Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

oasislabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 40 posts

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#11

Post by josh2600 »

cbsmith wrote: post #10
josh2600 wrote: post #7

I think this is exciting. I'm curious whether Oasis is still using SGX in their design (the Ekiden paper seems to be super SGX focused but I'm unclear as to whether they have moved away from this). Dawn is super smart so it's hard to bet against her. Edit: Oh maybe they're using some ZK stuff now: "Our platform achieves scalability and integrity with its novel architecture and protocol design, without relying on any…

Didn't even notice Dawn was running this. Well okay then.

Dawn is serious. I am super intrigued as to what she might be running to achieve her stated goals (I'd be super curious if she's got a new ZK algo up her sleeve :D).

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#12

Post by Ar-Curunir »

The research is from Dawn Song's lab, and she's a established research that has founded entire subfields of computer security.

The blockchain space is often full of scams, but you can usually trust stuff backed by academic papers from established folks.

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#13

Post by aakilfernandes »

berberous wrote: post #4

This article has more details: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/09/distributed-ledgeroasis-la... Some highlights from the article are below. Seems like a smart team tackling interesting problems, but as with most projects in this space, raising crazy amounts of money way too early. 1. Raised $45 million (!) in pre-sale financing. 2. 'Song says that her project has solved the scaling problem by separating execution from…

It sounds like what is commonly referred to as "sharding" in Ethereum. Is this the case, or is it something different?

By that I mean, are they implementing sharding a different way, or are they going an alternative route?

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#14

Post by funfunfunction »

dang wrote: post #9
funfunfunction wrote: post #8

Another day, another Decentralized AI Privacy Blockchain project raising a ton of money from people who don't truly understand the intricacies of the problems trying to be solved. What's new? I hate to be so cynical and this teams background does seem solid but I feel the same way when I see this as when the Prince of Nigeria personally reaches out to me for a loan. With all the other failed crypto projects these ann…

The site guidelines ask you not to post shallow dismissals to Hacker News, so could you please not? This comment doesn't clear that bar. If you're right, then the thing to do is drop the snark and explain some of the "intricacies of the problems trying to be solved" instead of just vaguely alluding to them. Then we could learn something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My apologies for the hyperbole. My comment was less about this particular project and more about the shaky ground that the entire cryptocurrency industry is currently standing on, seemingly in part due to announcements like this that claim to have solved the scalability problem of decentralization without providing much hard evidence. If there were specific technical claims, I would discuss them, but in this case there are not.

I think it's confusing to the public, who ultimately need to be confident in cryptocurrency as a whole if they're going to use it, when they find them asking, "wasn't this problem already solved by x?" every couple of months.

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#15

Post by trhway »

berberous wrote: post #4

This article has more details: https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/09/distributed-ledgeroasis-la... Some highlights from the article are below. Seems like a smart team tackling interesting problems, but as with most projects in this space, raising crazy amounts of money way too early. 1. Raised $45 million (!) in pre-sale financing. 2. 'Song says that her project has solved the scaling problem by separating execution from…

>we randomly select a subset of the computation nodes to form a computation committee, using a proof of stake mechanism.

who is that "we" who "selects" and what is the source of randomness (i.e. distributed verifiable randomness)? For example, in Satoshi PoW that PoW itself is such a verifiable source of randomness which thus does the "selection".

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#17

Post by lightedman »

dang wrote: post #9
funfunfunction wrote: post #8

Another day, another Decentralized AI Privacy Blockchain project raising a ton of money from people who don't truly understand the intricacies of the problems trying to be solved. What's new? I hate to be so cynical and this teams background does seem solid but I feel the same way when I see this as when the Prince of Nigeria personally reaches out to me for a loan. With all the other failed crypto projects these ann…

The site guidelines ask you not to post shallow dismissals to Hacker News, so could you please not? This comment doesn't clear that bar. If you're right, then the thing to do is drop the snark and explain some of the "intricacies of the problems trying to be solved" instead of just vaguely alluding to them. Then we could learn something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"The site guidelines ask you not to post shallow dismissals to Hacker News, so could you please not?"

Only when you can man up and admit that you're a shadowbanning coward.

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#18

Post by jesseb »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #12

The research is from Dawn Song's lab, and she's a established research that has founded entire subfields of computer security. The blockchain space is often full of scams, but you can usually trust stuff backed by academic papers from established folks.

I have no stake in this whatsoever, I just have some questions that maybe you (or somebody else) can answer, as I'm finding myself agreeing with the parent post.

- What does blockchain have to do with HPC? What advantages does this give me versus current solutions?

- If I was concerned of the privacy of my data, why would I put it on an unproven, public, immutable ledger? We all know what can happen when even minor bugs rear their heads in these types of applications.

- Where does machine learning come into the equation?

- Why would I want to use this rather than AWS/GCE/etc.?

I guess really what I'm asking is, what problem is this solving? Just curious :)

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#19

Post by justicezyx »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #12

The research is from Dawn Song's lab, and she's a established research that has founded entire subfields of computer security. The blockchain space is often full of scams, but you can usually trust stuff backed by academic papers from established folks.

> has founded entire subfields of computer security.

Mind to provide a pointer? Generally new to Dawn's work, and I think many readers here have a similar background.

Re: Oasis Labs: privacy-first high-performance cloud computing on blockchain

#20

Post by sniffme »

josh2600 wrote: post #7

I think this is exciting. I'm curious whether Oasis is still using SGX in their design (the Ekiden paper seems to be super SGX focused but I'm unclear as to whether they have moved away from this). Dawn is super smart so it's hard to bet against her. Edit: Oh maybe they're using some ZK stuff now: "Our platform achieves scalability and integrity with its novel architecture and protocol design, without relying on any…

I've also read their Ekiden paper, and agree that they put a lot of emphasis on using SGX.

What makes you think they've moved away from SGX? (genuine question)

Post reply on HN