Pseudo-Useful Contributions to the Blockchain Space
Specifically this can be seen here in this whitepaper by Alin Tomescu: https://people.csail.mit.edu/alinush/papers/catena-sp2017.pdf
What the Paper is About
(you won't believe this idea here)
The paper goes into somewhat of a droning shpill at its outset about 'equivocation' on the blockchain (think the term that they're looking for here would be better encapsulated within the idea of 'finality').
They make the correct deduction that if one were to anchor an identity / concept to an underlying blockchain (i.e., 'Bitcoin'), then one would be forced to download the entire chain (in order to retain the property of trustlessness conferred by Bitcoin)
So (rather than fixing Bitcoin - because nobody ever wants to fucking do that), this individuals proposed to create "logs" that abstract from the Bitcoin network by building another layer over top of it in some sort of capcity.
No Trustless Consensus - No Benefit
The benefit of blockchain = trustless consensus.
Do anything that mitigates, reduces, hampers, etc., that process should be considered something that's not wholly blockchain.
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