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Social consensus is vulnerable to the formation of factions, and only works when everyone is actually united. As we've seen from the 2-party US political system

by Taek 9y ago

Social consensus is vulnerable to the formation of factions, and only works when everyone is actually united. As we've seen from the 2-party US political system to the bch/segwit/segwit2x factions of Bitcoin, achieving social consensus around something is rare. I personally would not want to use social consensus to determine the result of chain turbulence caused by a weakness in the consensus code. If we are going to fall back on social strategies, haven't we forgone the biggest advantage of blockchain in the first place? (the ability to know the state of consensus without needing to trust anyone)

CryptoPunk 9y ago
Social consensus's suitability depends on the use-case. For example, social consensus is used to determine 'what is Bitcoin', and works pretty well for that use (the BCH hard fork notwithstanding). For determining the state of the blockchain at some point in the past, it is probably effective, because the fact unambiguously revealed itself at some point in the past. The trusted sources can even be Trusted Execution Environments that automatically output the state at t minus 3 months. There is very little room for factionalism, given deviating from the truth is so obvious when the whole interested world could see the objective truth three months prior and would have trusted sources they can rely on to relay that fact to them.
- Taek 9y ago
  The problem is that with social consensus you can argue for the way that it should have been in addition to arguing about the way that it was. This is exactly what happened with the DAO. Socially, the Etherum community decided that the DAO attack should not have happened, so they made a new client that required everyone to upgrade, and then they altered history that had actually happened. This of course resulted in two factions, one that disagreed with the change and one that agreed with the change. If you are using Etherum and your client complains that there are two valid histories and then asks you to use social consensus to pick the 'true' history, do you feel confident in the platform? Especially if you know that you have thousands of millions of dollars that you wanted to put into the system.
  - yonilevy 9y ago
    Not taking away from your comment because what you describe could have happened but the DAO hard-fork didn't alter history.
    - Taek 9y ago
      Yes it did. In the unaltered version of events the attacker got away with what would be worth almost a billion dollars today.
      - yonilevy 9y ago
        It didn't alter history. No transactions were reverted. It changed the rules by moving ETH from the attacker-owned contract address to a new contract address from which DAO investors could withdraw their funds. You might say that's semantics but in this technical context it's important, had the HF suggested altering history it would have gained less support IMO.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    Agreeing to use social consensus to enforce the protocol doesn't give a green light to using it to change the protocol. As the DAO and the BCH hard fork showed, having an objective proof of work consensus protocol doesn't protect the blockchain from a social consensus to change the protocol. That being said, depending social consensus to determine what happened could make it more likely that a faction will use it to determine what should have happened. I personally don't think it will make it very likely, given the inertia of the original chain, but we'll see.
edward_monahan 9y ago
Here is the irony in blockchain and computerized value systems in general: value is a collective social phenomenon. There is no way to avoid social consensus when creating a value exchange system between participants. In Bitcoin, it's people who have the biggest computational power decide what happens. In proof-of-stake, it's people with the most money decide what happens. In the latter, you might as well just argue that every country's government be set up as a trusted validator proportional to their population instead of Ethereum early adopters. Cryptocurrencies are a platform attempting to solve the very human issue that value transfer systems are social and emotional. The original concept with Bitcoin was that your money could go from A -> B and no one could stop it -- except for those people who can actually stop it because they have vast amounts of network influence for whatever reason. Notwithstanding, even if you have millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, if someone really wants it badly enough they can probably hit you with a wrench until you reveal your keys. The only thing stopping this is a strong system of property law enforced by someone capable of physically removing you from the rest of society if they deem you to be in violation of social pacts. The only major advantage offered by cryptocurrencies is that at least you can know the numbers appearing in your bank account aren't completely made up by a bureaucrat in an office somewhere. Regardless of your feelings about fiat, you can generally rest assured of this if you buy equities, which are well tracked and actually represent a corporeal stake in some company. So, aside from being a geeky toy and new market for gambling, where has cryptocurrency actually succeeded?
- xorcist 9y ago
  Miners and stakers are bound by the protocol. Their power to "decide what happens" is limited to the ordering of transactions, a subset of which is censoring them. Ordering transactions may sound trivial, but it is what gives the network resistance against double spends. It is not in their power to affect consensus rules such as making money out of thin air or stealing other people's money. In that sense Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrency systems are trustless. It is tempting to trivialize the creation of value in Bitcoin but there is are many diverse interests with an economic incentive to keep each other in check.
  - 9y ago

by Taek 9y ago

CryptoPunk 9y ago

Social consensus's suitability depends on the use-case. For example, social consensus is used to determine 'what is Bitcoin', and works pretty well for that use (the BCH hard fork notwithstanding). For determining the state of the blockchain at some point in the past, it is probably effective, because the fact unambiguously revealed itself at some point in the past. The trusted sources can even be Trusted Execution Environments that automatically output the state at t minus 3 months. There is very little room for factionalism, given deviating from the truth is so obvious when the whole interested world could see the objective truth three months prior and would have trusted sources they can rely on to relay that fact to them.

Taek 9y ago
The problem is that with social consensus you can argue for the way that it should have been in addition to arguing about the way that it was. This is exactly what happened with the DAO. Socially, the Etherum community decided that the DAO attack should not have happened, so they made a new client that required everyone to upgrade, and then they altered history that had actually happened. This of course resulted in two factions, one that disagreed with the change and one that agreed with the change. If you are using Etherum and your client complains that there are two valid histories and then asks you to use social consensus to pick the 'true' history, do you feel confident in the platform? Especially if you know that you have thousands of millions of dollars that you wanted to put into the system.
- yonilevy 9y ago
  Not taking away from your comment because what you describe could have happened but the DAO hard-fork didn't alter history.
  - Taek 9y ago
    Yes it did. In the unaltered version of events the attacker got away with what would be worth almost a billion dollars today.
    - yonilevy 9y ago
      It didn't alter history. No transactions were reverted. It changed the rules by moving ETH from the attacker-owned contract address to a new contract address from which DAO investors could withdraw their funds. You might say that's semantics but in this technical context it's important, had the HF suggested altering history it would have gained less support IMO.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Agreeing to use social consensus to enforce the protocol doesn't give a green light to using it to change the protocol. As the DAO and the BCH hard fork showed, having an objective proof of work consensus protocol doesn't protect the blockchain from a social consensus to change the protocol. That being said, depending social consensus to determine what happened could make it more likely that a faction will use it to determine what should have happened. I personally don't think it will make it very likely, given the inertia of the original chain, but we'll see.

edward_monahan 9y ago

Here is the irony in blockchain and computerized value systems in general: value is a collective social phenomenon. There is no way to avoid social consensus when creating a value exchange system between participants. In Bitcoin, it's people who have the biggest computational power decide what happens. In proof-of-stake, it's people with the most money decide what happens. In the latter, you might as well just argue that every country's government be set up as a trusted validator proportional to their population instead of Ethereum early adopters. Cryptocurrencies are a platform attempting to solve the very human issue that value transfer systems are social and emotional. The original concept with Bitcoin was that your money could go from A -> B and no one could stop it -- except for those people who can actually stop it because they have vast amounts of network influence for whatever reason. Notwithstanding, even if you have millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, if someone really wants it badly enough they can probably hit you with a wrench until you reveal your keys. The only thing stopping this is a strong system of property law enforced by someone capable of physically removing you from the rest of society if they deem you to be in violation of social pacts. The only major advantage offered by cryptocurrencies is that at least you can know the numbers appearing in your bank account aren't completely made up by a bureaucrat in an office somewhere. Regardless of your feelings about fiat, you can generally rest assured of this if you buy equities, which are well tracked and actually represent a corporeal stake in some company. So, aside from being a geeky toy and new market for gambling, where has cryptocurrency actually succeeded?

xorcist 9y ago
Miners and stakers are bound by the protocol. Their power to "decide what happens" is limited to the ordering of transactions, a subset of which is censoring them. Ordering transactions may sound trivial, but it is what gives the network resistance against double spends. It is not in their power to affect consensus rules such as making money out of thin air or stealing other people's money. In that sense Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrency systems are trustless. It is tempting to trivialize the creation of value in Bitcoin but there is are many diverse interests with an economic incentive to keep each other in check.
- 9y ago