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Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

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Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#51

Post by ahtihn »

Taek wrote: post #20
coconut08 wrote: post #2

Wait isn't each collection of 32 eth considered a separate validator no matter the source? If that's the case then wouldn't that mean that coinbase and other exchanges make up the massive overwhelming majority of those validators? If that's the case is it really good faith to claim that there are 400+ thousand validators and then arbitrarily put ethereum in first place?

Yes, its not genuine to say Eth has 400,000 validators as many of them are the same entity. It's a similar story for nodes as well. A ton of the reported nodes are actually running on AWS and ultimately its a fairly worthless metric. For a while the crypto community valued node count as a meaningful number for measuring decentralization, and naturally from that moment forward people have been fully shameless about ru…

> A ton of the reported nodes are actually running on AWS

So? That doesn't mean anything, Amazon doesn't control the nodes just because they are running on its infra.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#52

Post by SilverBirch »

mgraczyk wrote: post #36
mbesto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer (0 yr crypto dev & veteran): I start a new coin call $FOO. I release 1,000,000 coins. I sell one coin to a friend for $1,0000, and keep the remaining 999,999 coins for myself. The market cap is now $100M. > Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. You can game either one.

If there's a public order book, it's very easy to see through this. Harder to do that with nodes.

A public ledger only ensures that you can see through this if you can verify ownershp of wallets, because as we've seen repeatedly, you can programmatically create an entire eco-system of fake wallets trading back and forth. What's the cost? I can trivially create a series of bots that just trade their coins back and forth with each other forever. It'll create huge volumes. Now the reason you don't do this on real chains is because the transaction costs will cripple you. But transaction costs aren't real if the currency you're paying them in was entirely fictional to start with.

From the outside there is no way of verifying that any chain has any real activity without verifying ownership of the wallets.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#55

Post by guilhas »

avnfish wrote: post #29
mjmj wrote: post #28

Where is Chia? They might out rank all of these.

Was just about to say the same. Chia is at 123k full nodes. Source: https://dashboard.chia.net/

If you google Chia launch it says it started with more than 100k nodes already

If you zoom out that dashboard it says at one point 200k nodes that than very sudden changes but in a general trend downwards. Data might not be accurate

I don't understand much of Chia or other coins, but it does not look very organic

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#56

Post by throw101010 »

mbesto wrote: post #35
jgarzik wrote: post #31

Answer (12 yr crypto dev & veteran): Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. If a blockchain's economics purposefully incentivizes nodes, then number-of-nodes is entirely subsidized, in one common example. Further, the "Sybil" factor - which one party controls many nodes - and other centralizing factors - e.g. 90% of nodes are on Big Cloud - also complic…

Answer (0 yr crypto dev & veteran): I start a new coin call $FOO. I release 1,000,000 coins. I sell one coin to a friend for $1,0000, and keep the remaining 999,999 coins for myself. The market cap is now $100M. > Number of nodes is a poor metric that is easily gamified (pumped up), presenting an artificial picture. You can game either one.

Firstly I don't understand who you are "answering" to, the GP didn't talk about Market Cap as a relevant metric.

Secondly, Market Cap is only relevant when reported by popular metrics websites which vet their data sources a little... nobody relevant is listing your coin anywhere, sorry if it disappoints you.

Thirdly, I'm sure that in your first year as a veteran you will learn to care for coins/token which have liquidity/volume either on reputable CEXs or in tokens/networks with a good track record on DEXs.

You can't really game liquidity for long without risking your capital.

I know this is HN, so I would expect less low brow criticism... but who am I kidding this is about cryptocurrencies, rules don't apply.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#57

Post by overtonwhy »

loxias wrote: post #24

Always surprised at how few nodes there are relative to how loud the noise is about crypto. I don't mind deploying a service and running things myself, it seems there are only a few thousand of us in the world. Even Tor only has "a few thousand" nodes. It might be cute to also see some derived statistics like "market cap/node", average size of transaction, and "estimated cost of 51% attack". ;-)

Or "estimated cost to DDoS nodes". For a 51% attack can you DDoS rival nodes offline?

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#59

Post by mgraczyk »

SilverBirch wrote: post #52
mgraczyk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a public order book, it's very easy to see through this. Harder to do that with nodes.

A public ledger only ensures that you can see through this if you can verify ownershp of wallets, because as we've seen repeatedly, you can programmatically create an entire eco-system of fake wallets trading back and forth. What's the cost? I can trivially create a series of bots that just trade their coins back and forth with each other forever. It'll create huge volumes. Now the reason you don't do this on real ch…

Your counterargument here only applies when exchanges participate in the scam. Of course that does happen, and for a long time you could even pay OKeX to do this for you. But it's much less common than obscure coins faking volume off-exchange or faking node activity.

Re: Blockchains by number of nodes/validators

#60

Post by mgraczyk »

vlovich123 wrote: post #39
mgraczyk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a public order book, it's very easy to see through this. Harder to do that with nodes.

And yet so many instances of crypto coins that did this. I’m pretty sure they all had public books. The challenge isn’t I sell one coin. It’s wash trading. You create sufficient volume from multiple different anonymous accounts continuously. That’s impossible to decipher because ownership is impossible to untangle.

This only works if the exchange is in on it. That has happened many times but it's much harder to do than faking node activity.
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