I wonder how much of the inspiration for these append-only merkle trees of attestations came from blockchains.
We now have certificate transparency and also this that work this way. They seem to be direct logical descendants.
We now have certificate transparency and also this that work this way. They seem to be direct logical descendants.
Also, in my mind at least, the idea for doing secure attestable history comes from git. Once you have a crypto-DAG it's a fairly easy transition into other data structures although ordering becomes an issue with trees. I'm almost sure something else must have existed because it's not a far leap to a crypto-DAG when you are doing things like HMAC.