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The arrogance here is unfortunate. First, you start out with a remark reminiscent of a high school bully. Do you really need a co-conspirator to share in your

by jnbiche 13y ago

The arrogance here is unfortunate. First, you start out with a remark reminiscent of a high school bully. Do you really need a co-conspirator to share in your attempt to ridicule someone? Also, you're pretty uninformed about the history of Bitcoin. Satoshi did start with a spec, or at least a white paper (yes, the lack of a proper spec for Bitcoin has been a major problem). Satoshi presented the white paper to the cryptography e-mail list several months before releasing the software. He got some feedback at that time, and then he got significant feedback when upon his initial release, which he integrated into the protocol. This list included many of the top cryptographers in the cryptocurrency space, including Hal Finney and Adam Back. You can find all these discussions, and the original release at: http://nakamotoinstitute.org/ http://nakamotoinstitute.org/ Finally, with the exception of the transaction malleability issue, the failures in exchanges have had nothing to do with cryptography, but rather with basic secure software development practices and architectures.

danielweber 13y ago
I'm talking about exchanges, not the protocol itself. Every exchange seems to be a bespoke system and that is just begging for trouble. They should publish their architecture, then publish their source code, and then make sure that smart people have tried as hard as they can to find all the weaknesses in their stuff, and then turn it into a business. Of course, there are business reasons not to do that: someone else can use your verified source, someone else can get a first-mover advantage, you might not get the smart people to pay attention, you might not know when it's ever good enough, and (the more pernicious idea) is the worry that seeing the source will give the attackers ways of attacking your stuff. They fail for the same reasons that secret crypto systems fail. I fully understand why they are doing it, but it's still doomed to failure.

by jnbiche 13y ago

danielweber 13y ago

I'm talking about exchanges, not the protocol itself. Every exchange seems to be a bespoke system and that is just begging for trouble. They should publish their architecture, then publish their source code, and then make sure that smart people have tried as hard as they can to find all the weaknesses in their stuff, and then turn it into a business. Of course, there are business reasons not to do that: someone else can use your verified source, someone else can get a first-mover advantage, you might not get the smart people to pay attention, you might not know when it's ever good enough, and (the more pernicious idea) is the worry that seeing the source will give the attackers ways of attacking your stuff. They fail for the same reasons that secret crypto systems fail. I fully understand why they are doing it, but it's still doomed to failure.