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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

vitalik.ca

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Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#431

Post by Jweb_Guru »

shawnz wrote: post #410
atweiden wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite catch your point. The chances your brain continues functioning over the next twelve minutes is not 100%, but 100% less some infinitesimally small fraction. 99.999999...% is as close physical reality ever comes to 100%. > PoS/PoW is rather irrelevant It’s an incredibly relevant fact that PoS blockchains pos1, pos2, pos3 cannot be compared without overtly trusting central authorities to give you the “corr…

> PoS blockchains pos1, pos2, pos3 cannot be compared without overtly trusting central authorities to give you the “correct” answer. I have seen you make this point before on here but I don't see how that is true. Can you elaborate? Don't PoS chains typically choose forks based on how much is staked? Last time we discussed this you never explained what is wrong with that approach.

There is nothing wrong with it, the only trusted component is (obviously) in terms of the initial distribution of the staked coins, which is the central feature of proof of stake.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#432

Post by Sargos »

john_alan wrote: post #326
Sargos wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum via Aztec (zk.money)

Not default privacy, trusted setup.

OP listed Zcash which is the same so it seems fair game. I think it's also important to list it as Aztec can interact with DeFi privately and also be programmed which allows for complex interactions and an economy where money goes in and doesn't come back out often. This increases privacy and also allows people to actually use money instead of just temporarily hiding it.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#433

Post by john_alan »

Sargos wrote: post #432
john_alan wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not default privacy, trusted setup.

OP listed Zcash which is the same so it seems fair game. I think it's also important to list it as Aztec can interact with DeFi privately and also be programmed which allows for complex interactions and an economy where money goes in and doesn't come back out often. This increases privacy and also allows people to actually use money instead of just temporarily hiding it.

Yeah I agree that Aztec is more flexible than ZEC. But their weaknesses are a dealbreaker for me.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#434

Post by billytetrud »

space_rock wrote: post #347
billytetrud wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares who claims what? It's more important to hear the reasons behind the claims. Vitalik makes excellent points about tolerances and safety margins needed in decentralized networks like this. People who call for increasing the key parameters almost never acknowledge the fact that things aren't as simple as what some fast machines can process in ideal conditions.

He's repeating the criticisms of his own system as if they are new ideas. A positive I guess if he wasn't already aware of these issues

It is a bit surprising to hear this stuff coming from him, since Ethereum isn't exactly known for prudence in scaling.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#435

Post by billytetrud »

dannyw wrote: post #353
billytetrud wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Bitcoin, Stratum v2 will solve this problem and return block creation power to the miners instead of the handful of large pool operators, which will be a huge win. However, even then, miners are beholden to the actively spending economic majority.

Miners want ROI. Running your own block creation infrastructure offers no benefit and only drawbacks and more services to keep online.

... You should look into what Stratum v2 is. By "running your own block creation infrastructure", do you mean running a pool? No infrastructure is needed. Creating a block is very easy and cheap. What's expensive is repeatedly hashing that block enough times to mine the block.

Stratum v2 doesn't get rid of mining pools, it just puts the block creation in the hands of individual miners. Pools still get a cut, and pool miners still share the rewards. This is because Stratum v2 makes certain requirements of blocks created by miners such that when they mine a block, the pool and everyone properly gets paid along with it.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#436

Post by bartimus »

atweiden wrote: post #370
bartimus wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can we expect the future cryptocurrency of the world to be bottlenecked by average users needing to run full nodes on average laptops? Considering Bitcoin only has a total of 27 million addresses, couldn't we introduce some special blocks that consolidate the transaction history during a certain timespan so that nodes don't need to download the entire history?

Or we could simply not use a blockchain for Doritos purchases. If we’re willing to do that — if we’re able to trade off “Fort Knox” security for Doritos — we can get dramatically higher speed and efficiency for those transactions, and the options we have for implementing this significantly widen. Those options also tend to be inherently safer than their on-chain counterparts, because they both operate on an abstract…

At least a factor of 2-100 would solve the problem we're facing at this moment in time. We can explore solutions (like 2nd layer) while keeping everything usable.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#437

Post by cinntaile »

mvzvm wrote: post #228
cinntaile wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just by the way you describe it you already signal that you're not open to change your stance. Which is fine by me, but don't fool yourself.

I am very open. Focus on the statement, not the person.

You received a lot of replies, did you change your mind?

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#438

Post by mosdl »

DSingularity wrote: post #380
mosdl wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a major problem to all the hype around crypto - it relies on a centralized internet infrastructure.

If needed TOR is always available. Besides, internet may be vulnerable to ISP censorship for something like DNS but I would love to hear your approach for censoring something like the BTC network.

DPI can detect TOR for example. In the end your are still running on a centrally run network.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#439

Post by BeefWellington »

dmitriid wrote: post #356
BeefWellington wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain This seems an odd claim to make. Currently there's hundreds of Cryptocurrencies using blockchains as a foundation, and more than half a trillion dollars tied up in them. Right now it seems like they're at least speculative investments. If this does not count as a use-case then we'd better break the news to essentially all of finance. Year…

> Because of all of the speculation cryptocurrencies have generally become too volatile for that. So, the great amazing disruptive technology that is going to completely change the world... broke as soon as a tiny fraction of the world start paying any attention to it. > Then there's the applications for areas like logistics, supply chain, that are all under development. Literally none of those applications require b…

> So, the great amazing disruptive technology that is going to completely change the world... broke as soon as a tiny fraction of the world start paying any attention to it.

This is shifting the goalposts massively. The original comment was that there was no use-case for Blockchain. You are also talking about a component of cryptocurrencies as if they were the whole. The issue with the viability of cryptocurrencies is not tied to the blockchain but rather human investor behaviour.

> Literally none of those applications require blockchain, and blockchain solves literally none of the problems in those domains.

I'm not sure what you've imagined the applications in question are but you appear to have invented them and decided they don't work; I didn't provide any specific examples.

If you want a specific example of where it's addressing things and is being put to use: Provenance. If you don't mind a bit of dry reading the ieee has a decent writeup on the value this provides and the problems it can address: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8909921

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#440

Post by atweiden »

shawnz wrote: post #410
atweiden wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite catch your point. The chances your brain continues functioning over the next twelve minutes is not 100%, but 100% less some infinitesimally small fraction. 99.999999...% is as close physical reality ever comes to 100%. > PoS/PoW is rather irrelevant It’s an incredibly relevant fact that PoS blockchains pos1, pos2, pos3 cannot be compared without overtly trusting central authorities to give you the “corr…

> PoS blockchains pos1, pos2, pos3 cannot be compared without overtly trusting central authorities to give you the “correct” answer. I have seen you make this point before on here but I don't see how that is true. Can you elaborate? Don't PoS chains typically choose forks based on how much is staked? Last time we discussed this you never explained what is wrong with that approach.

When the PoW chain ‘pow’ forks into pow1 and pow2 with both sides claiming to be the original ‘pow’, the general public can compare the cumulative hashrate of pow1 and pow2 to ascertain legitimacy (see: Bitcoin v Bcash, 2016).

In PoW, external input to the system — electricity — powers hashrate. Electricity is altogether foreign to the context of cryptocurrency, and by necessitating the wasting of electricity on one fork over another, PoW consensus systems ensure miners can vote on only one side of a fork without bearing additional costs.

When the PoS chain ‘pos’ forks into pos1 and pos2, however, with both sides claiming to be the original ‘pos’, there is no hashrate to base our decision on. External inputs are never burned in any PoS chain’s forward progress.

If a Bitcoin v Bcash political fork were to unfold in a pure PoS context, the general public would be faced with a situation where both pos1 and pos2 chains were equally secure. If pos1 claimed to be the rightful heir to the ‘pos’ title while defensively slashing pos2 sympathizers, it wouldn’t harm pos2’s ability to make forward progress on the pos2 chain while pos2 also slashes pos1 sympathizers and equally claims to be the rightful heir to the ‘pos’ title.

It’s as if an OSS project forked with both forks claiming to be the real thing. If both sides are steadfast, it is ultimately up to the public to pick winners and losers based on nothing besides social signaling. See: 2015-2017 block size debate in Bitcoin for pitfalls to this.

Notice how no math is involved whatsoever in the decision to pick pos1 over pos2.

Notice how human intervention is inherently required to reach a decision as to which side of the pos1/pos2 split is given title to ‘pos’.

Pure PoS consensus is substantially similar to Git repos. If people are just going to trust a nebulous human hierarchy to resolve disputes like this, then the system is de facto permissioned, and a public blockchain isn’t required.

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