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IOTA is built by a bunch of technical founders who know enough about blockchain to confuse a lot of non-experts into thinking they are really smart and credible

by tfha 9y ago

IOTA is built by a bunch of technical founders who know enough about blockchain to confuse a lot of non-experts into thinking they are really smart and credible. But you will see very consistently in the cryptocurrency space that the experts refuse to endorse iota, and frequently say strongly negative things about it. They are very effective at selling snake oil, but that's all their blockchain is. The tangle that they have designed is neither scalable nor secure. Every node still needs to verify every transaction, and because there is no mining it's trivial to double spend if you have a few machines that focus on cranking out as many transactions as possible. If you understand enough about blockchains to find security flaws in an insecure system, all you need to do to believe me is learn more about iota. Their flaws are not subtle, there are many of them, and they are substantial. If you are not expert enough to analyze the security properties of various blockchains, look for reviews of iota by other experts. You will not find any positive ones by people with significant standing. Not from the ethereum camp, not from the bitcoin camp, not from the academic camp. This is not because of some iota vs. the world conspiracy. It's because iota is genuinely a terrible cryptocurrency.

q-base 9y ago
I do not own IOTA - thought about it some months back but decided against it because I don't fancy doing trades on or supporting Bitfinex. Another HN user swayed me away from Monero - which I owned a large part of as he told me about scaling issues. But my question is to your advice about: look to other experts. As someone coming outside the crypto-universe it is kind of hard to distill who the real experts are - so any advice on how to distill/find credible sources of information in this space?
- p33p 9y ago
  I'm also very interested in hearing the answer to this.
  - chvid 9y ago
    Listen to the ones the market listens to. For crypto currencies is not necessarily people with deep technical insight nor is it established economists.
    - infinity0 9y ago
      > Listen to the ones the market listens to. This is exactly the sort of anti-advice that brings suckers into a pyramid scheme. > For crypto currencies is not necessarily people with deep technical insight nor is it established economists. Sure, stir up hatred and jealousy of "experts" and "the establishment" to bring in more suckers, right? GTFO shill.
  - runeks 9y ago
    The only reason misinformation can thrive in the first place is because people choose to believe what other people say, rather than slowly, but steadily, acquiring the relevant knowledge, until they can judge by themselves. If people either a) didn’t show interest in something they don’t understand, or b) acquired the necessary level of knowledge to judge — by themselves — the validity of some concept, misinformation would be unable to survive.
- ExactoKnight 9y ago
  Monero's FUD was refuted. The privacy attack was patched and it's solid now.
  - q-base 9y ago
    It was not to do with privacy, it is to do with scaling issues that may arise if it gains more traction and wide acceptance.
    - ExactoKnight 9y ago
      Do scaling issues really matter?! Bitcoin hasn't dealt with its scaling issues, and Monero is an extremely far way away from it in needing to deal with issues of scale. Many of Bitcoin's scaling innovations could be applied to Monero as well.
- hndamien 9y ago
  It helps if they control a private key to a wallet very early in the blockchain.
- QML 9y ago
  This is a weird rule of thumb but I don’t trust anyone or any team in the cryptocurrency space who doesn’t have a technical background from a top university. When the noise is high, I need a better signal.
Aledgerly 9y ago
You are so full of lies... "know enough about blockchain to confuse a lot of non-experts". Yes, they just INVENTED full Proof of Stake, they did the first decentralized voting, asset exchange, supply chain and so much more on top of blockchain since 2011. They pioneered so much of this space that to hear you lie flat out is almost too dumb to even spend time correcting. There is no one on Earth with more blockchain expertise than the IOTA team, not even Etheruem (they are largely basing their future on the work IOTA's team did in 2013)
- mercer 9y ago
  I think you're breaking the rules here with the tone of your message.
- sctb 9y ago
  You've been using this account for a single purpose in addition to violating the guidelines by including personal attacks. We ban accounts like this, so could you please stop now? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
brndnmtthws 9y ago
I concur, IOTA doesn't seem to offer one iota of value.
EpicButterz 9y ago
The tangle is live right now with real transactions going on. If it's so insecure, why don't you go take as many IOTA as you please?
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  IOTA currently uses a masternode called the coordinator that verifies all transactions. The coordinator is a necessary feature until there's enough transactions to secure the tangle without out (millions per second?)
  - EpicButterz 9y ago
    Right, it's the training wheels until enough nodes are added to the tangle. What are they supposed to do instead?
    - hackinthebochs 9y ago
      The point is that its questionable whether it will work in practice, or ever reach the level of adoption needed to be autonomous. Treating IOTA now as a potential payment system to rival bitcoin is hugely risky.
      - EpicButterz 9y ago
        I agree that it's risky but a lot of people here are making it sound like the plague. There is inherent risk in all cryptos. IOTA being a totally new concept to crypto currency makes it a little more risky but that doesn't mean that it should be abandoned or destroyed. The vision and benefits of it are great! $0 transactions and no miners sucking up electricity! I just don't get the hate.
        dwaltrip 9y ago
        > There is inherent risk in all cryptos. This type of sentence is often intellectually dangerous. It's the basic pattern for a false equivalence -- brushing the differences under the rug. You are essentially saying that risk1 === risk2, without any justification. The default position when comparing thing1 to thing2, in any complex domain, is that they are not exactly the same, and we should be very cautious when trying to generalize from one to the other.
hyprCoin 9y ago
Many people in the crypto space are peddling their own agendas. I've read the tangle paper. It seems as the node transaction weights grow, the double spend problem is solved (transaction nodes gain weight as others confirm). Arguably you could have bad actors confirming transactions but that is why the coordinator exists until there are enough transactions happening where a coordinated double-spend attack is not feasible. Looking at tfha's post history, you can see he does not support POS as secure either and refers to the opinions of the bitcoin team. These are two red flags for me. There are others that do not act in your best interest taking center stage in the crypto world. There are many very well respected computer scientists in the iota foundation and I'm sure they are well aware of any issues the coin will have along the way. Edit: Don't trust me either. Do your own research.
- LightMachine 9y ago
  Sure, if you wait for a sufficiently large weight on top of your transaction, then you solve the double spend problem. But you need at the bare minimum that every transaction that happened at roughly the same time as yours to be included as an indirect child of your tips. If you do not understand that sentence, please try to, as it is the very reason that IOTA doesn't scale (and isn't fundamentally different from usual blockchains in any sense other than a somewhat contrived construction).
  - hyprCoin 9y ago
    I appreciate the succintness of your comment. I believe there is an elaboration here: https://github.com/noneymous/iota-consensus-presentation https://github.com/noneymous/iota-consensus-presentation If I understand the issue you've pointed out correctly, this is why the coordinator currently exists. Once there are constantly running zero value transactions all around us (self driving cars, smart sensors, etc), then that becomes trivial. IE the number of indirect children of your tip increases at a rate of roughly 2^n (less due to random tip selection). This leads to confirmation in an exponential fashion.
- runeks 9y ago
  > It seems as the node transaction weights grow, the double spend problem is solved (transaction nodes gain weight as others confirm). Arguably you could have bad actors confirming transactions but that is why the coordinator exists until there are enough transactions happening where a coordinated double-spend attack is not feasible. What is the fundamental assumption that makes the paper assert that this problem will be solved in the future? Is the assumption that hashing power will be spread more evenly among nodes? And, if so, what is the basis for assuming this? It's certainly not what we see with Bitcoin. Is the case that the IOTA security model breaks down if hashing power is unevenly distributed?
carolita 9y ago
Weirdly enough, they have multiple academic members in their team. Must be one of the only teams with such high requirements for academia. Also, please enlighten us with some of your findings or sources pointing out IOTA weaknesses so that they can be discussed here and can be conveyed to the dev team.

by tfha 9y ago

q-base 9y ago

I do not own IOTA - thought about it some months back but decided against it because I don't fancy doing trades on or supporting Bitfinex. Another HN user swayed me away from Monero - which I owned a large part of as he told me about scaling issues. But my question is to your advice about: look to other experts. As someone coming outside the crypto-universe it is kind of hard to distill who the real experts are - so any advice on how to distill/find credible sources of information in this space?

p33p 9y ago
I'm also very interested in hearing the answer to this.
- chvid 9y ago
  Listen to the ones the market listens to. For crypto currencies is not necessarily people with deep technical insight nor is it established economists.
  - infinity0 9y ago
    > Listen to the ones the market listens to. This is exactly the sort of anti-advice that brings suckers into a pyramid scheme. > For crypto currencies is not necessarily people with deep technical insight nor is it established economists. Sure, stir up hatred and jealousy of "experts" and "the establishment" to bring in more suckers, right? GTFO shill.
- runeks 9y ago
  The only reason misinformation can thrive in the first place is because people choose to believe what other people say, rather than slowly, but steadily, acquiring the relevant knowledge, until they can judge by themselves. If people either a) didn’t show interest in something they don’t understand, or b) acquired the necessary level of knowledge to judge — by themselves — the validity of some concept, misinformation would be unable to survive.
ExactoKnight 9y ago
Monero's FUD was refuted. The privacy attack was patched and it's solid now.
- q-base 9y ago
  It was not to do with privacy, it is to do with scaling issues that may arise if it gains more traction and wide acceptance.
  - ExactoKnight 9y ago
    Do scaling issues really matter?! Bitcoin hasn't dealt with its scaling issues, and Monero is an extremely far way away from it in needing to deal with issues of scale. Many of Bitcoin's scaling innovations could be applied to Monero as well.
hndamien 9y ago
It helps if they control a private key to a wallet very early in the blockchain.
QML 9y ago
This is a weird rule of thumb but I don’t trust anyone or any team in the cryptocurrency space who doesn’t have a technical background from a top university. When the noise is high, I need a better signal.

Aledgerly 9y ago

You are so full of lies... "know enough about blockchain to confuse a lot of non-experts". Yes, they just INVENTED full Proof of Stake, they did the first decentralized voting, asset exchange, supply chain and so much more on top of blockchain since 2011. They pioneered so much of this space that to hear you lie flat out is almost too dumb to even spend time correcting. There is no one on Earth with more blockchain expertise than the IOTA team, not even Etheruem (they are largely basing their future on the work IOTA's team did in 2013)

mercer 9y ago
I think you're breaking the rules here with the tone of your message.
sctb 9y ago
You've been using this account for a single purpose in addition to violating the guidelines by including personal attacks. We ban accounts like this, so could you please stop now? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

brndnmtthws 9y ago

I concur, IOTA doesn't seem to offer one iota of value.

EpicButterz 9y ago

The tangle is live right now with real transactions going on. If it's so insecure, why don't you go take as many IOTA as you please?

hackinthebochs 9y ago
IOTA currently uses a masternode called the coordinator that verifies all transactions. The coordinator is a necessary feature until there's enough transactions to secure the tangle without out (millions per second?)
- EpicButterz 9y ago
  Right, it's the training wheels until enough nodes are added to the tangle. What are they supposed to do instead?
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    The point is that its questionable whether it will work in practice, or ever reach the level of adoption needed to be autonomous. Treating IOTA now as a potential payment system to rival bitcoin is hugely risky.
    - EpicButterz 9y ago
      I agree that it's risky but a lot of people here are making it sound like the plague. There is inherent risk in all cryptos. IOTA being a totally new concept to crypto currency makes it a little more risky but that doesn't mean that it should be abandoned or destroyed. The vision and benefits of it are great! $0 transactions and no miners sucking up electricity! I just don't get the hate.
      - dwaltrip 9y ago
        > There is inherent risk in all cryptos. This type of sentence is often intellectually dangerous. It's the basic pattern for a false equivalence -- brushing the differences under the rug. You are essentially saying that risk1 === risk2, without any justification. The default position when comparing thing1 to thing2, in any complex domain, is that they are not exactly the same, and we should be very cautious when trying to generalize from one to the other.

hyprCoin 9y ago

Many people in the crypto space are peddling their own agendas. I've read the tangle paper. It seems as the node transaction weights grow, the double spend problem is solved (transaction nodes gain weight as others confirm). Arguably you could have bad actors confirming transactions but that is why the coordinator exists until there are enough transactions happening where a coordinated double-spend attack is not feasible. Looking at tfha's post history, you can see he does not support POS as secure either and refers to the opinions of the bitcoin team. These are two red flags for me. There are others that do not act in your best interest taking center stage in the crypto world. There are many very well respected computer scientists in the iota foundation and I'm sure they are well aware of any issues the coin will have along the way. Edit: Don't trust me either. Do your own research.

LightMachine 9y ago
Sure, if you wait for a sufficiently large weight on top of your transaction, then you solve the double spend problem. But you need at the bare minimum that every transaction that happened at roughly the same time as yours to be included as an indirect child of your tips. If you do not understand that sentence, please try to, as it is the very reason that IOTA doesn't scale (and isn't fundamentally different from usual blockchains in any sense other than a somewhat contrived construction).
- hyprCoin 9y ago
  I appreciate the succintness of your comment. I believe there is an elaboration here: https://github.com/noneymous/iota-consensus-presentation https://github.com/noneymous/iota-consensus-presentation If I understand the issue you've pointed out correctly, this is why the coordinator currently exists. Once there are constantly running zero value transactions all around us (self driving cars, smart sensors, etc), then that becomes trivial. IE the number of indirect children of your tip increases at a rate of roughly 2^n (less due to random tip selection). This leads to confirmation in an exponential fashion.
runeks 9y ago
> It seems as the node transaction weights grow, the double spend problem is solved (transaction nodes gain weight as others confirm). Arguably you could have bad actors confirming transactions but that is why the coordinator exists until there are enough transactions happening where a coordinated double-spend attack is not feasible. What is the fundamental assumption that makes the paper assert that this problem will be solved in the future? Is the assumption that hashing power will be spread more evenly among nodes? And, if so, what is the basis for assuming this? It's certainly not what we see with Bitcoin. Is the case that the IOTA security model breaks down if hashing power is unevenly distributed?

carolita 9y ago

Weirdly enough, they have multiple academic members in their team. Must be one of the only teams with such high requirements for academia. Also, please enlighten us with some of your findings or sources pointing out IOTA weaknesses so that they can be discussed here and can be conveyed to the dev team.