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If I understand correctly, the actual cryptography in cryptocurrencies isn't terribly interesting. Blockchains are, however, trying (or claim to be trying) to

by pid-1 4y ago

If I understand correctly, the actual cryptography in cryptocurrencies isn't terribly interesting. Blockchains are, however, trying (or claim to be trying) to solve the Byzantine Fault Tolerance problem, which has no known efficient solution. Is that correct? Are blockchains an actual area of research for folks studying distributed systems in CS Departments?

yata69420 4y ago
It is an actual area of research, mostly around scalability. I don't know what happens in computer science departments, but you can watch Ethereum be developed in the open. They cite the research they're implementing. For example: https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/proto_danksharding_faq#How-%E2%80%9Ccomplicated%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cnew%E2%80%9D-is-KZG https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/proto_danksharding_faq#... I'm not quite smart enough to follow all the cryptography, but there are a lot of unsolved problems being worked on. It seems that doing trust and accounting at global decentralized scale is trickier than chaining blocks together.
xtracto 4y ago
There are a couple of blockchain projects doing BFT development n the first one I read about was AntShares (now Neo) doing delegated BFT. There IS some interesting R&D happening, but most if it is lost in the get-rich-quick noise. Also Zk-SNARK research is interesting . Monero and Zcash technology is also quite interesting ,and can go beyond cryptocurrencies. I'm very pro blockchain tech, and I'm glad this "winter" is coming so that all that noise is reduced and good interesting projects get more visibility. There's a little known project called selfkey who have been developing some interesting "Sovereign digital id" stuff. Pretty early but interesting. Just get away from the "money money money" stuff and you can find some interesting projects.
xtracto 4y ago
Also , the basic cryptocurrency stuff is basic PKI with signing. Plus a version of Kademilla plus a database linking records with hashed previous records and the infamous PoW. Nothing really fancy computationally. The "genious" of Nakamoto was to put all the existing parts together. But hashcash was there, kad/BitTorrent were there, chained append only DBs were there, etc.

by pid-1 4y ago

yata69420 4y ago

It is an actual area of research, mostly around scalability. I don't know what happens in computer science departments, but you can watch Ethereum be developed in the open. They cite the research they're implementing. For example: https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/proto_danksharding_faq#How-%E2%80%9Ccomplicated%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cnew%E2%80%9D-is-KZG https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/proto_danksharding_faq#... I'm not quite smart enough to follow all the cryptography, but there are a lot of unsolved problems being worked on. It seems that doing trust and accounting at global decentralized scale is trickier than chaining blocks together.

xtracto 4y ago

There are a couple of blockchain projects doing BFT development n the first one I read about was AntShares (now Neo) doing delegated BFT. There IS some interesting R&D happening, but most if it is lost in the get-rich-quick noise. Also Zk-SNARK research is interesting . Monero and Zcash technology is also quite interesting ,and can go beyond cryptocurrencies. I'm very pro blockchain tech, and I'm glad this "winter" is coming so that all that noise is reduced and good interesting projects get more visibility. There's a little known project called selfkey who have been developing some interesting "Sovereign digital id" stuff. Pretty early but interesting. Just get away from the "money money money" stuff and you can find some interesting projects.

xtracto 4y ago

Also , the basic cryptocurrency stuff is basic PKI with signing. Plus a version of Kademilla plus a database linking records with hashed previous records and the infamous PoW. Nothing really fancy computationally. The "genious" of Nakamoto was to put all the existing parts together. But hashcash was there, kad/BitTorrent were there, chained append only DBs were there, etc.