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Blockchains, Teens and Hedge-Fund Hotels

• nissimk 11y ago
  1) Innovation of bitcoin is proof of work, not a chain of blocks. 2) credit crunch for unicorns is troubling. we should all be worried about where this can lead.
  • wraithm112 11y ago
    > Innovation of bitcoin is proof of work, not a chain of blocks. Proof of work was invented in the late 90s by Adam Back. The consensus algorithm using proof of work and a blockchain is what Bitcoin brought to the world.
    • brighton36 11y ago
      Adam would say that the difficulty calibration was the innovation satoshi brought, as most everything else existed elsewhere in some capacity
    • onnoonno 11y ago
      > Proof of work was invented in the late 90s by Adam Back. The consensus algorithm using proof of work and a blockchain is what Bitcoin brought to the world. Wikipedia disagrees: > The concept may have been first presented by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in a 1993 journal article. Adam Back invented hash cash as one form of POW.
      • wraithm112 11y ago
        True, I was wrong. Thank you for the correction.
• brighton36 11y ago
  These non-work blockchains are really scammy. Anyone around here have a journaled database that's not selling? Call it a blockchain, and wall street will open its wallets.
  • jaekwon 11y ago
    I can't speak for anything else out there, but Tendermint is about providing real accountable BFT middleware. https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/wiki/Byzantine-Consensus-Algorithm https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/wiki/Byzantine-Cons... Calling this a journaled database is an understatement.
    • brighton36 11y ago
      Hello jaekwon :)
  • kakoni 11y ago
    So this blockchain is called hyperledger [1]. According to coindesk; "Digital Asset said Hyperledger includes a "prototype implementation" of the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus module, which would serve as an alternative to the mining process." [2] [1] https://www.hyperledger.org/ https://www.hyperledger.org/ [2] http://www.coindesk.com/digital-asset-new-details-hyperledger-blockchain-platform/ http://www.coindesk.com/digital-asset-new-details-hyperledge...
  • jhallenworld 11y ago
    It seems that they don't really need blockchains (meaning fault tolerant consensus algorithms). I'm doubtful that these networks would be truly open, that they would allow untrusted partners on it. Auditing and logging should be enough. What they really need is peer to peer protocol standards for clearing. "Blockchain" seems to be enabling a discussion on this.
  • troymc 11y ago
    Algorithms/protocols to solve the consensus problem in the presence of arbitrary "Byzantine" faults have been around for a long time (since the 1980s, at least e.g. [1]), and they keep getting better. Make the network closed-access (i.e. where the owners of all nodes are known/approved), and voila, you've also got resistance to Sybil attacks. The end result is something with blockchain characteristics, but at lower computational cost than Proof-of-Work. Maybe that's not something everyone wants, but banks do. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#reaching http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...
• kchoudhu 11y ago
  Does anyone trust back office developers at major banks to implement a cohesive, industrywide blockchain-based replacement for 30 or 40 years of settlement and clearance technology? I sure as hell don't, and I work in the space: we'll get too distracted writing AbstractBlockchainFactoryFactories to do right by the problem.
  • diskcat 11y ago
    You don't have to trust them. That's the great thing about the free market.
    • danharaj 11y ago
      Transaction costs are non-trivial and determine in large part the structure of a market.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • nstj 11y ago
    > AbstractBlockchainFactoryFactories scary but true
  • mring33621 11y ago
    That's not really fair to our AbstractBlockchainProxyDelegate!
    • nstj 11y ago
      Cue the creation of the "Satoshi Pattern"
      • kchoudhu 11y ago
        I believe you are looking for the term 'ponzi scheme'
  • ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
• Animats 11y ago
  I'm surprised DTC is pushing this. If it catches on, DTC becomes obsolete. DTC is a centralized clearing house not tied to any single bank. That's the traditional way to get a combined ledger between mistrustful parties. Maybe that's why DTC wants to control the technology. What they're apparently doing first is applying a distributed ledger to some kinds of big, reasonably infrequent trades that are currently a headache.
  • trhway 11y ago
    >centralized clearing house not tied to any single bank. That's the traditional way to get a combined ledger between mistrustful parties. somehow reminded about opening pages of Cryptonomicon describing an alternative to centralized clearing house. I think that the new block-chain tech being developed by the banks would look and feel surprisingly pretty much the same as the one described by NS :)
• _jeb_ 11y ago
  I'm interested to hear Digital Asset's explanation of why a blockchain is an appropriate technical tradeoff in an industry with a central clearinghouse.
  • tristanj 11y ago
    They've written a whitepaper explaining their reasoning, listing over a dozen benefits. https://www.finextra.com/finextra-downloads/newsdocs/embracing%20disruption%20white%20paper_final_jan-16.pdf https://www.finextra.com/finextra-downloads/newsdocs/embraci...
  • fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    It's what happens when you have very vocal team members with zeal for shoehorning a particular technology.
• bboreham 11y ago
  > DLT may be able to provide regulators with visibility into the trading portfolios of swaps counterparties that they lacked during the financial crisis and that Dodd-Frank mandated. Err, except, as you said, Dodd-Frank mandated that visibility, and banks have been reporting their swap portfolios for around 3 years.