4 ms·

A blockchain only guarantees that calculations are done in a certain way, not that the input data is correct. That same problem also existed before the blockcha

A blockchain only guarantees that calculations are done in a certain way, not that the input data is correct. That same problem also existed before the blockchain as you can see with e.g. Amazon reviews and fake news. Traditionally that problem was solved by having a centralized authority that decides on what input data is correct and what isn't, but that, of course, comes with the usual problems of centralization and monopolies, and also, doesn't seem to work well at scale (as you can again see with the crumbling Amazon review system). While the criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected in my opinion (and maybe even purposefully misunderstanding what problems blockchains solve), I think the main problem of "shit in - shit out" is a very interesting and important one, even more so in decentralized systems where you don't have the crutches of a centralized verifier available. However, I'm pretty optimistic that that problem can even be solved with the help of blockchain. I hoped that I wouldn't have to plug our project[0] before we have anything published, but this seems too close of a topic to pass up. Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper for a decentralized information verification system that aims to solve the problems laid out in this blog post, that we worked on for quite some time. [0]: https://rlay.com https://rlay.com

456hdsaq234g 8y ago
your website has no details and you don't publish your whitepaper.
- hobofan 8y ago
  > Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper If you can be patient for a bit there will be something to see. If you want to you can also shoot me an email, and I'll send you the whitepaper ASAP.
nbeleski 8y ago
How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so?
- hobofan 8y ago
  > How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? The information is verified by creating an open system where anyone can point out wrong information (by providing oposing information). That is done with the help of a token in our system, which is issued to people who help establish consensus about what's true and what isn't. The token is the main reason we need a blockchain, and the gametheoretic aspects behind it dictate that there needs to be a token or similar in our system for it to work. > You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so? The "shit in - shit out" problem exists also with traditional systems and is not solely a blockchain-problem. That's what I meant to say with that. I think that's about as much as I can share right now without angering my colleagues. The whitepaper which is coming out in a few weeks goes more into depth about the specifics of each part of the systems and provides some game-theoretic and economic foundations for the system.
  - gus_massa 8y ago
    > The information is verified by creating an open system where anyone can point out wrong information (by providing oposing information). How do you combat "spam", were some users send thousands of fake registrations of well known art works? How do you combat sockpuppet that send wrong opposing information to steal the art work of the original creator? How do you combat sockpuppets that send wrong information to support fake claims? If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct?
    - hobofan 8y ago
      > If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct? In the end I would say that all of your other questions can be reduced to this one, by adding weight to claims, which makes the quantity of claims and indentities irellevant. We are not focused on the art market, but open to any kind of information. But for the example of the art ownership verification: - Person A (true owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - Person B (non-owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - An additional actor X who knows about the ownership can add additional weight to the claim of Person A. If the consensus in the end decides (based on the weights) that Person A is the true owner, actor X will be rewarded. There are some specifics about how we construct the reward function that I can't talk about yet, but the core of it is that all participants in the network are incentivized to only submit true information, and also incentivized to combat any wrong information they see by providing conflicting true information. If you are interested in the topic and would like to discuss more deeply feel free to reach out to me via the email on the website (I'm Max).
dick_sucker2 8y ago
Would you agree that this is a harder problem than say casino and gambling on the blockchain? There are great use cases for improving trust with smart contracts and ledgers that prevent the house from cheating or running off with the money.
- hobofan 8y ago
  Not sure what specifically you mean. Doesn't gambling on the blockchain usually work without a "house", e.g. smart contracts that are not in anyone's control? Those are the only gambling systems I've seen so far on the blockchain, but I must admit that I've never deeply looked at that topic.
  - dick_sucker2 8y ago
    The smart contracts have to be in someone's control. It's better if they aren't controlled by the house though. Check out FunFair.
    - hobofan 8y ago
      Ah, the FunFair example makes it more clear what you mean. I think the main obstacle there is finding/creating a decentralized way for (pseudo-)random numbers to establish true fairness. From what I've heard that problem has mostly been solved, but I don't know for certain. > The smart contracts have to be in someone's control. They don't _have_ to be. Someone has to deploy the smart contract, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they get any privileged access to alter/use the smart contract after deployment. That's where a lot of the beauty of smart contract enabled blockchains comes from in my opinion.
      - DennisP 8y ago
        There are various solutions for randomness. Funfair's is for the user and the house to generate chains of hashes, e.g. hash(hash(hash(secret))). Each posts the outermost hash to the smart contract. Then each can reveal successive preimages, and the contract can XOR each pair to get a random number. Here's an article on an idea very similar to theirs, with sample code: https://www.blunderingcode.com/gamble-channels-fast-verifiable-off-chain-gambling/ https://www.blunderingcode.com/gamble-channels-fast-verifiab...
pavel_lishin 8y ago
The criticism wasn't aimed at blockchain-as-a-technology, but at blockchain-as-a-panacea - at businesses who seem to think that slathering some blockchain on a problem is going to magically solve the problem.
thisisit 8y ago
> as you can see with e.g. Amazon reviews and fake news. If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will be like YouTube demonitization all over again. So companies err on the safer side and take actions only when things get out of hand. Sure it is not perfect but it is better than system which leaves less leeway. I read your below reply about how blockchain is required but you lost me at game theory, which frankly has become a go to explanation for everything blockchain. Why will this work in a blockchain? Is always followed by "because game theory and prisoners dilemma etc." Still given that you are implementing such a system, I am curious what is your background and experience in game theory, maths, voting etc?
- kinsomo 8y ago
  > If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will be like YouTube demonitization all over again. Why would it? No one makes money from legitimately written Amazon reviews.
  - thisisit 8y ago
    Because people rely on reviews and ratings to buy stuff? And stricter guidelines will mean lot of real reviews will be deleted along with fake ones? In which case some of the genuine items will be deprioritized because they have less reviews/rating?
    - kinsomo 8y ago
      > Because people rely on reviews and ratings to buy stuff? There are people who try to make a living on YouTube. Demonetization hurt them and they have a ready-made audience to vent to. But legitimate reviewers won't really care if Amazon implements stricter checks, because their livelihood doesn't rely on Amazon reviews. People won't have much sympathy for the people pushing crappy products using sketchy reviews who might get hurt, and they don't really have a high-profile forum to complain. If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will not be like YouTube demonitization all over again.
hobofan 8y ago
Draft of our whitepaper is out now: https://medium.com/rlay-official/introducing-rlay-a-decentralized-protocol-for-blockchains-external-data-problem-c0e6947a193d https://medium.com/rlay-official/introducing-rlay-a-decentra...

456hdsaq234g 8y ago

your website has no details and you don't publish your whitepaper.

hobofan 8y ago
> Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing both code for our first testnet and our whitepaper If you can be patient for a bit there will be something to see. If you want to you can also shoot me an email, and I'll send you the whitepaper ASAP.

nbeleski 8y ago

How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so?

hobofan 8y ago
> How is the information verified in your system? Why does it need a blockchain? The information is verified by creating an open system where anyone can point out wrong information (by providing oposing information). That is done with the help of a token in our system, which is issued to people who help establish consensus about what's true and what isn't. The token is the main reason we need a blockchain, and the gametheoretic aspects behind it dictate that there needs to be a token or similar in our system for it to work. > You mentioned that the "criticism in the blog post at blockchain as a technology is misdirected", how so? The "shit in - shit out" problem exists also with traditional systems and is not solely a blockchain-problem. That's what I meant to say with that. I think that's about as much as I can share right now without angering my colleagues. The whitepaper which is coming out in a few weeks goes more into depth about the specifics of each part of the systems and provides some game-theoretic and economic foundations for the system.
- gus_massa 8y ago
  > The information is verified by creating an open system where anyone can point out wrong information (by providing oposing information). How do you combat "spam", were some users send thousands of fake registrations of well known art works? How do you combat sockpuppet that send wrong opposing information to steal the art work of the original creator? How do you combat sockpuppets that send wrong information to support fake claims? If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct?
  - hobofan 8y ago
    > If some piece of art has two claims, who decides which one is the correct? In the end I would say that all of your other questions can be reduced to this one, by adding weight to claims, which makes the quantity of claims and indentities irellevant. We are not focused on the art market, but open to any kind of information. But for the example of the art ownership verification: - Person A (true owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - Person B (non-owner) claims that they own the Mona Lisa with a weight of 10 tokens - An additional actor X who knows about the ownership can add additional weight to the claim of Person A. If the consensus in the end decides (based on the weights) that Person A is the true owner, actor X will be rewarded. There are some specifics about how we construct the reward function that I can't talk about yet, but the core of it is that all participants in the network are incentivized to only submit true information, and also incentivized to combat any wrong information they see by providing conflicting true information. If you are interested in the topic and would like to discuss more deeply feel free to reach out to me via the email on the website (I'm Max).

dick_sucker2 8y ago

Would you agree that this is a harder problem than say casino and gambling on the blockchain? There are great use cases for improving trust with smart contracts and ledgers that prevent the house from cheating or running off with the money.

hobofan 8y ago
Not sure what specifically you mean. Doesn't gambling on the blockchain usually work without a "house", e.g. smart contracts that are not in anyone's control? Those are the only gambling systems I've seen so far on the blockchain, but I must admit that I've never deeply looked at that topic.
- dick_sucker2 8y ago
  The smart contracts have to be in someone's control. It's better if they aren't controlled by the house though. Check out FunFair.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    Ah, the FunFair example makes it more clear what you mean. I think the main obstacle there is finding/creating a decentralized way for (pseudo-)random numbers to establish true fairness. From what I've heard that problem has mostly been solved, but I don't know for certain. > The smart contracts have to be in someone's control. They don't _have_ to be. Someone has to deploy the smart contract, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they get any privileged access to alter/use the smart contract after deployment. That's where a lot of the beauty of smart contract enabled blockchains comes from in my opinion.
    - DennisP 8y ago
      There are various solutions for randomness. Funfair's is for the user and the house to generate chains of hashes, e.g. hash(hash(hash(secret))). Each posts the outermost hash to the smart contract. Then each can reveal successive preimages, and the contract can XOR each pair to get a random number. Here's an article on an idea very similar to theirs, with sample code: https://www.blunderingcode.com/gamble-channels-fast-verifiable-off-chain-gambling/ https://www.blunderingcode.com/gamble-channels-fast-verifiab...

pavel_lishin 8y ago

The criticism wasn't aimed at blockchain-as-a-technology, but at blockchain-as-a-panacea - at businesses who seem to think that slathering some blockchain on a problem is going to magically solve the problem.

thisisit 8y ago

> as you can see with e.g. Amazon reviews and fake news. If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will be like YouTube demonitization all over again. So companies err on the safer side and take actions only when things get out of hand. Sure it is not perfect but it is better than system which leaves less leeway. I read your below reply about how blockchain is required but you lost me at game theory, which frankly has become a go to explanation for everything blockchain. Why will this work in a blockchain? Is always followed by "because game theory and prisoners dilemma etc." Still given that you are implementing such a system, I am curious what is your background and experience in game theory, maths, voting etc?

kinsomo 8y ago
> If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will be like YouTube demonitization all over again. Why would it? No one makes money from legitimately written Amazon reviews.
- thisisit 8y ago
  Because people rely on reviews and ratings to buy stuff? And stricter guidelines will mean lot of real reviews will be deleted along with fake ones? In which case some of the genuine items will be deprioritized because they have less reviews/rating?
  - kinsomo 8y ago
    > Because people rely on reviews and ratings to buy stuff? There are people who try to make a living on YouTube. Demonetization hurt them and they have a ready-made audience to vent to. But legitimate reviewers won't really care if Amazon implements stricter checks, because their livelihood doesn't rely on Amazon reviews. People won't have much sympathy for the people pushing crappy products using sketchy reviews who might get hurt, and they don't really have a high-profile forum to complain. If Amazon wants to implement a stricter review check you can rest assured that it will not be like YouTube demonitization all over again.

hobofan 8y ago

Draft of our whitepaper is out now: https://medium.com/rlay-official/introducing-rlay-a-decentralized-protocol-for-blockchains-external-data-problem-c0e6947a193d https://medium.com/rlay-official/introducing-rlay-a-decentra...