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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

vitalik.ca

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Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#251

Post by jimmydorry »

c01n wrote: post #244
noxer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All that matters is the valid history with the largest weight (longest chain rule in PoW). No, that exactly the believe that comes from BTCs implementation and while it may be true for BTC its completely irrelevant for other systems. Imagine there is a room full of people all have a paper with the exact same transactions in order on it. Now a new person joins and copies someones paper and then verifies all Tx. Ok, n…

>So why even copy the chain first he could just start asking for the hash of the whole thing and if they all have the same there is no point to copy the chain. Well if I control enough nodes I can send you fake hashes (51% attack).

51% is actually a different attack.

The type of attack you are thinking of is called a Sybil Attack [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#252

Post by puranjay »

qeternity wrote: post #208
seibelj wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curve did $1 billion in volume over the past 24 hours https://curve.fi That isn’t hypothetical. It’s like you keep getting refuted and then ignore reality because it disagrees with you. “Blockchain is unused.” [a bunch of links with billions of dollars in actual daily usage provided] “Oh, well, I’ve never heard of that before so it doesn’t matter.” What kind of arguing is this?

Curve is just leverage for speculation: deposit token A, withdraw token B, earn the appreciation on both token A and B. Speculation is still the only use case. DeFi provides absolutely nothing novel. Nobody said it wasn’t used. They asked for a non speculative, “real” use case.

By that standard, majority of Wall Street has no use case either, since much of the money is made entirely on speculation. Is betting on whether oil price will go up or down really that much of a use case?

Unless you count making money as not enough of a use case.

I give up though. HN will willfully ignore crypto and miss out not only on life changing money, but one of the few places in tech that is still fun and exciting and hasn’t been “corporatized”.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#253

Post by bartimus »

magila wrote: post #29

Not mentioned in the bandwidth section is that residential connections in the US usually have a monthly data cap of ~1TB. Users are unlikely to tolerate a blockchain client using more than half of that. So if a full node sustains much more than 200KB/s then vanishingly few users in the US are going to run one.

But can we expect the future cryptocurrency of the world to be bottlenecked by average users needing to run full nodes on average laptops? Considering Bitcoin only has a total of 27 million addresses, couldn't we introduce some special blocks that consolidate the transaction history during a certain timespan so that nodes don't need to download the entire history?

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#254

Post by mexicanandre »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #223
legulere wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ideas do you think will not go away?

Gambling is a given...paired with oracles (e.g. Link) for real world outcome verification to decide smart contract outcomes. I think applications to supply chain manufacturing would be useful to cut down the tons of fraud that happen in manufacturing. It is already finding use in cargo logistics. I believe Egypt has recently incorporated blockchain to imports ( https://theloadstar.com/egypt-authorizes-cargox-as-the-b…

The above examples are really not useful real world examples I think.

Ultimately, there still is a single source of truth, which why not use a tech called MySQL for?

If fraud happens, the blockchain wont stop it. Its the systems in the real world that do. The fraud will just happen on the blockchain.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#255

Post by 3np »

dehrmann wrote: post #170
idlewords wrote: post #115

The really obvious weakness in any blockchain setup is the software. Whoever controls the software upgrade channel will always have potential control of the blockchain, whether that's the official entity in charge, or some intermediary. If you want really widespread distribution of full nodes, you need to make a consumer-friendly distribution of the node software, and package it and keep it updated in a way that regu…

Miners control bitcoin more than people realize.

Less than most actually. Most have no practical means to act against the interest of pools, whose operators have most of the real control that people ascribe to miners.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#256

Post by DennisP »

javert wrote: post #6

You could also just not scale the blockchain, and instead use layer 2 solutions, which is the bitcoin approach.

Ethereum is doing that today with rollups, which are capable of several thousand tx/sec without security compromises. But you multiply that if you scale the first layer too.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#257

Post by BigBubbleButt »

puranjay wrote: post #252
qeternity wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curve is just leverage for speculation: deposit token A, withdraw token B, earn the appreciation on both token A and B. Speculation is still the only use case. DeFi provides absolutely nothing novel. Nobody said it wasn’t used. They asked for a non speculative, “real” use case.

By that standard, majority of Wall Street has no use case either, since much of the money is made entirely on speculation. Is betting on whether oil price will go up or down really that much of a use case? Unless you count making money as not enough of a use case. I give up though. HN will willfully ignore crypto and miss out not only on life changing money, but one of the few places in tech that is still fun and exc…

> Unless you count making money as not enough of a use case.

So then you're agreeing that the only real use case for crypto is speculation, and not something normal people should care about.

> By that standard, majority of Wall Street has no use case either, since much of the money is made entirely on speculation.

I think most educated people would agree that Wall St is a drain on society the same as targeted ads. The world is better without it. Are ads also useful because of how much money they make?

> HN will willfully ignore crypto and miss out not only on life changing money, but one of the few places in tech that is still fun and exciting and hasn’t been “corporatized”.

I really hope you're not so naïve that you don't realize crypto markets are being manipulated by big banks.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#258

Post by [deleted] »

jimmydorry wrote: post #251
c01n wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So why even copy the chain first he could just start asking for the hash of the whole thing and if they all have the same there is no point to copy the chain. Well if I control enough nodes I can send you fake hashes (51% attack).

51% is actually a different attack. The type of attack you are thinking of is called a Sybil Attack [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

[deleted]

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#259

Post by mbesto »

puranjay wrote: post #198
mbesto wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?

1. Transfer to your bank account via an exchange (KYC applies) 2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC ) 3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card) 4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card) 5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (pro…

1. But I still need a bank in the currency on the other end. So this might eliminate some forex fees, but that's it?

2. Again, still need a bank account on the end.

3. How pervasive are these? Can I find one on the street while traveling Munich for example? How do I get a card?

4/5. No one wants to use crypto because they get FOMO on price fluctuations. Until then it's basically useless.

Until crypto becomes pervasive as a medium of exchange it's as useless as a bar of gold.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#260

Post by Freestyler_3 »

vehementi wrote: post #136
noofen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's genuinely concerning how 1:1 the Wyckoff pattern is for BTC at the moment [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhf_2gJJS1I

That was a month ago and it has since diverged, the same youtuber is performing even more mental gymnastics to try to explain the divergence

He mentioned pretty early that he bought at 60k. hindsight 20/20 I guess.
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