Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate(github.com)
github.com
Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate
https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/2010
64 comments
Can someone suggest a stable priced crypto that is actually useful for transactions? I have zero interest in speculating on the values of these things, but I would really like to start using crypto currency obtained from cash ATM's for all of my online purchases and avoid ever entering a credit card number anywhere again. Why hasn't that been solved?
If the crypto doesn't have a central bank to institute monetary policy and manage supply, it's unsolvable.
I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be demand-driven. Which means volatile. Fiat currency has a central bank with active control over the supply, so it is capable of keeping a stable price if the central bank does its job.
http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money...
I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be demand-driven. Which means volatile. Fiat currency has a central bank with active control over the supply, so it is capable of keeping a stable price if the central bank does its job.
http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money...
There is nothing to say that all coins need a fixed supply. It wouldn't be hard to establish voting to release a given amount of funds/authorize the selling of bonds. All blockchains have a transient central authority, the miner.
Have you taken a look at the Basecoin project (http://www.getbasecoin.com/)? It's a cryptocurrency system that's designed with a central bank in mind - you feed it the current exchange rate relative to some peg, and the system changes the money supply (through bond sales and purchases) to maintain the peg.
Who feeds the current exchange rate? Wouldn't that require trust from a central authority to determine?
The designers have proposed that as one possible solution. In their white paper (http://www.getbasecoin.com/basecoin_whitepaper_0_99.pdf), page 11, the three options they give are:
* Single trusted feed
* Take the median of the exchange rates from a set of feeds, with that set chosen by vote of holders of the coin (I can personally see this having some conflict-of-interest issues)
* Use what they call a "Decentralized Schelling point scheme" - have coinholders vote on what they think the exchange rate was in a recent time interval, use the median vote, then reward voters who were in the 25th to 75th percentile.
The authors seem to view the third option, with some engineering of the incentives, to be ideal; but I'm skeptical of a system that gives holders of an asset the ability to change the value of that asset. I would honestly prefer the use of a trusted authority - at least that way you have a very clear delineation of what the central authority is supposed to do and can easily audit whether it is doing its job.
* Single trusted feed
* Take the median of the exchange rates from a set of feeds, with that set chosen by vote of holders of the coin (I can personally see this having some conflict-of-interest issues)
* Use what they call a "Decentralized Schelling point scheme" - have coinholders vote on what they think the exchange rate was in a recent time interval, use the median vote, then reward voters who were in the 25th to 75th percentile.
The authors seem to view the third option, with some engineering of the incentives, to be ideal; but I'm skeptical of a system that gives holders of an asset the ability to change the value of that asset. I would honestly prefer the use of a trusted authority - at least that way you have a very clear delineation of what the central authority is supposed to do and can easily audit whether it is doing its job.
This comment is a perfect, concise explanation of why cryptocurrencies are strictly less ideal than fiat currency with a central bank with control over supply.
I do think cryptocurrencies do satisfy some use cases in a superior way to fiat currency. But there are some serious economic advantages that a currency with a central bank gives you that cryptocurrencies will never have (at least, the way they're currently designed).
I do think cryptocurrencies do satisfy some use cases in a superior way to fiat currency. But there are some serious economic advantages that a currency with a central bank gives you that cryptocurrencies will never have (at least, the way they're currently designed).
Huh? The volitility of Bitcoin is on a completely different timescale than the rate at which the Fed acts. The Fed may be relevant for the store-of-value role of USD, but the top commenter asked about medium of exchange.
Would you get paid in Bitcoin knowing it could be worth 20% less (or more I guess) in real terms on any given day that your company happens to do payrole?
You've misunderstood my comment. I'm not arguing against the idea that Bitcoin is a poor medium of exchange, I'm arguing against the idea that the sort of actions taken by the Fed would help. Rather, the Fed acts on a much longer timescale which are relevant for store-of-value roles.
I have stopped looking at bitcoin as a currency and have started looking at it as a stock or bond without any backing collateral or assets. The only particular properties are that it trades in a special way (in fractional quantities and round the clock) and that the number of shares is known in advance.
Otherwise it has the same volatility as a stock. It can gain or lose half its value in a few hours. Just like a stock the way to take volatility out of it is to diversify.
The volatility has nothing to do in my opinion with the lack of a central authority distributing it. It has to do with heavy speculation of this particular stock. Central banks can only correct for long term price evolutions, not for short term fluctuations.
Otherwise it has the same volatility as a stock. It can gain or lose half its value in a few hours. Just like a stock the way to take volatility out of it is to diversify.
The volatility has nothing to do in my opinion with the lack of a central authority distributing it. It has to do with heavy speculation of this particular stock. Central banks can only correct for long term price evolutions, not for short term fluctuations.
> The volatility has nothing to do with the lack of a central authority distributing it
If you know/believe that supply will generally adjust to cancel demand, then you have much less incentive to speculate.
If you know/believe that supply will generally adjust to cancel demand, then you have much less incentive to speculate.
Not if you make short term plays. Stock shares are also distributed by a central authority incentivized to make the price go up and therefore constrain supply, yet stocks are volatile.
>Just like a stock the way to take volatility out of it is to diversify.
The problem here though, is that every crypto valuation is linked directly to the value of Bitcoin. It's as if the entire S&P tracked the price of Apple.
The problem here though, is that every crypto valuation is linked directly to the value of Bitcoin. It's as if the entire S&P tracked the price of Apple.
Let’s assume that you know that the price of the bitcoin will increase during the holiday season due to many online transactions. Won’t people start to collect bitcoin before the holiday season? In turn it will make price increase earlier. It seems to me that can be a stabilizing factor.
Is it even possible to have a stable priced crypto?
The crypto money supply is predetermined, but demand is not, often driven by events outside of the blockchain. Supply needs to actively balance demand if the price is to stay stable.
For a stable price you'd need a crypto that adjusts mining difficulty in response to changes in the amount of demand (or something like that? My understanding of crypto currencies is only surface level).
However, the USD-to-Crypto price is something outside of the blockchain, so as far as my understanding goes you can't really use that as an input because you can't get undisputable information on the price, because the entirety of undisputable information should exist in the blockchain.
I guess you could try to use transaction volume as an input but that seems like a bad metric because it's a) gameable and 2) does not necessarily correlate with external demand for the crypto currency.
The crypto money supply is predetermined, but demand is not, often driven by events outside of the blockchain. Supply needs to actively balance demand if the price is to stay stable.
For a stable price you'd need a crypto that adjusts mining difficulty in response to changes in the amount of demand (or something like that? My understanding of crypto currencies is only surface level).
However, the USD-to-Crypto price is something outside of the blockchain, so as far as my understanding goes you can't really use that as an input because you can't get undisputable information on the price, because the entirety of undisputable information should exist in the blockchain.
I guess you could try to use transaction volume as an input but that seems like a bad metric because it's a) gameable and 2) does not necessarily correlate with external demand for the crypto currency.
> Is it even possible to have a stable priced crypto?
Stable with respect to what? Fiat? Which one?
In the limit you will have a cryptocurrency backed by a fiat currency (and I don't consider Tether to be one. Bitfinex will allow you to exchange $1 for 1 tether, but nobody will guarantee you can go the other direction).
Stable with respect to what? Fiat? Which one?
In the limit you will have a cryptocurrency backed by a fiat currency (and I don't consider Tether to be one. Bitfinex will allow you to exchange $1 for 1 tether, but nobody will guarantee you can go the other direction).
The crypto money supply is predetermined
No, it isn't. People just have trouble imagining non-crackpot cryptocurrency because they've never seen one.
For a stable price you'd need a crypto that adjusts mining difficulty in response to changes in the amount of demand (or something like that?)
Right, you can adjust the block reward so that the rate of issuance of money tracks the rate of change of demand.
However, the USD-to-Crypto price is something outside of the blockchain, so as far as my understanding goes you can't really use that as an input
There are some projects that use "oracles" to publish price information on the blockchain, but then you get into a bunch of complexity about electing oracles and taking the median price of multiple oracles.
I guess you could try to use transaction volume as an input but that seems like a bad metric because it's a) gameable and 2) does not necessarily correlate with external demand for the crypto currency.
Right. You can also use difficulty as a metric (based on the theory that higher price makes mining more profitable which causes more miners to mine which causes difficulty to increase). https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/11/search-stable-cryptocur... Note that some of these techniques don't guarantee stable value, just less volatile value.
No, it isn't. People just have trouble imagining non-crackpot cryptocurrency because they've never seen one.
For a stable price you'd need a crypto that adjusts mining difficulty in response to changes in the amount of demand (or something like that?)
Right, you can adjust the block reward so that the rate of issuance of money tracks the rate of change of demand.
However, the USD-to-Crypto price is something outside of the blockchain, so as far as my understanding goes you can't really use that as an input
There are some projects that use "oracles" to publish price information on the blockchain, but then you get into a bunch of complexity about electing oracles and taking the median price of multiple oracles.
I guess you could try to use transaction volume as an input but that seems like a bad metric because it's a) gameable and 2) does not necessarily correlate with external demand for the crypto currency.
Right. You can also use difficulty as a metric (based on the theory that higher price makes mining more profitable which causes more miners to mine which causes difficulty to increase). https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/11/search-stable-cryptocur... Note that some of these techniques don't guarantee stable value, just less volatile value.
> Is it even possible to have a stable priced crypto?
It should be possible to have one with reasonably stable value compared to any identifiable external commodity or basket of commodities that is not itself highly volstile, though it would be more complex than existing crpytocurrencies, and may not be completely decentralized.
Stability, decentralization, and trustlessness together...well, you are pretty much asking can you replace an active central bank with an preset, runs-forever algorithm without a trusted source for real world economic data. I'd say probably not.
It should be possible to have one with reasonably stable value compared to any identifiable external commodity or basket of commodities that is not itself highly volstile, though it would be more complex than existing crpytocurrencies, and may not be completely decentralized.
Stability, decentralization, and trustlessness together...well, you are pretty much asking can you replace an active central bank with an preset, runs-forever algorithm without a trusted source for real world economic data. I'd say probably not.
the only "stable" coin is USDT, but stay away, it's not useful for anything, and it's legitimacy is in question.
As long as there are finite-ish supply, I don't think any crypto would be stable.
As long as there are finite-ish supply, I don't think any crypto would be stable.
I don't think a stablecoin has been made, or at least if it has it hasn't found wide adoption. That is part of the problem, if people couldn't make profit off of speculating on bitcoin it's quite likely that it wouldn't be as widely accepted/talked about.
It wouldn't be too hard to make a inflationary coin, just mint coins proportional to the estimated GH of the network. That would give the coin a price ceiling.
It wouldn't be too hard to make a inflationary coin, just mint coins proportional to the estimated GH of the network. That would give the coin a price ceiling.
Use Apple Pay then.
Wow I guess people downvoted the heck out of this comment thinking I'm being sarcastic.
I am not.
Apple pay has all the encryption mechanism that makes it much safer than sending your credit card number over the Internet, which the parent was asking for.
I am not.
Apple pay has all the encryption mechanism that makes it much safer than sending your credit card number over the Internet, which the parent was asking for.
The "obtained from cash ATM's" part of OP seemed to be specifically targeting a higher degree of anonymity to me, but it is indeed open for interpretation.
Personally Apple pay is the primary appeal of Apple's ecosystem for me. No other intermediary's incentives are aligned to prioritize the customer in the transaction ahead of data mining opportunities.
Personally Apple pay is the primary appeal of Apple's ecosystem for me. No other intermediary's incentives are aligned to prioritize the customer in the transaction ahead of data mining opportunities.
People may see this comment and think it's being standoffish, but it's the truth. What OP wants is a system where you transfer traditional currency into digital money (which you're going to need to use a credit card/bank account at least once to do), and then use that without having to worry about using your card on multiple different websites. This is exactly what Apple Pay/Paypal is, minus the transaction fees. This is not the purpose of cryptocurrencies, nor will it ever be.
I think entering a credit card number isn't a pain for most people (from a safety and convenience perspective). It's a good enough solution, and crypto is not helping people 10x in this matter.
I don't think entering the cc number is the source of pain but rather it is entering a permanent account number that is thereafter always subject to being stolen. Using digital cash would be a wonderful alternative.
Sorry just saw this. That's what I meant by "safety". I don't think the average person cares or even knows that it could be a problem.
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The Basecoin project (http://www.getbasecoin.com/) is an as-yet-unreleased cryptocurrency designed for stable value. It's fed an externally-sourced target exchange rate and current exchange rate against some target currency basket and automatically sells and purchases bonds to remove from and add to the money supply, maintaining the currency peg.
What’s your goal with that set up compared to something like one use credit card numbers that cc companies and banks provide for online shopping?
This is still in development, so it's not an immediate solution, but you may find this interesting: http://makerdao.com/
>Can someone suggest a stable priced crypto that is actually useful for transactions?
Just wait anywhere between 0.5-5 years once enough people get burned and stop acting out of FOMO and you'll get it.
Just wait anywhere between 0.5-5 years once enough people get burned and stop acting out of FOMO and you'll get it.
Its solved - Tether is stable.
"stable".
Tether is always 1 USD so it is stable in the sense that the value doesn't change by 20% in a day which is what OP wants I think?
you can't redeem or use USDT for anything, and it's supposedly backed up by real usd, but in the terms of service, it says they have no obligation to redeem it.
You tell me.
You tell me.
To the extent you trust tether. But if trust is centralized, why use a block chain? If tether operated a Chaumian cash server instead of some block chain thing it would be universally better for all involved with no loss of trust from what actually existed before.
Yeah the PR tells it as it is
Ignoring btc's problems and calling forks"scams" won't fly for long
Ignoring btc's problems and calling forks"scams" won't fly for long
btc has put in some fixes for the problems though, everyone is now waiting for them to be adopted. Coinbase could cut their fees if they implemented Segwit. There are more improvements coming like schnorr signatures, and then obviously side chains. The philosophy has been to try the solutions they think will work before they increase block sizes. There are good reasons why some forks are called scams, especially if they are ran not as an open source community but as a company with a CEO.
The nature of bitcoin makes it one that the developers should be very cautiously improving and very skeptical of proposals. The linux kernel is the same way. The high stakes requires everyone to scrutinize changes, especially corporate backed ones. There are real concerns about raising block sizes as one of the key ideas of bitcoin is preventing scenarios that can lead to centeralization. "Core" is a large open source community, not a single leader who rejected raising block sizes for political reasons.
The nature of bitcoin makes it one that the developers should be very cautiously improving and very skeptical of proposals. The linux kernel is the same way. The high stakes requires everyone to scrutinize changes, especially corporate backed ones. There are real concerns about raising block sizes as one of the key ideas of bitcoin is preventing scenarios that can lead to centeralization. "Core" is a large open source community, not a single leader who rejected raising block sizes for political reasons.
"It's no one's fault in particular that Bitcoin's user experience has changed" - jlopp . Apparently blocking all proposed changes relating to scaling Bitcoin and lowering fees is the fault of "no one".
Segwit was implemented and lightning is being tested as we speak. If everyone used Segwit and certain miners weren’t playing games spamming the network to promote BCH there’d be no problem. There is solid development going on to improve Bitcoin. All the naysayers who don’t understand the technology and it’s true long term scaling limits are welcome to go to Bitcoin Cash. But BCH won’t scale in the long term to be usable as a currency for the 5 billion unbanked without cutting and pasting the enhancements that Bitcoin is building right now.
Much of BCH's value has been in removing Core's 'improvements'
Preventing Segwit preserves a full chain of signatures on chain.
Removing RBF (replace by fee) has preserved practical 0 confirmation times of a few seconds for small purchases.
Segwit is not implemented on Core's main client.
Lightning has been 18 months away since 2015. (It is still 18 months away)
Lightning will not work with the current block size that Blockstream is so fiercely protective of.
Please admit that if a credit card company wanted to maximally destroy the threat of Bitcoin, the last few years would serve as a pretty good blueprint...
*Edit: removed word that mangled sentence.
Segwit is not implemented on Core's main client.
Lightning has been 18 months away since 2015. (It is still 18 months away)
Lightning will not work with the current block size that Blockstream is so fiercely protective of.
Please admit that if a credit card company wanted to maximally destroy the threat of Bitcoin, the last few years would serve as a pretty good blueprint...
*Edit: removed word that mangled sentence.
The easiest thing is to do nothing.
I'm actually surprised at how much bitcoin cash pushing there is. I started thinking it was trolling and spam accounts, but im getting convinced of otherwise by now.
Its like a storm brewing.
Its like a storm brewing.
It’s disturbing because there’s really nothing good technically to support it and it’s highly centralized. If you believe in the ideas behind Bitcoin and decentralized crypto currencies in general you would in theory be very opposed to Bitcoin Cash. And if you’re not so concerned about tenants of decentralization then you’d be assessing currencies more like businesses or startups: look at the development team, the management, etc. and in that case there are much better alternatives to BCH. It’s very bizarre and sad for the damage it’s doing, really seemingly just to enrich a few.
This is laughable.
Technically
BTC and BCH share a near identical codebase, save for the recent junk BCH had to remove.
Larger BCH block size prevent transaction buildup that has caused the fees to go insane on the BTC side of the fence.
The new BCH difficulty adjustment protects it from would-be gaming/manipulation by miners.
Technical progress is actually happening with BCH.
Technical progress is currently vapourware with BTC.
Centralization
BCH has six distinct and separate development teams.
BTC has one gatekeeping development team aggressively blocking proposals that get in the way of selling second layer solutions.
Technically
BTC and BCH share a near identical codebase, save for the recent junk BCH had to remove.
Larger BCH block size prevent transaction buildup that has caused the fees to go insane on the BTC side of the fence.
The new BCH difficulty adjustment protects it from would-be gaming/manipulation by miners.
Technical progress is actually happening with BCH.
Technical progress is currently vapourware with BTC.
Centralization
BCH has six distinct and separate development teams.
BTC has one gatekeeping development team aggressively blocking proposals that get in the way of selling second layer solutions.
Surely from a decentralization point of view almost nothing would beat iota.
Surely, IOTA is a pile of insanity, right?
It is still centralized right? [1] The whole thing is still implemented in ternary [2] for some reason right? Implemented by the people who rolled their own crypto, then when they - days later - were told it was obviously and trivially broken (collisions discovered via differential cryptanalysis) claimed they left it broken as some sort of copy protection mechanism? [3] And then pretended Microsoft was involved? [4]
The one of which Schneier wrote: “In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix makes the system secure is low.”
That IOTA?
[1] https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is-centralized-6289246e7b4d
[2] https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1...
[3] https://gist.github.com/Come-from-Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543...
[4] https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota-partnership-...
It is still centralized right? [1] The whole thing is still implemented in ternary [2] for some reason right? Implemented by the people who rolled their own crypto, then when they - days later - were told it was obviously and trivially broken (collisions discovered via differential cryptanalysis) claimed they left it broken as some sort of copy protection mechanism? [3] And then pretended Microsoft was involved? [4]
The one of which Schneier wrote: “In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix makes the system secure is low.”
That IOTA?
[1] https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is-centralized-6289246e7b4d
[2] https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-alarming-934f1...
[3] https://gist.github.com/Come-from-Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543...
[4] https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota-partnership-...
Unfortunately they all are. There were 5-6 years when bitcoin actually wasn't totally insance, but unfortunately the way the "powers that be" (exchanges + hash pool managers) are treating the rest of us, that ended definitively in September (actually more like Februari, but ...).
You can't transact in bitcoin, and nothing else has any acceptance ... That breaks cryptocurrency, so all one looks at is finding interesting toys.
So I guess I'm doing the same thing as all your posts you linked to, I'm saying "I'm excited, if 'the tangle' demonstrates that it can scale, I'd love to see that happen".
I would suggest nobody invest in any cryptocurrency. That said, having 50$ of play money in iota (and others) is both fun and interesting.
You can't transact in bitcoin, and nothing else has any acceptance ... That breaks cryptocurrency, so all one looks at is finding interesting toys.
So I guess I'm doing the same thing as all your posts you linked to, I'm saying "I'm excited, if 'the tangle' demonstrates that it can scale, I'd love to see that happen".
I would suggest nobody invest in any cryptocurrency. That said, having 50$ of play money in iota (and others) is both fun and interesting.
I'm not, it's ALL trolling and bot accounts.
That's because the people who fell in love with Bitcoin pre-2014 see the world-changing potential in the project again.
Bitcoin Core has killed any practical use cases by refusing to scale and causing $50 fees.
Bitcoin Cash works today and puts the original vision back on track.
Bitcoin Core has killed any practical use cases by refusing to scale and causing $50 fees.
Bitcoin Cash works today and puts the original vision back on track.
Wasn't the original vision that Bitcoin could be used for everyday transactions like purchasing a cup of coffee?
Can Bitcoin Cash really support that rate of transactions? How large would the blocks have to be?
Can Bitcoin Cash really support that rate of transactions? How large would the blocks have to be?
Bitcoin Cash has 8MB blocks today, 8x larger than Core.
Core propaganda will decry this as lunacy since people won't be able to run nodes on raspberry pi's anymore. The sad reality is you can buy the hardware required for the cost of a single BTC transaction.
BCH nodes/miners can increase to 32MB without a hard fork, it's just as a config setting.
GB blocks are possible today with today's hardware, though those won't be necessary for quite some time.
TB blocks are almost possible today, though a little further out in practice.
The vision (and current reality of BCH) is that every transaction should make it in to the next block for less than a penny.
Low/non-existent fees is the only way a meaningful global exchange system will emerge. Better to have everybody on the globe doing 5 transactions a day for dust than to have a few hodlers transact twice a year.
Core propaganda will decry this as lunacy since people won't be able to run nodes on raspberry pi's anymore. The sad reality is you can buy the hardware required for the cost of a single BTC transaction.
BCH nodes/miners can increase to 32MB without a hard fork, it's just as a config setting.
GB blocks are possible today with today's hardware, though those won't be necessary for quite some time.
TB blocks are almost possible today, though a little further out in practice.
The vision (and current reality of BCH) is that every transaction should make it in to the next block for less than a penny.
Low/non-existent fees is the only way a meaningful global exchange system will emerge. Better to have everybody on the globe doing 5 transactions a day for dust than to have a few hodlers transact twice a year.
The problem is Bitcoin Core, at least some part of it’s developers, pushing their own agenda to implement SegWit and Lightning network. Both solutions have a lot of technical debt and possible security problems, they were controversial from the beginning, that’s why miners were refusing to implement SegWit for over a year. Now we have Bitcoin Cash which has solved those problems in a simple way, at least for now. Bitcoin Cash is more like a desperate effort to fix the damage done by Bitcoin Core and make Bitcoin usable again.
Stop spreading false information. Segwit is implemented, it’s working. 90% of the miners are working on the Bitcoin chain which has Segwit. One large miner did not support it because the Segwit change also removed a bug in Bitcoin that enabled them to “cheat” with the mining using something they patented called ASICBOOST. They could use it but nobody else could. So they had a perverse incentive to block and delay Segwit and Now to promote BCH.
And Segwit did not move the needle at all.
The BTC chain is SCREAMING for more transaction capacity and the Blockstream team is popping champaign (sic) that they've introduced a fee system 100 years ahead of schedule.
Bitcoin Cash is simply the manifestation of the original vision surviving a hostile takeover attempt.
How anybody can defend a crypto scaling plan introduced by a Bilderberg Group/AXA funded team is beyond me.
The BTC chain is SCREAMING for more transaction capacity and the Blockstream team is popping champaign (sic) that they've introduced a fee system 100 years ahead of schedule.
Bitcoin Cash is simply the manifestation of the original vision surviving a hostile takeover attempt.
How anybody can defend a crypto scaling plan introduced by a Bilderberg Group/AXA funded team is beyond me.
I don't see what the excitement is about blockchain. Can't you do the same stuff with SQL?
Blockchain:
* Separates your transactions into blocks and hashes the blocks together.
* Uses proof-of-work to add new blocks.
* Is slow (a block has to be filled).
* Is unreliable (your transaction may be rejected).
* Locks transactions at the block level.
* Easy for user to lose unique tokens (coins).
My SQL design for blockchain replacement:
* Take a database table.
* Allow INSERT permission only.
* Hash each record and insert the hash into next record, which chains them together like blockchain.
* Replicate the database.
This is like blockchain, because it hashes the records together, can't be modified, and has backups to ensure it can't be modified.
Unlike blockchain, it:
* Is centralized but still has backups.
* Is cheap (does not require proof of work).
* Is fast (one transaction at a time).
* Is reliable (ACID transactions).
* Locks transactions at the record level.
* User not required to keep track of coins.
So what's so great about blockchain compared to this design? The only thing blockchain does better is that there is no central server, so it's hard to shut down. But for industry use, no one is going to shut down their intranet servers. Only criminals need to worry about being shut down.
Blockchain:
* Separates your transactions into blocks and hashes the blocks together.
* Uses proof-of-work to add new blocks.
* Is slow (a block has to be filled).
* Is unreliable (your transaction may be rejected).
* Locks transactions at the block level.
* Easy for user to lose unique tokens (coins).
My SQL design for blockchain replacement:
* Take a database table.
* Allow INSERT permission only.
* Hash each record and insert the hash into next record, which chains them together like blockchain.
* Replicate the database.
This is like blockchain, because it hashes the records together, can't be modified, and has backups to ensure it can't be modified.
Unlike blockchain, it:
* Is centralized but still has backups.
* Is cheap (does not require proof of work).
* Is fast (one transaction at a time).
* Is reliable (ACID transactions).
* Locks transactions at the record level.
* User not required to keep track of coins.
So what's so great about blockchain compared to this design? The only thing blockchain does better is that there is no central server, so it's hard to shut down. But for industry use, no one is going to shut down their intranet servers. Only criminals need to worry about being shut down.
Under your design, it sounds like it would very much be possible to produce a modified history that remains valid, by repeating the hash chaining process from the point of the edit. You couldn't do it un-noticed because the hashes would change, but you would still end up with a valid database entry at the end.
More to the wider philosophical point, having a single centralised server means putting trust in a single authority - I'm not talking so much about the possibility of being shut down (although that ought to be a worry for more than just criminals) but about the power, implicitly granted to whoever maintains the central database, to act as gatekeeper.
Essentially, if you're happy having a single central authority (if you're willing to trust that they'll always play fair, never try to interfere with transactions, never exploit their position for profit, never deny service to particular customers) then all the hashing and chaining is a meaningless veneer and you might as well just use Paypal. If you're _not_ happy with a single central authority then "Just use a database" misses the point entirely.
More to the wider philosophical point, having a single centralised server means putting trust in a single authority - I'm not talking so much about the possibility of being shut down (although that ought to be a worry for more than just criminals) but about the power, implicitly granted to whoever maintains the central database, to act as gatekeeper.
Essentially, if you're happy having a single central authority (if you're willing to trust that they'll always play fair, never try to interfere with transactions, never exploit their position for profit, never deny service to particular customers) then all the hashing and chaining is a meaningless veneer and you might as well just use Paypal. If you're _not_ happy with a single central authority then "Just use a database" misses the point entirely.