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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

vitalik.ca

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Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#101

Post by wmf »

s17n wrote: post #65

If Vitalik is correct that the only viable defense against the attack described in this article is users validating nodes en masse, then blockchain is doomed, because you're never going to convince more than a small percentage of users to validate blocks. Personally, I think that custodial entities such as Coinbase (or in the future, banks) can probably be relied on to not do anything too controversial.

I don't think you're disagreeing as much as you think. A small percentage could still be 10,000 nodes or more which seems like a healthy number.

(Of course, even a billion nodes can't prevent attacks if they have no economic weight...)

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#102

Post by pfisch »

bradleyjg wrote: post #68
seibelj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for blockchain devs.

Perhaps we don’t change our minds because we haven’t seen a convincing counter-argument to the thesis that blockchains are fundamentally about getting rich quick through buying in early (or pre-mining) and then finding greater fools. The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms. I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These r…

Polymarket is a real use case.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#103

Post by xalava »

- Why 10% margins on average? What is exactly the risk profile?

- Why consider that a group of diverse group of developers is a governance danger while a group of users would be fine?

- What are the incentives to run a full node for an average user?

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#104

Post by jude- »

So, what happens when one of the shards goes offline, or forks? What are the cascading consequences for validators of other shards, if any?

Asking because I don't think there's a viable strategy for keeping all shard data around indefinitely, without giving up either scalability or durability:

* If the system requires cross-shard state-transitions to be mirrored to on a "central" chain (e.g. the beacon chain) in order to stave off unavailability, then that central chain's capacity is the scalability bottleneck.

* If the system requires cross-shard state-transitions to be mirrored instead to both shards in order to stave off unavailability, then ultimately all shards will host a non-trivial fraction of each others' state, meaning that the scalability bottleneck is the most-loaded shard.

* If the system requires some nodes to store full replicas of all shards in order to avert shard unavailability, then the system is no more scalable than the nodes required to carry this burden.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#105

Post by noxer »

mvzvm wrote: post #41
conception wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remittances are better/easier. That’s the only thing I’ve seen and the tech to do that is trivial now and Bitcoin is terrible for it specifically now.

Are they? I've had no issues with remittances outside of blockchain. In places where I have heard remittances are difficult, it is usually due to regulation, something this does not solve either.

Its difficult because it requires parked money (nostro accounts) in foreign currencies. This imposes a risk and act as "dead capital". At some point the cost to maintain the corridor is higher than the profit so the corridor is closed. Transaction then are routed trough other corridors which means multiple currencies swaps. More loses and more parties who want their cut. + it can takes days and the system are one-way so you have to ask the recipient if he got it to know.

Public ledgers can make a difference See https://ripple.com/ripplenet/on-demand-liquidity/

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#106

Post by tromp »

noxer wrote: post #85

This has some really questionable assumptions. Like the part about permanence. "An important property of a blockchain that users really value is permanence. A digital asset stored on a server will stop existing in 10 years when the company goes bankrupt or loses interest in maintaining that ecosystem. An NFT on Ethereum, on the other hand, is forever." This is wrong 2 times. First, there is no general requirement of…

> There is absolutely no reason to recreate the whole chain to come to the current state. You either use the current state or you cant participate. If you would find an error in the chain whatcha gonna do about? Nothing. The current majority accepted state is all that matters.

All that matters is the valid history with the largest weight (longest chain rule in PoW). If an invalid branch somehow acquires more weight, it simply gets ignored (except by SPV clients in bitcoin, which trust others to validate). Exchanges/pools that accept an invalid branch are completely untrustworthy and should similarly be ignored.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#107

Post by seibelj »

diegocg wrote: post #94
seibelj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for blockchain devs.

That's because on HN we know that 99% of the blockchain hype is about people discovering asymmetric cryptography and pretending that the blockchain is the only way to use it. The only real difference that blockchain solutions bring is decentralisation. I have to yet hear one single argument about why decentralisation is good. So far I have only heard the typical libertarianesque arguments about states, banks and infl…

Well I’m a libertarian and an Austrian economics / hard money enthusiast so I grant that my love of crypto is influenced by my politics. If you are a statist that loves government authority, its benefits will be be drawbacks as decentralized money is an obvious attack on state power.

The power of decentralization is to reduce the power of centralized entities. Even within decentralized networks, centralized nodes (companies) gain power. But in decentralized networks you can choose alternatives. In state-run networks, your only option is the state as guns prevent competitors. I like free markers / free minds / private wealth / private power.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#108

Post by [deleted] »

pfisch wrote: post #102
bradleyjg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we don’t change our minds because we haven’t seen a convincing counter-argument to the thesis that blockchains are fundamentally about getting rich quick through buying in early (or pre-mining) and then finding greater fools. The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms. I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These r…

Polymarket is a real use case.

[deleted]

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#109

Post by idlewords »

bpodgursky wrote: post #25
jeremycarter wrote: post #16

Blockchain, Decentralization and Smart Contracts have had nearly a decade to prove their value and disrupt the marketplace. So far nothing but whitepapers, pipe dreams and exit scams - nothing my mother can use. What's the point? Nobody is using crypto as an alternative to fiat. Prove me wrong.

On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. In July 1886 the newspapers reported on the first public outing of the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car, model no. 1.

And over the following years the automobile improved rapidly, becoming more capable, reliable, and gaining users as it went.

It didn't spend its first 13 years up on blocks while its supporters yelled at the skeptical and embezzled money from everyone else.

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