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That is what I have trying to explain. Mining and proof-of-work are not just strategies but necessary requirement. Blockchain is not just ledger. I'll try to e

by kang 12y ago

That is what I have trying to explain. Mining and proof-of-work are not just strategies but necessary requirement. Blockchain is not just ledger. I'll try to explain. The banks have a ledger of all the notes in circulation maintaining a record of the number printed on the note. Now when I give you a note, and its fake, you can figure it out by checking the unique factors. But lets say that my 3D printer is advnced and printed it so accurate that it is same as a real dollar. Now the way to catch this note would be to check if the number on this note also exists on some other note. So basically proof-of-work is you checking for unique factors(not counterfeit) and then somehow check all the notes in the world that none of them have the same number(unique). Both of these are in addition to the use of mining as a way of distribution of wealth. Could you just reply to why you don't consider the blockchain to be an algorithm? Also, I mostly meant that you are paying too much attention to what the media is throwing at us, in the form of bitcoin and exchanges. As a thinker, forget bitcoin and its code and just think about blockchain. Saying that blockchain enables value transfer and must be considered as the 8th layer of OSI model is technical artifact.

patio11 12y ago
Could you just reply to why you don't consider the blockchain to be an algorithm? I find this part of the conversation to be uninteresting, primarily because it attempts to make a distinction between "Bitcoin" and "the blockchain" (despite the fact that the Bitcoin consensus blockchain as annointed by the Bitcoin Core client at this moment in time is the only one of the infinite number of possible blockchains which is cared about) but can't make a distinction between "algorithm" and "protocol". This leaves me in a position where I say "Some people call IE6 a protocol. While one could rigorously examine the entire possible space of inputs and outputs associated with IE6 and attempt to describe some set-of-rules which would resemble a protocol, this is not what we mean when we say 'protocol' and it is, importantly, not the source of the benefits which IE6 fans say when they claim that IE6 is a protocol." To which "Why don't you think IE6 is an algorithm?" is rather non-responsive. (IE6 is, vacuously, an algorithm. Whee.) Saying that blockchain enables value transfer and must be considered as the 8th layer of OSI model is technical artifact. I find it difficult to extract any signal about the reality which I live in from this statement. When I say "technical artifact" I usually want to imply something about the reality I live in. For example, calc.exe is a technical artifact: it actually exists, on yonder computer, and I can right now walk over to it and calculate 6+5 with a reasonable degree of confidence that this will enlighten me. I would also say the HTTP specs are a technical artifact: I, or anybody with modest technical capability, can read the specs, open up telnet, fire it at www.google.com on port 80, and then type in a predictable series of letters which results in search results presented in the middle of a lot of HTML. I do not know of any comparable fashion in which "the blockchain" actually exists as distinct from "the data structure embedded in the much-more-complicated series of operations that is Bitcoin Core."
- moe 12y ago
  Bitcoin [...] is the only [...] blockchain which is cared about That is not correct. Bitcoin is by far the largest, but people also have non-trivial amounts in various alt-coins: http://coinmarketcap.com/ http://coinmarketcap.com/ In terms of your Browser-analogy: Next to IE6 (Bitcoin) we also have Safari (Ripple), Firefox (Litecoin) and whole range of smaller players. They all speak dialects of the blockchain protocol.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- kang 12y ago
  All the thousands of cryptocurrencies are different blockchain artifacts and blockchain cannot exist without issuing a 'currency' the way that TCP/IP cannot exist without issuing 'message' to and fro. It feels as if your real problem is that I am not using technical jargons :) I understand the meaning of 'protocol' vs 'algorithm' but this is a special case where the protocol is also the algorithm. Suppose you invented making tea and wrote down the recipe for doing so. This constitutes an algorithm for making tea for people who don't care how the ingredients came about, but this can also be called a protocol for making tea involving many algorithms like sugar-making etc. If you'd say that tea making is strictly an algo and not a protocol then I'd simply agree with you to use that term and move on since whats happening here is more important to me than the technical jargons.
  - felixgallo 12y ago
    What I think you may be missing is that he is saying that bitcoin is not, in pragmatic observable fact, a distributed consensus protocol. It is, instead, led and managed by an entity indistinguishable in form if not in intellect from every other governmental federal reserve. This entity responds, 100% correctly for the health of the currency, by issuing fiat mandates, just like the US government did when, e.g., real-world counterfeiters came up with supernotes and began flooding the world with fake $20 bills, mandating a switch to new notes. Although this behavior is correct, it does conclusively prove that the emperor has no clothes, and that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme run for the benefit of the early BTC holders.

by kang 12y ago

patio11 12y ago

Could you just reply to why you don't consider the blockchain to be an algorithm? I find this part of the conversation to be uninteresting, primarily because it attempts to make a distinction between "Bitcoin" and "the blockchain" (despite the fact that the Bitcoin consensus blockchain as annointed by the Bitcoin Core client at this moment in time is the only one of the infinite number of possible blockchains which is cared about) but can't make a distinction between "algorithm" and "protocol". This leaves me in a position where I say "Some people call IE6 a protocol. While one could rigorously examine the entire possible space of inputs and outputs associated with IE6 and attempt to describe some set-of-rules which would resemble a protocol, this is not what we mean when we say 'protocol' and it is, importantly, not the source of the benefits which IE6 fans say when they claim that IE6 is a protocol." To which "Why don't you think IE6 is an algorithm?" is rather non-responsive. (IE6 is, vacuously, an algorithm. Whee.) Saying that blockchain enables value transfer and must be considered as the 8th layer of OSI model is technical artifact. I find it difficult to extract any signal about the reality which I live in from this statement. When I say "technical artifact" I usually want to imply something about the reality I live in. For example, calc.exe is a technical artifact: it actually exists, on yonder computer, and I can right now walk over to it and calculate 6+5 with a reasonable degree of confidence that this will enlighten me. I would also say the HTTP specs are a technical artifact: I, or anybody with modest technical capability, can read the specs, open up telnet, fire it at www.google.com on port 80, and then type in a predictable series of letters which results in search results presented in the middle of a lot of HTML. I do not know of any comparable fashion in which "the blockchain" actually exists as distinct from "the data structure embedded in the much-more-complicated series of operations that is Bitcoin Core."

moe 12y ago
Bitcoin [...] is the only [...] blockchain which is cared about That is not correct. Bitcoin is by far the largest, but people also have non-trivial amounts in various alt-coins: http://coinmarketcap.com/ http://coinmarketcap.com/ In terms of your Browser-analogy: Next to IE6 (Bitcoin) we also have Safari (Ripple), Firefox (Litecoin) and whole range of smaller players. They all speak dialects of the blockchain protocol.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
kang 12y ago
All the thousands of cryptocurrencies are different blockchain artifacts and blockchain cannot exist without issuing a 'currency' the way that TCP/IP cannot exist without issuing 'message' to and fro. It feels as if your real problem is that I am not using technical jargons :) I understand the meaning of 'protocol' vs 'algorithm' but this is a special case where the protocol is also the algorithm. Suppose you invented making tea and wrote down the recipe for doing so. This constitutes an algorithm for making tea for people who don't care how the ingredients came about, but this can also be called a protocol for making tea involving many algorithms like sugar-making etc. If you'd say that tea making is strictly an algo and not a protocol then I'd simply agree with you to use that term and move on since whats happening here is more important to me than the technical jargons.
- felixgallo 12y ago
  What I think you may be missing is that he is saying that bitcoin is not, in pragmatic observable fact, a distributed consensus protocol. It is, instead, led and managed by an entity indistinguishable in form if not in intellect from every other governmental federal reserve. This entity responds, 100% correctly for the health of the currency, by issuing fiat mandates, just like the US government did when, e.g., real-world counterfeiters came up with supernotes and began flooding the world with fake $20 bills, mandating a switch to new notes. Although this behavior is correct, it does conclusively prove that the emperor has no clothes, and that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme run for the benefit of the early BTC holders.