2 ms·

Please provide sources and/or elaboration for/on the following: * Deliberate slowness. * Comparative slowness (given the problem space). * 1/3 collusion brea

Please provide sources and/or elaboration for/on the following: * Deliberate slowness. * Comparative slowness (given the problem space). * 1/3 collusion breaking trust-less consensus. * A definition of "us", "trust" and "scale" for your 6th line.

AlexCoventry 9y ago
> Deliberate slowness. As OP article alludes, bitcoin difficulty is tuned for a very long interval between blocks, to reduce the risk of nearly-simultaneous "uncle" blocks. Other blockchains such as Ethereum have seemingly successful alternative approaches. IMO the article has a very limited perspective on blockchain technology. It's understandable, since the space is exploding and very hard to keep a handle on, but I think it should be less sweeping in its claims.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  That doesn't really solve the problem at all though.
  - AlexCoventry 9y ago
    Ethereum beautifully solved the problem of "how do I cheaply make a token with trustless trading semantics?", and it's been used to raise billions of dollars of funding. So that might depend on the problem you're talking about. There's an enormous amount of interesting blockchain technology, so sweeping dismissals of it tend to be lazy and ignorant.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > to raise billions of dollars of funding How much of that was neither exit scammed nor lost to contract bugs?
      - opportune 9y ago
        how much of the internet was dedicated to porn and funny pictures?
      - AlexCoventry 9y ago
        Not the point. It's obviously introduced new problems, but does provide a highly valued capability. Sweeping dismissals of the space based on bitcoin's design are ignorant and lazy.
        KirinDave 9y ago
        How do we know there isn't a selfish mining ring owning and subtly biasing Ethereum? I want a good answer to this question before I put money back in. Because tbqf, it's very easy to raise capital on buzzwords. Especially if you're so we'll suited to money laundering.
        AlexCoventry 9y ago
        It should be possible to check for autocorrelation of block arrival times, and correlation with forks. I don't know whether anyone's gone looking for that, but Eyal and Sirer have a strong incentive to monitor for it, and obviously have the chops to do so.
        bduerst 9y ago
        While there are bad actors in every system, how that system handles bad actors is still relevant and to the point when judging it.
        spookthesunset 9y ago
        Hardly lazy. The entire space has existed for 10 years and the underlying tech for even more. So far all that has been produced is massive amounts of fraud. If you want to count pump and dump scams, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, terrorist funding, organized crime money laundering schemes, crypto-locker scams, “underage kids buying hardcore drugs” schemes, child trafficking schemes, blatant tax fraud, “hiding money from the ex wife” schemes, and all the other underground frauds, scams and criminal behavior as “valuable”, be my guest. ... oh and all at the low low cost of the several small nations worth of electricity required to power the brutally slow, inefficient by design Rube Goldberg contraption that is the blockchain... The whole space is a joke.
KirinDave 9y ago
The PoW blockchain is slow to propagate updates but design. If you don't know how proof of work blockchains work, I advice you to Google around for a nice technical breakdown. Suffice to say, it is fundamental and a property people specifically code in to make blocks take a specific amount of time to complete. As for the 1/3 citation, I guess that's slightly less known: "Selfish Mining". Citation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243 Of course "1/3" is a joke. It's actually closer to 1/4.
- tboyd47 9y ago
  TL;DR for those of us on small viewports?
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    People can collude to get a disrporotionate amount of the profit from a blockchain. The more people collude, the more profit they get, the more rational it is to join them. This then bridges into traditional 51% attacks.
    - philangist 9y ago
      > The more people collude, the more profit they get, the more rational it is to join them. This is not true. Colluders diminish the value of their PoW reward by reducing the trust of all other participants in the system and honest actors have an even strong incentive not to join them. Just a few years ago a mining pool that gained a very large share of the Bitcoin hashrate had members choose to leave -- https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-miners-ditch-ghash-io-pool-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-miners-ditch-ghash-io-pool-...
      - KirinDave 9y ago
        Please see the referenced paper. They address this. Because Selfish Mining attacks are not inherently detectable, you cannot expect the average user to detect them. Too many refutations of selfish mining appeal to an oracle. This is an example of such an argument.

AlexCoventry 9y ago

> Deliberate slowness. As OP article alludes, bitcoin difficulty is tuned for a very long interval between blocks, to reduce the risk of nearly-simultaneous "uncle" blocks. Other blockchains such as Ethereum have seemingly successful alternative approaches. IMO the article has a very limited perspective on blockchain technology. It's understandable, since the space is exploding and very hard to keep a handle on, but I think it should be less sweeping in its claims.

KirinDave 9y ago
That doesn't really solve the problem at all though.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  Ethereum beautifully solved the problem of "how do I cheaply make a token with trustless trading semantics?", and it's been used to raise billions of dollars of funding. So that might depend on the problem you're talking about. There's an enormous amount of interesting blockchain technology, so sweeping dismissals of it tend to be lazy and ignorant.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > to raise billions of dollars of funding How much of that was neither exit scammed nor lost to contract bugs?
    - opportune 9y ago
      how much of the internet was dedicated to porn and funny pictures?
    - AlexCoventry 9y ago
      Not the point. It's obviously introduced new problems, but does provide a highly valued capability. Sweeping dismissals of the space based on bitcoin's design are ignorant and lazy.
      - KirinDave 9y ago
        How do we know there isn't a selfish mining ring owning and subtly biasing Ethereum? I want a good answer to this question before I put money back in. Because tbqf, it's very easy to raise capital on buzzwords. Especially if you're so we'll suited to money laundering.
        AlexCoventry 9y ago
        It should be possible to check for autocorrelation of block arrival times, and correlation with forks. I don't know whether anyone's gone looking for that, but Eyal and Sirer have a strong incentive to monitor for it, and obviously have the chops to do so.
      - bduerst 9y ago
        While there are bad actors in every system, how that system handles bad actors is still relevant and to the point when judging it.
      - spookthesunset 9y ago
        Hardly lazy. The entire space has existed for 10 years and the underlying tech for even more. So far all that has been produced is massive amounts of fraud. If you want to count pump and dump scams, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, terrorist funding, organized crime money laundering schemes, crypto-locker scams, “underage kids buying hardcore drugs” schemes, child trafficking schemes, blatant tax fraud, “hiding money from the ex wife” schemes, and all the other underground frauds, scams and criminal behavior as “valuable”, be my guest. ... oh and all at the low low cost of the several small nations worth of electricity required to power the brutally slow, inefficient by design Rube Goldberg contraption that is the blockchain... The whole space is a joke.

KirinDave 9y ago

The PoW blockchain is slow to propagate updates but design. If you don't know how proof of work blockchains work, I advice you to Google around for a nice technical breakdown. Suffice to say, it is fundamental and a property people specifically code in to make blocks take a specific amount of time to complete. As for the 1/3 citation, I guess that's slightly less known: "Selfish Mining". Citation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243 Of course "1/3" is a joke. It's actually closer to 1/4.

tboyd47 9y ago
TL;DR for those of us on small viewports?
- KirinDave 9y ago
  People can collude to get a disrporotionate amount of the profit from a blockchain. The more people collude, the more profit they get, the more rational it is to join them. This then bridges into traditional 51% attacks.
  - philangist 9y ago
    > The more people collude, the more profit they get, the more rational it is to join them. This is not true. Colluders diminish the value of their PoW reward by reducing the trust of all other participants in the system and honest actors have an even strong incentive not to join them. Just a few years ago a mining pool that gained a very large share of the Bitcoin hashrate had members choose to leave -- https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-miners-ditch-ghash-io-pool-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-miners-ditch-ghash-io-pool-...
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      Please see the referenced paper. They address this. Because Selfish Mining attacks are not inherently detectable, you cannot expect the average user to detect them. Too many refutations of selfish mining appeal to an oracle. This is an example of such an argument.