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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#321

Post by buboard »

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

bank settlements are already using supra-national / supposedly neutral settlers.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#322

Post by thesausageking »

justicz wrote: post #225
thesausageking wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the network goes down completely, as it's coming back up, groups of nodes will start adding blocks before all of the other nodes are back online. When connectivity is completely restored, you end up with different parallel chains, each of which thinks it's the main chain. With Bitcoin, there's a simple, deterministic way to decide which chain to trust: the one which has had the most work done it. With Algorand, it…

(I work for Algorand) This is false. The BFT protocol that Algorand uses guarantees that each round may have exactly one block (up to our security assumptions with regard to honest stake); this is one of the protocol’s “safety” guarantees. In the case that a large number of participating nodes crash, the network will refuse to produce a block until a sufficient amount of stake begins participating again. Nodes that f…

Calling the case of the network halting "safety" doesn't help things.

To walk through a plausible example: let's say 3 Chinese services control 35% of the stake of Algorand. Without warning or any public announcement, the Chinese government steps in and forces them to turn off their servers. The Algorand network will now stop functioning as it can't reach 2/3rds. Hours go by and no one is able to transact. At this point, the network needs to decide how to proceed. Does everyone just agree to take a complete loss?

Most likely, a group of other stakers would work on a proposal to deal with it, maybe by removing the offline tokens. How do they get consensus for this proposal? And, if they do it, what do they do if the Chinese stakers come back online?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#323

Post by darawk »

good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

> I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those)

You know that one of the major motivations for Proof of Stake is environmental, right? Proof of stake eliminates the energy waste problem. That is one of its major motivating factors.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#324

Post by kadendogthing »

trophycase wrote: post #298
astazangasta wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense. It can't be used for purchases in most contexts and you can't use it as a stable store of value. It is also controlled by dubious actors and mining is a horribly destructive practice, both in terms of environmental waste and the constant nuisance of people stealing CPU time. But you were saying?

If you're saying "Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense" you simply just haven't used Bitcoin. It works absolutely fine, even great most of the time, and accomplishes what I personally see as its purpose.

Yep. Perfectly fine as tech beanie babies.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#325

Post by nambit »

intelliderp wrote: post #202
ckastner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so? That is a brilliant question! Instead of all the endless bickering between crypto-fans and -haters reaching from technology to fiscal policy to society, it reduces the conflict to one simple test, as a sort of precondition. Anecdata, but just going through my set of acquaintances, personal pro…

For me it's like asking, would you want Amazon to succeed if you did not profit from it?* Obviously, if I am not personally invested in Amazon, I don't really care that much. But it still could have value for society for other reasons than getting rich off of speculating. For example: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-gaza-west-bank-bitcoin-pales... * To those people who say, "You can't compare crypto to a company beca…

Don't compare a company to a tech.

As an example of a tech, if someone asked me would you want self driving cars to succeed if you could not profit off of them, I would say that's a resounding success. A lot of people are excited about this tech because of the improvement in their daily lives, not because of a profit motive. Compare that to crypto

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#326

Post by ksec »

Up to 99% more efficient are meaningless number.

Just tell me how much electricity is require for each transaction. How much is required for minning, Maximum possible transaction per second. etc.

I still believe in Blockchain, one way or another for many possible use case once all the technical / unit cost problems are solved. But I remain extremely sceptical of Cryptocurrency.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#327

Post by sbenitoj »

ur-whale wrote: post #319
sbenitoj wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, any supply of money will do, no need to permanently increase the amount in circulation — this is why the market settled on gold (which has an inherently low inflation rate due to the difficulties of mining) and impossible to pass off counterfeit gold at scald.

>this is why the market settled on gold Gold, which, by the way, has an extraordinarily high energy and environmental cost to extract.

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature — if it were easy to extract (like aluminum), it would have been much more inflationary and thus not a “good” choice for money.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#328

Post by dorgo »

ckastner wrote: post #276
sbenitoj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely — I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money.

> I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money. In that world, there would also be nothing to stop anyone else from just taking your money by force and without any consequences. The loudest voices against government regulation of finance usually belong to those with the least understanding of it. Most of the regulation is just there to prote…

> without any consequences

there are going to be consequences. It's just that they will be enforced by smart contracts instead of governments..

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#329

Post by sbenitoj »

ur-whale wrote: post #314
sbenitoj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely — I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money.

> I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money. Indeed. And not just because they're absolutely terrible at it: giving control over money creation to a government is like giving a drug addict the keys to the heroin factory.

Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, your comment is spot on. Governments can’t be trusted with money, the incentive to cheat is too great.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#330

Post by grandmczeb »

malloreon wrote: post #16

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

> do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so?

If the cryptocurrency was at least somewhat open and efficient, then I would be extremely happy. If it was more like a payment layer that only a few large banks could use, I would be still be happy, but much less so.

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