Part 2/8:
Zucco opens the conversation by observing that many financial institutions are studying their transaction traffic, realizing that certain traditional blockchain features may be unnecessary. These actors recognize that in permissioned, known, federated networks—where identities are verified and trust is established—proof-of-work mechanisms and blockchain chains might be redundant.
Instead of creating continuous chains of blocks secured by computational effort, these institutions could simply sign each transaction digitally, eliminating the need for blocks altogether. This approach transforms what is traditionally seen as a blockchain into a digital signature-based database, challenging the very notion of what constitutes a blockchain.