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Why I find IOTA alarming

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Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#121

Post by snissn »

0wing wrote: post #107
snissn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel there's a way to have a proof of stake coin without meeting your standard for being a scam?

Proof of Stake algorithms so far amount to various rationalizations on giving the wealthiest users more wealth. To explain further, PoS blockrewards are settled as lotteries to stakeholders with each staked coin being granted a lottery ticket. Due to the all or nothing nature of newly printed coins from blockrewards, the wealthiest users will not just accumulate more newly printed coins on average but the statistical…

I'm really impressed by RAIBlocks, and trying to decide what to think about it. There are no fees or printing.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#122

Post by rspeer »

bitoneill wrote: post #118
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…

You can read more concerns about IOTA and ternary in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15980675 IOTA rebutted MIT here: https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-t...

Even the rebuttal is immature and badly thought out, much like their cryptography.

They start by implying that the MIT Media Lab isn't really MIT (what the fuck) as an ad-hominem way to dodge their criticism. Later they whine "But Zcash rolled their own crypto, why can't we?!" which shows they really don't even understand the context of what they're doing.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#123

Post by rspeer »

kruhft wrote: post #68
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…

The designer for Curl was a Genetic Algorithm.

Which is about the farthest thing possible from an expert in cryptography.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#124

Post by [deleted] »

vvangemert wrote: post #13
lgierth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. There have no vulnerabilities in the past. I don't know man, the MIT Digital Currency Initiative found a pretty bad one last August: https://medium.com/@neha/cryptographic-vulnerabilities-in-io... > the IOTA developers had written their own hash function, Curl, and it produced collisions (when different inputs hash to the same output). Once we developed our attack, we could find collisions using commodity hardwa…

You should really read my first link and https://twitter.com/c___f___b/status/956445618381246464 The MIT-DCI are not credible..

[deleted]

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#125

Post by whataretensors »

ryan-c wrote: post #41
whataretensors wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. You have to generate a seed(like a private key) and use that to log in. The seed has to be random. Some used a dice, others /dev/random. I fully expect a wave of stolen IOTA to come from people who typed a 'random' code.

I'm tempted to write a cracker for shitty seeds people come up with, but given what I've heard of the design of IOTA, I'm afraid of getting brain damage trying to understand and reimplement their algorithms.

I've thought about this too but determined that it's too black hat for me.

Also look at it yourself, don't listen to others. Everyone is trying to do price manipulation on anything remotely related to crypto.

I thought the white paper and code were really interesting and thought-provoking fwiw, regardless of the viability of the project itself.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#126

Post by 0wing »

snissn wrote: post #121
0wing wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of Stake algorithms so far amount to various rationalizations on giving the wealthiest users more wealth. To explain further, PoS blockrewards are settled as lotteries to stakeholders with each staked coin being granted a lottery ticket. Due to the all or nothing nature of newly printed coins from blockrewards, the wealthiest users will not just accumulate more newly printed coins on average but the statistical…

I'm really impressed by RAIBlocks, and trying to decide what to think about it. There are no fees or printing.

RAIblocks isn't a protocol, it's someone running a centeralized database that publishes the results to everyone else. Dubious.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#127

Post by jacobush »

sanderjd wrote: post #88
jraines wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Give up. It's over. Use context clues. Not a statement on the merit of cryptocurrency or your reasoning, just a descriptivist observation.

Another possibility: folks like your parent may be able to keep fighting this fight long enough for cryptocurrency to fall off the mainstream hype radar and the smaller, more knowledgeable, community driving whatever the future steady-state of all this craziness ends up being may actually coalesce on better language (something involving "blockchain" perhaps?). I tend to think you're right that it's time to just sigh,…

"Crypto" is slightly easier and faster to say out loud than "blockchain". So, it's over, move on.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#128

Post by jacobush »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #101
canes123456 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care one way or the other but I don't see 'crypto' being that widespread yet.

A fifty year old not-very-tech-savvy colleague recently suggested (in jest) that we could pitch something as "crypto-nano, for maximum buzzword effect".

Hey... that could be a thing. A MEMS device, like a miniature (sorry, nano) Enigma machine.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#129

Post by sanderjd »

jacobush wrote: post #127
sanderjd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility: folks like your parent may be able to keep fighting this fight long enough for cryptocurrency to fall off the mainstream hype radar and the smaller, more knowledgeable, community driving whatever the future steady-state of all this craziness ends up being may actually coalesce on better language (something involving "blockchain" perhaps?). I tend to think you're right that it's time to just sigh,…

"Crypto" is slightly easier and faster to say out loud than "blockchain". So, it's over, move on.

You didn't respond to my point at all. People talk about this stuff like everything is established and permanent now that there has been, what, a year? of mainstream interest. It's absurd. Let's re-evaluate once we've moved a ways past the "flash in a pan" point.

Re: Why I find IOTA alarming

#130

Post by jacobush »

sanderjd wrote: post #129
jacobush wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crypto" is slightly easier and faster to say out loud than "blockchain". So, it's over, move on.

You didn't respond to my point at all. People talk about this stuff like everything is established and permanent now that there has been, what, a year? of mainstream interest. It's absurd. Let's re-evaluate once we've moved a ways past the "flash in a pan" point.

You are right, sorry, I didn't.

About that, I think it won't be a flash in the pan. I think it's here to stay and people won't stop talking about cryptocurrencies.

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