>> Not only block chains, but Linked Blockchains, Ricardian Contracts and
>> Semantic Smart Contracts
>>
>> Ive been waiting for something like this for over 5 years, well done!
>>
>> https://semanticblocks.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/linked_
>> blockchain_paper.pdf
>>
>>
>>
>>