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Why I find IOTA alarming

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Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#91

Post by kruhft »

drcode wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Swarm Intelligence" - Okay, I stopped there. Can't throw something like that out without a link or commentary. Getting a decentralized swarm to implement transaction processing is highly non-trivial, especially when (as the OP highlights) incentives are delicate and the entire system must be extremely secure.

Especially true since parallelizing the processing of transactions is orders of magnitude easier than parallelizing STORAGE of transactions in decentralized systems- he's deflecting the criticism towards an easier problem.

They perform 'tip selection' using a random walk. Given the nature of the Tangle Tips as a nebulous cloud, could there be any better way?

And you can't enforce tip selection.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#93

Post by kruhft »

indoordinosaur wrote: post #84
kruhft wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their Learning IOTA FAQ: What makes IOTA quantum-secure? IOTA uses hash-based signatures ( https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/07/18/hashsig.html ) instead of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Not only is hash-based signatures a lot faster than ECC, but it also greatly simplifies the overall protocol (signing and verification). What actually makes IOTA quantum-secure is the fact that we use Winternitz signature…

In the original article linked it talks about how people found a flaw in the cryptographic hash function. When it was pointed out to the founder he basically said "Yeah we knew it was not secure. We put it in there so if anyone copied our code we could undermine them." That smells fishy to me. Whether his statement is true or not he cannot be trusted. And the fact that they are using unproven in-house cryptography ag…

I asked them about it. They agreed after I said it was like 'inserting fake roads into a map by cartographers'.

Seemed a bit fishy to me too.

Math project is more likely.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#94

Post by jerf »

roywiggins wrote: post #73
etunity wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unless you have access to physical trits, you're going to be emulating them with two bits each...

There's actually this really clever emulation you can do where you don't blindly use two bits per trit, but fractionally pack the trits into bits such that you don't end up with any wasted bits. This has the further advantage that since it produces the same inputs and outputs as binary encoding that you can use the native binary hardware on the CPU to do all your math. Because it is the native binary encoding.

One of the reasons I wouldn't trust IOTA any farther than I could personally throw the entire development team is that writing a strong cryptocurrency requires a deep understanding of mathematics, and theirs is the sort of shallow I'd expect from a high schooler. They appear to be operating under the misapprehension that numbers come with their base built into them, as if they are operating in a mathematics regime where "10 != 0xa != 012(octal) != 1010(binary)", and anyone that confused about mathematics is not someone you want designing your CSS stylesheets ("no, that's rgb(255, 255, 255), you really want #fff. Or maybe #ffffff."), let alone your cryptocurrency.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#95

Post by logfromblammo »

mikestew wrote: post #71
cesarb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> growing food crops for fuel is energy net positive, and otherwise a good idea. According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance ), growing sugarcane for ethanol is 8x net energy positive.

Said biodiesel nut never once mentioned sugar cane, soybeans was the frequently suggested crop, your article is talking about ethanol and not biodiesel, and that wasn’t the point anyway.

This biodiesel nut never said "algae", "duckweed", or "synergy with aquaculture"?

Your nut isn't much of a nut.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#96

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

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)

I also first thought this was some smug condescending point of view, but the more I learned about it the more I realize this shit is hard.

And it's not hard because of the mathematical theory behind it. It's because there are so many subtleties in cryptography that in order to call yourself a "cryptographer", you not only need to have understood all the mathematical theory but also have thought about and understand all the subtle edge cases. And once you do get to that point, you become super careful about making certain claims.

Unlike engineering problems where a small error can be fixed somehow through monkey patching, a subtle loophole brings down the usefulness of the entire cryptographic algorithm. So no matter how powerful your next big cryptography algorithm is, if someone finds a very very small loop hole, it's fucked, and the entire algorithm is unusable.

This is so important that the WebCrypto API even named their main API endpoint as "crypto.subtle" (instead of just using the "crypto" prefix) to warn people.

So TLDR: it's not because people don't trust the expertise of a non-cryptographer, but because people trust that an actual "professional cryptographer" is humble enough to not make claims unless they can prove it.

My impression with IOTA is that it makes a lot of mind-bending claims which no one can easily prove or disprove. And also they don't use the proven-by-time cryptographic algorithm. This makes it impossible for anyone to make a trustworthy peer review. (It doesn't help that the founder acts like an asshole so nobody wants to waste their time doing a peer review on it anyway)

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#97

Post by Lewton »

thisisit wrote: post #92

I have been on HN for 3 years now but I have never seen anything like this thread. There are sheer amount of sockpuppet accounts being created to defend IOTA.

You know how people can get irrationally invested in defending gaming consoles because they’ve bought one for $500?

Imagine what it feels like when you have tens of thousands of dollars invested in something where the flamewars might actually have a real effect on whether you ten-double your investment or not

I think it’s gonna get much uglier than this down the road

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#98

Post by radiant_qs »

StavrosK wrote: post #78

Oh man, this article reminded me I should sell what little IOTA I have, so I tried to. Here's what happened: I launched my wallet and saw a zero balance and zero transactions. I looked around and heard from some friends that I need to convert my funds or something, because there was a "snapshot" yesterday. I clicked the "re-attach" button and waited for a few minutes. It failed, so I did it again and again and again.…

There are explanations and reasons for everything, but it doesn't matter much if you are disappointed with your experience and want to sell. It seems to me you have run out of patience / have lost your faith that IOTA will ever get where they want to get.

To be honest, I don't think anybody's personal user experience has been much of a concern to the IOTA project up until now. The new wallets might change that, so you might want to hold on to your coins until then.

They promise to solve all of the issues that you mention: - Automatic node selection rather than the limited amount of nodes currently listed in the wallet software. - Automatic re-attaching and promoting transactions. - Address re-use detection.

Automatic and distributed snapshotting of the network is also on the roadmap, this would address your zero balance issue.

But like I said, if you have run out of patience and you have your eyes on other projects that do deliver what you are looking for, then by all means...

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#99

Post by StavrosK »

radiant_qs wrote: post #98
StavrosK wrote: post #78

Oh man, this article reminded me I should sell what little IOTA I have, so I tried to. Here's what happened: I launched my wallet and saw a zero balance and zero transactions. I looked around and heard from some friends that I need to convert my funds or something, because there was a "snapshot" yesterday. I clicked the "re-attach" button and waited for a few minutes. It failed, so I did it again and again and again.…

There are explanations and reasons for everything, but it doesn't matter much if you are disappointed with your experience and want to sell. It seems to me you have run out of patience / have lost your faith that IOTA will ever get where they want to get. To be honest, I don't think anybody's personal user experience has been much of a concern to the IOTA project up until now. The new wallets might change that, so yo…

I hope the new wallets fix everything, but, in my opinion, having to promote transactions is a terrible hack and the new wallets don't seem to fix that (they just make it automatic).

Combine that with the hand-waving of the vulnerabilities by the community, and it's not a good sign. However, I'm not really interested in speculating about the price (I've never bought more than $100ish worth of any cryptocurrency), it's just that I don't see IOTA being a useful currency for me to play with.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#100

Post by tscs37 »

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.” —…

It's a shame this comment got parked in the bottom of the page, it just shows on how the article is right; IOTA is immature technology that hopes to be better one day (maybe with all fingers crossed)
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