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The network fork is exactly what I described. With IOTA, it operates in a similar fashion. The winning chain is the one with the most successful hashes discove

by lojack 9y ago

The network fork is exactly what I described. With IOTA, it operates in a similar fashion. The winning chain is the one with the most successful hashes discovered. Just like bitcoin, except instead of a winning chain happening after ~2 hashes, it happens after hundreds(?) of hashes.

csomar 9y ago
How do you reach a consensus and certainty though? What if there is low activity, few transactions; and then comes a big guy who was burning hash to generate txs and take over the chain?
- lojack 9y ago
  > How do you reach a consensus and certainty though? I feel like we're going in circles. In both Bitcoin and Iota, we never reach an absolute certainty. In Bitcoin we reach a point where its infeasible for transactions to ever be overwritten. For high value transactions this is generally around 5 or 6 confirmations. I don't know the exact number people use with Iota, but I remember hearing it was some percentage of confirmations within the tangle. > What if there is low activity, few transactions; and then comes a big guy who was burning hash to generate txs and take over the chain? That's the big flaw I pointed out in my original comment, that I suspect may exist.
  - csomar 9y ago
    > In both Bitcoin and Iota, we never reach an absolute certainty. That's not correct. You are only uncertain in bitcoin when there are two equal (hash wise) blocks. This happens very rarely. That's not the case in IOTA since it does happen all the time and I'm guessing somebody could calculate txs to make it happen on purpose.
    - lojack 9y ago
      > This happens very rarely Not true. Orphaned blocks happen all the time. https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks > You are only uncertain in bitcoin when there are two equal (hash wise) blocks. Not true. Its possible to see the longest chain and not know about another chain that is of equal length. Nodes won't propagate chains that are of equal length to their current chain, so this is actually probably a somewhat common scenario. There has also been a number of orphaned blocks of length 2, 3, and 4. That means its totally possible (not likely, but not outside the realm of possibilities) for a node to be working on a chain and have never seen the correct previous block. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3343/what-is-the-longest-blockchain-fork-that-has-been-orphaned-to-date https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3343/what-is-the... This is all exactly why many nodes don't accept transactions until there are 6 confirmations -- statistically, we shouldn't ever get to an orphan chain of length 6 even though its technically possible (outside of bugs). FWIW, I'm not arguing that IOTA is any more or less secure than Bitcoin.

by lojack 9y ago

csomar 9y ago

How do you reach a consensus and certainty though? What if there is low activity, few transactions; and then comes a big guy who was burning hash to generate txs and take over the chain?

lojack 9y ago
> How do you reach a consensus and certainty though? I feel like we're going in circles. In both Bitcoin and Iota, we never reach an absolute certainty. In Bitcoin we reach a point where its infeasible for transactions to ever be overwritten. For high value transactions this is generally around 5 or 6 confirmations. I don't know the exact number people use with Iota, but I remember hearing it was some percentage of confirmations within the tangle. > What if there is low activity, few transactions; and then comes a big guy who was burning hash to generate txs and take over the chain? That's the big flaw I pointed out in my original comment, that I suspect may exist.
- csomar 9y ago
  > In both Bitcoin and Iota, we never reach an absolute certainty. That's not correct. You are only uncertain in bitcoin when there are two equal (hash wise) blocks. This happens very rarely. That's not the case in IOTA since it does happen all the time and I'm guessing somebody could calculate txs to make it happen on purpose.
  - lojack 9y ago
    > This happens very rarely Not true. Orphaned blocks happen all the time. https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks > You are only uncertain in bitcoin when there are two equal (hash wise) blocks. Not true. Its possible to see the longest chain and not know about another chain that is of equal length. Nodes won't propagate chains that are of equal length to their current chain, so this is actually probably a somewhat common scenario. There has also been a number of orphaned blocks of length 2, 3, and 4. That means its totally possible (not likely, but not outside the realm of possibilities) for a node to be working on a chain and have never seen the correct previous block. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3343/what-is-the-longest-blockchain-fork-that-has-been-orphaned-to-date https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3343/what-is-the... This is all exactly why many nodes don't accept transactions until there are 6 confirmations -- statistically, we shouldn't ever get to an orphan chain of length 6 even though its technically possible (outside of bugs). FWIW, I'm not arguing that IOTA is any more or less secure than Bitcoin.