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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#551

Post by evanevan »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #484
evanevan wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm one of the founders of Coda - In Coda we use zero knowledge proofs to stand in for downloading / checking the blockchain. This means you get the identical computation to normal blockchain syncing, but in only the size of the zero knowledge proof and your account, which ends up being both constant and ~20kb. Which makes a big difference if you want to use Coda from a phone or browser. Check out this video if y…

Whats the difference with vault?

Biggest difference is Coda's constant 20kb vs still at least a few hundred megabytes for Vault. This matters because it helps in making cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency apps usable by people from their phones and browsers, at 20kb with Coda that's actually possible.

I haven't looked particularly into if any consensus / security assumptions are different either with Vault, but that could be another place for them to get down to a few hundred MBs without zero knowledge proofs.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#552

Post by root_axis »

DINKDINK wrote: post #549
root_axis wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is wasteful because of its energy profile not because of an arbitrary value judgement regarding how energy should be used. Rendering images is useful work. Processing transactions is useful work. With gaming computers, increasing energy costs means increasing detail and complexity in the images that can be processed. Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of…

>Bitcoin is wasteful because the increasing energy costs does not increase the total number of transactions that can be processed. Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system? If I need to move $250,000[1] in one hour with ~100% certainty are you saying an IOU from a bank janitor is equivalent in value to a bitcoin transaction? An increase in…

> Are you saying the number of transactions the market will demand of a system is independent of the trust of the system

No. I'm saying that if a 51% attack is practically impossible today, the increasing amount of energy consumed to secure the same amount of transactions is wasted. It's also a sign that the system is broken because the amount of energy consumed has no practical impact on security. Reasoning otherwise would suggest it is justified to consume infinite energy because that would be infinitely secure.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#554

Post by damip »

Here is also a lesser known open source project that demonstrates the use of proof-of-stake for energy efficiency, combined with a fixed-width directed acyclic grah with transaction sharding for parallelization. Furthermore, "final" and "stale" blocks are dynamically forgotten to increase storage efficiency.

It achieves 10,000 tx/s on chain and transaction times below 1 minute.

https://blockclique.io/

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#555

Post by thesausageking »

throwaway415415 wrote: post #518
thesausageking wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

Yes people can duck with a network by cutting cables. This works with all internet protocols.

If 99% of Bitcoin's hashrate gets taken off the internet, it keeps going without any problem. That's the beauty of a decentralized cryptocurrency. There's no central node and it's supremely fault tolerant.

Algorand has a lot of interesting technology and may have some use cases. But it's more like a distributed database / voting system than a true cryptocurrency.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#556

Post by DigiMortal »

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…

Dude, who cares about the energy used. Just make MORE energy

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#557

Post by orthecreedence »

baddox wrote: post #499
orthecreedence wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is, objectively, a complete fucking waste. You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical success for any of its goals. And given the amount of energy it uses to perpetuate its own failure, it's nearly sinful to keep it going. That said, I do support som…

> An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is, objectively, a complete fucking waste. Objectively? No, I'm pretty sure that isn't "a complete fucking waste" to the people who are benefitting from it. Which is literally the definition of "subjective." Removing externalities of electricity pricing solves this. That's the…

> If a kilowatt of electricity usage costs enough to offset its environmental impact

The day that markets actually price externalities into the costs of goods and services, whether by benevolent owners or force of regulation, I'll gladly declare Bitcoin useful.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#558

Post by altern8 »

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…

Banks do a LOT more damage than computers running.If cryptocurrencies get them out of the picture, it's well worth it.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#559

Post by semi-extrinsic »

sowbug wrote: post #344
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so how is it any different than having your money in a numbered account in Panama or Switzerland, which the government can't seize? And what's this Singularity nonsense of which you speak?

No need for the hostility. And if you want to have a discussion whether there are alternative ways to achieve specific valuable outcomes, count me out. This thread is about whether cryptocurrencies have any potential valuable outcomes besides the potential of lottery-style winnings for early adopters.

Sorry if I seemed hostile, but I couldn't find any better word than nonsense to describe what I presume you meant to invoke by "Technological Singularity". It's about as realistic and scientific as religious extremists telling us to repent and prepare for the Rapture.

Ah, but this unwillingness to consider "why couldn't we do this without crypto", leading to rejection of study of centuries of useful economic and monetary theory development, is precisely what predicates the failure of cryptocurrencies to achieve potentially valuable outcomes.

That's precisely why I bring it up. If a thing is a) valuable/useful and b) possible without cryptocurrencies, why has it not been done before? The fact that it has not, suggests that either a) or b) is false.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#560

Post by root_axis »

keymone wrote: post #533
root_axis wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics and the military are the foundation of all society. Those things won't go away because of cryptocurrency, so repeatedly bringing them up doesn't help your point at all.

> Politics and the military are the foundation of all society politics - maybe, military - not necessarily, just an artifact of infancy of our civilization. > Those things won't go away because of cryptocurrency those things will become irrelevant to financial system based on bitcoin, which is good enough for me.

> just an artifact of infancy of our civilization.

Just an artifact of all of human history.

>those things will become irrelevant to financial system based on bitcoin

I don't think there is any point in further discussion; we are simply living in two different realities. The military and the military industrial complex are not going anywhere, certainly not because of cryptocurrency, the notion is laughably absurd.

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