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I think there is perhaps a bit of irony in that your example of "database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted" h

I think there is perhaps a bit of irony in that your example of "database technology that allows encrypted data to be searched and the server to be untrusted" has already, to some degree, been invented in several competing and production strength crypto implementations: ZCash (Equihash) and Monero (RandomX/CryptoNight). I am stretching the truth a little bit here and it's more like "allows encrypted data/messages to be bidirectionally sent and exchanged two parties while the server is untrusted" because neither of these protocols allow for search. However, they /do/ allow for fully anonymous transactions + data storage, upon which you could build the rest of your social networks on top of. So IMO the actual pace of technological innovation in crypto is quite strong. I'm not such a big fan of the NFT space, but DeFi and the truly anonymous coins are extremely interesting to me.

ChadNauseam 5y ago
The database problem the GP describes is actively being worked on and is extremely difficult. There's Etebase, which is a product that's attempting to provide some of what they hope for, but without very modern (and usually very slow) encryption techniques it's not workable for most use cases. For example, on Etebase it's impossible to return rows in order from lowest to highest without using complicated hacks involving client-side indices. (In general, the field of doing operations on encrypted data is called homomorphic encryption.) ZK-tech, while super cool, is not super related IMO, but it is seem strange that the GP doesn't seem to consider it a worthwhile side effect of cryptocurrency hype.
Comevius 5y ago
The closest technology we have are verifiable databases, usually immutable ones. They can detect the server modifying the data, either with a Merkle or vector commitment tree, which blockchain technology also relies on. The difference is that those databases are much more efficient than blockchain technologies. The whole proof of work (voting power depends on computational effort) song and dance is unnecessary for a database. Even for a distributed database you only need a Byzantine agreement such as Paxos, which can only tolerate a certain number of faulty or malicious nodes. This would not work for cryptocurrencies, they need to tolerate arbitary number of such nodes (also known as a Sybil attack) to avoid the double spending problem. Cryptocurrency transactions are not I-confluent (invariant confluent), but certain database transactions are and they don't require consensus at all, so there are specialized databases that can tolerate arbitrary number of faulty or malicious nodes without Sybil countermeasures. The problem with crypto is that a solution to a specific problem (eliminating the double spending problem trustlessly) can't be applied to every problem. There are trade-offs involved. Solving the double spending problem will let you have cryptocurrencies, but will lock you out of efficiently solving a lot of other problems.
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
> I am stretching the truth a little bit here long past its breaking point
- yowlingcat 5y ago
  Please go right on ahead and elaborate on why you believe this to be the case. From the HN guidelines: >Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
  - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
    I said everything I felt the need to say. I see that you want to scold and give instructions to strangers In the meantime, I also don't discuss medicine with antivaxxers, or geology with flat earthers I have no interest in explaining to you that your lambo moon buddies are wrong, that blockchains aren't databases, that montero doesn't search encrypted data, that these things legitimately do exist, etc It's just an opportunity for you to dutifully recite something that you saw someone else say, then pretend shows you to be technically sophisticated I don't care about horse apple paste people telling me that I'm not being constructive when I vocally doubt their unevidenced claims Nobody cares when you demand that other people prove you wrong. Religious people do that all day every day. There's a reason religion never proves itself right. I don't need to prove my doubt of you. Science is rooted in doubt.
    - yowlingcat 5y ago
      You're going against the spirit of the guidelines of discourse for this community. Please take a look at them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In particular, you'd do well to look at these three guidelines: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Your comments are snarky, dismissive, shallow and presume bad faith. Rather than engage with curiosity and thoughtfulness, you put words that were never said into the mouths of others, so you ultimately are not adding anything to the conversation. Maybe this is the standard of discourse on Twitter or Reddit, but it doesn't rise to HN's level of discourse. I'm not going to make a value judgment one way or another here, but I'll just say this -- if you can't explain what you really think without belittling others, people won't think it's because you're smarter than them. They will think it's because you have nothing to say (or you're too lazy to put in the effort into saying something) and you're afraid of that being made obvious.

ChadNauseam 5y ago

The database problem the GP describes is actively being worked on and is extremely difficult. There's Etebase, which is a product that's attempting to provide some of what they hope for, but without very modern (and usually very slow) encryption techniques it's not workable for most use cases. For example, on Etebase it's impossible to return rows in order from lowest to highest without using complicated hacks involving client-side indices. (In general, the field of doing operations on encrypted data is called homomorphic encryption.) ZK-tech, while super cool, is not super related IMO, but it is seem strange that the GP doesn't seem to consider it a worthwhile side effect of cryptocurrency hype.

Comevius 5y ago

The closest technology we have are verifiable databases, usually immutable ones. They can detect the server modifying the data, either with a Merkle or vector commitment tree, which blockchain technology also relies on. The difference is that those databases are much more efficient than blockchain technologies. The whole proof of work (voting power depends on computational effort) song and dance is unnecessary for a database. Even for a distributed database you only need a Byzantine agreement such as Paxos, which can only tolerate a certain number of faulty or malicious nodes. This would not work for cryptocurrencies, they need to tolerate arbitary number of such nodes (also known as a Sybil attack) to avoid the double spending problem. Cryptocurrency transactions are not I-confluent (invariant confluent), but certain database transactions are and they don't require consensus at all, so there are specialized databases that can tolerate arbitrary number of faulty or malicious nodes without Sybil countermeasures. The problem with crypto is that a solution to a specific problem (eliminating the double spending problem trustlessly) can't be applied to every problem. There are trade-offs involved. Solving the double spending problem will let you have cryptocurrencies, but will lock you out of efficiently solving a lot of other problems.

JohnHaugeland 5y ago

> I am stretching the truth a little bit here long past its breaking point

yowlingcat 5y ago
Please go right on ahead and elaborate on why you believe this to be the case. From the HN guidelines: >Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  I said everything I felt the need to say. I see that you want to scold and give instructions to strangers In the meantime, I also don't discuss medicine with antivaxxers, or geology with flat earthers I have no interest in explaining to you that your lambo moon buddies are wrong, that blockchains aren't databases, that montero doesn't search encrypted data, that these things legitimately do exist, etc It's just an opportunity for you to dutifully recite something that you saw someone else say, then pretend shows you to be technically sophisticated I don't care about horse apple paste people telling me that I'm not being constructive when I vocally doubt their unevidenced claims Nobody cares when you demand that other people prove you wrong. Religious people do that all day every day. There's a reason religion never proves itself right. I don't need to prove my doubt of you. Science is rooted in doubt.
  - yowlingcat 5y ago
    You're going against the spirit of the guidelines of discourse for this community. Please take a look at them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In particular, you'd do well to look at these three guidelines: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Your comments are snarky, dismissive, shallow and presume bad faith. Rather than engage with curiosity and thoughtfulness, you put words that were never said into the mouths of others, so you ultimately are not adding anything to the conversation. Maybe this is the standard of discourse on Twitter or Reddit, but it doesn't rise to HN's level of discourse. I'm not going to make a value judgment one way or another here, but I'll just say this -- if you can't explain what you really think without belittling others, people won't think it's because you're smarter than them. They will think it's because you have nothing to say (or you're too lazy to put in the effort into saying something) and you're afraid of that being made obvious.