Re: [ANN] eMulah (EMU) - NOT a BitCoin fork/clone

This Quora answer describes the Byzantine General's problem well:

Quote

The Byzantine Generals' Problem roughly goes as follows: N Generals have their armies camped outside a city they want to invade. They know their numbers are strong enough that if at least 1/2 of them attack at the same time they'll be victorious. But if they don't coordinate the time of attack, they'll be spread too thin and all die. They also suspect that some of the Generals might be disloyal and send fake messages. Since they can only communicate by messenger, they have no means to verify the authenticity of a message. How can such a large group reach consensus on the time of attack without trust or a central authority, especially when faced with adversaries intent on confusing them?

http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea

Obviously if you change the problem so that generals can trust certain other generals or messengers or outside "unique nodes", you can "solve" it. This is how banks and ripple solve it. Bitcoin's breakthrough was solving the problem with no trust by using a proof-of-work system. If a coin does not use POW, that means that there is centralization/trust involved. Emulah doesn't seem to understand this concept very well.

You did not even comment on the mechanism that Emulah claims to use above (ie. proof-of-work-of-verification). ie. Emulah attempts to rely on proof-of-work. The proof is just different from hashcash. ie. Emulah is using something different from hashcash to prove that work was done. Bitcoin and all other alts rely on the hashcash concept.

Although, I think this is theoretically possible, I'm still waiting to see the math... I look forward to reading the source.

You see, Bitcoin works off the ability of being able to prove that a certain amount of work was done. This allows the system to decide who next gets the privilege of writing the next block of transactions; and therefore evenly distribute power based on work... but what if you could not only prove work was done, but also prove that a specific form of work was done? This would allow you to not only coerce the network into doing work, but doing work toward a specific end goal, so it would lead to a more efficient system. If you try to do a Sybil attack, you would have to do this verifiable work or the clients would all ignore your contributed transactions.