4 ms·

What you say doesn't really disprove my point. Yes you can change to a different algorithm. But the underlying principal is the same. You require participants

What you say doesn't really disprove my point. Yes you can change to a different algorithm. But the underlying principal is the same. You require participants to spend X time in a problem with no shortcuts. Changing the problem does not allow you to bypass this issue. If you choose a problem that requires less time to calculate, you increase the probability that someone spams the network with fake data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system You either have a centralized system that can cheaply tell you if something is legitimate, otherwise this is the only way to protect a decentralized system. To my knowledge, there is no altcoin with any significant amount of use that does not use this principal. Please tell me which altcoins do not use this principal.

Retric 9y ago
If you do 1 transaction every minute then someone needs a ~51% attack to "win" after 10 minutes because without that you will not have the longer chain. Having a protocol that can do 1 minute blocks is hard, but not nessisarily less safe because it's number of clocks * computing power that provides safety not the actual effort a block takes.
placeybordeaux 9y ago
> If you choose a problem that requires less time to calculate, you increase the probability that someone spams the network with fake data. No you just decrease the faith you can put into each confirmation. > You either have a centralized system that can cheaply tell you if something is legitimate, otherwise this is the only way to protect a decentralized system. There are some interesting efforts to create systems that work in complement to the main block chain. One complimentary idea is the lightening network which functions by creating channels that only transact of bitcoins that are currently locked out of the bitcoin system. This eliminates the potential for double spending these bitcoins in a tx with a third party. Once you eliminate the potential for double spending you can do just about whatever you want quickly and off chain. The system is set up to be able to be able to resolve all of the txs that happened off chain when the locked up bitcoins are unlocked. Once many of these channels are established you can start to establish a connection. For instance if I have 12 bitcoins in my own wallet I might keep ~1 BTC locked up to a connection to coinbase. From there they may charge a fraction of what the on chain cost for any tx would be. It'd take a regular on chain fee to establish the connnection, but once it is up the fee and latency should drop dramatically.
- codexon 9y ago
  > Once many of these channels are established you can start to establish a connection. For instance if I have 12 bitcoins in my own wallet I might keep ~1 BTC locked up to a connection to coinbase. This is old news and all you are doing is giving up decentralization to coinbase. The alternative is opening a "lightning channel" to every store which in this case does not solve the slow transaction problem.
deleted 9y ago
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goodside 9y ago
> "To my knowledge, there is no altcoin with any significant amount of use that does not use this principal. Please tell me which altcoins do not use this principal." Ripple, which currently has a market cap of $6.4B USD and $223M USD in 24-hour trading volume, making it the third largest after briefly passing Ethereum for #2 yesterday.
- codexon 9y ago
  Ripple can hardly be called an altcoin. The currency was all premined and seems to only be used by some banks as an alternative to ACH. You need to choose which nodes to trust, which can be a small set of easily compromised nodes. So once again you are trading speed for safety. It seems more like a distributed database with the cryptocurrency slapped on it to make banks think they are getting in on new technology.

Retric 9y ago

If you do 1 transaction every minute then someone needs a ~51% attack to "win" after 10 minutes because without that you will not have the longer chain. Having a protocol that can do 1 minute blocks is hard, but not nessisarily less safe because it's number of clocks * computing power that provides safety not the actual effort a block takes.

placeybordeaux 9y ago

> If you choose a problem that requires less time to calculate, you increase the probability that someone spams the network with fake data. No you just decrease the faith you can put into each confirmation. > You either have a centralized system that can cheaply tell you if something is legitimate, otherwise this is the only way to protect a decentralized system. There are some interesting efforts to create systems that work in complement to the main block chain. One complimentary idea is the lightening network which functions by creating channels that only transact of bitcoins that are currently locked out of the bitcoin system. This eliminates the potential for double spending these bitcoins in a tx with a third party. Once you eliminate the potential for double spending you can do just about whatever you want quickly and off chain. The system is set up to be able to be able to resolve all of the txs that happened off chain when the locked up bitcoins are unlocked. Once many of these channels are established you can start to establish a connection. For instance if I have 12 bitcoins in my own wallet I might keep ~1 BTC locked up to a connection to coinbase. From there they may charge a fraction of what the on chain cost for any tx would be. It'd take a regular on chain fee to establish the connnection, but once it is up the fee and latency should drop dramatically.

codexon 9y ago
> Once many of these channels are established you can start to establish a connection. For instance if I have 12 bitcoins in my own wallet I might keep ~1 BTC locked up to a connection to coinbase. This is old news and all you are doing is giving up decentralization to coinbase. The alternative is opening a "lightning channel" to every store which in this case does not solve the slow transaction problem.

deleted 9y ago

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goodside 9y ago

> "To my knowledge, there is no altcoin with any significant amount of use that does not use this principal. Please tell me which altcoins do not use this principal." Ripple, which currently has a market cap of $6.4B USD and $223M USD in 24-hour trading volume, making it the third largest after briefly passing Ethereum for #2 yesterday.

codexon 9y ago
Ripple can hardly be called an altcoin. The currency was all premined and seems to only be used by some banks as an alternative to ACH. You need to choose which nodes to trust, which can be a small set of easily compromised nodes. So once again you are trading speed for safety. It seems more like a distributed database with the cryptocurrency slapped on it to make banks think they are getting in on new technology.