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Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

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Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#71

Post by devrandomguy »

srdev wrote: post #68
devrandomguy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you also include the energy consumed by the employees and facilities of Visa, including their commute-to-work energy? And the energy used to construct their facilities, improve network infrastructure, etc? Now are we getting within an order of magnitude of the energy consumption of an army of ASIC miners, and the people who farm them?

On a per-transaction basis? No. Those costs specifically end up being reified in the fee those processors charge to their customers, so we can determine an upper limit to how much is spent on energy in that way.

The same is true of bitcoin transaction fees, no? Miners set the minimum fee that they will accept, and people tack a fee onto a transaction, large enough that a miner will likely process it.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#72

Post by srdev »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #34
jimktrains2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount of power. It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power, not to mention the number of steps and entities a transaction needs in order to be f…

> Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount of power. But is it more or less than the equivalent amount of power it would take for Bitcoin (or something like it) to scale to Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. global levels?

I think that depends on how much mining hashing power scales with regard to transaction rate. From a technical point of view, there's no reason that the hash rate has to increase to process more transactions. But from an economic and game theoretical point of view, increasing transaction rate makes the network more valuable, which makes attack rewards more valuable, which necessitates a higher hash rate. I'm not sure anyone has sussed out what the relationship is between transaction rate and minimum necessary hash rate.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#73

Post by problems »

aphextron wrote: post #3

>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming. >It feels like a get rich quick scheme - https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536 This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life and working in a constant sta…

The tech is legit for its application - but for many other purposes its very much not. It's being thrown around as a buzzword.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#74

Post by notzorbo3 »

sigstoat wrote: post #46
rafiki6 wrote: post #39

Here's one take DLT and Blockchain: https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-blockchain TL;DR, it's gonna take a real long time to make blockchain useful, if it even is. Further, I have yet to see a real production application of blockchain that isn't a crypto-currency. Everyone and their grandmothers has invested in it, or started a company or w/e. But has it actually been used to solve another problem? Blockchain wa…

> But has it actually been used to solve another problem? Maersk is interested http://fortune.com/2017/03/05/maersk-tests-blockchain-based-... Makes some sense freight shipments involve a lot of parties who don't completely trust one another, and they've got a lot of information to move back and forth between one another.

The article doesn't explain why a public distributed ledger such as the blockchain would make sense. A privately run ledger would probably also solve their problems, be cheaper and it would be a lot more secure against tampering.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#75

Post by andrewstuart2 »

runeks wrote: post #42
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. The stability of whole ecosystems is predicated upon those ecosystems being attractive to people who want to make money by competing to solve hard problems by brute force. That's a lot of energy going into a system that can commit a new block of transactions once every 10 minutes on average. It solves a problem in an in…

> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. The stability of whole ecosystems is predicated upon those ecosystems being attractive to people who want to make money by competing to solve hard problems by brute force. What do you mean by this, exactly? Bitcoin miners look more than willing to earn money on brute forcing hard problems. The point of proof-of-work i…

I mean that to stay stable and grow in popularity, bitcoin must sustain ever-increasing energy demands so that nobody has a majority and can start double-spending. The whole goal with variable difficulty is to counteract the ebb/flow in popularity and ensure that the work takes ~10 minutes. This ensures that as the popularity grows, more energy is required since it will always take 10 minutes for a new block, regardless of how many contributors are involved.

Furthermore, the miners are here for the direct mining rewards. I think the future transaction fees approach will be significantly less attractive, so I'll be very interested to see how that change plays out once the era of rewarded mining is over.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#76

Post by jimktrains2 »

root_axis wrote: post #30
jimktrains2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount of power. It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power, not to mention the number of steps and entities a transaction needs in order to be f…

So what? That's a totally meaningless comparison because the ubiquity of cryptocurrencies would not obviate the need for financial services. Besides, market forces incentivize businesses to use as little power as possible because it costs them money, PoW incentivizes miners to use as much power as possible because that is a necessary requirement for increasing hash output.

> So what? That's a totally meaningless comparison because the ubiquity of cryptocurrencies would not obviate the need for financial services.

The person I replied to compalined about "wasting" power to run the bitcoin network. It's only a valid comparison when compared against current usage, as our current system also "wastes" power to run the current system.

> PoW incentivizes miners to use as much power as possible because that is a necessary requirement for increasing hash output.

It also incentives them to get the most performance per Watt. I'm just saying it's meaningless to complain that bitcoin uses power, it only matters how it compares to the current system.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#77

Post by mhluongo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #34
jimktrains2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation of a global system. Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount of power. It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power, not to mention the number of steps and entities a transaction needs in order to be f…

> Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount of power. But is it more or less than the equivalent amount of power it would take for Bitcoin (or something like it) to scale to Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. global levels?

The Bitcoin we have now won't be the same network we have at that scale. L2 and on-chain optimizations will get us some of the way.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#78

Post by wolfgke »

rafiki6 wrote: post #39

Here's one take DLT and Blockchain: https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-blockchain TL;DR, it's gonna take a real long time to make blockchain useful, if it even is. Further, I have yet to see a real production application of blockchain that isn't a crypto-currency. Everyone and their grandmothers has invested in it, or started a company or w/e. But has it actually been used to solve another problem? Blockchain wa…

> Further, I have yet to see a real production application of blockchain that isn't a crypto-currency.

Do

- Bitcache (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcache) - in development

- Namecoin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin)

- Steemit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steemit)

- Synereo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synereo)

count? I know, formally these can be considered as a cryptocurrencies, but I would not consider this as the central purpose of existence.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#79

Post by vasilipupkin »

random023987 wrote: post #19
vasilipupkin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the ICO is the blockchain killer app. You don't really need a distributed ledger except in case of digital currencies, which can be used to facilitate transactions in specific apps

> In my opinion, the ICO is the blockchain killer app. There are so many examples, from Canadian Tire Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money to Microsoft Points https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Points showing you can create private currencies granting the bearer certain privileges without a blockchain.

Airline miles, etc. Of course, you can. It's not that you can't do it, it's that blockchain makes creation of such currencies easier.

Re: Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology?

#80

Post by Marazan »

EdSharkey wrote: post #62
random023987 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power Our current system does in fact use a negligible amount of power. Each $2 latte you put on a credit card uses an amount of electricity so infinitesimal that it can only be measured in the aggregate. The percentage of the power used to generate a single bitcoin block for a single transaction can power an average US household for (approximately) an e…

Why is so much compute needed for the blockchain? Couldn't a proof-of-work system be developed that consumes VISA-network levels of power? How costly the computation should be (and how much the cost has scaled up) seems like it was an arbitrary design decision.

No, the amount of energy needed will always be enormous as their is a direct linkage between the value of bitcoin and the amount of energy required to secure the network.

Otherwise there will be a point where it is cost effective to attack the network.

Bitcoin is designed to be wasteful.

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