4 ms·

Not sure why it would be an abomination. This is the exact use case which is a fit for cryptocurrency networks.

by lifty 3y ago

rakoo 3y ago
You have to look beyond the surface. Cryptocurrencies work specifically to address a system where no node can trust any other node. If I cannot trust any other node, why would I fetch anyone else's index, or ask them for the results of a query, or even talk to them ? Unless there can be a way to trivially verify what others tell you, crypto currencies are a dead end
- mhluongo 3y ago
  You have that issue without cryptocurrencies as well, you'd just be relying on the kindness of users rather than crypto incentives. You always need a way to hold nodes accountable in a system like this, or it'll be rife with manipulation — because there's already a strong, innate incentive to manipulate results. Today, we call that industry "SEO".
  - rakoo 3y ago
    What you don't understand is that "I don't trust others" is not a terminal statee I'd rather build trust again, create human connections, or rather, put them in front because there are always connections; nothing works if you trust noone. Building a societal system where you know you can rely on your peers, you build together, is a more joyful, more resilient, more ecological and also more realistic way of building a thriving society than distrust-by-default that cryptocurrencies live for.
    - idiotsecant 3y ago
      Your current fiat currency is not based on love and trust. Its Proof-of-World-Hegemony which puts crypto based consensus mechanisms to shame in terms of how not based on love and trust it is.
      - rakoo 3y ago
        My current fiat currency is absolutely based on trust that the State will uphold any disagreement, even though I know it is not benevolent. I also don't understand your point. The current world is not what I want, so let's make it worse according to my values ?
        idiotsecant 3y ago
        The value of, for example, the dollar is not based on your trust, at least not at the first order. It's based on the economic and military power backing it up.
        rakoo 3y ago
        Absolutely it is: it is based on the trust we all have that the government will do whatever it takes to guarantee the value of a dollar. Me being able to commerce with you in dollars and not, say, in old zimbabwean dollars rests on the shared assumptions that the US State can and will be there.
        idiotsecant 3y ago
        We're playing with words now but the power of the dollar does not arise from your faith in it, it arises from the nations around the world that view it as a stable medium of trade. This stability is based on the employment and perception of ability to employ hedgemonic hard and soft power. The US isn't going anywhere because it has the guns, bullets, bombs, allies, trade, and diplomacy to stay in the top spot. Your faith is a product of that system, not a cause of it. Your faith won't build aircraft carriers.
        rakoo 3y ago
        We're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about why the dollar will be stable (and I totally agree with you there). I'm talking about why you and I can do business in dollars, and that was the origin of the discussion: bitcoins are made for people who can't trust each other. With fiat currency we still don't trust each other, but we both trust a common third-party, and have good reason to trust it, at least on the "it will be there" side.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      And I think this is not even stupid either. Bad actors exist and there must be some process for identifying and dealing with them, but they are not the majority of people and so probably don't have to be the first, last, primary, and only consideration at all times. IE living in a bomb shelter is not a life worth living, even though yes you will be safe from bombs and theives.
      - rakoo 3y ago
        Exactly. If I'll have to depend on someone else anyway (and I will), might as well build trust because a life being cautious about everything and everyone is not worth living. Only those with already vast amounts of money can afford it because they trust (heh) other people working for them to taue care of that, but to non-jokingly propose it as a standard for everyone is a dystopia.
- lifty 3y ago
  You should be able add incentives in the system so that people store the correct index. You can check the incentive design of Filecoin for an example of how you can do that. Obviously it depends on the application how the incentive mechanism should be built.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Filecoin is "easy": it is trivial to verify that the blob you stored is the one I wanted you to store. There is no trivial way to verify that you indexed what I wanted you to index, or that you reply what I wanted you to reply. I highly dislike monetary incentives because they perpetuate inequalities by design, so here's another incentive: if you store a correct index, I will keep working with you and we can build an awesome system together. We can coordinate by talking to each other rather than trying to get money from each other.
- zubairq 3y ago
  Interesting comment about how cryptocurrencies can enable a system where no node can trust any other node. Something for me to think about as I am building a peer to peer system (not a search engine though)
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Cryptocurrencies only help where no one can trust anyone. But if that's the case, I claim that such a system is not viable in the long term.
    - zubairq 3y ago
      Good point. Does this mean that Bitcoin is not viable in the long term?
      - rakoo 3y ago
        Bitcoin as a speculating tool lives as long as speculation can live. Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency as an actual currency exchanged at large scale will not work, or at least not in a democracy.
- miohtama 3y ago
  Cryptocurrencies solve spam problem, not trust problem. No one can spam the network with new write data (transactions) because spam would become expensive. Although people still do, and Ethereum is full of spam tokens, meaning the transaction cost is still too low. This was also the use case of Hashcash, predecessor in proof-of-work, and was designed to solve email spam. You are paying either - Block space: your transaction to be included in a block - State: modifying the world state (EVM in Ethereum) Trust problem is solved by various other means, usually on libp2p level, by banning node (IP addresses) that send you bad data, which you can verify by comparing it to data from other peers.
  - dumbfounder 3y ago
    They also solve the trust problem through consensus using proof of stake. If there is enough financial skin in the game to behave correctly, then that should be enough to make sure that results are not tainted.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Cryptocurrencies slow down the rate of data not because of spam but because a slower rate means a higher consistency across the network: cryptocurrencies' goal is to agree on a consistent state with peers who do not want to negotiate. If the consistent state is pure garbage then that is not a problem for blockchains, because from blockchains' point of view, everything is fine. Spam is not a function of rate but of content. Spam can absolutely be sent in a blockchain, as you say, and making the price higher only makes both spam and non-spam more difficult. Spam for me might be actual legit information for you. Hashcash is another beast, it only has the proof-of-work part, not the money part (contrary to its name) so it's not comparable.
- mattdesl 3y ago
  This seems like something that could be verified through ZK proofs. The data to search could be represented by a public merkle root, and the searching/indexing given the user query could be programmed in a ZKVM like RISC0[1]. [1] https://www.risczero.com/zkvm https://www.risczero.com/zkvm
  - notfed 3y ago
    Most information is not a math equation.
    - mattdesl 3y ago
      As it turns out, a lot can be. The concept of a ZK VM is that it is able to prove arbitrary code. Risc0 and the more recent SP1[1] both compile arbitrary Rust programs into ZK circuits for generating and verifying execution proofs. [1] https://github.com/succinctlabs/sp1 https://github.com/succinctlabs/sp1
breakingrules 3y ago
[dead]

Not sure why it would be an abomination. This is the exact use case which is a fit for cryptocurrency networks.

by lifty 3y ago

Not sure why it would be an abomination. This is the exact use case which is a fit for cryptocurrency networks.

You have to look beyond the surface. Cryptocurrencies work specifically to address a system where no node can trust any other node. If I cannot trust any other node, why would I fetch anyone else's index, or ask them for the results of a query, or even talk to them ? Unless there can be a way to trivially verify what others tell you, crypto currencies are a dead end

mhluongo 3y ago
You have that issue without cryptocurrencies as well, you'd just be relying on the kindness of users rather than crypto incentives. You always need a way to hold nodes accountable in a system like this, or it'll be rife with manipulation — because there's already a strong, innate incentive to manipulate results. Today, we call that industry "SEO".
- rakoo 3y ago
  What you don't understand is that "I don't trust others" is not a terminal statee I'd rather build trust again, create human connections, or rather, put them in front because there are always connections; nothing works if you trust noone. Building a societal system where you know you can rely on your peers, you build together, is a more joyful, more resilient, more ecological and also more realistic way of building a thriving society than distrust-by-default that cryptocurrencies live for.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    Your current fiat currency is not based on love and trust. Its Proof-of-World-Hegemony which puts crypto based consensus mechanisms to shame in terms of how not based on love and trust it is.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      My current fiat currency is absolutely based on trust that the State will uphold any disagreement, even though I know it is not benevolent. I also don't understand your point. The current world is not what I want, so let's make it worse according to my values ?
      - idiotsecant 3y ago
        The value of, for example, the dollar is not based on your trust, at least not at the first order. It's based on the economic and military power backing it up.
        rakoo 3y ago
        Absolutely it is: it is based on the trust we all have that the government will do whatever it takes to guarantee the value of a dollar. Me being able to commerce with you in dollars and not, say, in old zimbabwean dollars rests on the shared assumptions that the US State can and will be there.
        idiotsecant 3y ago
        We're playing with words now but the power of the dollar does not arise from your faith in it, it arises from the nations around the world that view it as a stable medium of trade. This stability is based on the employment and perception of ability to employ hedgemonic hard and soft power. The US isn't going anywhere because it has the guns, bullets, bombs, allies, trade, and diplomacy to stay in the top spot. Your faith is a product of that system, not a cause of it. Your faith won't build aircraft carriers.
        rakoo 3y ago
        We're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about why the dollar will be stable (and I totally agree with you there). I'm talking about why you and I can do business in dollars, and that was the origin of the discussion: bitcoins are made for people who can't trust each other. With fiat currency we still don't trust each other, but we both trust a common third-party, and have good reason to trust it, at least on the "it will be there" side.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    And I think this is not even stupid either. Bad actors exist and there must be some process for identifying and dealing with them, but they are not the majority of people and so probably don't have to be the first, last, primary, and only consideration at all times. IE living in a bomb shelter is not a life worth living, even though yes you will be safe from bombs and theives.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Exactly. If I'll have to depend on someone else anyway (and I will), might as well build trust because a life being cautious about everything and everyone is not worth living. Only those with already vast amounts of money can afford it because they trust (heh) other people working for them to taue care of that, but to non-jokingly propose it as a standard for everyone is a dystopia.
lifty 3y ago
You should be able add incentives in the system so that people store the correct index. You can check the incentive design of Filecoin for an example of how you can do that. Obviously it depends on the application how the incentive mechanism should be built.
- rakoo 3y ago
  Filecoin is "easy": it is trivial to verify that the blob you stored is the one I wanted you to store. There is no trivial way to verify that you indexed what I wanted you to index, or that you reply what I wanted you to reply. I highly dislike monetary incentives because they perpetuate inequalities by design, so here's another incentive: if you store a correct index, I will keep working with you and we can build an awesome system together. We can coordinate by talking to each other rather than trying to get money from each other.
zubairq 3y ago
Interesting comment about how cryptocurrencies can enable a system where no node can trust any other node. Something for me to think about as I am building a peer to peer system (not a search engine though)
- rakoo 3y ago
  Cryptocurrencies only help where no one can trust anyone. But if that's the case, I claim that such a system is not viable in the long term.
  - zubairq 3y ago
    Good point. Does this mean that Bitcoin is not viable in the long term?
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Bitcoin as a speculating tool lives as long as speculation can live. Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency as an actual currency exchanged at large scale will not work, or at least not in a democracy.
miohtama 3y ago
Cryptocurrencies solve spam problem, not trust problem. No one can spam the network with new write data (transactions) because spam would become expensive. Although people still do, and Ethereum is full of spam tokens, meaning the transaction cost is still too low. This was also the use case of Hashcash, predecessor in proof-of-work, and was designed to solve email spam. You are paying either - Block space: your transaction to be included in a block - State: modifying the world state (EVM in Ethereum) Trust problem is solved by various other means, usually on libp2p level, by banning node (IP addresses) that send you bad data, which you can verify by comparing it to data from other peers.
- dumbfounder 3y ago
  They also solve the trust problem through consensus using proof of stake. If there is enough financial skin in the game to behave correctly, then that should be enough to make sure that results are not tainted.
- rakoo 3y ago
  Cryptocurrencies slow down the rate of data not because of spam but because a slower rate means a higher consistency across the network: cryptocurrencies' goal is to agree on a consistent state with peers who do not want to negotiate. If the consistent state is pure garbage then that is not a problem for blockchains, because from blockchains' point of view, everything is fine. Spam is not a function of rate but of content. Spam can absolutely be sent in a blockchain, as you say, and making the price higher only makes both spam and non-spam more difficult. Spam for me might be actual legit information for you. Hashcash is another beast, it only has the proof-of-work part, not the money part (contrary to its name) so it's not comparable.
mattdesl 3y ago
This seems like something that could be verified through ZK proofs. The data to search could be represented by a public merkle root, and the searching/indexing given the user query could be programmed in a ZKVM like RISC0[1]. [1] https://www.risczero.com/zkvm https://www.risczero.com/zkvm
- notfed 3y ago
  Most information is not a math equation.
  - mattdesl 3y ago
    As it turns out, a lot can be. The concept of a ZK VM is that it is able to prove arbitrary code. Risc0 and the more recent SP1[1] both compile arbitrary Rust programs into ZK circuits for generating and verifying execution proofs. [1] https://github.com/succinctlabs/sp1 https://github.com/succinctlabs/sp1

breakingrules 3y ago

[dead]