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Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

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Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#81

Post by IncRnd »

danbruc wrote: post #74
IncRnd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is very dangerous from a security perspective and may misinform many people who are still learning about digital identification. > the role of proof of work is to establish a somewhat strange kind of identity among anonymous participants. The role of proof of work is to make the creation of information one-way based upon a pre-specified amount of work. Therefore, in a properly constructed system, a particip…

The role of proof of work is to make the creation of information one-way based upon a pre-specified amount of work. Therefore, in a properly constructed system, a participant cannot steal the results created by another party. That makes no sense, or the meaning is at least not obvious. What does it mean to make creation of information one-way? Proof of work is just a vote allocation scheme. We want to reach consensus…

That makes no sense, or the meaning is at least not obvious. What does it mean to make creation of information one-way?

A one-way function is a function that cannot easily be reversed but can be easily computed. One example of such a function is a hash function, such as what is used in bitcoin's proof of work.

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#83

Post by IncRnd »

dlubarov wrote: post #77
IncRnd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is very dangerous from a security perspective and may misinform many people who are still learning about digital identification. > the role of proof of work is to establish a somewhat strange kind of identity among anonymous participants. The role of proof of work is to make the creation of information one-way based upon a pre-specified amount of work. Therefore, in a properly constructed system, a particip…

It seems like your criticizing his analogous use of "identity", but not the underlying idea. Perhaps the idea is more clear if it's framed in terms of votes rather than identities. Mining on top of a particular fork can be viewed as voting for that fork. Each participant's number of votes is proportional to their hash power. Double voting is impossible since the same hardware can't mine on more than one fork without…

> It seems like your criticizing his analogous use of "identity", but not the underlying idea.

I was pointing out the anomalous use of "identity".

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#84

Post by danbruc »

IncRnd wrote: post #81
danbruc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The role of proof of work is to make the creation of information one-way based upon a pre-specified amount of work. Therefore, in a properly constructed system, a participant cannot steal the results created by another party. That makes no sense, or the meaning is at least not obvious. What does it mean to make creation of information one-way? Proof of work is just a vote allocation scheme. We want to reach consensus…

That makes no sense, or the meaning is at least not obvious. What does it mean to make creation of information one-way? A one-way function is a function that cannot easily be reversed but can be easily computed. One example of such a function is a hash function, such as what is used in bitcoin's proof of work.

I know what a one-way function is but what does making the creation of information one-way mean? What information are we creating and what is this one-way that we can not go back? Do you mean to ensure that the information can not be destroyed after it was created? Or do you mean to order things temporally? And how does proof of work do that?

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#85

Post by bigiain »

rocqua wrote: post #19

> The Bitcoin Difficulty adjusts dynamically so that a proper hash is found on average once every ten minutes. So here, the bitcoin network needs to defer to the actual time. The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks. Then, the time it took to create those blocks is determined by looking at actual time stamps of the blocks. That is, time stamps that purport to be the time in UTC when the block was created. I never…

> I never understood how these time stamps are trusted and reliable.

I guess for difficulty adjustment purposes, that's not a hard requirement, it'd be closer to "plausible and consensus agreed timestamps". It doesn't matter much if a bad actor can try to slightly influence the raising or lowering of difficulty, so long as the long-term once every ten minutes "clock tick" holds and can be used to define transaction ordering.

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#86

Post by gitgud »

andrew1000 wrote: post #23

The article references "orphans" in blockchain, what becomes of those orphans? My understanding is that nodes compete to solve the hash - then the "winning" node has its transactions from the preceding 10 minutes added to the blockchain. What about all the other (thousands?) of nodes that didn't win - their transactions must not vanish into the ether, but what becomes of them? They must get added to the blockchain at…

I'm pretty sure that's what [1] this webpage references. Transactions that are waiting to be processed by the blockchain.

[1] https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#87

Post by state_less »

danbruc wrote: post #78
state_less wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wouldn't be any coins, instead double entry accounting I (pubkey:ae32...) owe (pubkey:af41...) 10 US dollars. Medium of exchange is agreed upon by the two parties, USD is one option. If you're my friend or a business, and you see my balance is deeply negative, maybe you don't give some service. If your my friend or a business, and my credit is not too bad, you follow my repo and give me some service. You commit…

So the entire thing starts with everyone having a balance of zero. Then A signs a transaction that he gives $1000 to B and we broadcast that transaction, new balances A $-1000, B $+1000. Now B wants to buy something for $500 from C and signs a matching transaction. What does C do? Is A a bank that provided a $1000 loan and therefore C will be able to actually get $500 from A? Or are A and B one and the same poor guy…

The important part is A signed over to B $1000. B and C may be the same person. B wanting to do business as C.

If A, B and C are all the same person and there wasn't an identity attached to any account, outsiders wouldn't value the record much, especially if they were transactions of significant value.

C could redeem the value with Western Union (or similar agent). They might say you have to agree to sign the closure of the account to no longer modify the balance of the account. They'd basically be like a collections agency, buying debt.

You'd be able to have similar plausible deniability as Bitcoin. Coinbase sees the transaction flows and the ledger is public. You could do business as a pseudo identity ( Do business as C, if you're B )

Re: Proof-Of-Work is a Decentralized Clock

#88

Post by state_less »

PKop wrote: post #76
state_less wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wouldn't be any coins, instead double entry accounting I (pubkey:ae32...) owe (pubkey:af41...) 10 US dollars. Medium of exchange is agreed upon by the two parties, USD is one option. If you're my friend or a business, and you see my balance is deeply negative, maybe you don't give some service. If your my friend or a business, and my credit is not too bad, you follow my repo and give me some service. You commit…

"There wouldn't be any coins" "USD is one option" And now you have no restriction on the money supply.. USD is coins.

Use something else if you prefer, gold or you could even sit atop bitcoin if parties find that more agreeable to transact in.

If I say I owe bitcoin, that's a transaction where I cash into bitcoin and then resolve my debt via bitcoin, but do I want my debt in bitcoin, maybe, but the value does vary more than USD.

A credit agency might not care if you improve your credit (by paying or resolving debts) in bitcoin, or may also give the option of cash or some other cheaper transaction form.

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