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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?

#81

Post by rocky1138 »

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…

The difficulty you mentioned only applies to certain currencies. Ethereum, for example, has a built-in "difficulty bomb" set for later this year to make hashing essentially unworkable.

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

#83

Post by Taek »

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 blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming.

I can't disagree too much about the immaturity, but you don't see too much more of that in the deeper technical circles than you might see on the Linux mailing list. Room for improvement? Plenty. But it's also not grossly out of line as long as you are in the right places.

The 'unwelcoming' bit though is more justified. Blockchain design is like cryptography - security is very important, and one tiny mistake means that your design is completely unviable. And if that tiny mistake occurred early in your design process, it may be too deep to be easily routed around.

Designing secure blockchains is very hard. As a result, the first year or so you try to improve on blockchain systems you usually end up with a bunch of broken stuff that nobody appreciates at all. The same is true if you are trying to make a better hashing algorithm, or doing quantum resistant cryptography. Except with blockchains people haven't learned to expect it to be this difficult to innovate yet, so it feels a lot more hostile.

That will fix with time. As more things blow up in production, people are realizing more and more that blockchains are tricky, and that good designs take a lot of expertise, a lot of collaboration, and are very rare. That will make it seem less unwelcoming when your intro to blockchains is 'well, this thing you are proposing doesn't work for at least 10 reasons, and here they are...'

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

#84

Post by random3 »

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…

Anything that's related to profits and democratized will attract all kinds of characters. Democratization lowers the barrier and profits provide the incentive. The choice to corner cryptocurrencies and choose to see the shady characters in this combination is an artificial one based on what you can and choose to "see". The same shady characters are in finance, fund raising, and perhaps around your desk. They may be less obvious or you may be more tolerant towards the corporate backstabber, but they're still there.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #41
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…

Even if the tech is "legit" it's encredibly inefficient. We're spewing off tons of CO2 just to verify the block chain, but we have plenty of technologies that can do the same with a minuscule amount of energy. The problem is that they want a system that's trustless and that's simply not what most engineers care about. We want a system that's fast and efficient.

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by darawk »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #57
darawk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions to that though, like Proof of Stake. If distributed systems really cared about that, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on blockchains, to make them more efficient.

So, your argument is: "you say our thing sucks at X, but if you really think so, why aren't you trying to fix it?" Filling in the variables differently, we could construct an argument like "If civil engineers really cared about structural stability, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on my bridge made out of playing cards." It's not their job to fix someone else's bad idea.

Cryptocurrencies aren't going away. Which means that if your primary motivation to not work on cryptocurrency is that it wastes energy, then there's a whole lot of room for you to be making it better, and that is a stupid motivation. I'm not saying that they are obligated to work on it because it wastes energy. But the comment I was responding to implied that distributed systems engineers didn't want to work on blockchains because they are wasteful - which is clearly illogical. That'd be like Elon Musk not working on electric cars because they're inefficient. Or Solar cells. Etc, etc..

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

#87

Post by didibus »

Where's the data, or at least arguments suggesting that no distributed systems engineer is working on blockchain technology?

If anyone could point to me what's the name for this fallacy. Lile when you ask a question that tricks people in assuming the premise.

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

#88

Post by darawk »

ntrepid8 wrote: post #55
darawk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions to that though, like Proof of Stake. If distributed systems really cared about that, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on blockchains, to make them more efficient.

Doesn't blockchain verification depend on a certain amount of inefficiency? Isn't that what makes forgery difficult?

That's a bit of a mistake. It doesn't rely on inefficiency it relies on economic costs. At the moment, hashing is a form of economic sunk cost. If you invest in hashpower, you can't split it without reducing your probability of success. It's an unforgable economic burden. Proof of stake architectures attempt to do the same thing with the currency of the network itself. There are lots of arguments about whether or not this is truly secure - but anyone on here telling you they know it's not is pretty much an idiot. There are tons of proof of stake coins operating successfully right now. There are no known attacks on these coins that allow you to do anything untoward (if there were, they'd be exploited on one of the many existing PoS coins).

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

#89

Post by sigstoat »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #74
sigstoat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

which of the mutually untrustworthy parties will operate the ledger?

customs agents don't trust shipping companies, shipping companies don't trust their customers, shipping companies might trust most customs agents in western countries but they operate everywhere, and there are, as i understand it, a number of other middle-men involved in the process, who probably aren't trusted much either.

i don't see how a privately operated database would solve any of the problems, or appear more secure to the folks not running the database. (certainly it would be cheaper.)

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

#90

Post by Rmilb »

Danihan wrote: post #61
cperciva wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is not the solution to the problem of how to make a crypto currency. Blockchain is the solution to the problem of how to cooperatively timestamp documents.

Completely agree. A true crypto-currency would not be "quasi-anonymous". Bitcoin is a government's wet dream, a near-complete map of every dark web transaction globally.

For now yes. More privacy features are on the road map though. You can always easily convert Bitcoin for a more anonymous eccentric currency and then convert it back to Bitcoin if you want to hide your trail if you need to.
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