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How Blockchain Works

blockchain.mit.edu

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Re: How Blockchain Works

#141

Post by thedancollins »

lawn wrote: post #119
thedancollins wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a technical perspective, yes. But the case for blockchain is difficult to make from a technical perspective so I do not bother talking about it. The tech struggles to be viable. With that said, everything is impossible .. until it is not. Somebody will figure it out.

What do you mean struggles to be viable? Cryptocurrencies is already viable and used in a lot of places. If you mean other usages of blockchain I do agree. And please don't bring up scaling (it's already viable today so the future is irrelevant to the point) or high fess (caused by Bitcoin's incompetent devs).

The technology cannot support millions of transactions per second - at least not in the case of a bitcoin blockchain which uses a PoW consensus mechanism. I am not sure how to respond to the second statement as there is some hand-waving and dogmatic proclamation that scalability is not an issue. Saying that cryptocurrencies are used in certain cases today and therefore - scalability is not an issue is like saying you once ate an apple and therefore all apples are edible.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#142

Post by sparkzilla »

UncleMeat wrote: post #138
sparkzilla wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company aims to convert all the world's news into data. Please tell me another technology that will allow us to build a decentralised, failure-tolerant, censorship- and tamper-resistant archive of that data, that allows anyone to add data, and have it verified without a central authority, and that anyone can use to create news applications.

Anybody can already create news applications. Just put up a blog.

A blog is just one kind of news application, that generally uses articles (not data) for its content. However, we propose that once news is converted to data it can be used for many different kind of applications: Trusted news feeds (filter and sort the data); automatically created articles (combine the data); fact checking systems (compare the data); fake news detectors (evaluate the sources of the data); and much more. For this to work the data must be independently verified as accurate (matching the source) and available for access at all times, without fear censorship. Put all that together and there is only one technology that can deal with it.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#143

Post by hannasanarion »

supersock wrote: post #18
hannasanarion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. Nobody says "one blockchain, two blockchain, oh hey look I found a bunch of new blockchain". Blockchain is here being used in reference to the technology itself, not the collection of its manifestations. Just like you might say "how the internal combustion engine works" or "how insertion sort works"

Does anyone say "here's one water, two waters"?

Water is a mass noun, generally used for things indivisible or uncountable. In English, you can tell if a noun is a mass noun if it cannot be used with the indefinite article "a".

"*Oh hey look, I found a sand"

"Oh hey look, I found a blockchain"

It doesn't fail the test, so it must be a count noun.

(PS: water is a bad example, because "a water" is a common abbreviation for "a glass of water" that's old enough it's probably lexicalized in a lot of people's heads. "sand", "salt", "bread", "wood", or "rice" are better examples)

Re: How Blockchain Works

#145

Post by thedancollins »

vec wrote: post #124
thedancollins wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not grasping the import of being able to exchange value WITHOUT a banking system in place. As for the credit requirements comment, yes - good point. But in the case of a micro-transaction, realtime agreement. I can consume 15 minutes of power and pay for it at 15:01. A credit requirement still exists -0 but it is one second as opposed to 60-90 days worth of power. This idea assumes many things into existence…

I can exchange value today without a banking system in place. I have some paper currency in my possession, and if that doesn't work there are plenty of commodity goods available to barter with. You'll notice that even in situations where cash or barter are feasible the vast majority of actors opt into the banking system anyway. Cryptocurrencies are genuinely useful for parties who don't have access to the formal bank…

Yes, you have paper money in your possession that is only worth as much as a centralized bank SAYS it is. And the awesome thing about that is that centralized banks never print ridiculous amounts of money and devalue their own currencies. That would be crazy and short-sighted. What sort of idiots would do that?

Crytpocurrencies are useful to people for a variety of reasons. And if a bank wants to deal in crytpocurrency, that is fine with me. I am glad that you have no doubt they will be profitable but you are pulling such sentiment out of thin air. There is not a precedent for cryptocurrency and how it may affect and integrate with existing systems. But consider that if you consider having a bank involved is a good thing for cryptocurrency - you might not understand the point of blockchain.

And the final point, the ledger is open, and everyone can see everything. You must consider this aspect in your scenario. I would imagine such a microtransactions agreement manifested into a smart contract or if not, prepaid. But again, only at a 15 minute. There is a level of credit there but still much smaller than 30 days worth.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#146

Post by thedancollins »

dx87 wrote: post #125
thedancollins wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not grasping the import of being able to exchange value WITHOUT a banking system in place. As for the credit requirements comment, yes - good point. But in the case of a micro-transaction, realtime agreement. I can consume 15 minutes of power and pay for it at 15:01. A credit requirement still exists -0 but it is one second as opposed to 60-90 days worth of power. This idea assumes many things into existence…

What benefit does transferring value with a blockchain have over any other method of transferring digital currency? People have been using chest keys and cosmetic items as currency on Steam for years, there are even sites where you can cash out and get money in exchange for digital currencies. Steam also has the benefit of being a point of authority that can handle fraud and theft.

I would offer that the value is the distributed ledger. Where everyone would see the quality of your business dealings because you kept them on a stable blockchain for all to see.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#147

Post by thedancollins »

jcranmer wrote: post #128
thedancollins wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ok, buit I was talking about transactability - not throughput. I have stated numerous times that the tech struggles to be viable at scale. On Bitcoin's blockchain you can transact and settle in 10 minutes. That beats 2 to 3 days all day long in a fiat-based system.

This is somewhat disingenuous. Transaction times can be as low as 10 minutes on Bitcoin, but this has high volatility. If I look in the past few months, average transaction times spike to a few hours quite frequently. Of course, if you look at the graph for January, the average transaction time jumped to days. In standard interbank settling times, the transaction time takes days. But that's because transactions will…

And the reason for the spikes - blockchain technology struggles to handle large transaction volumes. The consensus mechanism monitors block creation time and tries to keep it at 10 minutes. Ideally, there are never more than a block's worth of transactions to be created at any given time. When that is not the case a backup occurs and yes, the settling takes far too long. This is the technical challenge that must be overcome before a PoW backed blockchain should be considered "viable" ready-for-prime-time. It is a significant engineering problem that I am excited to try to solve.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#148

Post by thedancollins »

cromulent wrote: post #121
thedancollins wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ok, buit I was talking about transactability - not throughput. I have stated numerous times that the tech struggles to be viable at scale. On Bitcoin's blockchain you can transact and settle in 10 minutes. That beats 2 to 3 days all day long in a fiat-based system.

I transacted and settled with a physical fiat currency today in 10 seconds.

This is a perfectly cromulent response (see what I did there)?

I'd argue that you did not settle a transaction but more exchanged in a barter of one item for another. I am glad it worked out well for you and pray that you will experience continued expedient transactions in the future - blockchain-powered or not.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#149

Post by tim333 »

Moodles wrote: post #6

Now explain to a technical audience why some people say nonsense like how it’s the next internet or how it’ll change the world please.

It's already changed the world a bit - CryptoLocker, dark web drug purchases and Ponzi like ICOs wouldn't have been the same without it. It's also consumed epic amounts of electricity and warmed the planet a bit. I hope some positive changes come too.

Re: How Blockchain Works

#150

Post by thedancollins »

kybernetikos wrote: post #74
acjohnson55 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a different way of putting it, but my assumption is that if there are killer apps for blockchain tech, the value created will tend to be in the equity of companies rather than tokens. In most cases where those things are being conflated (e.g. ICOs), there's no obvious reason for it. Not everything needs a bespoke ledger and microeconomy. The complexity is completely unjustified.

> Not everything needs a bespoke ledger and microeconomy. The complexity is completely unjustified. I also think that the mad gold rush has the potential to turn off those who would build the real ecosystem, small pieces of useful, reusable smart-contract code at a time.

My friend, we are living in the Age of Complexity. Do you see ANY aspect of our lives that is getting simpler? Saying that the world doesn't need a realtime market for the valuation of chocolate bars - well, maybe it does. Maybe the end result is then cheap and freely available chocolate! What sort of monster are you, depriving the world of delicious chocolate?!
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