18 ms·

IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t

122 points by kushti 9y ago

dreamache 9y ago
I buy when these silly articles come out.
- jgh 9y ago
  Blindly brushing aside criticism as "FUD" is not a good investment strategy. There are lots of technical concerns around IOTA and maybe they can overcome them, and maybe they can't. But the cryptocurrency community's response to criticism is largely sticking their fingers in their ears and decrying it as FUD. Let me be clear that naysaying all the time is not productive, but neither is uncritically accepting that the system is flawless.
- scandox 9y ago
  So he has a page of contents and 30 footnotes. He writes in an articulate manner and his presentation is credible. It might all be bollocks - but why on earth would I rate your 8 word opinion higher?
  - thisisit 9y ago
    Are there any other cryptocurrency write ups from him?
  - nukeop 9y ago
    Brevity is the soul of wit.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      Perhaps, but that hardly makes everything brief witty.
    - deadbunny 9y ago
      Yet the comment in question was entirely lacking in wit.
    - stochastic_monk 9y ago
      Whenever I read this, I think of Bradbury's counterpoint to the Shakespeare quip that "Digression is the soul of wit." It's about having something to say, not just being of few words. More apropos here, concision can be a powerful dramatic device, but I don't feel that there's any wit in the post you're commenting on above. If you want a clickbait/digest-in-an-instant headline, why not "IOTA is vulnerable to replay attacks but has no intention of fixing the flaw"? [0] Personally, I like having a more detailed, precise, technical assessment. It may not be concise, but you can't put a pretty bow on cryptography without dumbing it down. [0]: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/02/21/iota-replay-attacks-vulnerability/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/02/21/iota-replay-attac...
      - Semaphor 9y ago
        FWIW the TNW article title should have been "IOTA is vulnerable to replay attacks if you use a malicious wallet that could also steal your private keys"
    - UncleMeat 9y ago
      This line is ironic in the play, as it is spoken by someone who is absolutely not brief. It isn't a truism.
- Finnucane 9y ago
  Do you sell when affirmative articles come out?
mulkbug 9y ago
buy buy buy.
bengale 9y ago
1.1 is a weird way of presenting that issue. Its discussed in length with explanations of why it exists now, and how they plan to remove it. It's not something required for the technology, just in its infancy.
- tree_of_item 9y ago
  Sorry, but that sounds like bullshit from the IOTA team to me. "We're totally gonna be decentralized in the future, honest!"
thisisit 9y ago
Here we go again. Iota has never been one of the coins to answer any concerns without either saying "this is planned for the future" or creating sock puppets to try and drown the thread in low quality comments.
- lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  Ok, so it'll be huge, like Mongo then?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
wildbunny 9y ago
Not to mention that the central consensus mechanism is completely broken. You cannot have a trustless consensus without a mining incentive: Quoted from my post linked below: o) Network hashrate is the overall power of the network - in bitcoin, this is the computing power needed to generate a block. o) Bitcoin employs a mining reward which creates a competition between miners to produce a block and claim their reward for doing so. Slower miners lose out to faster miners, but they still participate in the competition to produce a block because they stand a chance of winning occasionally. o) This mining subsidy provides a positive incentive to miners to play by the rules, and encourages them not try to double spending, because they might as well claim the mining reward instead of trying to double spend which is often much more difficult than producing a single block. o) The mining subsidy also encourages all miners to participate in the mining process, which gives an overall metric for total network hashing power, which you can then use to give an estimate of when it is safe to accept a transaction of a given size, as confirmed, because (on average), the block reward is equal to the electricity cost of mining that block. That means that when your transaction has been buried under enough blocks that the mining subsidy equals the transactions size, it is more or less safe to accept that transaction as confirmed. Now, imagine the situation with no mining reward. o) Instead of participating in a competition to win the block reward, miners have no positive incentive to participate anymore. They now are left with the negative incentive to try and double spend. o) Since these miners are not contributing their hashing power to the network anymore, the overall hashrate of the network in unmeasurable, since these miners are quite likely to leave their ASICs in sleep mode until they want to double spend o) With the network hash rate unmeasurable, there is no way to put an estimate on when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed. When there is no way to estimate when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed, that currency is now useless because any transaction can potentially be reversed. This is why both byteball and iota use trusted third parties to secure the network, but at that point, you might as well be using VISA. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#msg20108439 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#...
- elmar 9y ago
  > both byteball and iota use trusted third parties to secure the network and Byteball looks more secure than IOTA you can have several witnesses that can bee different entities and you have to conclude more than half to change consensus state.
lambdas 9y ago
Is this the same coin that has both incredibly rude developers and one that claims to have invented time travel?
- enthd 9y ago
  Wow, really? Do you happen to have any sources? I'd be curious to see. Thanks!
  - JCharante 9y ago
    re: time travel. Check out their website and specifically the team page.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      Their website (iota.org) does not appear to have any team page. Do you mind posting a specific link?
      - keketi 9y ago
        "Sergey Ivancheglo (Co-Founder, Engineer)"[1] "My name is Sergey Ivancheglo. I am the mastermind of computer science, in all domains, of literally all mind-numbing technology that you ever come across."[2] The domain registration seems recent: 2017-09-26 [3]. Registrant data is obscured by Domains By Proxy. I can't find any indication that the site is owned by Ivancheglo. A Reddit thread[4] suggests that it is a troll website. [1] http://www.tangleblog.com/what-is-iota-what-is-the-tangle/ http://www.tangleblog.com/what-is-iota-what-is-the-tangle/ [2] http://archive.is/GebOA http://archive.is/GebOA [3] https://who.is/whois/come-from-beyond.com https://who.is/whois/come-from-beyond.com [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7p1x1k/founding_partner_sergey_ivancheglo_and_his_odd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7p1x1k/founding_partn...
  - lambdas 9y ago
    Yeah it was on his domain at http://come-from-beyond.com http://come-from-beyond.com, unfortunately since last month he's not renewed it and wayback just loads a blank page. Shame, I'm going to see if it's available anywhere as it was a riot. Technology NASA is making him keep secret until this countdown he had going.
granaldo 9y ago
as interesting iota is so they claim, my bet is on lightning network for high scalability transaction and machine to machine payment
- tobiaswk 9y ago
  A mesh network that requires YOU to be online to receive funds. Also you must have funds to open a channel. So in order to receive funds you must have funds already. It seems like a really big step backwards in big big scheme of things bitcoin. All of the above problems can be solved by increasing the block size. I'm not saying it's the definitive solution... but right now it is a better solution. A good talk about really big blocks on bitcoin and what the ramifications are; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M
  - 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
    No, you dont need funds to receive them. An unfunded node can receive and transact over a peer funded channel. There are services like strike that offer custodial lightning channels, and will aggregate and send onchain tx's: https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing-strike-a-stripe-like-api-for-lightning-c84762f4f634 https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing-strike-a-stripe-like-a... While the network has such low fees as today, there is no need to increase the blocksize. Increasing the blocksize (or time) effects scalability in epic ways -- ie: Ethereum requires at least 500GB SSD to run -- so the minimum cost of entry is at least $300. Meanwhile 10m/1MB blocks still runs on $20 RPis. I am not against mods to consensus to increase the block size, but there are more critical problems like solving tx malleability and new tx format (segwit) that provide more value today. Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying?
    - davidgerard 9y ago
      > Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying? I'm seeing them zoom in on the key technical problem: at no point has LN fixed the key technical issue, how to route. Every transaction invalidates the routing path, because it changes the amount of liquidity available in the channels. Rick Falkvinge nails this point. Key bit from 10:00 on, though the rest is well worth your time (and I say that as someone who hates watching videos on YouTube): https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600 https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600 LN proponents explicitly compare it to BGP - but BGP is a completely trust-based protocol, where a lot of telecoms engineers have an agreement that they'll keep the network going no matter what, and bad actors are dealt with by hand. Trust-based and fixing problems by hand is the diametric opposite of the cryptocurrency model.
aje403 9y ago
There are a lot of letters in that article. Here is a lot less: It is a scam
- cdiddy2 9y ago
  damn so did Bosch get scammed too? http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-bosch-bets-on-iota-2017-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-bosch-bets-on-iota-201...
  - Hurdy 9y ago
    Bosch just wants to have press releases that contain the word "blockchain". It doesn't make the technology any less broken.
    - cdiddy2 9y ago
      as far as I know Bosch is a private company. A lot less for them to gain from PRs with 'blockchain' in them. From the AMA Bosch did[1] it certainly seems like its more than just a blockchain PR and that they are actually putting resources towards this, but its hard to tell from the outside [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_january_25th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_janu...
  - aje403 9y ago
    No, he did not get scammed, he became involved in a scam.
  - drcode 9y ago
    A larger company has an opportunity to do more smart things... but also an opportunity to do a larger number of dumb things.
coinerone 9y ago
Why would anyone spend Time to write this Article?
coinerone 9y ago
Isnt it correct that IOTA is not meant to be tradet by humans?
- duskwuff 9y ago
  The vast majority of entities currently trading IOTA are humans. The designers have claimed that it is somehow designed for IoT devices, but no such application currently exists, and it is unclear how their design is supposed to enable such a usage.
matthewbauer 9y ago
This quote applies especially to IOTA: "Cryptocurrencies are nothing except the marketing power of inventors, financiers and others who love the idea of buying a black box (which is obviously empty) for the price of a Kia and dreaming that it will turn into a Mercedes. There have been times recently when this dream has materialized within hours. This is not just a bubble. It is not just a fraud. It is perhaps the outer limit, the ultimate expression, of the ability of humans to seize upon ether and hope to ride it to the stars." - Paul Singer, Elliott Management IOTA's tech is shitty but they've convinced enough people that it's worth something that it's now worth something. Maybe that's all a crypto needs? I was honestly expecting all of this to crash and burn back in December- but it hasn't yet. Maybe these cryptocoins really are the future.
- aje403 9y ago
  Those Singer quotes almost killed me: "limitless ignorance of swaths of the human race". He's absolutely correct, but, deep down, secretly a little upset he did not purchase Ripple at 2 cents
  - tim333 9y ago
    There is perhaps a bit more to cryptocurrencies that Singer gives them credit for. I've recently been reading some of the original stuff from Szabo / Satoshi eg http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html and https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf that partly explain why they have worked and not collapsed 9 years later. A lot of it is much clearer than the hype which has followed.
    - aje403 9y ago
      There are several thousand of those articles with the same points scrambled, filled with millions of comments with the same points scrambled. It's bait for people to jump in a pool with sharks. People like Singer and Buffett are driving by in a boat and looking in with binoculars. Hopefully enough people do not jump in that there ends up being a tidal wave.
aars 9y ago
Nice writeup. Though you might want to proof read it a few (more) times. "since The Coordinator is the current the arbiter of truth in the IOTA system" "Similarly, transaction outputs that appear in a snapshot [6] are more valuable than those that have." And a couple more like these.
- rodarmor 9y ago
  Oh snap, thanks for catching those. I actually fixed those in the source, but didn't render them and update the site.
onion-soup 9y ago
keep on hating
MatekCopatek 9y ago
I think the biggest issue here is that even though this post is well researched, most people don't care, because they haven't invested in IOTA (or any other cryptocurrency for that matter) with the intention of using the features. The large majority is in it for the trading. Unless there are huge issues such as the network crashing, they don't care. It's just a line chart on an exchange to them. That's also why there are no repercussions for people never delivering on ICO promises. It kinda scares me.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Exactly this, for me, what crypto represented, when I put money in it, was a way for me to take the skills I learned trading fake video game items in runescape, and apply it to something that people would pay real money for. It's been a rather profitable venture for me but I realize that is the exception rather than the rule.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Whether or not IOTA’s ledger is “tamper-proof,” the entire IOTA network went down in November, and was completely inoperable for about three days. That this has never happened in Bitcoin or Ethereum suggests the extent to which the IOTA network relies on the “coordinator”—a single point of failure—and is not truly decentralized. The network did crash when IOTA pulled its centeral authoritative 'coordinator' server offline causing all other nodes and clients to go offline. This was during a patch from an exploit discovered by MIT researchers. IOTA later denied the flaw existed, even though they took the network offline to patch it. https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/ https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/
- davidgerard 9y ago
  > Unless there are huge issues such as the network crashing, they don't care. When the network literally didn't work, the price went up. (Because the "price" is a thing that happens inside individual exchanges, not on the public blockchain/tangle/whatever.)
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
When we post things like this, can we at least put a summary of what this thing is about? For those not already familiar with IOTA, there is nothing in the first paragraphs of the article that actually explains what it is and why I should care.
rthomas6 9y ago
What do smart people think about NANO (Formerly Raiblocks)? It also uses a DAG scheme and has fast transactions with no fees, and it's already decentralized.
- rileyphone 9y ago
  Important to note is that Nano isn't really a DAG, but rather a block lattice - essentially every account has it's own chain of transactions that are verified by nodes. Additionally, each transaction is actually two, a 'send' and a 'receive', each mentioning the other address, amount, and preceding block to prevent double sends/receives. The only problem in this article shared with Nano is the ability to spam the network, but there is a small PoW associated with each transaction to slow this down.
andrewla 9y ago
The main thing here is that IOTA is not a _decentralized_ cryptocurrency. Given that there are centralized cryptocurrencies in circulation, it makes more sense to compare IOTA to something like Ripple or Stellar than to compare it to Bitcoin. In that light, most of the other objections go away -- censorship resistance is not an advertised feature; double-spends are only detectable when the coordinator milestone; fungibility is only effective after a milestone, etc. The "post-quantum" cryptography is interesting to me personally not because of the quantum aspect, but because the tractability of discrete-log based cryptography is up in the air, and a vulnerability found in a year, or ten years, could have profound impact reaching back into the past. Hash-based one-time signature schemes seem to be a much more robust approach that will not fall to the discovery of better algorithms (even non-quantum) for approaching the discrete log problem. The notion of using a DAG is also very interesting, and one of the nice things about IOTA is that it does not try to be anything other than a currency. Alternatives such as Byteball are, in my opinion, overreaching by attempting to be some sort of global computer that has the net effect of making clients much more complex and thus vulnerable to strange forking effects if client implementations diverge too much.
- veeti 9y ago
  https://iota.org/ https://iota.org/ > Scalable, Decentralized, Modular, No Fees
  - andrewla 9y ago
    Hmm... I did not mean for my reply to be an apology for IOTA, though reading it now I can easily see how it looks like it. I'm not trying to rewrite history and say that "IOTA was never intended to be decentralized". I'm saying, as the article points out, that IOTA is effectively centralized, and the plan for moving to being decentralized is fatally and irretrievably flawed. I also think the rhetoric about being a currency for the "Internet of Things" is a nonsensical claim at best. The fact that the coins does not deliver on anything it promises does not mean that it is worthless, because it still delivers on other things that people find useful. I'm not sold on IOTA (I have no holdings myself) just as I am not sold on the other big centralized competitors (Ripple or Stellar), but I don't think it's significantly worse than either of those in terms of what it delivers.
tim333 9y ago
There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-funds-may-occur-e45b1ed9dd6b https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...
- izelkay 9y ago
  The writer of the article essentially admitted it was bullshit and wrote it just to manipulate the market: https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672 https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672
  - verroq 9y ago
    Where is the part where he admitted it was bullshit?
    - tim333 9y ago
      Indeed "Our short of #IOTA on @bitfinex has closed at a profit of over 30%. Who said writing doesn't pay?" could open him to criminal prosecution if it was bullshit. It's legal to short something and make legitimate criticisms but spreading lies to drop the price is not.
      - QML 9y ago
        Article probably didn't have a dent on price; the whole market dropped.
    - izelkay 9y ago
      https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965370339999014913 https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965370339999014913 Are you honestly going to try and tell me that this guy is not full of shit?
      - tim333 9y ago
momentmaker 9y ago
What about NANO then if they share the same kind of tech as IOTA? Any thoughts on that?
- whataretensors 9y ago
  Completely different project. Nano seems closer. Despite the negativity here I think iota will likely become production ready too, but the timeline will be longer.
dsacco 9y ago
I want to critique one particular point made in this article, becuase it’s incorrect: > IOTA uses cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. The use of such cryptography, specifically Winternitz signatures, leaves IOTA users vulnerable to loss of funds if they ever reuse an address. This attack that has already been seen in practice, with one user reportedly losing $30,000 USD worth of IOTA. As quantum computers large enough to threaten existing cryptosystems do not exist and may not exist for many decades, this use of post quantum cryptography comes with no tangible benefit. “No tangible benefit” is a gross overstatement and simplification. I wholeheartedly agree that 1) novel cryptography should not be adopted before it has been well-studied, and 2) threat models for motivating novel cryptography should be rational and pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, if and when quantum computers can practically break classical cryptosystems, they will be able to do against everything cryptography is used to secure today, not just going forwards. This is a stonger argument for encryption and confidentiality, but it nevertheless also applies to signatures and authentication. As a tangential point: while they aren’t perfect (in terms of efficiency), Winternitz signatures are very well studied. Given what’s available, it’s not a bad choice. I think a lot of IOTA’s specification is pretty suspect, especially since it does utilize novel cryptography without an apparent track record or notable expertise among its team. But I also absolutely believe new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects should be preparing for quantum computation now, if it’s possible. More pertinently, I don’t agree with the way this point was presented, because it can be interpreted as the claim that post-quantum cryptography is a useful heuristic in determining if a project has “issues”. In reality all cryptography should be suspect, and the use of post-quantum cryptography should not be dismissed immediately as a waste. With IOTA in particular, I’m weakly on the side that they shouldn’t have bothered with Winternitz signatures. But in general, I’m happy to see any project at least giving it serious consideration.
- simias 9y ago
  Don't you think IOTA is trying to do too much at the same time? Maybe I'm underestimating the risk but it seems like practical quantum computer attacks are still a few decades away, maybe it would make more sense to focus on getting the rest of IOTA to work and plan to switch to different cryptographic algorithms later once things have settled a bit. If I get this right IOTA is trying to: * Move away from PoW * Have a cryptocurrency that scales well to a very high transaction frequency * Implement quantum-resistant cryptography * Use ternary logic to theoretically minimize power consumption That's a lot for a single project I think.
simias 9y ago
While it's probably not the main problem with IOTA I must say that the ternary logic is probably the most amusing and baffling thing about it. This kind of hubris is something I would expect from a very junior developer without much real world experience who already thinks he's got everything figured out. How can one rationalize starting a super ambitious cryptocurrency project and on top of that decide to reimplement their own crypto using ternary logic for some vague theoretical benefits that would only pay out if IOTA ever becomes mainstream enough (and the benefits large enough) for people to create not only dedicated chips for it but entire industrial processes to make ternary logic silicon. It's also completely misunderstanding the current state of IoT, chips capable of doing high grade (binary) cryptography in a reasonable amount of time nowadays are worth next to nothing and their consumption is almost negligible. It's not premature optimization, it's too-little-too-late optimization. Doing that as a fun week end project to learn about ternary? Sure. As the foundation of your multi billion dollar cryptocurrency set to revolutionize IoT? Come on.
- throwawaylolx 9y ago
  This is even more amusing when coupled with the thoughts of IOTA followers: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_arithmetic_in_iota_by_using_a_ternary/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_ar... The two most voted comments are as follows: >It's a little overwhelming seeing IOTA do all of these things so far beyond other crypto projects. Blockchain tech is already bleeding edge but then add in ternary, quantum resistance, DAG, infinite scaling, free transactions, and AI resistance... It can be a lot to soak in for the average blockchain investor. But that just means time is even more on IOTA's side as it slowly proves itself :). This coin is going to turn the crypto space upside down. >IOTA is thinking ahead into the future but people seem to think their decision to go Ternary is "stupid" not realizing they are just that far ahead in their vision.
  - siruncledrew 9y ago
    In other words, people are trying to pump up the price of IOTA.
fathomit 9y ago
Time for some FUD Copy Pastas: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pastas/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pasta...
progresss 9y ago
I don't see anything wrong in creating something new even if it is not working right now at at best, at least people progressing, you would never have any crypto if somebody would not create something new like "Bitcoin" those who just follow blockchain tech they are just followers (easy life just add something extra and scream MY COIN IS THE BEST) Iota is something totally new and only idiots can demand from iota to be perfect from the very begining! Its not perfect but everyday it gets stronger and stronger, if you think iota is terrible why you even care about it, it will die soon maybe tomorow?, after tomorew? next week? why you even bother ? You care about everything what is terrible from your point of view? okay just go outside find some "dog shit" on the street sit down and talk about it for hours, should be same satisfaction ?! I don't think that is the case... Most probably you don't think that iota so terrible and you see some very good percentage that it could possibly succeed in the future in that case i understand why suporters of other altcoins puts so much effort to scam about it...

122 points by kushti 9y ago

dreamache 9y ago

I buy when these silly articles come out.

jgh 9y ago
Blindly brushing aside criticism as "FUD" is not a good investment strategy. There are lots of technical concerns around IOTA and maybe they can overcome them, and maybe they can't. But the cryptocurrency community's response to criticism is largely sticking their fingers in their ears and decrying it as FUD. Let me be clear that naysaying all the time is not productive, but neither is uncritically accepting that the system is flawless.
scandox 9y ago
So he has a page of contents and 30 footnotes. He writes in an articulate manner and his presentation is credible. It might all be bollocks - but why on earth would I rate your 8 word opinion higher?
- thisisit 9y ago
  Are there any other cryptocurrency write ups from him?
- nukeop 9y ago
  Brevity is the soul of wit.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    Perhaps, but that hardly makes everything brief witty.
  - deadbunny 9y ago
    Yet the comment in question was entirely lacking in wit.
  - stochastic_monk 9y ago
    Whenever I read this, I think of Bradbury's counterpoint to the Shakespeare quip that "Digression is the soul of wit." It's about having something to say, not just being of few words. More apropos here, concision can be a powerful dramatic device, but I don't feel that there's any wit in the post you're commenting on above. If you want a clickbait/digest-in-an-instant headline, why not "IOTA is vulnerable to replay attacks but has no intention of fixing the flaw"? [0] Personally, I like having a more detailed, precise, technical assessment. It may not be concise, but you can't put a pretty bow on cryptography without dumbing it down. [0]: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/02/21/iota-replay-attacks-vulnerability/ https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/02/21/iota-replay-attac...
    - Semaphor 9y ago
      FWIW the TNW article title should have been "IOTA is vulnerable to replay attacks if you use a malicious wallet that could also steal your private keys"
  - UncleMeat 9y ago
    This line is ironic in the play, as it is spoken by someone who is absolutely not brief. It isn't a truism.
Finnucane 9y ago
Do you sell when affirmative articles come out?

mulkbug 9y ago

buy buy buy.

bengale 9y ago

1.1 is a weird way of presenting that issue. Its discussed in length with explanations of why it exists now, and how they plan to remove it. It's not something required for the technology, just in its infancy.

tree_of_item 9y ago
Sorry, but that sounds like bullshit from the IOTA team to me. "We're totally gonna be decentralized in the future, honest!"

thisisit 9y ago

Here we go again. Iota has never been one of the coins to answer any concerns without either saying "this is planned for the future" or creating sock puppets to try and drown the thread in low quality comments.

lowbloodsugar 9y ago
Ok, so it'll be huge, like Mongo then?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

wildbunny 9y ago

Not to mention that the central consensus mechanism is completely broken. You cannot have a trustless consensus without a mining incentive: Quoted from my post linked below: o) Network hashrate is the overall power of the network - in bitcoin, this is the computing power needed to generate a block. o) Bitcoin employs a mining reward which creates a competition between miners to produce a block and claim their reward for doing so. Slower miners lose out to faster miners, but they still participate in the competition to produce a block because they stand a chance of winning occasionally. o) This mining subsidy provides a positive incentive to miners to play by the rules, and encourages them not try to double spending, because they might as well claim the mining reward instead of trying to double spend which is often much more difficult than producing a single block. o) The mining subsidy also encourages all miners to participate in the mining process, which gives an overall metric for total network hashing power, which you can then use to give an estimate of when it is safe to accept a transaction of a given size, as confirmed, because (on average), the block reward is equal to the electricity cost of mining that block. That means that when your transaction has been buried under enough blocks that the mining subsidy equals the transactions size, it is more or less safe to accept that transaction as confirmed. Now, imagine the situation with no mining reward. o) Instead of participating in a competition to win the block reward, miners have no positive incentive to participate anymore. They now are left with the negative incentive to try and double spend. o) Since these miners are not contributing their hashing power to the network anymore, the overall hashrate of the network in unmeasurable, since these miners are quite likely to leave their ASICs in sleep mode until they want to double spend o) With the network hash rate unmeasurable, there is no way to put an estimate on when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed. When there is no way to estimate when it is safe to accept a transaction as confirmed, that currency is now useless because any transaction can potentially be reversed. This is why both byteball and iota use trusted third parties to secure the network, but at that point, you might as well be using VISA. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#msg20108439 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799665.msg20108439#...

elmar 9y ago
> both byteball and iota use trusted third parties to secure the network and Byteball looks more secure than IOTA you can have several witnesses that can bee different entities and you have to conclude more than half to change consensus state.

lambdas 9y ago

Is this the same coin that has both incredibly rude developers and one that claims to have invented time travel?

enthd 9y ago
Wow, really? Do you happen to have any sources? I'd be curious to see. Thanks!
- JCharante 9y ago
  re: time travel. Check out their website and specifically the team page.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    Their website (iota.org) does not appear to have any team page. Do you mind posting a specific link?
    - keketi 9y ago
      "Sergey Ivancheglo (Co-Founder, Engineer)"[1] "My name is Sergey Ivancheglo. I am the mastermind of computer science, in all domains, of literally all mind-numbing technology that you ever come across."[2] The domain registration seems recent: 2017-09-26 [3]. Registrant data is obscured by Domains By Proxy. I can't find any indication that the site is owned by Ivancheglo. A Reddit thread[4] suggests that it is a troll website. [1] http://www.tangleblog.com/what-is-iota-what-is-the-tangle/ http://www.tangleblog.com/what-is-iota-what-is-the-tangle/ [2] http://archive.is/GebOA http://archive.is/GebOA [3] https://who.is/whois/come-from-beyond.com https://who.is/whois/come-from-beyond.com [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7p1x1k/founding_partner_sergey_ivancheglo_and_his_odd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7p1x1k/founding_partn...
- lambdas 9y ago
  Yeah it was on his domain at http://come-from-beyond.com http://come-from-beyond.com, unfortunately since last month he's not renewed it and wayback just loads a blank page. Shame, I'm going to see if it's available anywhere as it was a riot. Technology NASA is making him keep secret until this countdown he had going.

granaldo 9y ago

as interesting iota is so they claim, my bet is on lightning network for high scalability transaction and machine to machine payment

tobiaswk 9y ago
A mesh network that requires YOU to be online to receive funds. Also you must have funds to open a channel. So in order to receive funds you must have funds already. It seems like a really big step backwards in big big scheme of things bitcoin. All of the above problems can be solved by increasing the block size. I'm not saying it's the definitive solution... but right now it is a better solution. A good talk about really big blocks on bitcoin and what the ramifications are; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  No, you dont need funds to receive them. An unfunded node can receive and transact over a peer funded channel. There are services like strike that offer custodial lightning channels, and will aggregate and send onchain tx's: https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing-strike-a-stripe-like-api-for-lightning-c84762f4f634 https://medium.com/@ACINQ/introducing-strike-a-stripe-like-a... While the network has such low fees as today, there is no need to increase the blocksize. Increasing the blocksize (or time) effects scalability in epic ways -- ie: Ethereum requires at least 500GB SSD to run -- so the minimum cost of entry is at least $300. Meanwhile 10m/1MB blocks still runs on $20 RPis. I am not against mods to consensus to increase the block size, but there are more critical problems like solving tx malleability and new tx format (segwit) that provide more value today. Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying?
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    > Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying? I'm seeing them zoom in on the key technical problem: at no point has LN fixed the key technical issue, how to route. Every transaction invalidates the routing path, because it changes the amount of liquidity available in the channels. Rick Falkvinge nails this point. Key bit from 10:00 on, though the rest is well worth your time (and I say that as someone who hates watching videos on YouTube): https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600 https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=600 LN proponents explicitly compare it to BGP - but BGP is a completely trust-based protocol, where a lot of telecoms engineers have an agreement that they'll keep the network going no matter what, and bad actors are dealt with by hand. Trust-based and fixing problems by hand is the diametric opposite of the cryptocurrency model.

aje403 9y ago

There are a lot of letters in that article. Here is a lot less: It is a scam

cdiddy2 9y ago
damn so did Bosch get scammed too? http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-bosch-bets-on-iota-2017-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-bosch-bets-on-iota-201...
- Hurdy 9y ago
  Bosch just wants to have press releases that contain the word "blockchain". It doesn't make the technology any less broken.
  - cdiddy2 9y ago
    as far as I know Bosch is a private company. A lot less for them to gain from PRs with 'blockchain' in them. From the AMA Bosch did[1] it certainly seems like its more than just a blockchain PR and that they are actually putting resources towards this, but its hard to tell from the outside [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_january_25th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7sxgx0/bosch_ama_janu...
- aje403 9y ago
  No, he did not get scammed, he became involved in a scam.
- drcode 9y ago
  A larger company has an opportunity to do more smart things... but also an opportunity to do a larger number of dumb things.

coinerone 9y ago

Why would anyone spend Time to write this Article?

coinerone 9y ago

Isnt it correct that IOTA is not meant to be tradet by humans?

duskwuff 9y ago
The vast majority of entities currently trading IOTA are humans. The designers have claimed that it is somehow designed for IoT devices, but no such application currently exists, and it is unclear how their design is supposed to enable such a usage.

matthewbauer 9y ago

This quote applies especially to IOTA: "Cryptocurrencies are nothing except the marketing power of inventors, financiers and others who love the idea of buying a black box (which is obviously empty) for the price of a Kia and dreaming that it will turn into a Mercedes. There have been times recently when this dream has materialized within hours. This is not just a bubble. It is not just a fraud. It is perhaps the outer limit, the ultimate expression, of the ability of humans to seize upon ether and hope to ride it to the stars." - Paul Singer, Elliott Management IOTA's tech is shitty but they've convinced enough people that it's worth something that it's now worth something. Maybe that's all a crypto needs? I was honestly expecting all of this to crash and burn back in December- but it hasn't yet. Maybe these cryptocoins really are the future.

aje403 9y ago
Those Singer quotes almost killed me: "limitless ignorance of swaths of the human race". He's absolutely correct, but, deep down, secretly a little upset he did not purchase Ripple at 2 cents
- tim333 9y ago
  There is perhaps a bit more to cryptocurrencies that Singer gives them credit for. I've recently been reading some of the original stuff from Szabo / Satoshi eg http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html and https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf that partly explain why they have worked and not collapsed 9 years later. A lot of it is much clearer than the hype which has followed.
  - aje403 9y ago
    There are several thousand of those articles with the same points scrambled, filled with millions of comments with the same points scrambled. It's bait for people to jump in a pool with sharks. People like Singer and Buffett are driving by in a boat and looking in with binoculars. Hopefully enough people do not jump in that there ends up being a tidal wave.

aars 9y ago

Nice writeup. Though you might want to proof read it a few (more) times. "since The Coordinator is the current the arbiter of truth in the IOTA system" "Similarly, transaction outputs that appear in a snapshot [6] are more valuable than those that have." And a couple more like these.

rodarmor 9y ago
Oh snap, thanks for catching those. I actually fixed those in the source, but didn't render them and update the site.

onion-soup 9y ago

keep on hating

MatekCopatek 9y ago

I think the biggest issue here is that even though this post is well researched, most people don't care, because they haven't invested in IOTA (or any other cryptocurrency for that matter) with the intention of using the features. The large majority is in it for the trading. Unless there are huge issues such as the network crashing, they don't care. It's just a line chart on an exchange to them. That's also why there are no repercussions for people never delivering on ICO promises. It kinda scares me.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
Exactly this, for me, what crypto represented, when I put money in it, was a way for me to take the skills I learned trading fake video game items in runescape, and apply it to something that people would pay real money for. It's been a rather profitable venture for me but I realize that is the exception rather than the rule.
nosuchthing 9y ago
Whether or not IOTA’s ledger is “tamper-proof,” the entire IOTA network went down in November, and was completely inoperable for about three days. That this has never happened in Bitcoin or Ethereum suggests the extent to which the IOTA network relies on the “coordinator”—a single point of failure—and is not truly decentralized. The network did crash when IOTA pulled its centeral authoritative 'coordinator' server offline causing all other nodes and clients to go offline. This was during a patch from an exploit discovered by MIT researchers. IOTA later denied the flaw existed, even though they took the network offline to patch it. https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/ https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/iota-response/
davidgerard 9y ago
> Unless there are huge issues such as the network crashing, they don't care. When the network literally didn't work, the price went up. (Because the "price" is a thing that happens inside individual exchanges, not on the public blockchain/tangle/whatever.)

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago

When we post things like this, can we at least put a summary of what this thing is about? For those not already familiar with IOTA, there is nothing in the first paragraphs of the article that actually explains what it is and why I should care.

rthomas6 9y ago

What do smart people think about NANO (Formerly Raiblocks)? It also uses a DAG scheme and has fast transactions with no fees, and it's already decentralized.

rileyphone 9y ago
Important to note is that Nano isn't really a DAG, but rather a block lattice - essentially every account has it's own chain of transactions that are verified by nodes. Additionally, each transaction is actually two, a 'send' and a 'receive', each mentioning the other address, amount, and preceding block to prevent double sends/receives. The only problem in this article shared with Nano is the ability to spam the network, but there is a small PoW associated with each transaction to slow this down.

andrewla 9y ago

The main thing here is that IOTA is not a _decentralized_ cryptocurrency. Given that there are centralized cryptocurrencies in circulation, it makes more sense to compare IOTA to something like Ripple or Stellar than to compare it to Bitcoin. In that light, most of the other objections go away -- censorship resistance is not an advertised feature; double-spends are only detectable when the coordinator milestone; fungibility is only effective after a milestone, etc. The "post-quantum" cryptography is interesting to me personally not because of the quantum aspect, but because the tractability of discrete-log based cryptography is up in the air, and a vulnerability found in a year, or ten years, could have profound impact reaching back into the past. Hash-based one-time signature schemes seem to be a much more robust approach that will not fall to the discovery of better algorithms (even non-quantum) for approaching the discrete log problem. The notion of using a DAG is also very interesting, and one of the nice things about IOTA is that it does not try to be anything other than a currency. Alternatives such as Byteball are, in my opinion, overreaching by attempting to be some sort of global computer that has the net effect of making clients much more complex and thus vulnerable to strange forking effects if client implementations diverge too much.

veeti 9y ago
https://iota.org/ https://iota.org/ > Scalable, Decentralized, Modular, No Fees
- andrewla 9y ago
  Hmm... I did not mean for my reply to be an apology for IOTA, though reading it now I can easily see how it looks like it. I'm not trying to rewrite history and say that "IOTA was never intended to be decentralized". I'm saying, as the article points out, that IOTA is effectively centralized, and the plan for moving to being decentralized is fatally and irretrievably flawed. I also think the rhetoric about being a currency for the "Internet of Things" is a nonsensical claim at best. The fact that the coins does not deliver on anything it promises does not mean that it is worthless, because it still delivers on other things that people find useful. I'm not sold on IOTA (I have no holdings myself) just as I am not sold on the other big centralized competitors (Ripple or Stellar), but I don't think it's significantly worse than either of those in terms of what it delivers.

tim333 9y ago

There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-funds-may-occur-e45b1ed9dd6b https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...

izelkay 9y ago
The writer of the article essentially admitted it was bullshit and wrote it just to manipulate the market: https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672 https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672
- verroq 9y ago
  Where is the part where he admitted it was bullshit?
  - tim333 9y ago
    Indeed "Our short of #IOTA on @bitfinex has closed at a profit of over 30%. Who said writing doesn't pay?" could open him to criminal prosecution if it was bullshit. It's legal to short something and make legitimate criticisms but spreading lies to drop the price is not.
    - QML 9y ago
      Article probably didn't have a dent on price; the whole market dropped.
  - izelkay 9y ago
    https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965370339999014913 https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965370339999014913 Are you honestly going to try and tell me that this guy is not full of shit?
    - tim333 9y ago

momentmaker 9y ago

What about NANO then if they share the same kind of tech as IOTA? Any thoughts on that?

whataretensors 9y ago
Completely different project. Nano seems closer. Despite the negativity here I think iota will likely become production ready too, but the timeline will be longer.

dsacco 9y ago

I want to critique one particular point made in this article, becuase it’s incorrect: > IOTA uses cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. The use of such cryptography, specifically Winternitz signatures, leaves IOTA users vulnerable to loss of funds if they ever reuse an address. This attack that has already been seen in practice, with one user reportedly losing $30,000 USD worth of IOTA. As quantum computers large enough to threaten existing cryptosystems do not exist and may not exist for many decades, this use of post quantum cryptography comes with no tangible benefit. “No tangible benefit” is a gross overstatement and simplification. I wholeheartedly agree that 1) novel cryptography should not be adopted before it has been well-studied, and 2) threat models for motivating novel cryptography should be rational and pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, if and when quantum computers can practically break classical cryptosystems, they will be able to do against everything cryptography is used to secure today, not just going forwards. This is a stonger argument for encryption and confidentiality, but it nevertheless also applies to signatures and authentication. As a tangential point: while they aren’t perfect (in terms of efficiency), Winternitz signatures are very well studied. Given what’s available, it’s not a bad choice. I think a lot of IOTA’s specification is pretty suspect, especially since it does utilize novel cryptography without an apparent track record or notable expertise among its team. But I also absolutely believe new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects should be preparing for quantum computation now, if it’s possible. More pertinently, I don’t agree with the way this point was presented, because it can be interpreted as the claim that post-quantum cryptography is a useful heuristic in determining if a project has “issues”. In reality all cryptography should be suspect, and the use of post-quantum cryptography should not be dismissed immediately as a waste. With IOTA in particular, I’m weakly on the side that they shouldn’t have bothered with Winternitz signatures. But in general, I’m happy to see any project at least giving it serious consideration.

simias 9y ago
Don't you think IOTA is trying to do too much at the same time? Maybe I'm underestimating the risk but it seems like practical quantum computer attacks are still a few decades away, maybe it would make more sense to focus on getting the rest of IOTA to work and plan to switch to different cryptographic algorithms later once things have settled a bit. If I get this right IOTA is trying to: * Move away from PoW * Have a cryptocurrency that scales well to a very high transaction frequency * Implement quantum-resistant cryptography * Use ternary logic to theoretically minimize power consumption That's a lot for a single project I think.

simias 9y ago

While it's probably not the main problem with IOTA I must say that the ternary logic is probably the most amusing and baffling thing about it. This kind of hubris is something I would expect from a very junior developer without much real world experience who already thinks he's got everything figured out. How can one rationalize starting a super ambitious cryptocurrency project and on top of that decide to reimplement their own crypto using ternary logic for some vague theoretical benefits that would only pay out if IOTA ever becomes mainstream enough (and the benefits large enough) for people to create not only dedicated chips for it but entire industrial processes to make ternary logic silicon. It's also completely misunderstanding the current state of IoT, chips capable of doing high grade (binary) cryptography in a reasonable amount of time nowadays are worth next to nothing and their consumption is almost negligible. It's not premature optimization, it's too-little-too-late optimization. Doing that as a fun week end project to learn about ternary? Sure. As the foundation of your multi billion dollar cryptocurrency set to revolutionize IoT? Come on.

throwawaylolx 9y ago
This is even more amusing when coupled with the thoughts of IOTA followers: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_arithmetic_in_iota_by_using_a_ternary/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/73w6i7/why_ternary_ar... The two most voted comments are as follows: >It's a little overwhelming seeing IOTA do all of these things so far beyond other crypto projects. Blockchain tech is already bleeding edge but then add in ternary, quantum resistance, DAG, infinite scaling, free transactions, and AI resistance... It can be a lot to soak in for the average blockchain investor. But that just means time is even more on IOTA's side as it slowly proves itself :). This coin is going to turn the crypto space upside down. >IOTA is thinking ahead into the future but people seem to think their decision to go Ternary is "stupid" not realizing they are just that far ahead in their vision.
- siruncledrew 9y ago
  In other words, people are trying to pump up the price of IOTA.

fathomit 9y ago

Time for some FUD Copy Pastas: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pastas/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/7j81tq/fud_copy_pasta...

progresss 9y ago

I don't see anything wrong in creating something new even if it is not working right now at at best, at least people progressing, you would never have any crypto if somebody would not create something new like "Bitcoin" those who just follow blockchain tech they are just followers (easy life just add something extra and scream MY COIN IS THE BEST) Iota is something totally new and only idiots can demand from iota to be perfect from the very begining! Its not perfect but everyday it gets stronger and stronger, if you think iota is terrible why you even care about it, it will die soon maybe tomorow?, after tomorew? next week? why you even bother ? You care about everything what is terrible from your point of view? okay just go outside find some "dog shit" on the street sit down and talk about it for hours, should be same satisfaction ?! I don't think that is the case... Most probably you don't think that iota so terrible and you see some very good percentage that it could possibly succeed in the future in that case i understand why suporters of other altcoins puts so much effort to scam about it...