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>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. Unfortunate

by yashg 4y ago

>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.

noxer 4y ago
PoW is not needed at all its just a puzzle do "randomizes" who can write the next block. Its comically inefficient and p much the worst known working solution. Some BTC devs realized this and created Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) which used Byzantine Agreement rather than a puzzle to created the consensus and then federated the whole system to prevent 51%-like attacks. Obviously if the peers work together with the goal to reach consensus based on fix rules it becames way more efficient. Only a few year after bitcoin this was already invented theoretically and shortly after build an went online 2012/13. It essentially depreciated PoW (and Bitcoin) long before all the BTC clones existed and even before ETH. People just tend to stick to "the first of something" and fight whatever comes after. tl;dr The secret sauce of blockchain is not PoW, its a public state of a ledger that can be verified to be correct by anyone without trusting anyone simply by applying the rules of the system yourself.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  PoW is needed for the "trustless" qualifier. Other schemes like PoS can be very low trust but not fully trustless. They also tend towards ever increasing centralization.
  - noxer 4y ago
    No, its really not. It is literally just a puzzle which solves the "problem" as to who gets to write the next block. Instead if you define the rules for the next block as strict as possible so it essentially eliminates a huge variety of possible blocks, participants can instead easily agree on one (the best) block (one that follows all rules and is objectionably better than all other possible blocks). There is no need to "fight" over who can add that block, agreeing is way more efficient. And Consequentially the puzzle is no longer needed. PoS is not what I'm talking about at all. PoS just replaces the PoW puzzle with a "virtual puzzle" that acts as if higher stakes are higher hash power thus more chance to win the puzzle. Other than that its still the same "fight" over who gets to write the next block. PoW and PoS at scale leads to more centralization over time because of the economy of scale principle. While FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement) leads to more decentralization because its in everyones interest to increase the number of participants, they are helping the system not competing.
    - Sammi 4y ago
      "agreeing is way more efficient" Then it's not trustless is it?
      - noxer 4y ago
        People mean different things with "trustless". Its trustless in the sense that you yourself can apply the rules and verify that each block follows the public rules. The "agreeing" is only within the rules and the rules are in the code. So you have to trust (or verify) that the code actually does implement the rules the way you want them to be.
    - FabHK 4y ago
      How do you solve double spend? So you make your objective rules as to what is the best block by defining some measure of quality (maybe include the most transactions that fit in, maybe sorted by fee-per-byte or so). Now all the good nodes agree on the next block B1 and then start working on B2 (not much work to do, because no PoW, but whatever, they build the next block B2.) Meanwhile, evil actor Eve has transferred a lot of money in B1 to Alice, and received something worthwhile. Now she makes an alternative block B1', transferring the money to her friend Bob instead of Alice, where B1' has even higher quality (higher fee, say), and quickly creates B2' and then B3'. How is a new node coming in to decide between the chain B1->B2, and the chain B1'->B2'->B3'? The latter chain is longer and has higher quality.
      - noxer 4y ago
        There is no block 2 created if block 1 is not final. Once consensus is reached on what is in B1 it doesn't matter anymore if someone comes around with a different idea what should be in B1. So by the time the nodes "debate" over B2, Alice has the money and its final. There can not be a double spend with time delay in between because the second transaction ties to move already moved funds so its objectively invalid. A double spend would need to happen in the same block but all transaction are ordered sequentially so the second one will fail anyway as it still tries to moved funds that are already moved. The nodes just have to agree on one, it doesn't matter which one. If someone internationally tries to send the same funds to Bob an Alice he's just flipping a coin as to who will get it. Alice doesn't care and Bob doesn't care either. They only care about it being final if they see the funds in their account. And the rest of the network doesn't care that Eve is being a bit silly and wants a "decentral coin flip" to decide where the money goes.
_nalply 4y ago
> planet destroying at scale This has been repeated often. I usually think everytime I read this: what if the price of electric power included the price of destroying the planet? For me this looks like a market failure that proof of work is allowed to destroy the planet. You consume a lot of electric power? Then you pay the full price of it!
rzz3 4y ago
Planet destroying is a bit extreme. The traditional finance system is no more energy efficient overall. It’s certainly not environmentally friendly, but that’s more a function of the dirty power we use for anything and everything. We just need to fix our methods of generating energy, not criticize everything that uses a lot of it.
- jimjimjim 4y ago
  preposterous. financial transaction processing is and always has been vastly more efficient and quick.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  > The traditional finance system is no more energy efficient overall. Using more power[1] to process vastly more transactions makes it more efficient. There are over a billion credit card transactions per day as it is, and that doesn't include debit cards, wire transfers, BACS, Swift, PayPal, WU, AliPay, WeChat and all the others. And cash while we're at it, that's part of the system too. [1]: Lets say it does, though transaction processing is only a small part of the financial industries. I don't even know how much the whole industry uses, let alone what fraction is transaction handling.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > We just need to fix our methods of generating energy, not criticize everything that uses a lot of it. The problem isn't that proof-of-work "uses a lot of [energy]"; the problem is that proof-of-work only exists to waste energy. "Fix[ing] our methods of generating energy" is a red herring, since proof-of-work will automatically scale to consume any difference. It's a Red Queen's Race, which cannot be won.
  - Sammi 4y ago
    No PoW is done so that the blockchain can be trustless. That is a valuable property. No other system has that property.
    - 4y ago
soulofmischief 4y ago
> That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. It might interest you to know then that the short, digestible 8 page whitepaper on Bitcoin, which originally described the blockchain, specifically used this definition. It's the most accurate because it is what a blockchain was designed for. I recommend giving it a read and ignoring any project which doesn't follow its core tenants. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- vasco 4y ago
  Tenets! Tenants pay rent.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    Whoops! Nice catch. Don't ignore your tenants.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Latin "He holds"; imported to English, if refers to a belief (which is something you hold), e.g. tenets of the Catholic Church.
  - bobthechef 4y ago
- yashg 4y ago
  I have read that whitepaper. That was the first think I read when I started researching about the whole crypto and blockchain space. And this is the culmination of my research https://bit.ly/3OB5G18 https://bit.ly/3OB5G18
  - anamax 4y ago
    I'm sure that that is a wonderful paper, behind a paywall.
    - 4y ago
kayamon 4y ago
It's supposed to be slow. That's what secures it. The production speed comes from layer 2 solutions built on top of it (analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security). It's not expensive. Transaction fees are just fine and getting cheaper over time. It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry.
- louthy 4y ago
  > It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry. But the fossil-fuel industry has had very real benefits (whether we like it our not!). It's surely debateable whether fuelling crime, scams, and what is tantamount to a massive casino is of any benefit to humanity. Especially when running it consumes more energy than Argentina [1] Of course there are plenty of other aspects of human existence that requires energy, and therefore has an impact on our home. That doesn't give individuals who are engaged in this casino an 'out'. It is an entirely greed driven exercise right now. Perhaps something will come along that makes blockchain and other crypto concepts viable and valuable to society, it ain't here yet though. So I don't see how anybody can justify an Argentina's worth off energy usage. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    >Perhaps something will come along that makes blockchain and other crypto concepts viable and valuable to society, it ain't here yet though. So I don't see how anybody can justify an Argentina's worth off energy usage. Central banking finally has a freer market and you can choose (or create) an asset with your preferred monetary policy... Avoiding or atleast limiting exposure to global currency debasement is now a possibility when you choose the right product/chain/coin. That's a problem that costs workers around the world 100s of trillions of dollars and it's being solved.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security …what? You can’t JIT your way out of the underlying machine being slow. The machine is a watch; JITs typically achieve performance by speeding up an interpreter running on the machine (in other words, taking advantage of missed performance opportunities). This analogy doesn’t work for POW schemes, since wasting energy is the entire point. My understanding of “L2” solutions is that they’re really just pseudo-verified batching techniques, where transactions are rolled up off-chain and settled in bulk. That doesn’t “solve” PoW; it fundamentally undermines the original integrity promise.

by yashg 4y ago

noxer 4y ago

PoW is not needed at all its just a puzzle do "randomizes" who can write the next block. Its comically inefficient and p much the worst known working solution. Some BTC devs realized this and created Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) which used Byzantine Agreement rather than a puzzle to created the consensus and then federated the whole system to prevent 51%-like attacks. Obviously if the peers work together with the goal to reach consensus based on fix rules it becames way more efficient. Only a few year after bitcoin this was already invented theoretically and shortly after build an went online 2012/13. It essentially depreciated PoW (and Bitcoin) long before all the BTC clones existed and even before ETH. People just tend to stick to "the first of something" and fight whatever comes after. tl;dr The secret sauce of blockchain is not PoW, its a public state of a ledger that can be verified to be correct by anyone without trusting anyone simply by applying the rules of the system yourself.

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
PoW is needed for the "trustless" qualifier. Other schemes like PoS can be very low trust but not fully trustless. They also tend towards ever increasing centralization.
- noxer 4y ago
  No, its really not. It is literally just a puzzle which solves the "problem" as to who gets to write the next block. Instead if you define the rules for the next block as strict as possible so it essentially eliminates a huge variety of possible blocks, participants can instead easily agree on one (the best) block (one that follows all rules and is objectionably better than all other possible blocks). There is no need to "fight" over who can add that block, agreeing is way more efficient. And Consequentially the puzzle is no longer needed. PoS is not what I'm talking about at all. PoS just replaces the PoW puzzle with a "virtual puzzle" that acts as if higher stakes are higher hash power thus more chance to win the puzzle. Other than that its still the same "fight" over who gets to write the next block. PoW and PoS at scale leads to more centralization over time because of the economy of scale principle. While FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement) leads to more decentralization because its in everyones interest to increase the number of participants, they are helping the system not competing.
  - Sammi 4y ago
    "agreeing is way more efficient" Then it's not trustless is it?
    - noxer 4y ago
      People mean different things with "trustless". Its trustless in the sense that you yourself can apply the rules and verify that each block follows the public rules. The "agreeing" is only within the rules and the rules are in the code. So you have to trust (or verify) that the code actually does implement the rules the way you want them to be.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    How do you solve double spend? So you make your objective rules as to what is the best block by defining some measure of quality (maybe include the most transactions that fit in, maybe sorted by fee-per-byte or so). Now all the good nodes agree on the next block B1 and then start working on B2 (not much work to do, because no PoW, but whatever, they build the next block B2.) Meanwhile, evil actor Eve has transferred a lot of money in B1 to Alice, and received something worthwhile. Now she makes an alternative block B1', transferring the money to her friend Bob instead of Alice, where B1' has even higher quality (higher fee, say), and quickly creates B2' and then B3'. How is a new node coming in to decide between the chain B1->B2, and the chain B1'->B2'->B3'? The latter chain is longer and has higher quality.
    - noxer 4y ago
      There is no block 2 created if block 1 is not final. Once consensus is reached on what is in B1 it doesn't matter anymore if someone comes around with a different idea what should be in B1. So by the time the nodes "debate" over B2, Alice has the money and its final. There can not be a double spend with time delay in between because the second transaction ties to move already moved funds so its objectively invalid. A double spend would need to happen in the same block but all transaction are ordered sequentially so the second one will fail anyway as it still tries to moved funds that are already moved. The nodes just have to agree on one, it doesn't matter which one. If someone internationally tries to send the same funds to Bob an Alice he's just flipping a coin as to who will get it. Alice doesn't care and Bob doesn't care either. They only care about it being final if they see the funds in their account. And the rest of the network doesn't care that Eve is being a bit silly and wants a "decentral coin flip" to decide where the money goes.

_nalply 4y ago

> planet destroying at scale This has been repeated often. I usually think everytime I read this: what if the price of electric power included the price of destroying the planet? For me this looks like a market failure that proof of work is allowed to destroy the planet. You consume a lot of electric power? Then you pay the full price of it!

rzz3 4y ago

Planet destroying is a bit extreme. The traditional finance system is no more energy efficient overall. It’s certainly not environmentally friendly, but that’s more a function of the dirty power we use for anything and everything. We just need to fix our methods of generating energy, not criticize everything that uses a lot of it.

jimjimjim 4y ago
preposterous. financial transaction processing is and always has been vastly more efficient and quick.
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> The traditional finance system is no more energy efficient overall. Using more power[1] to process vastly more transactions makes it more efficient. There are over a billion credit card transactions per day as it is, and that doesn't include debit cards, wire transfers, BACS, Swift, PayPal, WU, AliPay, WeChat and all the others. And cash while we're at it, that's part of the system too. [1]: Lets say it does, though transaction processing is only a small part of the financial industries. I don't even know how much the whole industry uses, let alone what fraction is transaction handling.
chriswarbo 4y ago
> We just need to fix our methods of generating energy, not criticize everything that uses a lot of it. The problem isn't that proof-of-work "uses a lot of [energy]"; the problem is that proof-of-work only exists to waste energy. "Fix[ing] our methods of generating energy" is a red herring, since proof-of-work will automatically scale to consume any difference. It's a Red Queen's Race, which cannot be won.
- Sammi 4y ago
  No PoW is done so that the blockchain can be trustless. That is a valuable property. No other system has that property.
  - 4y ago

soulofmischief 4y ago

> That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. It might interest you to know then that the short, digestible 8 page whitepaper on Bitcoin, which originally described the blockchain, specifically used this definition. It's the most accurate because it is what a blockchain was designed for. I recommend giving it a read and ignoring any project which doesn't follow its core tenants. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

vasco 4y ago
Tenets! Tenants pay rent.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  Whoops! Nice catch. Don't ignore your tenants.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Latin "He holds"; imported to English, if refers to a belief (which is something you hold), e.g. tenets of the Catholic Church.
- bobthechef 4y ago
yashg 4y ago
I have read that whitepaper. That was the first think I read when I started researching about the whole crypto and blockchain space. And this is the culmination of my research https://bit.ly/3OB5G18 https://bit.ly/3OB5G18
- anamax 4y ago
  I'm sure that that is a wonderful paper, behind a paywall.
  - 4y ago

kayamon 4y ago

It's supposed to be slow. That's what secures it. The production speed comes from layer 2 solutions built on top of it (analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security). It's not expensive. Transaction fees are just fine and getting cheaper over time. It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry.

louthy 4y ago
> It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry. But the fossil-fuel industry has had very real benefits (whether we like it our not!). It's surely debateable whether fuelling crime, scams, and what is tantamount to a massive casino is of any benefit to humanity. Especially when running it consumes more energy than Argentina [1] Of course there are plenty of other aspects of human existence that requires energy, and therefore has an impact on our home. That doesn't give individuals who are engaged in this casino an 'out'. It is an entirely greed driven exercise right now. Perhaps something will come along that makes blockchain and other crypto concepts viable and valuable to society, it ain't here yet though. So I don't see how anybody can justify an Argentina's worth off energy usage. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952
- ashwagary 4y ago
  >Perhaps something will come along that makes blockchain and other crypto concepts viable and valuable to society, it ain't here yet though. So I don't see how anybody can justify an Argentina's worth off energy usage. Central banking finally has a freer market and you can choose (or create) an asset with your preferred monetary policy... Avoiding or atleast limiting exposure to global currency debasement is now a possibility when you choose the right product/chain/coin. That's a problem that costs workers around the world 100s of trillions of dollars and it's being solved.
woodruffw 4y ago
> analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security …what? You can’t JIT your way out of the underlying machine being slow. The machine is a watch; JITs typically achieve performance by speeding up an interpreter running on the machine (in other words, taking advantage of missed performance opportunities). This analogy doesn’t work for POW schemes, since wasting energy is the entire point. My understanding of “L2” solutions is that they’re really just pseudo-verified batching techniques, where transactions are rolled up off-chain and settled in bulk. That doesn’t “solve” PoW; it fundamentally undermines the original integrity promise.