I suppose the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance should be contrasted with IBM and friends Hyperledger. These are a couple of well backed consortia which from 30,000 feet are similar. https://www.hyperledger.org/
What exactly is hyperledger solving?
Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
141–150 of 177 posts
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing that ties a blockchain to proof of work. Proof of work just just one consensus protocol. For instance, JP Morgan's Quorum is working on Raft based consensus. https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum/blob/master/raft/doc...
The nodes are federated and you're still calling this a blockchain? What definition of the word "blockchain" are you using? Is this not more commonly called a "distributed database"?
A "blockchain", taken as a primitive, is essentially an append-only (geographically-)distributed database.
Consider: a Starcraft 1v1 ladder match is, by this definition, synchronized using a "blockchain", whose participating nodes are the two players' computers and the auditing ladder-server instance. That's not a reductio ad absurdam; that's actually what you should be picturing when you say "blockchain" generally: participant nodes, an event stream chunked into blocks, and a consensus mechanism for validating blocks.
Proof-of-work is just one consensus mechanism for blockchains. Mutually-agreed arbitration oracles (as above) is another. First-claim using a global hierarchy of signed-timestamping servers is a third. Etc.
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#143It seems like Ethereum is getting a lot more industry support than Bitcoin ever did. If Ethereum continues it looks like it could kill off Bitcon, the looming possibility of a hard fork might be contributing make that happen really soon.
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Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have always thought that but it just crossed my mind that credit cards are basically just terrible loans. You could still give out loans in cryptocurrencies. Maybe Master Card could just switch if a particular crypto currency gained wide adoption. They could start issuing new cards with some sort of technology that allowed for cryptocurrency transactions at businesses. Or maybe they can use existing card tech, I re…
So maybe I don't understand this, but one of the purported advantages of cryptocurrencies is that the supply cannot be expanded by loose credit. Thus it is seemingly impossible (to me at least) for a bank to for a bank to extend credit.
Even if the supply of the currency can't be expanded, can't credit still be issued from the supply of currency that the lender has?
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#145Always surprises me a bit because it seems to me like those large corporate players don't necessarily need all the features offered by Ethereum (or Bitcoin), especially proof-of-work, since there's enough non-adversarial cooperation between them that a simple distributed ledger with traditional (efficient) consensus mechanisms would suffice for most of their applications. They wouldn't have to deal with the drawbacks…
I thought this Factom video was interesting, describing how companies like BoA paid billions of dollars in fines due to fraud in mortgages. Presumably, if the documents were on the block chain this could be adverted.
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#146If you'd like an easy way to keep up to date on Ethereum: http://www.weekinethereum.com
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ethereum is planning a switch away from proof of work.
It's unclear whether or not the alternative 'proof of stake' technique will be more efficient than proof of work. It is susceptible to abuse, and is likely to require an arms race of CPU power to prevent attackers from abusing it.
CPU power doesn't come into it. More ETH = higher returns.
I haven't seen any specific details for Ethereum bonded validators, but the hardware required is likely to be a cheap VPS with a reliable internet connection, at least judging by other active proof of stake projects.
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ#how...
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#148How pointless. The whole point of Bitcoin was to have uncensorable, decentralized asset that can be used to exchange value without any trust etc. That is the only reason we endure this utterly shitty and inefficient blockchain thing, and we exchange money for this otherwise pointless online points. I have no problem with ETH as cryptocurrency / smart contract platform. But this whole Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is j…
There's even evidence of vote manipulation on this very HN thread on the announcement over on Reddit.
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those companies are using Ethereum without PoW in their private networks. They plug in a different consensus model.
I don't understand what you mean by this. To my understanding, the companies' transactions/data are either on the Ethereum blockchain or not. Do you mean that they are using some other type of distributed ledger algorithm unconnected to Ethereum?
You can use the Ethereum project code to speed up and reduce the cost of development, since a lot of man-hours has gone into R&D by the Ethereum foundation (you fork the codebase). Ethereum is open source, anyone can do this. EEA members will likely run private, permissioned blockchains, likely using proof of stake or some other energy efficient consensus mechanism.
When you use a private blockchain, I like to think of it as being a bit like using a corporate intranet vs the public internet. It's disconnected, but it's possible at some point that data will flow across the public Ethereum blockchain if it's in the members' interest.
For example, imagine a private, permissioned blockchain using proof of stake for the insurance industry[1]. Since it's permissioned, only the major players get invites, and since they know each other, trust is higher than on a public blockchain. Each player has a certain number of shares/tokens, used to validate transactions. They use this to streamline their business. At some point (purely speculative on my part) they may wish to share information with some other entity who is not a part of their private blockchain. It's possible that data from the private blockchain could pass along the public Ethereum blockchain at this point, perhaps to an external auditor, regulator, other financial institution, etc.
[1] There is a proof of concept in this vein- http://www.swissre.com/reinsurance/insurers_and_reinsurers_l...
Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's unclear whether or not the alternative 'proof of stake' technique will be more efficient than proof of work. It is susceptible to abuse, and is likely to require an arms race of CPU power to prevent attackers from abusing it.
CPU power doesn't come into it. More ETH = higher returns. I haven't seen any specific details for Ethereum bonded validators, but the hardware required is likely to be a cheap VPS with a reliable internet connection, at least judging by other active proof of stake projects. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ#how...
Ethereum wants a PoS that works, so they will need to do something different. We don't know what that will look like.
Other projects using PoS survive by doing things like frequent block chain checkpoints (a notary stamped block if you will), which arguably isn't very decentralized or at least not trustless. If you have a notary anyway there are more efficient ways to go about things.