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Children Playing Blockchain

jott.live

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Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#51

Post by sliken »

Gunax wrote: post #45

Can someone continue the staking analogy? What exactly is being staked? You put a bunch of bricks in the center and randomly choose one, then return the remaining bricks to their owners?

It falls a part a bit. You don't need to stake to use a proof of stake system, much like in bitcoin you don't have to mine to use bitcoin.

But generally the bricks you have in play can be lost if the network thinks you are cheating, even lying by omission (downtime) is penalized. So to try to change the blockchain (to allow double spending or zero someone's zccount) or even not to vote for the valid blockchain can be penalized by losing your staked bricks.

Another detail lost on the analogy is people get more bricks, just before being a good network citizen by helping the network and staking your bricks.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#52

Post by pazimzadeh »

> The class playing Proof-of-stake has a lot of notebooks filled with doodles. The teacher hasn't provided the children with much else to do and they've become quite bored.

This sounds like the dream.

In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#53

Post by atweiden »

spijdar wrote: post #31
spurdoman77 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of stake literally makes rich richer, thats the point of it - holders can mint new blocks. With proof of work there is actual work involved tol, not just minting money with your capital.

In either case you can use your accumulating capital to accumulate more capital -- PoW just means consuming actual resources to do so, as you fold your earnings into more hardware and electricity to earn more.

> In either case you can use your accumulating capital to accumulate more capital -- PoW just means consuming actual resources to do so, as you fold your earnings into more hardware and electricity to earn more.

Proof-of-Work miners have ongoing variable expenses to contend with — electricity cost being the major one.

Conversely, in “Proof-of-Stake”, mining is virtually costless, because it's enough to show you have money to then earn money with your money.

(Disclosure: I’m invested in a true hybrid PoW/PoS system, so I’m familiar with the downsides of both.)

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#54

Post by whytaka »

Gunax wrote: post #45

Can someone continue the staking analogy? What exactly is being staked? You put a bunch of bricks in the center and randomly choose one, then return the remaining bricks to their owners?

What's being staked is ETH (or any other units of PoS-based cryptocurrency) itself. The lock-in, and therefore any opportunity cost associated with the locked-in value, is the price to play.

The analogy, to my understanding, is not 100% faithful to how PoS works, at least in Ethereum. There's no choosing one of the bricks, or one of the units of currency or anything. You simply lock in your units as collateral for your right to take part in the dice roll selection where, if chosen, you get to add a new block to the blockchain. If you append a block without cheating, you are rewarded with new units of the currency. If you cheat, your collateral is taken away. You may choose to keep your stake in as long as you want.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#55

Post by gus_massa »

In the proof of stake class, the people that get rich in dollars are the old timers that collected a lot of bricks during the first year, and now can sell the bricks to the newbies that want to enter the game. (And the teacher, that also saved like the 5% of the initial bricks for ... pedagogical purposes.)

In the proof of work class, the people that get rich in dollars are owner of the owner of the stationary that can sell better pencils, sharpers and erasers to the students, the writer of a book with tips about solving Sudoku, the person that writes a Sudoku solving program. Newbies can just buy the solver program, and participate without paying the old timers.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#56

Post by m4lvin »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #23
jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #18

A third class plays using a consensus model based on explicit relationships of trust. Each student keeps track of which of the others they consider trustworthy. Since they all play together everyday, they know who is nice, and who is naughty. When a supermajority trusts the student placing a new block, that student is allowed to place it anywhere. When not enough people trust the student placing the block, they preve…

Which cryptocurrency does this describe?

it sounds a bit like https://faircoin.world/

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#57

Post by pazimzadeh »

kleer001 wrote: post #24
ronsor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the network so secure if relatively few groups hold most of the power? The danger of 51% attacks[0] is well known. [0] https://dci.mit.edu/51-attacks

Any discussion of 51% attacks that ignores the game theory of it I think misses the original genius of the Bitcoin white paper. If one has control of 51% of the network it's in one's best interest to keep that network going successfully. Sure, there's suicidal malcontents and those that just want chaos. But barring some brain cancer it's very difficult for individuals to throw away billions of dollars. Because if a 5…

You could say the same thing about infectious disease. The most successful diseases don't kill you, they just sap your energy a little bit at a time. What is the equivalent of parasites in blockchain-land?

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#58

Post by sparkie »

kang wrote: post #8

Funny. The first class was a public class & anybody could join in at any time. The second class had reserved early seats based on the initial supply of the dices; without investment in the initial dices the game doesnt start, whereas sudoku generation is free.

In the PoS game, the stakers must be trusted to report their dice roll accurately. To overcome this, you would need some kind of random oracle which can't be influenced by any of the participants.

The best random oracle we know is of course, Proof-of-Work.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#59

Post by johncolanduoni »

gus_massa wrote: post #55

In the proof of stake class, the people that get rich in dollars are the old timers that collected a lot of bricks during the first year, and now can sell the bricks to the newbies that want to enter the game. (And the teacher, that also saved like the 5% of the initial bricks for ... pedagogical purposes.) In the proof of work class, the people that get rich in dollars are owner of the owner of the stationary that c…

Except transitioning back to the real world proof of work situation, it’s dominated by players who make their own ASICs and have access to the most heavily subsidized electricity. Newbies can’t even break even anymore.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#60

Post by pazimzadeh »

kang wrote: post #8

Funny. The first class was a public class & anybody could join in at any time. The second class had reserved early seats based on the initial supply of the dices; without investment in the initial dices the game doesnt start, whereas sudoku generation is free.

The first one was only accessible to wizards who knew the magic spells to generate gold. The second one was accessible to anyone willing to risk losing a little bit of gold on an idea.
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