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Why I find IOTA alarming

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Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#51

Post by frostsoar »

tauntz wrote: post #25
raitucarp wrote: post #17

I just copy paste from CfB's response, in case you missed it: Thank you. This article was useful for me, it showed what details of IOTA haven’t been highlighted yet. Below I list incorrect things from the article, if you find time it would be great if you paid more attention to them and shared your thoughts: “IOTA has no limit on transactions and therefore, it has no limit on bandwidth requirements or disk space.” —…

This is a very.. immature and amateurish response at best, purposely deceptive at worst. OP talks about what IOTA _is_. The response is: "You are wrong because we _hope that IOTA will be different in the future_". How does this response make any sense at all?

It's like calling every other project under development a scam and wrong. Because things aren't fully completed doesn't mean they aren't the direction of the project.

You can debate and speculate if IOTA will manage to accomplish their goals. But calling the answers a lie and imply that falsely made statements are the truth is bullshit.

To me the answers from CFB make pretty damn good sense.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#52

Post by etunity »

imglorp wrote: post #38
etunity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their argument for using ternary is that it is 8 times more efficient than binary and it is very important for iot devices which need to be have low energy consumption and a long life. Whereas the conversation from ternary to binary would add only a 10 % additional usage. They are trying to push the ternary to see if adoption can take off. All it needs is a few thousand logic gates on any traditional chip.if it doesn…

> 8 times more efficient than binary They're claiming this, for what operation? And similar question for the 10% usage claim. I suspect storage will be the same when you get done packing into machine words and storing those, yes? Unless they're not using all the bits in a word... Any independent references for ternary efficiencies for any operation?

I am not sure about 8 times efficiency and 10% argument. The founder said that in his interview yesterday. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GwhJQ67zxbg I just found this article about ternary and as you said storage needs to be in ternary too. The main reason seems to be it is close to the value of “e” https://www.techopedia.com/why-not-ternary-computers/2/32427

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#53

Post by Reimersholme »

tauntz wrote: post #25
raitucarp wrote: post #17

I just copy paste from CfB's response, in case you missed it: Thank you. This article was useful for me, it showed what details of IOTA haven’t been highlighted yet. Below I list incorrect things from the article, if you find time it would be great if you paid more attention to them and shared your thoughts: “IOTA has no limit on transactions and therefore, it has no limit on bandwidth requirements or disk space.” —…

This is a very.. immature and amateurish response at best, purposely deceptive at worst. OP talks about what IOTA _is_. The response is: "You are wrong because we _hope that IOTA will be different in the future_". How does this response make any sense at all?

Like people have commented in the article though; the IOTA roadmap has been public for a long time. Everyone knows it's still a very early-stage project.

What's the point of criticising it for things on the roadmap not yet implemented? "This beta version isn't feature complete!" Duh?

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#54

Post by smrtfckr »

0wing wrote: post #11
vvangemert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There have been no vulnerabilities in the past. Please read: https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-t... 2. If people are unable to generate a simple seed (password) on their own. How can they even begin to understand cryptocurrency or even new tech based on IoT? Still, yes it should be in the wallet and it will be added, but only for investors, I guess?! 3. Please read the following from their…

1. The vulnrability existed in their active codebase and network - only AFTER the research team contacted IOTA with the working exploit did they shut the entire (centralized) network down to patch the code. “In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix makes the system sec…

1) In order for the attack to succeed, the attacker would have to have access to the seed at which point the entire thing becomes moot.

2) The android wallet has seed generation. So it's not a question of "refusal", more a question of priotities. Seedgen had not been a priority of the team. We can argue if its good or bad but at the end of the day, it is what it is. Creating a seed is not hard and if you can't put in the effort, well nobody is forcing you to jump into cutting edge experimental technology in search of lambo when!!!

3) Please click "parent" on that comment in order to realize that, yes, this is not a reply to the original post of the thread but to another person unlike it was made out to be and context does matter. Who knew?

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#55

Post by dsacco »

etunity wrote: post #28
simias wrote: post #2

I feel like I'm missing one side of the story. I don't know much about IOTA but from what I learned reading articles linked on HN today IOTA: - Uses custom "ternary" crypto which has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past. - Has software that doesn't include the basic function of generating wallet addresses, instead having some users rely on shady 3rd party websites and getting their coins stolen. - Does away…

Their argument for using ternary is that it is 8 times more efficient than binary and it is very important for iot devices which need to be have low energy consumption and a long life. Whereas the conversation from ternary to binary would add only a 10 % additional usage. They are trying to push the ternary to see if adoption can take off. All it needs is a few thousand logic gates on any traditional chip.if it doesn…

Ternary computation does reduce the number of operations for things like multiplication, that’s correct. But if the rest of the modern world isn’t also ternary, you actually introduce performance overhead that reduces your overall efficiency. A bit-based computation has two states, and a trit-based computation has three. Since 3 isn’t a power of 2 (or even, for that matter), you’ll have a remainder when you convert your ternary multiplication to binary.

Considering this, it doesn’t really make sense that the Iota founders made a decision to not only introduce a novel cryptocurrency system (the tangle), but to also try to push ternary adoption. That’s a monolithic amount of work from a research and business perspective, and it strains credulity that they could engage in this with a full understanding of what they’re doing. Their work is completely divorced from the rest of the academic community, which has many well-respected researchers with a vetted track record already.

Innovation usually happens in incremental steps forward, building from the (recent) work of others. Much more rarely, it manifests as a large leap forward without significant cumulative work. But it approximately never happens that a new state of the art combines several large and orthogonal leaps forward. It’s not impossible, but my outlook is strongly pesimisstic.

When you combine this with the frankly odd (and potentially unethical) behavior the founders are showing - rolling their own cryptography out of ignorance or to attempt to sabotage other open source projects - it becomes extremely hard to take the work seriously.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#56

Post by api »

asymmetric wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom crypto primitives (ciphers, hashes, etc.) is a big red flag to me unless the designers are cryptographers. I know a fair bit about crypto. I would implement (and have implemented) higher order constructions like encrypted and authenticated protocols according to design patterns and principles put forward by competent cryptographers. I would never ever even attempt to design a cipher or a cryptographically stro…

> Actual deep cryptography such as cipher design is an area where truly extreme and very esoteric expertise is required to even get started I hear this every time cryptography is brought up. I think I get that it's hard, but people make it sound like it's the hardest thing ever . Where does this extreme complexity stem from? And what's the field of knowledge required? (Mathematics I imagine)

It's not complexity but combinatorics. The hardness of crypto is a type of hardness not often encountered in other programming areas, or not to the same degree.

Cryptographers are modern day real world occultists and wizards. It really is an esoteric area of computational and mathematical lore that requires many years of diligent study before one can even attempt to do anything that isn't a toy.

The gods (intelligence agencies, organized crime) laugh at those who attempt to roll crypto without knowing what they're doing.

Note again that I'm talking about core primitive (cipher, hash, etc.) design. I do think that mere mortals can implement crypto, though doing so competently still requires a lot of study and respect for the difficulty of the domain. I don't repeat the "never implement crypto" mantra. Instead I prefer the modified version: "do not attempt to implement crypto unless you know how to break crypto." If you don't understand how crypto is often broken and can't name and explain a few recent examples, you should not be implementing crypto.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#57

Post by fabian2k »

imglorp wrote: post #38
etunity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their argument for using ternary is that it is 8 times more efficient than binary and it is very important for iot devices which need to be have low energy consumption and a long life. Whereas the conversation from ternary to binary would add only a 10 % additional usage. They are trying to push the ternary to see if adoption can take off. All it needs is a few thousand logic gates on any traditional chip.if it doesn…

> 8 times more efficient than binary They're claiming this, for what operation? And similar question for the 10% usage claim. I suspect storage will be the same when you get done packing into machine words and storing those, yes? Unless they're not using all the bits in a word... Any independent references for ternary efficiencies for any operation?

If I understood it correctly, they're claiming that it's more efficient on native ternary hardware, and it has no advantage on binary hardware. The people behind IOTA are also connected in some fashion to the development of such a ternary computer.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#58

Post by etunity »

elmar wrote: post #48
etunity wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing.

>For the double spend to occur, you would need access to the seed ( private key) which the victims had and are trying to outrun the attacker in the case you were describing. So it works a bit like replace-by-fee on bitcoin? There is no mining on IOTA so what is the possible time frame? do you have more detailed technical information how this works? Thanks

New transactions are selected randomly to be verified. So in case the attackers transaction is still not confirmed there is a chance to outspend him by having the private keys. I find this useful in understanding the confirmation/consensus mechanism. https://forum.iota.org/t/iota-consensus-masterclass/1193

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#59

Post by mikestew »

simias wrote: post #40
asymmetric wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: who are the crypto people you follow? And on which channels? Twitter seems sadly popular among this crowd. Sadly because it lends itself to flamewars.

Cryptos lend themselves to flamewars, no twitter or anything else needed. You have a bunch of people who are trying to get rich quick while on average not understanding much about the underlying technology. Try to have a technical discussion on any crypto enthusiast forum and see how well it goes. In my experience it turns really ugly really quickly. In general I give up after I get the first "you don't know what you…

We all rise together, so we should more encouraging of one another’s endeavors in crypto and blockchain

There’s your tip-off for a scam: don’t ask questions, and be encouraging to each other, because it’s us against a skeptical world. Cults, penny stocks, Amway, and now crypto currency scams apparently: I’ve observed similar patterns in all. Not that we shouldn’t support each other in our mutual endeavors, but if that’s the only thing with any substance that you hear and money is on the line, run away.

Tip-off #2: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Enlighten me.”

Learned that one from a biodiesel nut, a suburban boy with clean fingernails trying to convince this ex-mechanic who grew up on a farm that growing food crops for fuel is energy net positive, and otherwise a good idea. Not that his heavy financial investment in a local biodiesel company would color his opinion at all.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#60

Post by masklinn »

berberous wrote: post #9
simias wrote: post #2

I feel like I'm missing one side of the story. I don't know much about IOTA but from what I learned reading articles linked on HN today IOTA: - Uses custom "ternary" crypto which has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past. - Has software that doesn't include the basic function of generating wallet addresses, instead having some users rely on shady 3rd party websites and getting their coins stolen. - Does away…

BitConnect, a literal Ponzi scheme that was repeatedly flagged to newbies as a Ponzi scheme they should avoid, had a $2.5 billion market cap last month before collapsing. While IOTA boosters probably have a story they believe that justifies the hype in their mind, just because it’s worth $6 billion in this market doesn’t mean they necessarily have a good one. For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow tha…

> For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow that I consider smart or savvy, none of them are IOTA bulls.

Would it be possible to stop using crypto as a shorthand for cryptocurrency? It's already a term of art for the much older field of cryptography and things get confusing, especially as all the crypto(graphy) people I follow consider altcoins in general to be hype.

Not to mention it makes no sense, kryptós means "hidden" or "secret", which cryptocurrencies are not, the crypto- prefix comes solely from the underlying usage of cryptographic tools.

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