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Isn’t the whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid centralized authorities that can do exactly this?

ceejayoz 3y ago
If you have a big red button marked "do not push ever", and everyone goes and pushes the button, perhaps the problem is less the people and more the button.
nightski 3y ago
No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.
- Retric 3y ago
  There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.
  - nightski 3y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
    - Retric 3y ago
      There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
        Retric 3y ago
        I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
        junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
        Retric 3y ago
        What’s your argument for >>centralized<< blockchains here? Bitcoin and other public PoW blockchains are decentralized. > Banks carry insurance. And???
        seanhunter 3y ago
        Firstly I don't disagree that private chains are generally pointless, so I'm not going to post these supposed specific benefits. I was saying your "hash power" based thought experiment is not valid. Also the "most trivial case" you're proposing here is a strawman. You demonstrate that your trivial case wouldn't work and everyone who does this knows that it wouldn't work so that's not how it works. Genarally these chains submit a transaction proof to some base chain so they can't go back later and rewrite history unless they could also rewrite history on that base chain. Here's a source if you want to read up about how these things actually work https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/ https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pornel 3y ago
      FTX was supposed to be cryptocurrency-based — you were buying tokens in an immutable blockchain, and yet the real money was tracked in spreadsheets, and the exchange had an infinite money flag for their own accounts.
  - pornel 3y ago
    Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.

If you have a big red button marked "do not push ever", and everyone goes and pushes the button, perhaps the problem is less the people and more the button.

nightski 3y ago

No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.

Retric 3y ago
There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.
- nightski 3y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
  - Retric 3y ago
    There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
      - Retric 3y ago
        I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
        junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
        Retric 3y ago
        What’s your argument for >>centralized<< blockchains here? Bitcoin and other public PoW blockchains are decentralized. > Banks carry insurance. And???
        seanhunter 3y ago
        Firstly I don't disagree that private chains are generally pointless, so I'm not going to post these supposed specific benefits. I was saying your "hash power" based thought experiment is not valid. Also the "most trivial case" you're proposing here is a strawman. You demonstrate that your trivial case wouldn't work and everyone who does this knows that it wouldn't work so that's not how it works. Genarally these chains submit a transaction proof to some base chain so they can't go back later and rewrite history unless they could also rewrite history on that base chain. Here's a source if you want to read up about how these things actually work https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/ https://wiki.polygon.technology/docs/cdk/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pornel 3y ago
    FTX was supposed to be cryptocurrency-based — you were buying tokens in an immutable blockchain, and yet the real money was tracked in spreadsheets, and the exchange had an infinite money flag for their own accounts.
- pornel 3y ago
  Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.