Quote from: zack-aeternity on March 29, 2017, 03:02:31 PM

Quote from: Cryptorials on March 29, 2017, 11:45:37 AM

My question got buried so I'm going to ask it again, can anybody answer this for me please?

Quote from: Cryptorials on March 28, 2017, 08:31:43 PM

I just read the whitepaper and I don't understand the integration of the Oracle machine into the consensus mechanism.

It says that when there are competing counter claims the consensus mechanism for blocks will be used to answer the oracle. Where / who does the consensus mechanism get the answer from?

Hi Cryptorials,

Here is a document explaining the motivations of the oracle mechanism, and how it connects to the block consensus mechanism. https://github.com/aeternity/testnet/blob/master/docs/oracle_simple.md

Here I explain the step by step of how the oracle works https://github.com/aeternity/testnet/blob/master/docs/oracle_design.md

You are correct to analyze the oracle within the context of the block consensus mechanism. Every game is inside of a bigger game.

Thanks for the answers! They are a bit complex for me to understand though.

What I think I got is that users must answer questions to download the blockchain, until a sufficient difficult threshold is reached at which point the answer is finalized. But if you are just asking a random group of users, who's to say they will even know the answer let alone answer honestly? Is this linked to the PoS so answers from users with a higher stake in the network and therefore more incentive to do the right thing will carry more weight?

Also, if you don't know the answer what happens - are you prevented from downloading the chain. If yes then its an incentive to lie, if no then maybe people won't bother answering.