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Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

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Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#61

Post by mynewtb »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #53
mynewtb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what if a story or bit of information has to be retracted by law? I second my sibling, newspapers have no interest in transparency.

> So what if a story or bit of information has to be retracted by law? Then the news agency issues a retraction. It's already the case that the Internet will not forget, whether via the Internet Archive or http://www.newsdiffs.org/ .

How can data be retracted from a blockchain?

Both those sites are also subject to laws and can easily retract information if necessary.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#62

Post by albinowax_ »

liorn wrote: post #46

If I were a malicious actor with a good way to attack this, I would wait until this was being used in real applications which deal with larger amounts of ETH, and then attack. Why should I reveal my cards for $3K?

Bug bounties aren't aimed at malicious actors, or an attempt to outbid the black market. There's a lot of non malicious people out there who are still competent hackers.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#63

Post by simias »

seibelj wrote: post #6

Cryptocurrencies, and especially Ethereum, are truly novel innovations in computer science that cross many academic disciplines. The linked example is a great write-up. It’s sad that there is a vocal group, especially on HN, that knee-jerk hates everything blockchain related and wishes with their entire being for it to fail. However, I think smart contracts are fascinating and wish more people would keep an open mind…

You're making a strawman argument here. People who have speculated money in blockchains have a financial incentive to be vocal and overhype the technology while minimizing the many drawbacks it has. So I think a bit of "knee-jerk" skepticism is warranted around anything related to cryptocurrencies.

So maybe instead of building strawmen you could tell us what you find so fascinating about smart contracts? Who knows, you might end up convincing some of us haters. Not me though, I'm too busy wishing with my entire being for it to fail. It's better than running for cardio.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#64

Post by JoshTriplett »

mynewtb wrote: post #61
JoshTriplett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what if a story or bit of information has to be retracted by law? Then the news agency issues a retraction. It's already the case that the Internet will not forget, whether via the Internet Archive or http://www.newsdiffs.org/ .

How can data be retracted from a blockchain? Both those sites are also subject to laws and can easily retract information if necessary.

> How can data be retracted from a blockchain?

In much the same way data can be retracted from printed copies of newspapers that already have widely circulated copies in both personal and institutional/library hands: by publishing a subsequent retraction later in the chain, like any other change.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#65

Post by simias »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #29
nosuchthing wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term “Smart contracts” (Ethereum/EOS/hyperledger) is often used with wild claims for supply chains and cross border business deals, but why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? Smart contracts can’t even do anything interesting without a trusted source of data input. The threat model and legal questions of smart contracts are another huge deterrent for most businesses. Latency, throughput, sec…

> why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

It's exhausting arguing with the same bogus "use cases" every other week but here goes in short:

- In your scenario you're not decentralized, you have a clear authority: the news agency

- The news agency can broadcast a signed merkle tree of the articles it publishes alongside the normal newspaper/news program etc... For instance through their website.

- Anybody who cares about it could maintain a copy of this signed tree locally.

- If the news agency censors or edits an article anybody with a copy of the original tree can prove it by showing that their tree has a valid signature from the news agency and yet the hashes don't match.

There, problem solved without having to worry about proof of work, proof of stake, transaction costs, 50% attacks of what have you.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#66

Post by lalaland1125 »

arcticbull wrote: post #45
thecatspaw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not anti-blockchain, there are applications where it makes sense. But 90% of the time when I hear about a blockchain related application its a regular application which just so happens to use the blockchain as storage because its a buzzword. It feels like the world suddenly discovered the hammer, and now we think everything is a nail

Like what? Everyone seems to hand-wave this, but nobody in the full decade long history of bitcoin and blockchain has come up with a single good use case that isn't better solved by MySQL.

Illegal gambling and illegal transactions tend to be good Bitcoin usecases that are trickier to solve with MySQL due to trust issues. Now, you may not be particularly enamored with illegal activity, but it is the one use case where Bitcoin really excels.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#67

Post by lalaland1125 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #27
erikpukinskis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mostly useful for people whose social networks aren’t fully enfranchised in the U.S. financial system. For people within that system your analysis is correct.

Interesting. Can you expand on what you mean by "people whose social networks aren't full enfranchised in the U.S. financial system?" The phrase has me thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

They probably mean people who carry out illegal transactions.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#68

Post by simias »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #24
LeoPanthera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be anti-blockchain, but I have yet to come across any problems that are solved better with a blockchain than with any other traditional technology - except for the original one, a distributed electronic currency.

I don’t understand why you would be anti- something so new at all. To me it’s preposterous that you would evaluate a new technology based on how many problems it and only it can solve. Don’t you get that new technology has an incubation period where its fundamental challenges must be overcome? What problem could early steam powered cars solve that horses couldn’t solve better? I doubt the earliest ones performed bett…

How long do we have to wait before we can consider blockchains not so new? Bitcoin is 10yo, the whole field has received literal billions in founding in the past few years (anybody with a good looking website and a three page whitepaper could make millions in an ICO last year). Furthermore anybody coming up with an actual innovation in the field is sure to make millions so the incentive to innovate is huge.

So, where are the results?

Your car analogy doesn't add up, for quite a while horses were undoubtedly more convenient than automobiles. Then automobiles improved and took over. We have a similar situation with electric cars today.

Blockchain technologies are not a few cycles of optimizations away from being able to compete with PostgreSQL, they work fundamentally differently and they have fundamentally, per design, strong limitations about how efficient they can be. That's the cost of trustless decentralization.

To overcome these limitations you don't need "a blockchain but more better", you need a fundamental breakthrough in the way these things work. I suppose you could hope for such a breakthrough but that's akin to hoping that we're going to figure out cold fusion and solve the energy crisis. Sure, it can happen but it's not unreasonable to be skeptical of it.

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#69

Post by tomc1985 »

merlincorey wrote: post #59
tomc1985 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're praising innovation blindly. Not all innovation is good, and many supposed innovators are crocks. I understand blockchains enough to where I could build one of my own (note that I say blockchain, and not cryptocurrency) and I really don't see much use for this particular datastructure outside certain niche applications. What are these truly innovative uses for a nested chain of data blobs whose contents includ…

What defines a blockchain for you? I agree that a token based currency is not required, I'm just interested in what people define a blockchain as for intellectual curiosity.

> What defines a blockchain for you?

A (potentially distributed) datastructure of some kind, which resembles a linked-list, and ensures its integrity using some sort of cryptographic hash of the previous link such that changing any link but the most recent invalidates the whole chain. Literally -- a chain of (data) blocks.

A non-engineering description of a "blockchain" should be considered to be misleading.

edit - also, I'd take cryptocurrencies more seriously if they could stay out of the headlines for a while

Re: Priority Queue on Ethereum with a 15 ETH Bug Bounty

#70

Post by simonsaidit »

chickenfries wrote: post #33
bonestamp2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would any real business want to use a public blockchain? I think it is only important for a business when public trust is important. For example, a news agency could publish its articles in a public blockchain so the original article and any updates to that article would forever be auditable from that blockchain.

Why? News sites don’t even care about maintaining an edit history. They just make minor fixes and leave editors notes when they fix things. News on the block chain is not something anyone wants.

I do. Censorship resistance and removing the ability to rewrite history would be good. even if current media practice is different doesn’t mean it can’t change in the future.
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