There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...
IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
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Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#42What about NANO then if they share the same kind of tech as IOTA? Any thoughts on that?
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#43There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...
The writer of the article essentially admitted it was bullshit and wrote it just to manipulate the market: https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have yet to see a convincing argument that proof-of-stake can be made trustless. The only designs that I've seen that seem realistic rely on some notion of checkpointing to prevent large scale chain rewrites. While it may be possible to make that checkpointing distributed, the only way that I'm aware of is to use proof of work. The easier path is to just checkpoint in the client, so that the trust comes from the gi…
> I have yet to see a convincing argument that proof-of-stake can be made trustless. It turns out that "trustless" is more subtle and not quite as discrete as we might've thought. While PoW coins like Bitcoin are probably ranked higher on this scale than others, it might not matter. > That's not to say that trustless consensus is necessary for a currency. Agreed. IMO these newer coins that are lower on the trustless…
> It turns out that "trustless" is more subtle and not quite as discrete as we might've thought.
That's exactly it -- even in the centralized variants, the "trusted" authority doesn't have a lot of power. The main power they have is censoring transactions, both in the present (not accepting a new transaction) and in the past (rewriting the chain to omit a transaction and all of its dependents).
The ability to rewrite history is a dangerous one, but is mitigated by the fact that they can't do so undetected by the network. This is a social/economic effect rather than a cryptographic one, which has its own dangers, but means that the trusted authority risks losing (or forking) its status to a competing trusted authority for the same coin if the consensus of the network is that they cannot be trusted.
The forward security guarantees are just that the transactions are signed, and those signatures cannot be forged, even by the trusted authority, so there is no way for another actor (including the trusted authority) without access to your private keys to spend your coins.
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#45I want to critique one particular point made in this article, becuase it’s incorrect:
> IOTA uses cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. The use of such cryptography, specifically Winternitz signatures, leaves IOTA users vulnerable to loss of funds if they ever reuse an address. This attack that has already been seen in practice, with one user reportedly losing $30,000 USD worth of IOTA.
As quantum computers large enough to threaten existing cryptosystems do not exist and may not exist for many decades, this use of post quantum cryptography comes with no tangible benefit.
“No tangible benefit” is a gross overstatement and simplification. I wholeheartedly agree that 1) novel cryptography should not be adopted before it has been well-studied, and 2) threat models for motivating novel cryptography should be rational and pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, if and when quantum computers can practically break classical cryptosystems, they will be able to do against everything cryptography is used to secure today, not just going forwards. This is a stonger argument for encryption and confidentiality, but it nevertheless also applies to signatures and authentication. As a tangential point: while they aren’t perfect (in terms of efficiency), Winternitz signatures are very well studied. Given what’s available, it’s not a bad choice.
I think a lot of IOTA’s specification is pretty suspect, especially since it does utilize novel cryptography without an apparent track record or notable expertise among its team. But I also absolutely believe new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects should be preparing for quantum computation now, if it’s possible. More pertinently, I don’t agree with the way this point was presented, because it can be interpreted as the claim that post-quantum cryptography is a useful heuristic in determining if a project has “issues”. In reality all cryptography should be suspect, and the use of post-quantum cryptography should not be dismissed immediately as a waste. With IOTA in particular, I’m weakly on the side that they shouldn’t have bothered with Winternitz signatures. But in general, I’m happy to see any project at least giving it serious consideration.
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#46While it's probably not the main problem with IOTA I must say that the ternary logic is probably the most amusing and baffling thing about it. This kind of hubris is something I would expect from a very junior developer without much real world experience who already thinks he's got everything figured out.
How can one rationalize starting a super ambitious cryptocurrency project and on top of that decide to reimplement their own crypto using ternary logic for some vague theoretical benefits that would only pay out if IOTA ever becomes mainstream enough (and the benefits large enough) for people to create not only dedicated chips for it but entire industrial processes to make ternary logic silicon.
It's also completely misunderstanding the current state of IoT, chips capable of doing high grade (binary) cryptography in a reasonable amount of time nowadays are worth next to nothing and their consumption is almost negligible. It's not premature optimization, it's too-little-too-late optimization.
Doing that as a fun week end project to learn about ternary? Sure. As the foundation of your multi billion dollar cryptocurrency set to revolutionize IoT? Come on.
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#47This quote applies especially to IOTA: "Cryptocurrencies are nothing except the marketing power of inventors, financiers and others who love the idea of buying a black box (which is obviously empty) for the price of a Kia and dreaming that it will turn into a Mercedes. There have been times recently when this dream has materialized within hours. This is not just a bubble. It is not just a fraud. It is perhaps the out…
Those Singer quotes almost killed me: "limitless ignorance of swaths of the human race". He's absolutely correct, but, deep down, secretly a little upset he did not purchase Ripple at 2 cents
There is perhaps a bit more to cryptocurrencies that Singer gives them credit for. I've recently been reading some of the original stuff from Szabo / Satoshi eg http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html and https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf that partly explain why they have worked and not collapsed 9 years later. A lot of it is much clearer than the hype which has followed.
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#48There is also a somewhat amusing IOTA write up on shitcoin.com "IOTA: Cannot be used for IoT. Loss of funds may occur." https://shitcoin.com/iota-cannot-be-used-for-iot-loss-of-fun...
The writer of the article essentially admitted it was bullshit and wrote it just to manipulate the market: https://twitter.com/ShitcoinDotCom/status/965910847645212672
Where is the part where he admitted it was bullshit?
Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#49Re: IOTA: The Brave Little Toaster That Couldn’t
#50I want to critique one particular point made in this article, becuase it’s incorrect: > IOTA uses cryptography that cannot be broken by quantum computers. The use of such cryptography, specifically Winternitz signatures, leaves IOTA users vulnerable to loss of funds if they ever reuse an address. This attack that has already been seen in practice, with one user reportedly losing $30,000 USD worth of IOTA. As quantum…
Don't you think IOTA is trying to do too much at the same time? Maybe I'm underestimating the risk but it seems like practical quantum computer attacks are still a few decades away, maybe it would make more sense to focus on getting the rest of IOTA to work and plan to switch to different cryptographic algorithms later once things have settled a bit.
If I get this right IOTA is trying to:
* Move away from PoW
* Have a cryptocurrency that scales well to a very high transaction frequency
* Implement quantum-resistant cryptography
* Use ternary logic to theoretically minimize power consumption
That's a lot for a single project I think.