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Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

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Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#171

Post by xorcist »

runeks wrote: post #159
xorcist wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit early to say for certain. Nobody has made PoS work in an adversarial environment yet. It is misleading to describe PoS as a democratic vote. There is no voting as that could be faked. If you want an allegory maybe jury duty for the richest. That also captures the basic problem with it, when the chosen few collude. Let's just say it is an active research area.

> It is misleading to describe PoS as a democratic vote. There is no voting as that could be faked. I disagree. With PoS there is, ultimate, only the democratic vote. For example, in a network with 1,000 nodes, let's say 95% follow one chain and ignore another chain, and that the remaining 5% follow that other chain. The two chains are completely different, but are both valid. In a PoS-system there would be no way, b…

What you describe should not be valid in any well working blockchain, not sustainably. Guaranteed global consensus is the whole point, and a simple majority vote would be useless for obvious reasons. I'm not sure if you have something specific in mind, but what you write is not true in the general case.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#172

Post by Laforet »

dwild wrote: post #162
Laforet wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster above, but I think the main issue is with the cost to provide proof of work in a trustless network. For example, bitcoin is already at or close to the point where the most efficient mining operations have a hard time turning profit without a major bubble drawing in outside capital. 3 years from now it may well be unsustainable.

Isn't it by design? The Bitcoin difficulty move depending on the mining power, thus lowering or increasing the cost of operating a miner. If it's unsustainable, then miners will go out, the mining power will decrease and it will cheaper again. I guess an outside force (private corporation or government) can try to leverage that as a weakness by injecting capital into their own mining operation, thus making it unsusta…

>There could also be some kind of critical point where too many miners keep doing it unsustainably, in hope to survive longer than others and stay up (but that would be absurd, they could just start it up again later when it will be sustainable again, but humans are humans...).

This is not absurd at all, most miners have a lot of sunken capital as well as ongoing costs such as fixed term rent and electricity contracts they cannot easily get out of, thus many continue to operate at a loss just in case price improves over time. A lot of traditional businesses also follow this model.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#173

Post by dx034 »

bduerst wrote: post #120
zeroxfe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federated blockchains allow multiple parties in an industry (for example) to maintain a shared trusted database, with no single owner, or single point of failure. (Also, changing immutable data or posting fraudulent transactions requires collusion between multiple parties.) This is why many large industries like healthcare and finance are actively exploring this space.

Distributed databases can be configured to work that way as well. Why do you need a proof-of-work blockchain? With such a small number of participants doesn't that weaken it's integrity to attacks, especially without capital incentives?

This doesn't work in reality. If you have two companies that need to work with common data it's currently very complex and costly to ensure that both parties can trust the data. That's why trust banks are so big in finance (e.g. Bank of New York, State Street) because it's often cheaper to have a third party you can trust rather than establishing protocols between two companies that auditors approve.

Blockchain can save a lot of money here by making the trusted third party obsolete.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#174

Post by dx034 »

s_dev wrote: post #154
Veelox wrote: post #33

It 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.

>It seems like Ethereum is getting a lot more industry support than Bitcoin ever did. Why do crypto currencies need industry support?

So that consumers without technical knowledge can profit from the technology.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#175

Post by dx034 »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #5

I heard the head of R&D (of Scotiabank) talk at a conference a little over a month ago and at the time he made it seem like Scotiabank had experimented with existing cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech and were disatisfied and thought it would be some time before the technology was approachable for their bank. I guess they were just playing coy.

Being part of such an alliance is helpful to make sure that you can implement it once it works. It's probably not expensive for them to be part of the network and it gives them the chance to be one of the first to make use of it if they want.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#176

Post by dx034 »

wideem wrote: post #72

Ethereum as a currency will never go mainstream with a price swings like this

No crypto-currency will be mainstream because payment verification takes longer. Credit cards can now confirm a payment in less than a second with contactless payments.

Where those technologies will rather be used is in the background. Storing those payments or access to details across companies could be done more efficiently than currently.

Re: Master Card, Cisco, and Scotiabank Join the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

#177

Post by dx034 »

cmurf wrote: post #70

Andhra Pradesh, one of the four who have joined this alliance in the announcement, is a state of India. Visakhapatnam is its largest city, with just about 50 million people, more than the state of California.

And it's great to see that they're interested in the technology. Blockchain could be a great way for governments to keep track of data in a transparent way and could potentially be implemented much cheaper than current database solutions.
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