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Having spent around 18 months of my life working on a top 5 blockchain, it's pretty disheartening to see so many comments on HN suggesting I'm some sort of MLM

by exdsq 6y ago

Having spent around 18 months of my life working on a top 5 blockchain, it's pretty disheartening to see so many comments on HN suggesting I'm some sort of MLM Ponzi Scammer when I'm actually just a guy who's interested in various CS subjects and few industries involve them all the same way blockchains do...

ashkankiani 6y ago
What was some of the interesting technical CS challenges you had to face in doing so? I have no interest in blockchain or adjacent tech because I don't see any technical challenges worth solving, so I'd be interested in learning if I was mistaken to come to that conclusion.
- str33t_punk 6y ago
  Game theory? Distributed systems? Cryptography? The technical challenges in crypto are much more interesting than that of a FANG company’s (i.e enterprise software and widgets)
  - ashkankiani 6y ago
    There's a lot of assumptions in this comment: - That people are only employed at FANG - That outside of cryptocurrencies, people only work on enterprise software and widgets - That blockchain has the only difficult distributed systems problems - That cryptography is being advanced significantly by blockchain (I would like to see more on this if it's true. From a brief search only "zero-knowledge proofs" are brought up, and considering it's a deeply technical math area, just throwing more money at the problem won't necessitate any advancement) But most of all, you just threw out buzzwords without giving any examples, which is a non-argument.
- rauljordan2020 6y ago
  Quite surprised at this comment. The reason I got into blockchain was _because_ of the incredibly difficult technical challenges it poses. Among the few I get to work on: - How to implement robust p2p networking algorithms for sharding in a distributed system such as Ethereum (a very deep rabbit hole), as Ethereum is migrating to a "sharded" architecture - How to solve the "data availability problem" https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/A-note-on-data-availability-and-erasure-coding https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/A-note-on-data-ava.... The current solution uses advanced cryptography known as KZG commitments https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2020/06/16/kate-polynomial-commitments.html https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2020/06/16/kate-polynomial-... - How to solve the problem of "transaction frontrunning", in which miners have an asymmetric advantage in ordering transactions they put in blocks for their benefit, which can adversely affect users creating those transactions. This is a problem known as MEV (Miner Extractable Value) https://research.paradigm.xyz/MEV https://research.paradigm.xyz/MEV and there is some incredibly sophisticated work going into this problem. It is a deep engineering problem as well I could go on and probably give you 20 other incredibly technical, challenging problems that are on the bleeding-edge of this technology. If you're interested, would be happy to chat more!
- exdsq 6y ago
  Depends on what you're interested in. One thing I found really cool were zero-knowledge proofs where I have to get you to trust I know something without giving away any information about that specific thing (because it's all public). This would let you have secrets, such as private transactions, on a decentralized ledger.
wmf 6y ago
The world's trying to tell you that being an honest person in a dishonest field isn't a good idea. I hope you're at least getting rich.
str33t_punk 6y ago
Hey — don’t listen to these clowns. They are upset because all they do is make enterprise widgets for a megacorp and memorize leetcode. Most software engineers in megacorps are incredible risk adverse (similar to doctors and others who follow a path) and are pretty salty they missed the boat. IMO the most interesting problems in computer science are happening in crypto. Especially if you are interested in cryptography or distributed systems. Way more interesting than making some web app ‘scale’ with the same formula everyone uses

by exdsq 6y ago

ashkankiani 6y ago

What was some of the interesting technical CS challenges you had to face in doing so? I have no interest in blockchain or adjacent tech because I don't see any technical challenges worth solving, so I'd be interested in learning if I was mistaken to come to that conclusion.

str33t_punk 6y ago
Game theory? Distributed systems? Cryptography? The technical challenges in crypto are much more interesting than that of a FANG company’s (i.e enterprise software and widgets)
- ashkankiani 6y ago
  There's a lot of assumptions in this comment: - That people are only employed at FANG - That outside of cryptocurrencies, people only work on enterprise software and widgets - That blockchain has the only difficult distributed systems problems - That cryptography is being advanced significantly by blockchain (I would like to see more on this if it's true. From a brief search only "zero-knowledge proofs" are brought up, and considering it's a deeply technical math area, just throwing more money at the problem won't necessitate any advancement) But most of all, you just threw out buzzwords without giving any examples, which is a non-argument.
rauljordan2020 6y ago
Quite surprised at this comment. The reason I got into blockchain was _because_ of the incredibly difficult technical challenges it poses. Among the few I get to work on: - How to implement robust p2p networking algorithms for sharding in a distributed system such as Ethereum (a very deep rabbit hole), as Ethereum is migrating to a "sharded" architecture - How to solve the "data availability problem" https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/A-note-on-data-availability-and-erasure-coding https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/A-note-on-data-ava.... The current solution uses advanced cryptography known as KZG commitments https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2020/06/16/kate-polynomial-commitments.html https://dankradfeist.de/ethereum/2020/06/16/kate-polynomial-... - How to solve the problem of "transaction frontrunning", in which miners have an asymmetric advantage in ordering transactions they put in blocks for their benefit, which can adversely affect users creating those transactions. This is a problem known as MEV (Miner Extractable Value) https://research.paradigm.xyz/MEV https://research.paradigm.xyz/MEV and there is some incredibly sophisticated work going into this problem. It is a deep engineering problem as well I could go on and probably give you 20 other incredibly technical, challenging problems that are on the bleeding-edge of this technology. If you're interested, would be happy to chat more!
exdsq 6y ago
Depends on what you're interested in. One thing I found really cool were zero-knowledge proofs where I have to get you to trust I know something without giving away any information about that specific thing (because it's all public). This would let you have secrets, such as private transactions, on a decentralized ledger.

wmf 6y ago

The world's trying to tell you that being an honest person in a dishonest field isn't a good idea. I hope you're at least getting rich.

str33t_punk 6y ago

Hey — don’t listen to these clowns. They are upset because all they do is make enterprise widgets for a megacorp and memorize leetcode. Most software engineers in megacorps are incredible risk adverse (similar to doctors and others who follow a path) and are pretty salty they missed the boat. IMO the most interesting problems in computer science are happening in crypto. Especially if you are interested in cryptography or distributed systems. Way more interesting than making some web app ‘scale’ with the same formula everyone uses