This one is particularly funny.

Adding “the blockchain” to a factual claim doesn’t make it any more or less true than it already is.

Sure, a cryptographic signature can at least prove that an article was written by who it claims to be written by, and they’re perfect for this application — but cryptographic signatures pre-date the blockchain by decades.

Cryptographic signatures are extremely light. A blockchain, on the other hand, is extremely consumptive of resources because everything has to be copied to every node. Considering that the blockchain does solve a really hard problem — the consensus problem — that’s reasonable. But there is no consensus problem here.

I see literally zero advantage of using “the blockchain” in this application. I think that, like so many other organizations, the Times wants to be 100% buzzword compatible.