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Blockchains in their original design were special because they could resist contentious changes in the event of political turmoil. Bitcoin protects users agains

by Taek 9y ago

Blockchains in their original design were special because they could resist contentious changes in the event of political turmoil. Bitcoin protects users against hyperinflation chosen by a ruling elite trying to fund a war, for example. Bitcoin is a money that doesn't grant massive economic power to a controlling authority. The US has massive global influence derived from its status as the global reserve currency. Using bitcoin does not grant that power to anyone, and therefore could be argued as a better base for a global currency. Namespace stuff is exciting for the same reason. Today there are powers and squatters and authorities that can decide if you get the right to a domain. This is inherently political for contentious names and sites. Decentralization isolates you from these risks. Blockchain 2.0 has spoiled this quite a bit by running things like a startup and essentially giving full control to the founding team. I think most people who are newer to the blockchain space completely miss the advantages of a system that is extremely difficult to change.

shandor 9y ago
I keep hearing about an inherent problem in this capability to "resist contentious changes". In dark corners it keeps whispered that if any one entity gets control over 50% of the mining capacity, they can essentially decide the "immutable truth" in the blockchain. Is there any merit to that scenario, or is it complete bogus? And if it's true, how come it's not more openly discussed? I guess what I'm asking is if things like the hard fork of The DAO Ethereum blockchain are actually a fundamentally solved problem. Stuff like that happening when our banking infrastructure has moved to a blockchain sounds like a disaster.
- doomrobo 9y ago
  You listed two forms of control: social and computational. The latter is baked into Bitcoin and we rely on the assumption that no single entity will control >50% of the computing power of the network. This situation being "bad" is purely a consequence of the construction of the blockchain. On the other hand, the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain. But because there is a single overwhelmingly popular ethereum client, the developers had the ability to make the software obey the fork by default. A referendum was conducted in good faith, and the devs flipped the switch. But again, this was only possible because everyone was using the same client to begin with, and few people bother to change the default behavior.
  - jerguismi 9y ago
    The current segwit non-adoption by miners in Bitcoin shows that with Bitcoin there clearly isn't as much social control as in ethereum. This can be bad or good, depending on viewpoint. I myself doubt that segwit will ever get adopted in bitcoin. It looks like even if a small group of actors want to block some change, they can. So that will mean that the protocol will remain pretty much the same with the good and the bad features.
  - shandor 9y ago
    > the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain I'm not very well-versed in computational power requirements on this scale, but it doesn't sound at all infeasible that a nation state (or a couple in unison) could setup a "51% attack", thus reducing the social form of control back to only the computational one. And if anything, that threat is only going to become worse with ever-increasing computational capability, advent of quantum computers at some point, etc. Nations (and other huge players) have the resources to tap into all that new power, while the individuals ideally making up the bulk of a blockchain's computing power would most probably not, at least not in big enough scale. I don't see how that could be prevented, and that leaves me somewhat confused on why the blockchain is advertised as "immutable" as it is.
- Taek 9y ago
  It depends on the blockchain. If you run your own full node in Bitcoin, it doesn't matter what the majority hashrate is doing. If they aren't creating blocks that follow your specific rules, you can ignore them. A 51% attack cannot change the block size, for example. The ethereum ecosystem has placed a lot of trust in the ethereum foundation, plus the foundation controls a large percentage of the fully validating nodes, and is in close contact with all major miners, exchanges, etc. For this reason they are much more able to push through contentious changes. This is provably not the case in Bitcoin, as demonstrated by the active segwit vs. hardfork political deadlock.
- hdhzy 9y ago
  > In dark corners it keeps whispered that if any one entity gets control over 50% of the mining capacity, they can essentially decide the "immutable truth" in the blockchain. Having >50% hashing capacity allows you to arbitrarily select which transactions will or won't be confirmed. Additionally you can perform double-spends, that is the most important thing (in my opinion) that proof of work was supposed to prevent. Of course with more confirmations this attack becomes more and more expensive to execute. For details see Majority Attack [0] page on Bitcoin wiki. [0]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack
oculusthrift 9y ago
yeah, ask people during the great depression how much they liked the fact that the lack of a central bank left them unable to mitigate the damage. there's a reason central banks exist and it's not just a globalist conspiracy.
- Taek 9y ago
  The great depression was triggered not in small part by irresponsible fractional reserve banking. With bitcoin, there is no such thing. Your coins belong to you, and you can be certain that someone else has not already withdrawn them.
abalone 9y ago
It is ludicrous to assert that Bitcoin protects users against "turmoil". Bitcoin is extremely tumultuous. Still waiting to hear that compelling use case.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  I'm not as technically versed in this stuff as it appears many people are here, but the use case for blockchain tech (not necessarily Bitcoin, though not necessarily excluding Bitcoin) may include, but not necessarily be limited to, currency. If I had more time I could elucidate on specific use cases, but I'll list some existing attempts. For example: * The recent foundation of the EEA[1] for the express purpose of developing with the existing public Ethereum chain and the development of other technologies that utilize both the public and private chains. * Toyota experimenting with Oaken Innovations[2] utilizing blockchian tech (not mentioned is that this would involve an Ethereum blockchain[3]. * Maybe less notably, Kik recently adopted the Ethereum public blockchain as the foundation for their own internal token "Kin". The results of that experiment are yet to be seen.[4] * Two of Canada's largest banks (TD, and RBC) have partnered with IBM on a project to experiment with using blockchain tech in a new identification system.[5] There's likely more. I find it fascinating. But I guess my point being that for better or for worse there are most definitely use cases being tested, especially outside the use as a direct currency using currently established blockchain networks, no less. [1] https://entethalliance.org/ https://entethalliance.org/ [2] http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/toyota-exploring-blockchain-for-driverless-cars-partnering-with-firms-including-torontos-oaken-innovations http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/toyota... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-22/toyota-merck-join-ethereum-group-to-build-blockchain-network https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-22/toyota-me... [4] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/kik-launches-ethereum-blockchain-cryptocurrency-kin-token.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/kik-launches-ethereum-blockch... [5] http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/canadas-big-banks-testing-toronto-based-digital-identity-network-powered-by-blockchain http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/canadas-big...

by Taek 9y ago

shandor 9y ago

I keep hearing about an inherent problem in this capability to "resist contentious changes". In dark corners it keeps whispered that if any one entity gets control over 50% of the mining capacity, they can essentially decide the "immutable truth" in the blockchain. Is there any merit to that scenario, or is it complete bogus? And if it's true, how come it's not more openly discussed? I guess what I'm asking is if things like the hard fork of The DAO Ethereum blockchain are actually a fundamentally solved problem. Stuff like that happening when our banking infrastructure has moved to a blockchain sounds like a disaster.

doomrobo 9y ago
You listed two forms of control: social and computational. The latter is baked into Bitcoin and we rely on the assumption that no single entity will control >50% of the computing power of the network. This situation being "bad" is purely a consequence of the construction of the blockchain. On the other hand, the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain. But because there is a single overwhelmingly popular ethereum client, the developers had the ability to make the software obey the fork by default. A referendum was conducted in good faith, and the devs flipped the switch. But again, this was only possible because everyone was using the same client to begin with, and few people bother to change the default behavior.
- jerguismi 9y ago
  The current segwit non-adoption by miners in Bitcoin shows that with Bitcoin there clearly isn't as much social control as in ethereum. This can be bad or good, depending on viewpoint. I myself doubt that segwit will ever get adopted in bitcoin. It looks like even if a small group of actors want to block some change, they can. So that will mean that the protocol will remain pretty much the same with the good and the bad features.
- shandor 9y ago
  > the DAO fork was a result of centralized control due to social factors. As with bitcoin, a >50% consensus is necessary to fork a blockchain I'm not very well-versed in computational power requirements on this scale, but it doesn't sound at all infeasible that a nation state (or a couple in unison) could setup a "51% attack", thus reducing the social form of control back to only the computational one. And if anything, that threat is only going to become worse with ever-increasing computational capability, advent of quantum computers at some point, etc. Nations (and other huge players) have the resources to tap into all that new power, while the individuals ideally making up the bulk of a blockchain's computing power would most probably not, at least not in big enough scale. I don't see how that could be prevented, and that leaves me somewhat confused on why the blockchain is advertised as "immutable" as it is.
Taek 9y ago
It depends on the blockchain. If you run your own full node in Bitcoin, it doesn't matter what the majority hashrate is doing. If they aren't creating blocks that follow your specific rules, you can ignore them. A 51% attack cannot change the block size, for example. The ethereum ecosystem has placed a lot of trust in the ethereum foundation, plus the foundation controls a large percentage of the fully validating nodes, and is in close contact with all major miners, exchanges, etc. For this reason they are much more able to push through contentious changes. This is provably not the case in Bitcoin, as demonstrated by the active segwit vs. hardfork political deadlock.
hdhzy 9y ago
> In dark corners it keeps whispered that if any one entity gets control over 50% of the mining capacity, they can essentially decide the "immutable truth" in the blockchain. Having >50% hashing capacity allows you to arbitrarily select which transactions will or won't be confirmed. Additionally you can perform double-spends, that is the most important thing (in my opinion) that proof of work was supposed to prevent. Of course with more confirmations this attack becomes more and more expensive to execute. For details see Majority Attack [0] page on Bitcoin wiki. [0]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack

oculusthrift 9y ago

yeah, ask people during the great depression how much they liked the fact that the lack of a central bank left them unable to mitigate the damage. there's a reason central banks exist and it's not just a globalist conspiracy.

Taek 9y ago
The great depression was triggered not in small part by irresponsible fractional reserve banking. With bitcoin, there is no such thing. Your coins belong to you, and you can be certain that someone else has not already withdrawn them.

abalone 9y ago

It is ludicrous to assert that Bitcoin protects users against "turmoil". Bitcoin is extremely tumultuous. Still waiting to hear that compelling use case.

52-6F-62 9y ago
I'm not as technically versed in this stuff as it appears many people are here, but the use case for blockchain tech (not necessarily Bitcoin, though not necessarily excluding Bitcoin) may include, but not necessarily be limited to, currency. If I had more time I could elucidate on specific use cases, but I'll list some existing attempts. For example: * The recent foundation of the EEA[1] for the express purpose of developing with the existing public Ethereum chain and the development of other technologies that utilize both the public and private chains. * Toyota experimenting with Oaken Innovations[2] utilizing blockchian tech (not mentioned is that this would involve an Ethereum blockchain[3]. * Maybe less notably, Kik recently adopted the Ethereum public blockchain as the foundation for their own internal token "Kin". The results of that experiment are yet to be seen.[4] * Two of Canada's largest banks (TD, and RBC) have partnered with IBM on a project to experiment with using blockchain tech in a new identification system.[5] There's likely more. I find it fascinating. But I guess my point being that for better or for worse there are most definitely use cases being tested, especially outside the use as a direct currency using currently established blockchain networks, no less. [1] https://entethalliance.org/ https://entethalliance.org/ [2] http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/toyota-exploring-blockchain-for-driverless-cars-partnering-with-firms-including-torontos-oaken-innovations http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/toyota... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-22/toyota-merck-join-ethereum-group-to-build-blockchain-network https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-22/toyota-me... [4] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/kik-launches-ethereum-blockchain-cryptocurrency-kin-token.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/25/kik-launches-ethereum-blockch... [5] http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/canadas-big-banks-testing-toronto-based-digital-identity-network-powered-by-blockchain http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/canadas-big...