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Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

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Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#121

Post by baby »

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…

I mean to me the problem is how do you define a node? A node participating in consensus or any node? And if it's participating in consensus, is it counting only the nodes that participated in consensus since genesis or since some time in the past? All of these technologies are completely different.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#122

Post by TheDudeMan »

imtringued wrote: post #108
guilhas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But is it really "more energy on manufacturing the equipment"? Bitcoin requires hardware, too. (Hardware that can never be used for other purposes.)

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#123

Post by hinkley »

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…

GDP?

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#124

Post by olalonde »

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…

I feel like you are a bit understating your role here... jgarzik was one of the early Bitcoin core developers.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#126

Post by TheDudeMan »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #25
literallyWTF wrote: post #9

Quoted post unavailable.

What is valuable to one person may not be to another. Does that make it a scam? Most people are adamant that gold is a fundamental unit of value, and yet it's paper value (by volume) is 10x the real thing¹. Does that make gold a scam? Personally, I'm much more interested in the value inherent in the Human Spirit, but others place almost no value on human life. Insurance companies place a dollar value on human life. I…

Insurance companies do not place a dollar value on human life. They provide a service that lets the client decide the dollar value.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#127

Post by nope96 »

olalonde wrote: post #124
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…

I feel like you are a bit understating your role here... jgarzik was one of the early Bitcoin core developers.

I think he burned his rep pumping "United Bitcoin", a strange Chinese scam coin

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/garzik-forks-unitedbitc...

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#128

Post by landemva »

cowtools wrote: post #112
landemva wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does not matter because any new node joining would only need to connect to a single node that doesn't do the USAF in order to be converted against the USAF. The default behavior is to resist the USAF unless otherwise programmed. Additionally, different nodes could receive different blocks at different times, meaning they will decide to do a USAF at different block heights. The idea that non-mining/staking nodes do…

Full nodes validate the rules. They check and enforce that minded blocks follow the rules. This could be rules of a UASF which a group could take to ignore the antagonistic miner.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#129

Post by nl »

latchkey wrote: post #120
nl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people move them? Control of the software is the relevant thing here. If AWS started modifying the software to make it fraudulent that's a problem. Until that is an issue the hosting provider is as relevant as the bandwidth provider. It's just dumb compute.

Move them where? As we've seen more recently with the OFAC list blocking... once one big player starts to block, the rest follow suit pretty quickly. Remember also that a lot of the large staking players are staking on AWS and also have other external factors which dictate where they can host (taxes, corporations, shareholders, etc). Many of the large players are also tied to AWS deployment APIs... moving means rewri…

> Move them where?

Google Cloud, Azure, deploy a server yourself, etc.

> As we've seen more recently with the OFAC list blocking... once one big player starts to block, the rest follow suit pretty quickly.

There's a big difference between something that is made illegal (eg the OFAC sanctions) and a private action by a company. If your service is illegal then you are going to have other problems than just AWS refusing to host.

> Many of the large players are also tied to AWS deployment APIs... moving means rewriting those.

There's a big difference between using AWS as dumb compute and using AWS features.

The more AWS features you use the more control AWS has. The same applies to any software you use - if a license can be withdrawn there is an element of control. These things are much more important than if the physical machine you are running on is owned by Amazon.

As I said above: Control is the important thing.

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