Page 2 — Mutiny BBS, 2:14 AM

MERKLE TREES

Donna: "You can't store every version, Cam." Me: "We don't. We store the root."

Take 8 chat logs. Hash each. Pair them. Hash again. You get one 32-byte root.

leaf1 → a3f9...
leaf2 → 9c12...
      ↘
       parent → 4e...
            ↘
             ROOT

Change one character in 1987, the root in 1989 is different. That's accountability without a server.

At Mutiny we couldn't afford mainframes. So we made the files be the database.