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> Do you know any other way to bootstrap a peer to peer network without centralised authorities? I’m not the parent, but – no, I don’t. But that’s exactly the

by comex 5y ago

> Do you know any other way to bootstrap a peer to peer network without centralised authorities? I’m not the parent, but – no, I don’t. But that’s exactly the point. The need to bootstrap from centralized authorities is what’s supposedly so bad about weak subjectivity in proof-of-stake. Yet in practice, it’s needed with proof-of-work as well.

Laforet 5y ago
Hi Nick, very well said and this is precisely my point as well. Satoshi tried to convince us that we could decentralise trust by doing honest work instead of relying on authority. It turns out that doing work is actually pretty hard, people are lazy, and security is still the nemesis of efficiency.
ricardolopes 5y ago
Maybe I didn't word it right, but I wasn't calling bitcoin's method reliant on centralised authorities, just asking if there were more methods out there that weren't as well. Bitcoin is an open source permissionless protocol, so you have multiple clients to chose from, each with their own list of bootstrapping nodes, many open source where you can submit a PR to add your node too. You can even build your own client and point to whatever you want. You can also just ignore them and just point directly to nodes in a list from a public forum, a private chat, whatever. Also, you're not just connected to those bootstrapping nodes: you use them to find the rest of the peers in the network.
- colordrops 5y ago
  It seems that PoW is like recursion. You don't get it at all until you completely get it. It's a leap to understand it and somehow many very technical people don't understand a seemingly simple protocol even a decade after it became mainstream and is threatening national banks due to the very characteristics these people claim it doesn't have.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    Indeed, a very strange phenomena. Willful ignorance?
- comex 5y ago
  > Bitcoin is an open source permissionless protocol, so you have multiple clients to chose from, each with their own list of bootstrapping nodes, many open source where you can submit a PR to add your node too. You can even build your own client and point to whatever you want. You can also just ignore them and just point directly to nodes in a list from a public forum, a private chat, whatever. I characterized this as relying on centralized authorities (albeit several of them), but sure, it can also be considered decentralized to some extent. The point is that it's a mechanism outside of the proof-of-work network itself. Instead of relying on a machine to reach consensus via a formal protocol, you the human are probing for a social consensus by evaluating statements made by other humans (via GitHub, public forums, or private chats, or just talking to people in person). In both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, you need to find social consensus in order to initially obtain the software, after which point you can rely on the network's consensus. The difference with proof-of-stake is that you have to redo this if you disconnect from the network for months on end. In practice, for a variety of reasons, practically all users of cryptocurrencies download regular software updates, and thus continue to rely on social consensus, regardless of whether the currency is proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
  - yanmaani 5y ago
    I want to take a moment to note what you're doing here. You're making a negative argument, in want of a better word. It goes something like this: 1. X is a problem? 2. But Y is also a problem, in my opinion. 3. X and Y are both the same, I think. 4. Therefore X is not a problem. We can - theoretically - verify the correctness of PoW software by downloading the source code, reading it over, etc. We can also refuse to update, reducing ourselves to SPV security. We can internally verify the checkpoints using 100% objective standards. There are other things as well. This is not the case for PoS, where our "signature A existed at time B" has to be taken as faith, or evidence of things unseen. There is no internal way to verify the veracity of such a statement. The fact that users aren't personally doing this, is not the same as saying it makes no difference whether they are able to or not. I'm not personally going to withdraw all the money in my bank account - that would be ridiculous - but if the bank informed me I was no longer able to withdraw the money in my account, that would not be suitable at all. The assurance that I can do it makes it so that I don't have to.
hackernews777 5y ago
It's not actually needed, its simply a convenience for users who just want it to work out of the box. You can hand configure the bootstrapping process with -connect and -addnode if you wish.

by comex 5y ago

Laforet 5y ago

Hi Nick, very well said and this is precisely my point as well. Satoshi tried to convince us that we could decentralise trust by doing honest work instead of relying on authority. It turns out that doing work is actually pretty hard, people are lazy, and security is still the nemesis of efficiency.

ricardolopes 5y ago

Maybe I didn't word it right, but I wasn't calling bitcoin's method reliant on centralised authorities, just asking if there were more methods out there that weren't as well. Bitcoin is an open source permissionless protocol, so you have multiple clients to chose from, each with their own list of bootstrapping nodes, many open source where you can submit a PR to add your node too. You can even build your own client and point to whatever you want. You can also just ignore them and just point directly to nodes in a list from a public forum, a private chat, whatever. Also, you're not just connected to those bootstrapping nodes: you use them to find the rest of the peers in the network.

colordrops 5y ago
It seems that PoW is like recursion. You don't get it at all until you completely get it. It's a leap to understand it and somehow many very technical people don't understand a seemingly simple protocol even a decade after it became mainstream and is threatening national banks due to the very characteristics these people claim it doesn't have.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Indeed, a very strange phenomena. Willful ignorance?
comex 5y ago
> Bitcoin is an open source permissionless protocol, so you have multiple clients to chose from, each with their own list of bootstrapping nodes, many open source where you can submit a PR to add your node too. You can even build your own client and point to whatever you want. You can also just ignore them and just point directly to nodes in a list from a public forum, a private chat, whatever. I characterized this as relying on centralized authorities (albeit several of them), but sure, it can also be considered decentralized to some extent. The point is that it's a mechanism outside of the proof-of-work network itself. Instead of relying on a machine to reach consensus via a formal protocol, you the human are probing for a social consensus by evaluating statements made by other humans (via GitHub, public forums, or private chats, or just talking to people in person). In both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, you need to find social consensus in order to initially obtain the software, after which point you can rely on the network's consensus. The difference with proof-of-stake is that you have to redo this if you disconnect from the network for months on end. In practice, for a variety of reasons, practically all users of cryptocurrencies download regular software updates, and thus continue to rely on social consensus, regardless of whether the currency is proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
- yanmaani 5y ago
  I want to take a moment to note what you're doing here. You're making a negative argument, in want of a better word. It goes something like this: 1. X is a problem? 2. But Y is also a problem, in my opinion. 3. X and Y are both the same, I think. 4. Therefore X is not a problem. We can - theoretically - verify the correctness of PoW software by downloading the source code, reading it over, etc. We can also refuse to update, reducing ourselves to SPV security. We can internally verify the checkpoints using 100% objective standards. There are other things as well. This is not the case for PoS, where our "signature A existed at time B" has to be taken as faith, or evidence of things unseen. There is no internal way to verify the veracity of such a statement. The fact that users aren't personally doing this, is not the same as saying it makes no difference whether they are able to or not. I'm not personally going to withdraw all the money in my bank account - that would be ridiculous - but if the bank informed me I was no longer able to withdraw the money in my account, that would not be suitable at all. The assurance that I can do it makes it so that I don't have to.

hackernews777 5y ago

It's not actually needed, its simply a convenience for users who just want it to work out of the box. You can hand configure the bootstrapping process with -connect and -addnode if you wish.