Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was doing this kind of hobby work well before. I learnt solving Rubik's cube from his page[0]. [0] http://badmephisto.com
Woah, he's him? Same here!
I had no idea!!! That's amazing.
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
151–160 of 293 posts
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#152Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#153"NIST publishes recommendations on which ones to use, but people prefer to use other curves (like secp256k1) that are less likely to have backdoors built into them"
Does this make any sense? How is a curve going to have backdoors on it? Or he means a specific implementation? Or is this a joke? I'm confused
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Would you include environmental impact as a solved problem? My understanding is that Proof of Stake is the best serious option and that it's very controversial if it'll work.
Solves as in it does not use more energy than what the hardware needs to process the data + it doubles every time you double the number of nodes (obviously since they all have to do the same work too)
Its not wasting energy for a PoW lottery it just uses energy like a comparable instant messenger with global server farm would. The more people who use it the more energy it will use there is no way around that.
FBA is completely different form PoS. It does not work on incentives and penalties it works with a global final state, global rules and (federated) byzantine agreement (FBA) for progress (adding the next "block"). No way to re-org, no block/staking reward, no censorship. If someone doesn't act in everyone's interest other nodes simply wont listen to them anymore. Not following the rules its publicly visible for anyone. And since there is no reward anyway there is no financial reason why anyone would participate who does not simply want to help the system.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#155I’ve made something similar in order to learn how everything works and made it into a python library. Everything is in pure python with no dependencies, only std lib. I’ve implemented all the crypto stuff, address generation including HD, transaction serialization and even the bitcoin script. https://github.com/mcdallas/cryptotools
respect.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#156"NIST publishes recommendations on which ones to use, but people prefer to use other curves (like secp256k1) that are less likely to have backdoors built into them" Does this make any sense? How is a curve going to have backdoors on it? Or he means a specific implementation? Or is this a joke? I'm confused
There's been a history of mathematical information used in cryptography produced by the NSA, for which it's later revealed, they had pre-developed an attack. Example: the s-boxes of DES.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin doesn't scale. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption Just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDKntG4F0hg So in about 5 years pretend everyone in the United States melts a wrench like that... Then a month later they do that twice, a month later they do it three times. Hey, at least it will be fun.
Why does every discussion about Bitcoin's environmental impact reduce to "it uses a lot of electricity therefore it should be stopped". We're not going to shut down entire sectors of the economy because of their environmental impact. People are going to innovate and invest in alternative sources of energy because it is becoming profitable to do so. The solution is hardly ever "just stop doing it", it's "how can we do…
It has been "done better" in 2013 or so when the first FBA system where created as an direct answer to bitcoins expected future environmental impact and scalability problems.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#158"NIST publishes recommendations on which ones to use, but people prefer to use other curves (like secp256k1) that are less likely to have backdoors built into them" Does this make any sense? How is a curve going to have backdoors on it? Or he means a specific implementation? Or is this a joke? I'm confused
ECC NIST curves were proposed by the NSA. They have some unusual hand-selected constants that nobody quite understands exactly why they were selected.
https://miracl.com/blog/backdoors-in-nist-elliptic-curves/
“Working in collaboration with the NSA, NIST included three sets of recommended elliptic curves in FIPS 186-2 that were generated using the algorithms in the American National Standard (ANS) X9.62 standard and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) P1363 standards.”: What exactly is NIST’s justification for making claims regarding the method that NSA used to generate these curves? The fact that a hash matches is publicly verifiable, but the distribution of “random” inputs is not. I have heard NSA employees claiming that the “random” inputs were actually generated as hashes of English text chosen (and later forgotten) by Jerry Solinas."
https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/sp/800-186/dra...
It's all quite public.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#159Implementing things from scratch is probably the ultimate test of thorough understanding. Chapeau! On another note I am amused that Mr. Karphathys name describes exactly what he is doing in his day job.
Re: A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
#160"NIST publishes recommendations on which ones to use, but people prefer to use other curves (like secp256k1) that are less likely to have backdoors built into them" Does this make any sense? How is a curve going to have backdoors on it? Or he means a specific implementation? Or is this a joke? I'm confused
Here's a computerphile video that explains it very simply: https://youtu.be/nybVFJVXbww