6 ms·

Its amazing to me it took 15 years to go from hashcash to Bitcoin. I think it speaks to the strangeness of Bitcoin, and its niche idealogical underpinnings. Bit

Its amazing to me it took 15 years to go from hashcash to Bitcoin. I think it speaks to the strangeness of Bitcoin, and its niche idealogical underpinnings. Bitcoin solved a problem that most of the people never thought about. Yet if you're looking to solve Bitcoin's problem set, calibrated hashcash to secure a ledger seems completely obvious. I also thought that Bitcoin's asic-vulnerability (and thus mining centralization) would be fatal. It turned out to be not fatal (yet), but thats not something which could be determined on paper. It needed real-world use before people knew if it could work or not.

wmf 9y ago
One of the points of the article is that the field wasn't idle during those 15 years; bit gold, b-money, and Finney's RPOW made incremental improvements on hashcash that led to Bitcoin. Also, Bitcoin is kind of a "dirty" solution to the consensus problem; if all the academics were looking for an elegant solution it's not surprising that they didn't discover it.
- Marazan 9y ago
  The repeated claim that Bitcoin came up with a totally new and unknown way of solving the problem always irks me. Everyone keeping a complete history of all actions is, like, consensus 101. Research is based around not having to do that.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    That wasn't the key insight -- it was the idea that you could get a working solution under the assumption that 50%+1 of the hashing power is from honest nodes as long as those nodes agreed to coordinate on the ledger with the most proven work invested in it.
  - lemonycracket 9y ago
    You do realize that everything is pretty much re-used and not new? 99.99% of all creation is Synthetic. The other 0.01% is very rare and looks more like abstract art.
- mbrock 9y ago
  I mentioned to an academic computer scientist that I worked with blockchains. He immediately asked "So these blockchains, how do they do consensus? Isn't it some kind of majority vote?" I said "Well, kind of, in combination with economic incentives to follow the longest chain." He just said "Well, come on! That's the whole problem! That's not a solution!" or something like that. Not impressed at all!
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Bitcoin does not meet the requirements identified by the academic community for a usable digital currency. On the other hand, it works (while nothing that came out of academia in this area ever has). Infer from that what you will. It would be nice if science had a term for its equivalent of "outsider art."
colordrops 9y ago
"asic-vulnerability" is actually an asset. If Bitcoin were mined with CPUs or GPUs, any large organization or government could just point their computing power at Bitcoin and disrupt it.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  > any large organization or government China is already well on their way to doing this, with Jihan Wu and the emergence of larger mining 'cartels'.
- CyberDildonics 9y ago
  Should I really explain why that doesn't make sense? With GPUs or CPUs individuals can outweigh large organizations. With ASICs, the 'many' are far less because the barrier to entry is so high, so the many can't easily outweigh the few and centralization occurs.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    Don't be condescending. There are a couple more factors at play that make this more nuanced. First is that entering the ASIC field requires more time and economic outlay, so it's not something an attacker will do overnight. Also, it removes anonymity from an attacker as it's hard to hide the source of a large ASIC farm. Lastly, because of the investment in time and money, the existing well known players are not incentivized to turn their farms into attack vectors. I do recognize that the gov of China could force all miners there to do that, but I didn't claim that ASICs made BTC invulnerable, only that they are safer than CPU/GPU mining.
    - CyberDildonics 9y ago
      > it removes anonymity from an attacker as it's hard to hide the source of a large ASIC farm This has already been shown to be untrue, an anonymous pool has mined both bitcoin cash and the segwit bitcoin chains.
  - xorcist 9y ago
SilasX 9y ago
Hashcash was still missing a major piece: the idea of the blockchain as a solution to Byzantine fault tolerance.
- EthanHeilman 9y ago
  Yes, this is the Satoshi idea. PoW to create consensus in an unpermissioned and open system.

wmf 9y ago

One of the points of the article is that the field wasn't idle during those 15 years; bit gold, b-money, and Finney's RPOW made incremental improvements on hashcash that led to Bitcoin. Also, Bitcoin is kind of a "dirty" solution to the consensus problem; if all the academics were looking for an elegant solution it's not surprising that they didn't discover it.

Marazan 9y ago
The repeated claim that Bitcoin came up with a totally new and unknown way of solving the problem always irks me. Everyone keeping a complete history of all actions is, like, consensus 101. Research is based around not having to do that.
- SilasX 9y ago
  That wasn't the key insight -- it was the idea that you could get a working solution under the assumption that 50%+1 of the hashing power is from honest nodes as long as those nodes agreed to coordinate on the ledger with the most proven work invested in it.
- lemonycracket 9y ago
  You do realize that everything is pretty much re-used and not new? 99.99% of all creation is Synthetic. The other 0.01% is very rare and looks more like abstract art.
mbrock 9y ago
I mentioned to an academic computer scientist that I worked with blockchains. He immediately asked "So these blockchains, how do they do consensus? Isn't it some kind of majority vote?" I said "Well, kind of, in combination with economic incentives to follow the longest chain." He just said "Well, come on! That's the whole problem! That's not a solution!" or something like that. Not impressed at all!
- kobeya 9y ago
  Bitcoin does not meet the requirements identified by the academic community for a usable digital currency. On the other hand, it works (while nothing that came out of academia in this area ever has). Infer from that what you will. It would be nice if science had a term for its equivalent of "outsider art."

colordrops 9y ago

"asic-vulnerability" is actually an asset. If Bitcoin were mined with CPUs or GPUs, any large organization or government could just point their computing power at Bitcoin and disrupt it.

jameskegel 9y ago
> any large organization or government China is already well on their way to doing this, with Jihan Wu and the emergence of larger mining 'cartels'.
CyberDildonics 9y ago
Should I really explain why that doesn't make sense? With GPUs or CPUs individuals can outweigh large organizations. With ASICs, the 'many' are far less because the barrier to entry is so high, so the many can't easily outweigh the few and centralization occurs.
- colordrops 9y ago
  Don't be condescending. There are a couple more factors at play that make this more nuanced. First is that entering the ASIC field requires more time and economic outlay, so it's not something an attacker will do overnight. Also, it removes anonymity from an attacker as it's hard to hide the source of a large ASIC farm. Lastly, because of the investment in time and money, the existing well known players are not incentivized to turn their farms into attack vectors. I do recognize that the gov of China could force all miners there to do that, but I didn't claim that ASICs made BTC invulnerable, only that they are safer than CPU/GPU mining.
  - CyberDildonics 9y ago
    > it removes anonymity from an attacker as it's hard to hide the source of a large ASIC farm This has already been shown to be untrue, an anonymous pool has mined both bitcoin cash and the segwit bitcoin chains.
- xorcist 9y ago

SilasX 9y ago

Hashcash was still missing a major piece: the idea of the blockchain as a solution to Byzantine fault tolerance.

EthanHeilman 9y ago
Yes, this is the Satoshi idea. PoW to create consensus in an unpermissioned and open system.