Live data from Hacker News

Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

bitcore.io

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#21
post #15

It's an exciting time to be a JavaScript developer for Bitcoin. There are a number of JavaScript libraries for Bitcoin. Here is a comprehensive list of alternatives to Bitcore: - https://github.com/bitcoinjs/bitcoinjs-lib (one of the best) - https://github.com/indutny/bcoin (Indutny's work is found throughout Node.js and is the basis of elliptic curve cryptography in Bitcore) - https://github.com/ryanxcharles/fullnod…

Since you'd be the most likely person to know here, what javascript VM's will give you known-secure PRNG's, and which won't? I think that's a pretty important thing to clarify if you're creating/signing transactions via JS.

A deterministic K is used in many of these libraries, so randomness isn't needed at the time of signing transactions. window.crypto and the Node.js crypto library are often used for private key generation.

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe haakon is correct on this one, unless I'm missing something. We just got into an argument at my work over the correct usage of the term "api", but found this post to back up my arguments - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8772746/difference-betwee... Anyway, I'm not trying to nitpick or keep this side-discussion alive. But I'm genuinely curious how most people classify the difference between api and libra…

> Also on a sidenote, who's downvoting all the comments and the thread itself? This seems like a really cool project and it doesn't look like anyone's posted anything completely irrelevant here. Who else? Bitcoin haters and deniers like patio11. Such kinds of irrational and emotional people are everywhere, including HN. Keep in mind they can be good and logical at other things, but get emotional on one particular sub…

> Bitcoin shakes some of the foundations everyone on Earth has or has had at some point

really now...

> like the concept of money

Bitcoin is still money (which I would describe as a proxy for value with latency built in).

> the justifications for inflation

Other than eventually running out and deflating (probably a problem in it's own way), bitcoin doesn't address this problem.

What is bitcoin going to do to address fractional reserve banking, debt slavery, information asymmetry (insider trading), financial chicanery (selling debt-based products/toxic assets), which I would argue are bigger problems built into money as we know it. Nada that I'm aware of.

Why is bitcoin even less anonymous than traditional currency?

Why is it even more inequal (who has bitcoin? wealthy, technologically literate citizens of the first world) than traditional currency?

I agree that money sucks but bitcoin is hardly the solution we need.

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#25
I am wondering if anyone has some thoughts on the security of this in a web-application? Storing the private keys in a database connected to one's web-app is just a bad idea right? So than it just becomes a proxy to the Bitcoind installation via JSON-RPC? Would it be considered safe to encrypt user's private keys via their password+hash+salt the same way I'm storing their passwords?

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#27
I have a question about bitcoin in general - how do transactions on the network get verified? Does it mostly happen through miners? If so, what happens when mining reaches the point where it becomes economically worthless to everyone except a few electricity thieves? Will there just be a massive backlog of unprocessed transactions?

Unless I'm wrong somehow, I could see this becoming especially problematic as bitcoin becomes more popular and the daily transaction volume grows. How does the bitcoin foundation/community plan to tackle this issue?

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#28
post #27

I have a question about bitcoin in general - how do transactions on the network get verified? Does it mostly happen through miners? If so, what happens when mining reaches the point where it becomes economically worthless to everyone except a few electricity thieves? Will there just be a massive backlog of unprocessed transactions? Unless I'm wrong somehow, I could see this becoming especially problematic as bitcoin…

Transaction Fees: http://bitcoinfees.com/

> The fees go to the miners to incentivise them to keep mining, which in turn keeps the Bitcoin network secure. They already get a reward of 25 XBT for each block they mine, but this reward halves every 4 years. The plan is that as the block reward diminishes over the time, it will be replaced by transaction fees.

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#29
post #27

I have a question about bitcoin in general - how do transactions on the network get verified? Does it mostly happen through miners? If so, what happens when mining reaches the point where it becomes economically worthless to everyone except a few electricity thieves? Will there just be a massive backlog of unprocessed transactions? Unless I'm wrong somehow, I could see this becoming especially problematic as bitcoin…

This is clearly not the place to ask this question about mining. This is a thread about a software development on a whole different side of Bitcoin. If you are genuinely curious about the theme of your question, and not just interested in derailing threads, you are very welcome to educate yourself at bitcointalk, the main Bitcoin forum. There have been thousands -if not millions- of man hours in thinking, development, research and debate about the topics you enquire about. Head there and find the answers, and if still in doubt don't be afraid to ask (on an appropriate thread).

Re: Bitcore – A pure JavaScript Bitcoin API

#30
post #27

I have a question about bitcoin in general - how do transactions on the network get verified? Does it mostly happen through miners? If so, what happens when mining reaches the point where it becomes economically worthless to everyone except a few electricity thieves? Will there just be a massive backlog of unprocessed transactions? Unless I'm wrong somehow, I could see this becoming especially problematic as bitcoin…

>If so, what happens when mining reaches the point where it becomes economically worthless to everyone except a few electricity thieves?

The difficulty of mining is represented by a certain target number. The process of mining involves finding another number (the nonce) such that the hash of the transactions and that nonce together is less than the target. The smaller the target is, the less possible solutions exist, and the more nonces you'd have to guess before you find one that satisfies the condition.

This difficulty is self-adjusting based on how long it took to find the previous 2016 blocks (at an average of 1 block every 10 minutes this is 2 weeks). If the previous 2016 blocks were found faster than an average of 1 every 10 minutes, then the difficulty will be increased so that the next 2016 go closer to 1 every 10 minutes, and vice versa. (There is a clamp on the change of 25% if I remember correctly, so it won't change drastically.)

The assumption in the end is that these few electricity thieves will not have so much hashpower that they will be able to drive up the difficulty so high the rest of the non-thieves can get profits from their miners.

Post reply on HN