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Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

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Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#101

Post by EdSharkey »

Marazan wrote: post #80
EdSharkey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is so much compute needed for the blockchain? Couldn't a proof-of-work system be developed that consumes VISA-network levels of power? How costly the computation should be (and how much the cost has scaled up) seems like it was an arbitrary design decision.

No, the amount of energy needed will always be enormous as their is a direct linkage between the value of bitcoin and the amount of energy required to secure the network. Otherwise there will be a point where it is cost effective to attack the network. Bitcoin is designed to be wasteful.

I guess I was asking for a hypothetical, new crypto coin. Does proof-of-work have to be costly compute-wise in order to be proof-of-worky?

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#102

Post by redy »

Taek wrote: post #54
darawk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions to that though, like Proof of Stake. If distributed systems really cared about that, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on blockchains, to make them more efficient.

Most of the bitcoin researchers have thoroughly convinced themselves that Proof of Stake is not achievable with acceptable levels of security, and for good reason. The reason you don't see more active research on Proof-of-Stake is that it is thought to only lead to dead ends.

Nxt is a proof-of-stake currency that has scaled well for the last four years.

Peercoin is older than that.

There's millions of dollars at stake here so if PoS is not acceptable why haven't these currencies been attacked yet?

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#103

Post by bb88 »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #96
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the tech is "legit" it's encredibly inefficient. We're spewing off tons of CO2 just to verify the block chain, but we have plenty of technologies that can do the same with a minuscule amount of energy. The problem is that they want a system that's trustless and that's simply not what most engineers care about. We want a system that's fast and efficient.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't this why LiteCoin was created by a Google Engineer? Does it solve the problem? Or did it just make a step in the right direction?

LiteCoin's proof of work is memory hard so it's harder to create an asic.

A hard proof of work algorithm is required for decentralized coin chains to work. Otherwise it would be easy to create a denial of service attack by rogue agents filling up your blockchain with worthless blocks.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#104

Post by DINKDINK »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #26
DINKDINK wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. What have you found that is cheaper to proof-of-work that works on a global system?[1] [1] "Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work" http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/

Centralized authority. With the obvious tradeoffs. :-/ Maybe there's a happy medium where trustworthiness of central authorities is appropriately distributed, but common operations are quicker and less wasteful.

>Centralized authority.

Centralized authority isn't cheaper. It trades proof of work for violence or denial of liberty.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#105

Post by vocatus_gate »

srdev wrote: post #99

My observation is this: The "killer app" of Blockchains are the trustless nature of the system. In most practical application, allowing actors without a trust relationship to interact with the log is not a significant requirement of the system. Once you remove that requirement, there are technically superior approaches to maintaining a ledger.

That's why I've never understood all this talk about "private blockchains." Why? What's the point? We already have distributed database systems that are light years faster than blockchains. The ONLY benefits of a blockchain-based approach are censorship resistance and not having to trust the actors in the system. If you don't need either of those two benefits, then there are far better existing solutions for record keeping.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#106

Post by nullstyle »

dboreham wrote: post #92
darawk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies aren't going away. Which means that if your primary motivation to not work on cryptocurrency is that it wastes energy, then there's a whole lot of room for you to be making it better, and that is a stupid motivation. I'm not saying that they are obligated to work on it because it wastes energy. But the comment I was responding to implied that distributed systems engineers didn't want to work on block…

But the entire point is that it wastes energy. That's why it works. It isn't like a car that can be made more efficient and therefore better. The central premise is that we're going to waste energy to do something that can be done in other ways without wasting energy.

No, wasting energy is not why blockchain works. proof of work is just one way a blockchain can work. There are alternatives:

https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/scp.html

disclosure: I work at stellar

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#107

Post by tyingq »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #66
bradleyjg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I initially thought across borders/regulatory domains, blockchain will shine." Massive institutions with billions of dollars at stake would rather have a predictable and stable regulatory regime to conduct transactions in the shadow of then to rely on a technical solution that supposedly obviates the need for one. Things come up -- bugs, acts of god, internal fraud, hacking, flash crashes, and so forth and so on. Th…

A few years ago, a substantial amount of money was accidentally wired to my bank account. After about a month, I got a letter from the bank if I agreed on that money being wired back to the sender. I agreed, because I knew the implications. With a technology like bitcoin, where receivers are pseudononymous, that would have never been possible. Noone except for those who wish to remain pseudononymous will ever use bit…

I wonder if there's such a thing as Bitcoin address typosquatting. Especially targeting single bit typos (of busy wallets) to catch single bit errors. I guess, though, vanity wallet addresses are hard to create. Or maybe there's also a checksum that keeps this from working anyway.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#108

Post by KirinDave »

aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

It's also surrounded by a ton of cargo cultism, poorly considered engineering, people who don't understand the math but claim to be gurus, and strange parasitic political views.

It's a frustrating community to engage with because it has redefined a lot of longstanding terms to (in my opinion) make itself look better and smarter. It also is a constant roiling tempest of non-self-reliant-but-fantastically-dedicated-to-anarcho-capitalists-type folks, which can be terribly tedious to deal with.

For example, ask a btc engineer if they have byzantine fault tolerance. Then ask anyone else. Ask them if they have eventual consistency. Then ask anyone else.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#109

Post by fokinsean »

aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

> You just can't trust anyone

Isn't that one of the reasons blockchain came to existence?

I know you aren't using that in the same context, it just sounded funny in my head :)

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#110

Post by KirinDave »

bb88 wrote: post #103
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't this why LiteCoin was created by a Google Engineer? Does it solve the problem? Or did it just make a step in the right direction?

LiteCoin's proof of work is memory hard so it's harder to create an asic. A hard proof of work algorithm is required for decentralized coin chains to work. Otherwise it would be easy to create a denial of service attack by rogue agents filling up your blockchain with worthless blocks.

It's worth noting that the qualification should be "easier." But the POW is only one side of the DoS problem bitcoin's model can be forced to experience.

By carefully attacking the network links between miners, someone can significantly extend the amount of time that an attack can take place in. These attacks are expensive, but orthogonal to any PoW algorithm.

Then the problem transforms into: "can I trigger enough small pluralities of miners to split and form opposing but equally long viewpoints?" The only resolution to such a scenairo is to discard most of the divergent blockchains arbitrarily by human consensus.

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