5 ms·

Without reading reams of stuff over my head, why is this interesting?

hatsunearu 9y ago
Basically they are claiming one of the core primitives to make IOTA work as a secure cryptocurrency is fundamentally flawed. Haven't read enough but if this is what it sounds like, it means IOTA needs a major rework. I mean what did you expect from a weird shitcoin that uses trinary arithmetic (really?) for no good reason. edit: letter #11 says "shit's fucked, yo".
- tmz 9y ago
  Actually, Iota already had the rework you are demanding, months ago. You should start reading at #76. It is a fast read.
atdrummond 9y ago
IOTA rolled their own crypto. As they were warned by many in and out of the crypto (in both senses of the word) communities at the time, it was susceptible to attack. MIT Media Lab wrote a responsible disclosure report on a vulnerability. IOTA kept pushing back the publication date, based on a mixture of amateur cryptography arguments and nitpicking over disclosure issues. MIT Media Lab finally published, well after the originally agreed deadline, after realizing IOTA was not serious about improving the code further and was using the time to attempt to improve their appearance in the disclosure report's narrative. IOTA got upset, as this publication exposed them with their pants down. They've now threatened the involved academics with legal action. (There is, of course, no actionable basis for such.) It is interesting if you find cryptocurrencies interesting, as it shows how "well" run many are - and IOTA is by no means an outlier here. The foundations are simply not lousy with cryptography, programming and economics experts who are solely interested in best practices.
- sanmon3186 9y ago
  >MIT Media Lab wrote a responsible disclosure report Pardon my ignorance but I am confused with engagement of MIT Media lab in this. Was it volunteer or there was some formal engagement between IOTA foundation and MIT Media lab?
loxias 9y ago
Because IOTA is rekt, it has been for some time, and this is just what you should expect from people who try to roll their own cryptography, then get defensive when a notable real cryptographer points out flaws.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Agreed. FD: I've 'shorted' IOTA in any way possible, mostly through altcoins which may actually deliver on IOTAs promises. As soon as I heard they were using ternary as some kind of competitive advantage, I lost all faith in them.
  - hatsunearu 9y ago
    somehow they claim ternery is easier to implement in hardware when it's strictly false in every way.
    - loxias 9y ago
      I have a vague memory of once upon a time reading a paper alleging that if you could start everything over again from the beginning, that somehow ternary was more efficient than binary for a digital architecture, something having to do with power usage. But other than that it just sounds like nonsense.
      - hatsunearu 9y ago
        Love to see that paper; seems like nonsense to me. If someone came up with a more optimized transistor architecture than CMOS I'd love to have a look at it.
        loxias 9y ago
        Oh! I remembered more details about it if it helps. It has to do with e being the "most efficient" numbering base. The reason e is the "most efficient" has to do with wanting to minimize both the size of the alphabet of symbols as well as the number of digits in an average computation. If you allow for a non-integer base, and a non-integer number of digits, the optimum base is e. e rounds to 3. ;-) Now, full disclosure, I'm not entirely sure I believe in this, I'm just citing sources but check these out: http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmSci-2001-11-Hayes-ternary.pdf http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmS... https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/building-the-first-ternary-microprocessor/ https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/building-the-first-ternary-m... Also, Don Knuth likes balanced ternary, and, well, I guess that counts for something. (again, personally I have no idea if I think it's nonsense or not)

Basically they are claiming one of the core primitives to make IOTA work as a secure cryptocurrency is fundamentally flawed. Haven't read enough but if this is what it sounds like, it means IOTA needs a major rework. I mean what did you expect from a weird shitcoin that uses trinary arithmetic (really?) for no good reason. edit: letter #11 says "shit's fucked, yo".

tmz 9y ago
Actually, Iota already had the rework you are demanding, months ago. You should start reading at #76. It is a fast read.

atdrummond 9y ago

IOTA rolled their own crypto. As they were warned by many in and out of the crypto (in both senses of the word) communities at the time, it was susceptible to attack. MIT Media Lab wrote a responsible disclosure report on a vulnerability. IOTA kept pushing back the publication date, based on a mixture of amateur cryptography arguments and nitpicking over disclosure issues. MIT Media Lab finally published, well after the originally agreed deadline, after realizing IOTA was not serious about improving the code further and was using the time to attempt to improve their appearance in the disclosure report's narrative. IOTA got upset, as this publication exposed them with their pants down. They've now threatened the involved academics with legal action. (There is, of course, no actionable basis for such.) It is interesting if you find cryptocurrencies interesting, as it shows how "well" run many are - and IOTA is by no means an outlier here. The foundations are simply not lousy with cryptography, programming and economics experts who are solely interested in best practices.

sanmon3186 9y ago
>MIT Media Lab wrote a responsible disclosure report Pardon my ignorance but I am confused with engagement of MIT Media lab in this. Was it volunteer or there was some formal engagement between IOTA foundation and MIT Media lab?

loxias 9y ago

Because IOTA is rekt, it has been for some time, and this is just what you should expect from people who try to roll their own cryptography, then get defensive when a notable real cryptographer points out flaws.

oh_sigh 9y ago
Agreed. FD: I've 'shorted' IOTA in any way possible, mostly through altcoins which may actually deliver on IOTAs promises. As soon as I heard they were using ternary as some kind of competitive advantage, I lost all faith in them.
- hatsunearu 9y ago
  somehow they claim ternery is easier to implement in hardware when it's strictly false in every way.
  - loxias 9y ago
    I have a vague memory of once upon a time reading a paper alleging that if you could start everything over again from the beginning, that somehow ternary was more efficient than binary for a digital architecture, something having to do with power usage. But other than that it just sounds like nonsense.
    - hatsunearu 9y ago
      Love to see that paper; seems like nonsense to me. If someone came up with a more optimized transistor architecture than CMOS I'd love to have a look at it.
      - loxias 9y ago
        Oh! I remembered more details about it if it helps. It has to do with e being the "most efficient" numbering base. The reason e is the "most efficient" has to do with wanting to minimize both the size of the alphabet of symbols as well as the number of digits in an average computation. If you allow for a non-integer base, and a non-integer number of digits, the optimum base is e. e rounds to 3. ;-) Now, full disclosure, I'm not entirely sure I believe in this, I'm just citing sources but check these out: http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmSci-2001-11-Hayes-ternary.pdf http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmS... https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/building-the-first-ternary-microprocessor/ https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/building-the-first-ternary-m... Also, Don Knuth likes balanced ternary, and, well, I guess that counts for something. (again, personally I have no idea if I think it's nonsense or not)