51–60 of 72 posts
Yeah, I'm done with this "scientific" tone, this PDF thing and so on. What is in this paper that couldn't be posted as HTML in a web page? How is PDF better compared to that?
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I've always wondered the same. Why do these bitcoin people always do this "white paper" thing as PDF? Is it because it's trendy?
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Try reading the HTML version of Fielding's paper and tell me it looks better than the pdf. It might have been invented for that purpose, but that doesn't mean it's still suitable for it. When you are writing a paper, you want to control the presentation, not just the content.
I'm pretty sure you have way more control over "presentation" when you use HTML vs PDF.
So this is basically a blockchain, but with transactions instead of blocks, and diverging-then-converging graph instead of a linear sequence of blocks (like a real family graph instead of just one-parent-one-child families common in blockchains). Looks nice, what are the problems with the approach? (the paper only lists the benefits).
There is no way to have a controlled release of new coins into the system. For that you need a blockchain that establishes a consensus on time transpired and on the total economic resources being contributed (which allows the share of the newly generated coins that each participant will receive in a unit of time to be proportional to the share of the total economic resources they are responsible for contributing). Th…
Note that this is not currently the case in bitcoin, transaction fees have gone up with the current scarcity due to the arbitrary block limit, but the fees are still a pittance compared with block reward - which is the real incentive for mining (but will not always be the case as block reward reduces in the future).
This is somewhat of a sore point for the bitcoin community as a large (probably not majority, but large) portion of the user base / miners / nodes does not think scarcity of space is a good idea at current levels of transactions.
Also Ethereum (which at the moment uses a blockchain and mining mechanism very similar to bitcoins) does not impose a block size limit, rather leaves it up to the miners to decide on the "gas" limit (they have a computational limit rather than a block size, but it can be viewed as a parallel).
Yeah, I'm done with this "scientific" tone, this PDF thing and so on. What is in this paper that couldn't be posted as HTML in a web page? How is PDF better compared to that?
i prefer PDFs because they are easier to store offline and easier to move around.
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Stellar has nice properties, like a decentralised exchange built into the platform and native integration with existing financial institutions/other cryptocurrencies through anchors. But I would not say it's blockchain-free. They close a "block" every 5 seconds. Depends on what you consider a block. They use boring stuff like PostgreSQL to store the data instead of reinventing everything.
The innovation of blockchains is not on the how-to-store-things side, but how to keep a state of things every nodes agree with. Stellar can store data on Postgres because it is just a small database of how much money each account has at each ledger. Past ledgers can be erased from the database (which makes it not a blockchain in any sense anymore). Bitcoin has a history of all transactions organized in blocks not bec…
A Bitcoin node can store blocks/transactions in whatever way it wishes -- Postgres, Dropbox, SQLite DB on a floppy disk -- as long as it's able to deliver to nodes in the canonical serialization format, because it's needed to verify proof-of-work (and signatures for the transactions).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way to have a controlled release of new coins into the system. For that you need a blockchain that establishes a consensus on time transpired and on the total economic resources being contributed (which allows the share of the newly generated coins that each participant will receive in a unit of time to be proportional to the share of the total economic resources they are responsible for contributing). Th…
>With a blockchain, scarcity of space per block leads to a fee market forming, and fees paid increasing as the value contained per transaction increases. Note that this is not currently the case in bitcoin, transaction fees have gone up with the current scarcity due to the arbitrary block limit, but the fees are still a pittance compared with block reward - which is the real incentive for mining (but will not always…
So transaction fees are not insignificant.
1: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins July 6th data 2: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees July 6th data
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>With a blockchain, scarcity of space per block leads to a fee market forming, and fees paid increasing as the value contained per transaction increases. Note that this is not currently the case in bitcoin, transaction fees have gone up with the current scarcity due to the arbitrary block limit, but the fees are still a pittance compared with block reward - which is the real incentive for mining (but will not always…
Number of new Bitcoins a day: 2063 [1] Transaction fees in Bitcoin: 272 [2] So transaction fees are not insignificant. 1: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins July 6th data 2: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees July 6th data
Per block, fees average 0.9btc iirc.
Transaction reward is 12.5 btc
0.9 is not insignificant, but compared with block reward, the true (current) incentive providing block security is not in question, and that is what was being discussed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number of new Bitcoins a day: 2063 [1] Transaction fees in Bitcoin: 272 [2] So transaction fees are not insignificant. 1: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins July 6th data 2: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees July 6th data
That's total, not per block. Per block, fees average 0.9btc iirc. Transaction reward is 12.5 btc 0.9 is not insignificant, but compared with block reward, the true (current) incentive providing block security is not in question, and that is what was being discussed.
Note that base58 for addresses was generally considered a mistake - there's a replacement for Bitcoin proposed here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0173.mediawi...