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Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

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Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#101

Post by redox99 »

fallat wrote: post #98
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #87

I think cryptocurrencies should be ranked by the mass in kilograms of the actual, real, physical products and the weight of people performing actual, real, services that have been paid for using them. Arbitrage and exchange, and all of the people and infrastructure surrounding those, would have no mass in this ranking system. "What about online stuff?" Well, yeah. If you pay for a small instance VPS using bitcoin the…

Pretty much this in a vague way. Obviously not exactly as the comment is written, but yes, it should be measured in the actual usage of the tokens.

One decent metric are the fees[1]. Basically how much money people are actually spending to use the cryptocurrency.

Raw usage (as in number of transactions) is meaningless because it can be trivially manipulated by wash trading if the fees are super low (typical of a barely used chain).

[1] https://cryptofees.info/

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#102

Post by TheDudeMan »

guilhas wrote: post #38
bitcurious wrote: post #3

Chia is famously decentralized when using “number of nodes” as the measure and yet is missing from this list.

Chia sounds like the biggest lost opportunity ever. Why not use the drives for cloud storage? Destroying a lot of HDDs and SSDs for nothing

Chia probably represents about 0.01% of the data in the world (I'm extrapolating from old info -- https://rivery.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/a-day-in-data2....).

The process of plotting the data is strenuous on SSDs. You might kill an SSD if you are plotting a petabyte or so. But if you are that serious, you can plot in RAM (or just eat the cost, which is insignificant compared to the cost of a petabyte).

The process of farming/mining doesn't stress HDDs in the slightest.

To the OP, why isn't Chia in this list?

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#103

Post by redox99 »

guilhas wrote: post #38
bitcurious wrote: post #3

Chia is famously decentralized when using “number of nodes” as the measure and yet is missing from this list.

Chia sounds like the biggest lost opportunity ever. Why not use the drives for cloud storage? Destroying a lot of HDDs and SSDs for nothing

Probably the same reason PoW is wasted on "useless calculations" instead of calculating protein folding or whatever.

Because these useless calculations have cryptographic properties (one way functions) that make the process secure. Useful calculations instead of just calculating a simple hash function would either be risky in term of future security (because of unknown properties), or outright insecure.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#104

Post by latchkey »

cowtools wrote: post #99
latchkey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they never switched. For security reasons, there can only be one top coin per class of hardware. sha256/bitcoin = asic ethash/ethereum = gpu randomx/xmr= cpu Yes, there are ethash asics, but they are effectively just asic gpus with ram... the memory controller is the gating factor because ethash is memory hard [1]. The gpu balance will shift with the merge... all the hash will go to ETC and other shitcoins. $2…

Interesting, thank you for clearing this up. However, I think you could have multiple competing cryptocurrencies in the ASIC class, because the ASICs are not as generic as GPUs or CPUs, so they cannot be easily repurposed for attack unless they are FPGA-based (doubful). Anyways, I'm looking forwards to the new supply of GPUs. Hopefully we don't get the same thing again with Chia hogging up all the storage on the mark…

Correct, asic's could have multiple, but in reality, don't. There is litecoin with scrypt. I was the 3rd largest scrypt miner there for a while. But these are all speculation coins without any solid utility. Nobody is going to build asics for coins that don't have demand. We saw this happen with Grin coin.

Another little tidbit for you... GPU mining didn't really impact the supply as much as people like to talk it up in the press. Maybe for a short while, but it was more just a lack of manufacturing than anything.

Because ethash is memory hard, older (4-5 year old) gpus are actually the most ROI profitable. It isn't the same nm hardware race as asics. People buying up the most expensive GPUs for mining were not helping themselves at all.

CPU based mining is kind of a shit show... less about people buying CPUs and more about bot networks being used to mine.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#106

Post by landemva »

cowtools wrote: post #90
SilasX wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. If a blockchain's economics purposefully incentivizes nodes, then number-of-nodes is entirely subsidized, in one common example. I'm not sure that this dynamic would compromise the metric's usefulness. A cryptocurrency can only offer such incentives in-protocol if it's made the currency have real-world, persistent…

Even if the nodes are independent, I don't think it really matters as much as the distribution of the hash-power. The non-mining nodes will not be able to resist a re-org by antagonistic miners.

Is this true for validating full nodes on a proof of work chain?

>> The non-mining nodes will not be able to resist a re-org by antagonistic miners.

A full node can pick whatever block it wants as the tip of the chain. Many nodes choosing the same would be a UASF. That would resist, by ignoring, the antagonistic miners.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#107

Post by yarky »

mbesto wrote: post #35
jgarzik wrote: post #31

Answer (12 yr crypto dev & veteran): Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. If a blockchain's economics purposefully incentivizes nodes, then number-of-nodes is entirely subsidized, in one common example. Further, the "Sybil" factor - which one party controls many nodes - and other centralizing factors - e.g. 90% of nodes are on Big Cloud - also complic…

Answer (0 yr crypto dev & veteran): I start a new coin call $FOO. I release 1,000,000 coins. I sell one coin to a friend for $1,0000, and keep the remaining 999,999 coins for myself. The market cap is now $100M. > Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. You can game either one.

> The market cap is now $100M.

In your dreams only. Good luck finding any serious (aka "smart") money willing to take your valuation seriously. With such due diligence you're likely to be the only one hodling $FOO ;)

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#108

Post by imtringued »

guilhas wrote: post #38
bitcurious wrote: post #3

Chia is famously decentralized when using “number of nodes” as the measure and yet is missing from this list.

Chia sounds like the biggest lost opportunity ever. Why not use the drives for cloud storage? Destroying a lot of HDDs and SSDs for nothing

The point is to save energy during operation in exchange for spending more energy on manufacturing the equipment. Since equipment manufacturing is bounded by more than just raw energy the end result is a net decrease in energy consumption.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#109

Post by imtringued »

loxias wrote: post #24

Always surprised at how few nodes there are relative to how loud the noise is about crypto. I don't mind deploying a service and running things myself, it seems there are only a few thousand of us in the world. Even Tor only has "a few thousand" nodes. It might be cute to also see some derived statistics like "market cap/node", average size of transaction, and "estimated cost of 51% attack". ;-)

Solana validators are very expensive so it is actually surprising that it is in the top 5 in terms of validators.
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