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In defense of cryptocurrency

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#461

Post by AlexandrB »

danuker wrote: post #384
AlexandrB wrote: post #46

I find the last section of this article particularly ironic considering cryptocurrency is one of the biggest steps back for technological efficiency I've seen in my lifetime. No, credit card fees have not improved in 30 years, but at least the energy required to process those transactions hasn't increased by orders of magnitude in the same time period.

So what? If the pollution is the problem, government should tax the externalities through a Pigovian tax. In the EU we have a functioning carbon cap, and as such mining is less profitable here. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-sy... But the US will hear none of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MondapIjAAM

I think you pointed out the problem yourself. Bitcoin and pollution don't care about borders, unless you get every country in the world to pass such a tax the miners will just move to wherever they can get away with not paying it.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#462

Post by hnthrow1010 »

yellowapple wrote: post #369
danuker wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof-of-stake is possible, but requires an honest majority of stakers continuously online. If you want to eliminate Sybil attacks in PoS, there is no way of externally validating which branch of a split chain is legitimate. Each of them has a majority of stake backing it. As for PoW however, you can just look at the total work proven.

> Proof-of-stake is possible, but requires an honest majority of stakers continuously online. Which is itself possible by penalizing stake pools that go offline, thus motivating them to maximize uptime. That's how Ouroboros-based chains (Cardano, Polkadot) do it (among other mitigations against various attacks). > If you want to eliminate Sybil attacks in PoS, there is no way of externally validating which branch of…

>Which is itself possible by penalizing stake pools that go offline, thus motivating them to maximize uptime.

This is still unfair to stakers that legitimately have infra disruptions. I have not seen any design for PoS that is actually fair and reasonable and I doubt it will ever happen because this is simply not something you want to just put in an algorithm. The problem space fundamentally requires human intervention at a high level.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#463

Post by yellowapple »

tsimionescu wrote: post #431
yellowapple wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I have proof that I paid you cash for a service, and then proof you didn't provide that service, I absolutely expect to be able to reverse that transaction, via the legal system. That's very different from what's meant by "reversible transactions" in the context of other payment systems. If the legal system can dictate the reversal of a cash transaction, then it can do so for a crypto transaction - without eithe…

> That's just, like, your opinion, man. Mine and everyone else's who holds important information in databases. The whole financial system for one. > NFTs can store arbitrary data. Up to some size. > Which is many orders of magnitude easier than the current system. It is not. The current system scales with the number of home transactions. Your proposal scales with the number of homes - a much bigger number. > Besides,…

> Mine and everyone else's who holds important information in databases.

If your opinion is that your information warrants less redundancy and resiliency than what Zoomer cryptobros get with their sad monkey NFTs, then maybe your information ain't all that important?

> Up to some size.

That size being more than sufficient to store a land parcel's coordinates, address, and other identifying data.

> The current system scales with the number of home transactions. Your proposal scales with the number of homes - a much bigger number.

They both scale with both. Or do you propose that the current system instantaneously sprung into existence without spending centuries distributing paper deeds beforehand?

> Sure, but then it's just a whole bunch of extra work for no benefits for 10-20 years.

If you don't consider the greatly improved auditability and resiliency to be a benefit then that's further reason to question whether your opinion is actually representative of people with important information needing stored.

> not only will they still need to process the existing requirements, they would also have new requirements to obtain and prove ownership of their ETH/other crypto wallet

That doesn't logically follow. It's quite possible for it to be a "one or the other" deal.

And ownership is pretty trivial to prove: you either can initiate transactions with that wallet's private key or you can't.

> Well, there are exactly two block chains that are somewhat noteworthy outside the crypto bubble: Bitcoin and Ethereum.

There are a lot more than only two which are noteworthy. That you believe otherwise is itself reason enough to disregard your comment as thoroughly misinformed...

> And any other block gain that becomes even mildly popular quickly explodes in values and transaction fees just like the other two.

...as is this. There are multiple NFT-capable blockchains that have demonstrated better scalability both in theory and practice by virtue of them using a consensus method more sane than burning energy on useless SHA256 hashes.

> There are still some important differences I feel, mainly related to the fact that today's systems enforce knowing the legal identity of parties to a transaction for something like a house, even if the sale is done in cash - which wouldn't be guaranteed if the house could be traded by selling an NFT on a chain.

It wouldn't necessarily need to be guaranteed, because the information is already in a public ledger. If you want to get fancy you could address that further with NFTs representing personal identification (which has other applications, like tracking licenses and certifications and other endorsements, but I digress).

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#464

Post by NoGravitas »

randomran01234 wrote: post #105
JackC wrote: post #98

"transaction reversibility is not about the ledger, but rather about the transaction rules that a currency uses. A reversible currency requires that someone anoint this trusted party (or trusted parties) and that they use their powers to freeze/burn/transact currency in ways that are at odds with the recorded owners’ intentions. And indeed, this is a capability that many tokens now possess" I think this is arguing th…

And it is fine to build systems with trusted parties on top of a permissionless network. The article cites USDC which does this, it is one of many applications users can choose to transact with. Attempting to bake reversibility into the protocol would lead to a tightly permissioned system with only a few trusted authorities. A loose analogy might be the internet, which aims to be a decentralized global protocol that…

If you build a system with trusted parties, you no longer need to build it on top of a permissionless network. If permissionless networks were zero-cost and had no downsides, it wouldn't matter. But in fact, they are incredibly expensive and complex compared to conventional systems (like relational databases), and have serious downsides. Once you need a trusted party, there's no way to justify the permissionless network.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#465

Post by landemva »

lottin wrote: post #283
landemva wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every land owner has granted reciprocal easement to every other land owner in the town to use what looks like roads through the subdivisions but are actually part of each lot. We don't need government to do this because we use what works like contracts on property - reciprocal easements. In fact, if the town disbanded there would be no questions about who owns what. Oh, maybe you don't know how easements work?

No, I don't know how easements work. So, you need to sign a reciprocity agreement with the road owner before they let you use their road for free? What prevents road owners from charging extortionate fees to people who don't own roads themselves?

The easements stay with the land. A land purchaser who uses a competent title search firm will find these easements filed many years ago with county clerk and recorder. Literally it gets set up once.

The easements are reciprocal to everyone else in the town.

An interesting thing with this is that if a giant company wants to drive around, take pictures of everything, and then monetize those pictures (G's street view), they would be trespassing.

Nobody (but my neighbors, rarely and just for short time) parks cars in front of my house because it is private property. No need to ask a government road owner to pass ordinance to restrict parking of RVs, and put up no parking signs, and have police write tickets ... it's private property and a call to towing company gets it removed from my property. In practice, everybody is polite and friendly.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#466

Post by hnthrow1010 »

toolz wrote: post #119
pavlov wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe Nakamoto was simply full of crap, like people talking up their cryptocurrency schemes tend to be?

I just don't understand why crypto discussions seems to draw out so many rude comments. If satoshi wanted fame and fortune he could have both easily, but there are a ton of early bitcoins that haven't moved - so obviously he wasn't in it for the money or he would've used those coins.

That's not a rude comment. Regardless of how much money he made or didn't make from the endeavor, Nakamoto still made many incorrect statements.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#467

Post by yellowapple »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #462
yellowapple wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proof-of-stake is possible, but requires an honest majority of stakers continuously online. Which is itself possible by penalizing stake pools that go offline, thus motivating them to maximize uptime. That's how Ouroboros-based chains (Cardano, Polkadot) do it (among other mitigations against various attacks). > If you want to eliminate Sybil attacks in PoS, there is no way of externally validating which branch of…

>Which is itself possible by penalizing stake pools that go offline, thus motivating them to maximize uptime. This is still unfair to stakers that legitimately have infra disruptions. I have not seen any design for PoS that is actually fair and reasonable and I doubt it will ever happen because this is simply not something you want to just put in an algorithm. The problem space fundamentally requires human interventi…

> This is still unfair to stakers that legitimately have infra disruptions.

I'd hardly characterize that as "unfair"; it's no more unfair than any other perceived correlation between uptime and trustworthiness.

> The problem space fundamentally requires human intervention at a high level.

It fundamentally requires the opposite. The more human intervention possible, the more room for exploitation and corruption and unfairness. This is evident both within the crypto space (Safemoon comes to mind) and outside of it (the legacy financial system comes to mind).

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#468

Post by hnthrow1010 »

denkmoon wrote: post #161
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works great except for the fact that 99% of crypto trades occur through exchanges which just put you back to the worst of both worlds.

If 99% of users stuck their fork in their eyeball, it wouldn't mean that a Fork is a bad design or a bad implement, it would mean that the users are using it wrong. FWIW, in my own usage of crypto, the lack of central authority is exactly why it is used. I don't really care that other people are just hodl-ing their funny money in someone else's wallet. Crypto, outside of an exchange, means I can send money to anyone…

>Crypto, outside of an exchange, means I can send money to anyone I want, and no other entity can prevent that.

No, this is extremely false. The miners/stakers can prevent that by blacklisting your wallet address. You might be thinking of privacy coins which are a very small subset of cryptocurrencies that are hard to use because of the security requirements, and are extremely impractical for most people who aren't criminals, and they only really work correctly if everyone using them has perfect opsec which currently they don't. And also a powerful entity who really wants to stop you can still prevent your transactions just by attacking and disabling the network itself through traditional or non-technical means, such as infiltrating the foundation that manages the project.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#469

Post by NoGravitas »

headsupernova wrote: post #430
once_inc wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Christmas lights consume more electricity than Argentina." "Wash dryers consume more electricity than Argentina." "Steel foundries consume more electricity than Argentina." What is the point? Comparing global electricity usage of a single sector and comparing it to the usage of a whole country is meaningless.

Those things produce joy, dry clothes, and steel. Crypto produces... scams? We're facing climate collapse and need to choose what we burn electricity on very very wisely.

Honestly, I'd be in favor of banning Christmas lights.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#470

Post by NoGravitas »

saalweachter wrote: post #409
once_inc wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I defense of those existing blockchains: the annual worldwide energy usage of blockchain technology is roughly equal to the annual US energy waste from machines plugged in while in standby mode. It is also significantly lower than the annual worldwide usage of Christmas lights, and wash dryers.

US spam postal mail also releases a comparable amount of CO2. These facts don't provide a defense of one or the other as "not that bad"; these give us multiple opportunities to make small but meaningful reductions in waste with relatively little impact on the quality of life of the world at large.

Yes, please. Ban both bitcoin mining and junk mail; there are absolutely no downsides to this.
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