4 ms·

A little OT but seems the right place to ask. Is there any 'mainstream' crypto useful for micro-transactions with low-latency and low-transaction fees? Or main

A little OT but seems the right place to ask. Is there any 'mainstream' crypto useful for micro-transactions with low-latency and low-transaction fees? Or mainstream is what kills actually kills it?

dylkil 6y ago
Yes, but you sacrifice security for scalability. One of the ethereum layer 2's seem to be the most promising but are yet to gain major traction. Loopring seems to be in a pretty good place right now though. You could also use some other crypto like BCH, which vitalik once suggested could be used to store ethereum state. So if its good enough for him, it might be good enough for you.
ssijak 6y ago
Nano. High throughoutput, no transaction fees. Works well for years already.
- mlqnw 6y ago
  Having some level of transaction fees could be important for preventing DOS attacks. I also like the idea of forming a treasury from a cut of the transaction fees to fund proposals for future projects from within the community as Cardano and Polkadot have done.
  - rekshaw 6y ago
    > Having some level of transaction fees could be important for preventing DOS attacks. Agreed. Their mitigation approach is somewhat interesting as well though (dynamic PoW [1]). Thanks to the independent nature of the blocks, signing difficulty of the transactions can be raised and lowered dynamically making spam incrementally more expensive for the spammers. [1] https://medium.com/nanocurrency/dynamic-proof-of-work-prioritization-4618b78c5be9 https://medium.com/nanocurrency/dynamic-proof-of-work-priori...
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Can you explain in simple words, how they achieve this?
  - bmh 6y ago
    Every account in the network is a chain of blocks, with each block signed by the private key of that account. So only the owner of the account can add a block to their chain. To send money from A to B, A will add a 'spend' block to her chain, and B will add a 'receive' block to his chain. If B is offline, he can claim that receive later. The speed comes from the fact that spends from A to B can be processed independently of spends from C to D. So all independent transactions occur in parallel (and as you can imagine most transactions are independent). Every block addition is voted on by all participating nodes, and they vote as quickly as possible, so they're limited by internet bandwidth/latency, as well public/private key signature verification and generation. Most transactions complete within less than a second. New blocks do need a PoW signature, but these are much much smaller than other PoW signatures. Additionally, they are usually generated by the account performing the transaction, so they will typically run on your phone or browser wallet app. Finally, the entire system was feeless from inception. That's just a design decision. I guess people run nodes because they want the whole thing to live.
    - ativzzz 6y ago
      So it only works as long as people are willing to volunteer nodes right? For a stable business model, I assume some party will start hosting nodes and charging people to use it?
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        It seems like it, but still, I like that approach a lot.
gnrlst 6y ago
Out of all the options I've researched, the one I'm considering investing my development time into is Nano. 0 transaction fees, <<1s transaction times, already decentralized and a great community. It's a very polarizing coin (people either love it or dismiss it), but what won me over is that it's not built on promises: it does exactly what it says on the tin, already.

A little OT but seems the right place to ask. Is there any 'mainstream' crypto useful for micro-transactions with low-latency and low-transaction fees? Or mainstream is what kills actually kills it?

dylkil 6y ago

Yes, but you sacrifice security for scalability. One of the ethereum layer 2's seem to be the most promising but are yet to gain major traction. Loopring seems to be in a pretty good place right now though. You could also use some other crypto like BCH, which vitalik once suggested could be used to store ethereum state. So if its good enough for him, it might be good enough for you.

ssijak 6y ago

Nano. High throughoutput, no transaction fees. Works well for years already.

mlqnw 6y ago
Having some level of transaction fees could be important for preventing DOS attacks. I also like the idea of forming a treasury from a cut of the transaction fees to fund proposals for future projects from within the community as Cardano and Polkadot have done.
- rekshaw 6y ago
  > Having some level of transaction fees could be important for preventing DOS attacks. Agreed. Their mitigation approach is somewhat interesting as well though (dynamic PoW [1]). Thanks to the independent nature of the blocks, signing difficulty of the transactions can be raised and lowered dynamically making spam incrementally more expensive for the spammers. [1] https://medium.com/nanocurrency/dynamic-proof-of-work-prioritization-4618b78c5be9 https://medium.com/nanocurrency/dynamic-proof-of-work-priori...
hutzlibu 6y ago
Can you explain in simple words, how they achieve this?
- bmh 6y ago
  Every account in the network is a chain of blocks, with each block signed by the private key of that account. So only the owner of the account can add a block to their chain. To send money from A to B, A will add a 'spend' block to her chain, and B will add a 'receive' block to his chain. If B is offline, he can claim that receive later. The speed comes from the fact that spends from A to B can be processed independently of spends from C to D. So all independent transactions occur in parallel (and as you can imagine most transactions are independent). Every block addition is voted on by all participating nodes, and they vote as quickly as possible, so they're limited by internet bandwidth/latency, as well public/private key signature verification and generation. Most transactions complete within less than a second. New blocks do need a PoW signature, but these are much much smaller than other PoW signatures. Additionally, they are usually generated by the account performing the transaction, so they will typically run on your phone or browser wallet app. Finally, the entire system was feeless from inception. That's just a design decision. I guess people run nodes because they want the whole thing to live.
  - ativzzz 6y ago
    So it only works as long as people are willing to volunteer nodes right? For a stable business model, I assume some party will start hosting nodes and charging people to use it?
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      It seems like it, but still, I like that approach a lot.

gnrlst 6y ago

Out of all the options I've researched, the one I'm considering investing my development time into is Nano. 0 transaction fees, <<1s transaction times, already decentralized and a great community. It's a very polarizing coin (people either love it or dismiss it), but what won me over is that it's not built on promises: it does exactly what it says on the tin, already.