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Red Lang goes blockchain

red-lang.org

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Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#61

Post by CryptoPunk »

Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties, which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they have a legal entity backing them.

The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If they want to go down this route, that's their prerogative, but it's downright misleading to describe it as decentralized or even as in the same space as cryptocurrency. It's more like a traditional Fintech company, with greater separation of concerns between users and trusted third parties (e.g. updates to the database are cryptographically validated, with each user controlling their own private keys to authorize updates to their respective account), to provide more transparency and security than closed database models.

I would add Ripple, Stellar and EOS to this class of pseudo-cryptocurrency platforms, that while arguably offering interesting innovations on the centralized server-client architecture, are exploiting the hype around decentralization to raise funds and users for platforms that are not decentralized.

Its centralized consensus model means NEO can afford to place very high resource loads on its nodes (or really, servers), and use traditional programming languages that are not optimized for the decentralized world. This ability to use Java, C# and Python to write programs for it is actually one of its features that is marketed on its website.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#62

Post by dreit1 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #61

Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties, which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they have a legal entity backing them. The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If the…

There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision, but it is misleading to claim otherwise.

Disclosure: NEO fan

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#64

Post by CryptoPunk »

dreit1 wrote: post #62
CryptoPunk wrote: post #61

Exciting stuff. Just a heads up that NEO is being marketed as a decentralized platform but its roadmap describes a platform run by Trusted Third Parties, which have to be approved by NEO after proving their identity and proving they have a legal entity backing them. The NEO team also promotes itself as compliant with regulations (probably to stay on the good side of the authorities in China where it is based). If the…

There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision, but it is misleading to claim otherwise. Disclosure: NEO fan

A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority, and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted third parties unnecessary.

You could call it federated, but not decentralized.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#65

Post by john_moscow »

Oh boy. It would suck ass to see those guys busted by SEC for offering unregistered securities. The voting rights will definitely make it a security from SEC's standpoint, so the only question is whether they will be considered too small of a fish to bother.

The irony with the ICO market is that it's safe for total scams with untraceable founders and it's safe for big players like FileCoin that voluntarily comply with the securities laws. But if you're a well-meaning techie with no legal team, you may be easily breaking dozens of security-related regulations without even realizing it.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#66

Post by ZenoArrow »

dmitriid wrote: post #52
dragonwriter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red has potential, but certainly has had slow progress; shifting focus to blockchain may increase total resources but even if it does it mostly likely means slowing down progress outside of the new focal domain. So, I can see it legitimately killing interest at the margins for those not specifically not interested in blockchain-focussed programming.

> it mostly likely means slowing down progress outside of the new focal domain. IIRC, at the end of last year they promised 1.0 by the end of this year. Then they missed a 0.6.x release by four months. Now they don't even talk about a 1.0 and even minor releases no longer have a due date [1] So yes, all these additional endeavours will definitely slow an already slow progress to a halt. I also wonder if they finally…

> "IIRC, at the end of last year they promised 1.0 by the end of this year."

To be honest, I don't think that was ever a realistic goal, even when it was set. The only benefit of setting such a goal ahead of when a clear release date can be determined is in keeping up momentum during the awkward middle phase of language maturity, when key functionality is clearly missing but you want to maintain interest. This isn't just a Red thing, it's fairly common.

If I had to guess, even by the end of next year, it's much more likely we'll be looking at a 0.7.x release (or, best case, 0.8.x) rather than 1.0. The good news is that the language is likely to be generally useful around 0.7.x (assuming the roadmap is stuck to), as that's the point when the network I/O features are being implemented.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#67

Post by ZenoArrow »

sidi wrote: post #7

Curious - How is Red sustained, who currently supports it? Or what does the roadmap look like for this to be a five-year sustainable project? Edit: They seem to address this down in the blog post, with the creation of a RCT token. What is the incentive for a potential backer to buy this token?

> "How is Red sustained, who currently supports it?"

IIRC there's a Chinese company that pays the lead developer to work on it.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#68

Post by dreit1 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #64
dreit1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing misleading about it at all. A delegated system is decentralized, whether it is decentralized enough for you is your decision, but it is misleading to claim otherwise. Disclosure: NEO fan

A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority, and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted third parties unnecessary. You could…

This radical consensus mechanism has led to multiple hostile parties go into a pseudo economic war with each other. These parties are fairly centralized, miners, developers, and business interests, with the users largely standing on the sidelines of all of this.

A decentralized system takes power from one party and moves it to multiple parties. That is the definition of decentralization. A decentralized system is not one that completely does away with trust. That would be a trustless system.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#69

Post by cordite »

I was actually looking at Red in consideration for my next year's personal projects.

I'd consider it further if I felt it was more complete. Perhaps this is a cursory evaluation, but it feels like the emphasis is to use what's built in as much as possible. Given a lack of json (yes, there is an implementation out there, but not built in), and still pending linux GUI support, it still feels too unfinished for me to invest my time into.

Re: Red Lang goes blockchain

#70

Post by CryptoPunk »

dreit1 wrote: post #68
CryptoPunk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A set of trusted third parties that are pre-approved by a central authority, and are operating in a platform designed to comply with rules created by a central authority (the government), is not decentralized, in any context, let alone in the cryptocurrency context, where the original Bitcoin whitepaper describes a radical consensus algorithm designed specifically to make trusted third parties unnecessary. You could…

This radical consensus mechanism has led to multiple hostile parties go into a pseudo economic war with each other. These parties are fairly centralized, miners, developers, and business interests, with the users largely standing on the sidelines of all of this. A decentralized system takes power from one party and moves it to multiple parties. That is the definition of decentralization. A decentralized system is not…

>>This radical consensus mechanism has led to multiple hostile parties go into a pseudo economic war with each other.

I'm not arguing about the merits of its consensus algorithm or of decentralization. I'm providing context for how the term 'cryptocurrency' originated, and how 'decentralization' was used in this context.

Having a central authority determine who can be a consensus server, and being explicitly designed to put known and trusted third parties in charge to comply with the rules of a central governing authority, is not a decentralized system, especially in the context of cryptocurrency, where the term was used in relation to the absence of trusted third parties.

The economic wars you speak of could put to question whether Bitcoin succeeded in being decentralized, but it doesn't change the fact that NEO and other permissioned blockchains run by pre-approved and known trusted third parties, are definitely not decentralized.

>>A decentralized system takes power from one party and moves it to multiple parties.

But the ultimate power still resides in the hands of one party in NEO, because there is one party acting as a gatekeeper, deciding what can happen on its ledger, and who can run a server.

To call this decentralization, with whaboutisms about problems in the Bitcoin space, that are not even comparable, to justify the characterisation, is disingenuous.

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