Waterken was the same kind of logic, applied at web API scale.

https://shiftleft.com/mirrors/www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/201...

The failure of this system and the HP ESpeak system are what left the gap which the blockchain smart contract model filled.

I have complex thoughts about that.

Specifically: a globally visible distributed database is a fantastic resource for managing namespaces, as demonstrated by DNS and SSL Certificate Authorities.

But when we start essentially doing _transactions_ by writing into such a database, it starts to look like buying a domain name every time you want to make a credit card payment.

There is an architectural problem here.