3 ms·

> What was novel about Satoshi's vision was POW races over the commit rights with enough smarts around how folks would accept blocks. But even then that's a gam

> What was novel about Satoshi's vision was POW races over the commit rights with enough smarts around how folks would accept blocks. But even then that's a game theoretical way to build the consensus. Like i said, people think of different things when they say blockchain so I don't blame you or anyone. I'm just pointing out the phenomenon. Even the most passionate cryptocurrency evangelists seem to have different ideas on what they think "blockchain" is when you watch their speeches. As you pointed out, the PoW approach to commit rights to a canonical ledger that's distributed is what's novel about this. Some people think this "canonical ledger" concept is not part of what blockchain is, some people do. No one is right or wrong because it's just semantics. When you compare Git to blockchain you are comparing just the data structure aspect, and I'm trying to point out that some people define blockchain as the distributed ledger network itself, which is where the confusion comes from.

KirinDave 9y ago
> When you compare Git to blockchain you are comparing just the data structure aspect Not really, though. While the git client chooses not to verify it continuously, github does. This is a very powerful feature of git, the history of code is difficult to alter once held (especially if you use modern variants of git that use a secure hash). In a very real sense, git is a blockchain and it's strictly incorrect to suggest that you need an unproven POW game theoretic system designed by an anonymous dude with a fake japanese name. > No one is right or wrong because it's just semantics. Why is it that people cheerfully offer this when called out on blockchains but think I'm being improper for calling Etherium an obvious ponzi scheme designed to enable a bunch of quasi-legal and obviously scammy ICOs and then not have to issue refunds even as the ICO folks get fined and outlawed? > some people define blockchain as the distributed ledger network itself Some people are just using words in a very wrong way. This is technology, not postmodernist social theory. Even if it was postmodernist, the people using these words in this way are just wrong and not speaking to the academic or even industry consensus. "Blockchain" is "web 2.0". It actually meant something specific for a short period and then marketers got ahold of it and it was basically a non-word.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Even as you pointed out, "git" is a decentralized version tracking system, and "github" is a centralized website that hosts it. In this case it's pretty clear where git starts and ends. however bitcoin blockchain is a data structure AND a network. And the innovative part is that it manages to stay decentralized (unlike github) while keeping a single canonical ledger. This has nothing to do with postmodernist societal theory, it's a fact. Also I'm not sure if you actually took a look at the code and ran a node and hacked around with a bitcoin wallet, but from my experience there's a lot more to Bitcoin blockchain than your simplified version of what it is. > In a very real sense, git is a blockchain Let me bite and go into technical details and argue with you. Even if we're talking on a purely data structure level, git is NOT a "block" chain. There's a clear reason why blockchain had to use the "block" structure to group transactions together instead of chaining them individually. Thinking git is a blockchain is as ridiculous as saying anything that uses this type of linked list structure is a blockchain. Finally, let's not bring in these ludicrous ICO stuff into this argument. I am as much of a skeptic as you about these scams, but just because there are many scams out there, doesn't mean that the original technology is not a work of genius. If you really think it is not, then I recommend you actually reading the white paper, running a node, and looking into the code. I bet you will realize what you've been skeptical about is nothing more than what the ignorant media have been hyping up, but not the actual technology. p.s. Note that i'm the GP of this entire thread which you commented to, so I am as cynical as--probably more than yourself--about people using the term for marketing purposes.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > however bitcoin blockchain is a data structure AND a network. And the innovative part is that it manages to stay decentralized (unlike github) while keeping a single canonical ledger. This has nothing to do with postmodernist societal theory, it's a fact. But it's not true. Neither the blockchain nor the POW hashes assert consensus. What asserts consensus is technically fear of losing money and the desire to make more money. PoW blockchains only work so long as a majority of computing power in the system is not hostile. Let me reiterate: THE BLOCKCHAIN DOES NOT ASSERT DISTRIBUTED CONSENSUS AND THE POW HASH JUST DEFINES WHO CAN "PLAY" THE MINER GAME AS A SMALLER SUBSET OF INVESTED PEOPLE. That is fact. This is why distributed system engineers are very eye-rolley about the ide seea that the blockchain has a Byzantine problem solution. It really doesn't, it just bribes them. As long as those bribes work for a majority of the generals, the system moves one step forward. This is fundamentally different from other algorithms in the space, and does fundamentally different things. > git is NOT a "block" chain. There's a clear reason why blockchain had to use the "block" structure to group transactions together instead of chaining them individually. Squashed commits exist, dude. And quite often Bitcoin's chain has short lived forks. Heck, it's even got a long-lived fork. The folks with merge rights are your miners in this system. You could also make an analgoue to POS chain systems where the stake is not a majority share of currency but some sort of community mandate or grant. What's funny to me: cryptocurrency is moving away from Bitcoin's model and towards the POS world rapidly. What's more, people are redefining "stake" in exotic and exciting ways besides Victorian-era money worship models. > Thinking git is a blockchain is as ridiculous as saying anything that uses this type of linked list structure is a blockchain. A blockchain is just a Merkle Tree. The "genius" you're so lovingly referring to with Bitcoin is the game theoretic part of Bitcoin. The technical parts are ancient. It's worth noting that there are lots of attacks that would count as Byzantine faults that neither POW nor POS shared consensus models can handle. > I recommend you actually reading the white paper, running a node, and looking into the code. I bet you will realize what you've been skeptical about is nothing more than what the ignorant media have been hyping up, but not the actual technology. I've written them. They're the kind of thing I write over a few glasses of whiskey when the family is away. It was boring. They're not hard unless you're writing them in some crazy makework language like C or Go. The most exciting parts of cryptocurrency are how we start redefining shared value in a way that offers some of the adaptive benefits of capitalist markets while still offering societally confirmed limits. The thing that really strikes me about your (and so many other people's) misunderstanding of cryptocurrency is that you have conflated the notion of machine consensus with human consensus. At the speed of the current Bitcoin network, machine consensus is an old and solved problem. A boring problem. What the Bitcoin paper is about is a system that builds human consensus. That's a trickier problem.

KirinDave 9y ago

> When you compare Git to blockchain you are comparing just the data structure aspect Not really, though. While the git client chooses not to verify it continuously, github does. This is a very powerful feature of git, the history of code is difficult to alter once held (especially if you use modern variants of git that use a secure hash). In a very real sense, git is a blockchain and it's strictly incorrect to suggest that you need an unproven POW game theoretic system designed by an anonymous dude with a fake japanese name. > No one is right or wrong because it's just semantics. Why is it that people cheerfully offer this when called out on blockchains but think I'm being improper for calling Etherium an obvious ponzi scheme designed to enable a bunch of quasi-legal and obviously scammy ICOs and then not have to issue refunds even as the ICO folks get fined and outlawed? > some people define blockchain as the distributed ledger network itself Some people are just using words in a very wrong way. This is technology, not postmodernist social theory. Even if it was postmodernist, the people using these words in this way are just wrong and not speaking to the academic or even industry consensus. "Blockchain" is "web 2.0". It actually meant something specific for a short period and then marketers got ahold of it and it was basically a non-word.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Even as you pointed out, "git" is a decentralized version tracking system, and "github" is a centralized website that hosts it. In this case it's pretty clear where git starts and ends. however bitcoin blockchain is a data structure AND a network. And the innovative part is that it manages to stay decentralized (unlike github) while keeping a single canonical ledger. This has nothing to do with postmodernist societal theory, it's a fact. Also I'm not sure if you actually took a look at the code and ran a node and hacked around with a bitcoin wallet, but from my experience there's a lot more to Bitcoin blockchain than your simplified version of what it is. > In a very real sense, git is a blockchain Let me bite and go into technical details and argue with you. Even if we're talking on a purely data structure level, git is NOT a "block" chain. There's a clear reason why blockchain had to use the "block" structure to group transactions together instead of chaining them individually. Thinking git is a blockchain is as ridiculous as saying anything that uses this type of linked list structure is a blockchain. Finally, let's not bring in these ludicrous ICO stuff into this argument. I am as much of a skeptic as you about these scams, but just because there are many scams out there, doesn't mean that the original technology is not a work of genius. If you really think it is not, then I recommend you actually reading the white paper, running a node, and looking into the code. I bet you will realize what you've been skeptical about is nothing more than what the ignorant media have been hyping up, but not the actual technology. p.s. Note that i'm the GP of this entire thread which you commented to, so I am as cynical as--probably more than yourself--about people using the term for marketing purposes.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > however bitcoin blockchain is a data structure AND a network. And the innovative part is that it manages to stay decentralized (unlike github) while keeping a single canonical ledger. This has nothing to do with postmodernist societal theory, it's a fact. But it's not true. Neither the blockchain nor the POW hashes assert consensus. What asserts consensus is technically fear of losing money and the desire to make more money. PoW blockchains only work so long as a majority of computing power in the system is not hostile. Let me reiterate: THE BLOCKCHAIN DOES NOT ASSERT DISTRIBUTED CONSENSUS AND THE POW HASH JUST DEFINES WHO CAN "PLAY" THE MINER GAME AS A SMALLER SUBSET OF INVESTED PEOPLE. That is fact. This is why distributed system engineers are very eye-rolley about the ide seea that the blockchain has a Byzantine problem solution. It really doesn't, it just bribes them. As long as those bribes work for a majority of the generals, the system moves one step forward. This is fundamentally different from other algorithms in the space, and does fundamentally different things. > git is NOT a "block" chain. There's a clear reason why blockchain had to use the "block" structure to group transactions together instead of chaining them individually. Squashed commits exist, dude. And quite often Bitcoin's chain has short lived forks. Heck, it's even got a long-lived fork. The folks with merge rights are your miners in this system. You could also make an analgoue to POS chain systems where the stake is not a majority share of currency but some sort of community mandate or grant. What's funny to me: cryptocurrency is moving away from Bitcoin's model and towards the POS world rapidly. What's more, people are redefining "stake" in exotic and exciting ways besides Victorian-era money worship models. > Thinking git is a blockchain is as ridiculous as saying anything that uses this type of linked list structure is a blockchain. A blockchain is just a Merkle Tree. The "genius" you're so lovingly referring to with Bitcoin is the game theoretic part of Bitcoin. The technical parts are ancient. It's worth noting that there are lots of attacks that would count as Byzantine faults that neither POW nor POS shared consensus models can handle. > I recommend you actually reading the white paper, running a node, and looking into the code. I bet you will realize what you've been skeptical about is nothing more than what the ignorant media have been hyping up, but not the actual technology. I've written them. They're the kind of thing I write over a few glasses of whiskey when the family is away. It was boring. They're not hard unless you're writing them in some crazy makework language like C or Go. The most exciting parts of cryptocurrency are how we start redefining shared value in a way that offers some of the adaptive benefits of capitalist markets while still offering societally confirmed limits. The thing that really strikes me about your (and so many other people's) misunderstanding of cryptocurrency is that you have conflated the notion of machine consensus with human consensus. At the speed of the current Bitcoin network, machine consensus is an old and solved problem. A boring problem. What the Bitcoin paper is about is a system that builds human consensus. That's a trickier problem.