Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: DECENTRALIZED crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion (any solutions?)
by
TPTB_need_war
on 16/01/2016, 21:16:48 UTC
Quote
Both are fundamentally broken.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1323408.msg13518156#msg13518156 (Ethereum)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569087#msg13569087 (Block chain scaling Tragedy of the Commons applies to Monero also)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569178#msg13569178 (Monero's anonymity is unreliable/unprovable and thus useless for fungibility or other important use cases)


"Broken" and "Success" are relative terms.  Both are broken less than bitcoin and bring attributes to the table that fiat does not.  

If you have any suggestions that are less broken ... I'm all ears.

An absolutist uses words like broken.  A realist uses terms like "best alternative".  Opening myself up to all available options those are the two answering the big questions.  Privacy, programmable blockchain and both more scalable than bitcoin.

What alternatives are less broken than these two I mentioned?

Don't you understand that "fundamentally broken" means they don't work for the features they claim that are an improvement over Bitcoin.

The link I provided to you for Ethereum explains that afaik they never solved the primary economic issue facing scaling programmable block chains, which is that every full node has to verify the block chain, thus every full node has to run the programmable script. But the problem is who to pay the gas (ether) to so that all full nodes are paid for verification? This has DDoS implications as well. In short, they never solved the core economic problem and thus Ethereum is just a fucking toy that can't actually work.

And so the n00bs moved their delusion over to Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/41a3nb/is_anonymint_correct/cz0r3d5

Quote from: myself
Hi, I am AnonyMint. The drama queen allegation is a perception that is mostly irrelevant. Everyone on BCT who posts significantly is a drama queen bcz crypto is dramatic. Your labeling me a drama queen makes you a drama queen, lol. On to the substantive issue...

The OP didn't quote my clarifying statement:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13575212#msg13575212

"The link I provided to you for Ethereum explains that afaik they never solved the primary economic issue facing scaling programmable block chains, which is that every full node has to verify the block chain, thus every full node has to run the programmable script. But the problem is who to pay the gas (ether) to so that all full nodes are paid for verification? This has DDoS implications as well. In short, they never solved the core economic problem and thus Ethereum is just a fucking toy that can't actually work."

A probabilistic argument that says miners who win block rewards get paid fees and it will balance out, is dumb as shit. Just think it out. Unless hashrate is uniformly distributed amongst miners, then some miners get paid less for doing the same verification work. It is also DDoS amplication attack vector.

Also there are variants of attacks, and Vitalik was incorrect to argue that the attacks are unlikely due to cost, because the attacker can profit from shorting the coin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=448923.msg4995521#msg4995521

Come on n00bs, you don't have a clue. Give up. You need an expert. Respect when one is trying to help you understand. Stop labeling him a drama queen. That is B-lister attitude.

Quote from: myself
I think when people try to be perfectly politically correct, they become so anal that they enter another form of insanity. I didn't think you were being a dick. I just chalk it up to the nature of life. It is no big deal, that is why I put "lol".

Well it is mostly getting exhausted because it is very difficult to write so much and repeat oneself so many times. And also I am not really in a position in life where I can just sit back and relax. I have serious problems in my life and I am under a lot of stress. So I am stressed about consuming so much time writing (instead of for example coding). I also run into the problem that when I am less forceful, then the discussions get overrun with noise by emboldened n00bs. I don't know what the correct balance should be. As I said, it is just life. I laugh it away. No worries mate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/41a3nb/is_anonymint_correct/cz0rgdv

Quote from: myself
You entirely miss the point. The cost of verification in Bitcoin is rather small because the transaction rate is so low, and the block rewards are so high. So the inequality I explained my other post above, isn't such a big deal. But eventually this same issue could plague Bitcoin as well.

The problem is more immediately egregious in Ethereum, because scripts can consume a lot of resources, unlike verification of Bitcoin transactions which is a constant resource cost per transaction.

Again you n00bs should stop trusting your own analysis, because in my excrutiatingly vast experience of reading n00b posts at BCT, you are nearly always wrong.

Quote from: myself
In Bitcoin I think so, although there was a recent block chain fork because some miners were not doing complete verification, so perhaps the costs of verification are already borderline in Bitcoin and the transaction rate is highly corralled in Bitcoin to a 1MB block size which can't scale world wide.

Also $9 - $16 in electricity cost per transaction isn't going to scale. So eventually PoW must be redesigned to lower the cost. (I have designed that solution)

And Ethereum MUST allow a much greater use of verification resources, simply because scripts consume more resources than highly optimized code for doing one thing of verifying transactions. Ethereum could place global limits on the amount of gas a script can consume, but this is no longer a fully programmable block chain (no longer Turing complete because it requires unbounded tapes) and it is also not a free market, but rather a hard-coded, centralized decision. Just like Bitcoin's block size constant, this will become a political hellhole.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1219023.msg13577344#msg13577344

"Bottom line is any global constant in the protocol is not decentralization. Period. End of story.

The protocol must be able to function in a free market dynamic.

All the arguments about consensus is moving forward from 1MB slowly are irrelevant, because if constants are not decided by the protocol, then the protocol is by definition under a 51% attack always."

Quote from: myself
Afaics, none of these directions Ethereum is headed deal with the economic issue I outlined in my first post in this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/41a3nb/is_anonymint_correct/cz0r3d5

As for their scalability ideas (which again do not address the economic problem of inequality of gas fees I outlined), they are going down the same throught process that I went through in my analysis of how to scale a consensus system. My thought process is far ahead of theirs, and they will later realize that what they have designed is a total failure. The reason is because the CAP theorem is violated by Proof of Evidence aka Proof of Cheating (which is also one of the reasons why Bitcoin's proposed Segregated Witness will fail). Refer to my decentralization thread in the Altcoin Discussion forum at Bitcointalk for more details of the relevance of the CAP theorem. I am not eager to drill down and convince them of this, because I don't want to give then my design.

In short, scalability requires centralization. I ultimately realized it is how the centralization is structured that allows for decentralized control. That was my key epiphany.



Quote from: anonymous
Also the tragedy of the commons in both systems is largely resolved if you assume that all nodes mine (or this could be read as only miners and economically important users run nodes at all). That was satoshi's original design. It was pool mining that sort of broke it.

You are assuming a more uniform distribution of hash rate (otherwise gas is appropriately unequally yet all full nodes have to do the verification cost). But the problem is that never will be true due to the economics of cost of electricity, as well the variance issue forces pooling even if everyone could have uniformly distributed hashrate.