A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python • Hacker News Board

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#101

Post by nednar » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #89

wyager wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taproot decreases the size of multisig and other complex transactions significantly, in the happy path of a cooperative signature. It also enables Schnorr, which produces smaller signatures than ECDSA. It also contains features to further improve the efficiency of Lightning, which is a shockingly effective scaling mechanism.

Lightning doesn't work because it either leads to a chaos of routing that doesn't scale or it ends up centralized and you lose the point of bitcoin in the first step. And don't bother coming up with hand wavy explanations of how it could work, some day . People have been talking about Lightning for years, literally billions of dollars have been poured into the "tech", the fact that even bitcoin enthusiasts barely eve…

Well, the "pyramid scheme" + "technobabble" is not totally worthless, if it enables the investment of "literally billions of dollars" in otherwise totally unproven technology paths, doesn't it? Finally there is one area where people are really investing money into computer science! A cause to celebrate in my book.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#102

Post by plebianRube » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #89

wyager wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taproot decreases the size of multisig and other complex transactions significantly, in the happy path of a cooperative signature. It also enables Schnorr, which produces smaller signatures than ECDSA. It also contains features to further improve the efficiency of Lightning, which is a shockingly effective scaling mechanism.

Lightning doesn't work because it either leads to a chaos of routing that doesn't scale or it ends up centralized and you lose the point of bitcoin in the first step. And don't bother coming up with hand wavy explanations of how it could work, some day . People have been talking about Lightning for years, literally billions of dollars have been poured into the "tech", the fact that even bitcoin enthusiasts barely eve…

Weird Lightning works perfect for me, every time I use it. Low fees instant transactions. Maybe the trouble is in your trolling?

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#103

Post by noxer » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #76

noxer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taproot doesn't make bitcoin scale its mainly to increase privacy.

Taproot decreases the size of multisig and other complex transactions significantly, in the happy path of a cooperative signature. It also enables Schnorr, which produces smaller signatures than ECDSA. It also contains features to further improve the efficiency of Lightning, which is a shockingly effective scaling mechanism.

Who cares, the size could be 10 times smaller and it would not make a dent in the scalability problem. Its a few transaction per second at max and it would need to be be several hundred just so people could move their "owned" bitcoins away from exchange wallets without loosing several % in fees.

LN is not part of bitcoin and a total joke anyway.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#104

Post by jaycroft » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

One little nitpick: the checksum error probability should be more like 9 nines. The checksum contains 4 bytes, not 4 bits, and so the false positive rate should be about 1 in 2^32, not 1 in 2^4.

"The raw 25 bytes of our address though contain 1 byte for a Version (the Bitcoin “main net” is b'\x00', while the Bitcoin “test net” uses b'\x6f'), then the 20 bytes from the hash digest, and finally 4 bytes for a checksum so we can throw an error with 1 - 1/2*4 = 93.75% probability in case a user messes up typing in their Bitcoin address into some textbox."

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#105

Post by tsimionescu » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

exit wrote: post #84

noxer wrote: post #61

"...Bitcoin is a living, breathing, developing code base that is moving forward with new features to continue to scale..." There is exactly zero progress to make it scale in the last 10+ years.

segwit facilitates the construction of lightning channels. taproot, which recently locked in, reduces the space needed to represent complex contracts. moreover, bitcoin aims at being a concise and focused base layer on top of which secondary layers and sidechains can be built. your absolute statement "exactly zero" is absolutely wrong.

> moreover, bitcoin aims at being a concise and focused base layer on top of which secondary layers and sidechains can be built.

Have you ever read the white paper that outlines what bitcoin aims to be?

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#106

Post by noxer » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #89

wyager wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taproot decreases the size of multisig and other complex transactions significantly, in the happy path of a cooperative signature. It also enables Schnorr, which produces smaller signatures than ECDSA. It also contains features to further improve the efficiency of Lightning, which is a shockingly effective scaling mechanism.

Lightning doesn't work because it either leads to a chaos of routing that doesn't scale or it ends up centralized and you lose the point of bitcoin in the first step. And don't bother coming up with hand wavy explanations of how it could work, some day . People have been talking about Lightning for years, literally billions of dollars have been poured into the "tech", the fact that even bitcoin enthusiasts barely eve…

Daily reminder that cryptocurrencies are not == bitcoin

All the problems with bitcoin are long long solved just not with bitcoin because its not possible to fix something when the majority (of hashpower) thinks its not broken or rather profit form its brokenness.

FBA coins exists since 2013 or so.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#107

Post by plebianRube » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

IncRnd wrote: post #87

plebianRube wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, with major caveats - knowing the public key and having 100s of messages signed by corresponding private key. Nowadays people only expose their public key one time per transaction, and never reuse their address. So to steal coins, not only do you have only ~10 mins between blocks to find the private key, currently Shor's algorithm is unfeasible with only 1 signed message.

Shor's integer factorization algorithm needs a single number or key to factor, not hundreds of transactions. I've certainly sent money to old addresses, which exist in perpetuity on the blockchain. I can also use web searches to find hundreds of current public keys in a matter of minutes. > currently Shor's algorithm is unfeasible with only 1 signed message. The algorithm is currently unfeasible with 100s of messages…

Try actually reading it's aplication to eliptix curve cryptography. No really. Come back when all the bitcoin are belong to you.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#108

Post by nednar » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

blocked_again wrote: post #68

That's a lot of upvotes. Do you folks really spend hours going through the whole blog post? I for one can never go through the whole blog post. My brain would be shouting at me the whole time to work on something that can generate passive recurring revenue instead.

If your capital does not grow from gaining more knowledge then invest a few hours into investment theories.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#109

Post by krick » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #82

thesausageking wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It launched, is usable in most wallets, and is starting to get adoption. It's going to be a key piece of the recently passed legislation in El Salvador which makes Bitcoin legal tender.

Using a closed, centralized implementation that doesn't accept third party nodes. The use of bitcoin is pure marketing, it's just MySQL with extra steps.

This is interesting. Obviously, I heard about the whole "El Salvador something something Bitcoin" deal, but am completely unaware of the actual situation. Can somebody point me in the direction of some nice writeup explaining these details? I can only vaguely imagine how one can take Bitcoin and make it essentially an extension of SWIFT, and struggle to clearly visualize what the implications of this are.

Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

#110

Post by tsimionescu » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

plebianRube wrote: post #38

isoprophlex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He links committing transactions to the blockchain to storing state in a distributed data structure... which is of course, in the case of Bitcoin, implemented in arguably the most wasteful, ham-fisted, environmentally disastrous way possible. There's also the ethereum VM which is a slow decentralized state machine capable of executing code...

Check yourself.All progress was 'wasteful' with resources at one time. And yes, bitcoin is progress.

All progress was 'wasteful' at some point, but all 'progress' is wasteful. And yes, bitcoin is 'progress'.

I suppose Bitcoin is better than gold. Unfortunately, for BTC, we already have much more advanced financial technology.