3 ms·

Technically proof of output could be used by running it on multiple nodes and comparing output, but for anything but idempotent reads this will be difficult. A

Technically proof of output could be used by running it on multiple nodes and comparing output, but for anything but idempotent reads this will be difficult. Also for anything that needs any privacy this is fraught since unless you're running hardware obfuscation (sgx or similar) every workload is possibly observable by the 3rd party who is running the workload, including the client who is connecting. Ssl? Keys are on the host... Then there's the risk to the host, which could be side channeled in the best case scenario where isolation is sound, and completely owned in the worst case where containers are... containers. Lofty idea but extremely difficult without making it a tiny domain. There are multiple billion-dollar crypto projects aiming to do trusted distributed compute and so far none have shown anything but the most basic use cases.

silviaotar 8y ago
AFAIK Codius doesn't provide any tool to compare outputs from different hosts. Even if the outputs from different hosts is the same, you don't have a proof that the output is correct. For me the point is: why would I use a machine managed by an anonymous person/organization, with no guarantees on execution (and QoS in general) while I can run stuff on AWS EC2, where at least I have a contract with Amazon. > Codius billing is resource-driven, you should see a very strong correlation between the load on your servers (and the number of servers required) and the amount of money earned. from https://codius.org/docs/running-a-host/why https://codius.org/docs/running-a-host/why Codius incentive system is weird to me. I am incentivized to be a "host" and run a codius node so I can make money when people use it, and I am incentivized in maximizing my profit by faking the amount of resources used by the apps I host. I am not incentivized to be a "guest": how can I verify that the billing is correct? How can I verify that the host is running my application correctly?
- justmoon2 8y ago
  > AFAIK Codius doesn't provide any tool to compare outputs from different hosts. I'd love to see somebody make a browser extension that does just that! There are a bunch of important ecosystem pieces missing from Codius still. Keep in mind that this current release of it just came out a month ago. If I had a magic wand, the next things I'd introduce would be a Codius namespace system (have the design in my head but haven't had time to write it down) which can securely resolve an identifier like "alicescontract" to a JSON document like {"hosts":[...],"manifestHash":"...","hostPublicKeys":[...],"threshold":5} (For the blockchain geeks in the audience: Note you wouldn't need consensus for that because names are not fungible, so some weak form of consistency would be fine.) Then I would add a feature to Codiusd which allows a host to look up that identifier and then depending on the JSON become a proxy to that contract. What that would mean is that you could go to alicescontract.[any-codius-host] in your browser and that host would do the work of collecting responses from all the other hosts and respond once it has `threshold` matching replies. You could use whatever host you trust most as your proxy or, for the super-paranoid, you could run your own host and use that. There are further optimizations of course but I'll stop here.

silviaotar 8y ago

AFAIK Codius doesn't provide any tool to compare outputs from different hosts. Even if the outputs from different hosts is the same, you don't have a proof that the output is correct. For me the point is: why would I use a machine managed by an anonymous person/organization, with no guarantees on execution (and QoS in general) while I can run stuff on AWS EC2, where at least I have a contract with Amazon. > Codius billing is resource-driven, you should see a very strong correlation between the load on your servers (and the number of servers required) and the amount of money earned. from https://codius.org/docs/running-a-host/why https://codius.org/docs/running-a-host/why Codius incentive system is weird to me. I am incentivized to be a "host" and run a codius node so I can make money when people use it, and I am incentivized in maximizing my profit by faking the amount of resources used by the apps I host. I am not incentivized to be a "guest": how can I verify that the billing is correct? How can I verify that the host is running my application correctly?

justmoon2 8y ago
> AFAIK Codius doesn't provide any tool to compare outputs from different hosts. I'd love to see somebody make a browser extension that does just that! There are a bunch of important ecosystem pieces missing from Codius still. Keep in mind that this current release of it just came out a month ago. If I had a magic wand, the next things I'd introduce would be a Codius namespace system (have the design in my head but haven't had time to write it down) which can securely resolve an identifier like "alicescontract" to a JSON document like {"hosts":[...],"manifestHash":"...","hostPublicKeys":[...],"threshold":5} (For the blockchain geeks in the audience: Note you wouldn't need consensus for that because names are not fungible, so some weak form of consistency would be fine.) Then I would add a feature to Codiusd which allows a host to look up that identifier and then depending on the JSON become a proxy to that contract. What that would mean is that you could go to alicescontract.[any-codius-host] in your browser and that host would do the work of collecting responses from all the other hosts and respond once it has `threshold` matching replies. You could use whatever host you trust most as your proxy or, for the super-paranoid, you could run your own host and use that. There are further optimizations of course but I'll stop here.