Ask HN: What real innovation in CS can be attributed to Bitcoin?
5 comments
If you were working in the distributed systems field and trying to publish a paper at a conference you'd certainly get your paper rejected if adding a new node didn't increase the system's workload capacity. (e.g. the whole point of adding more nodes is to get performance.)
Bitcoin, being a network that doesn't scale in terms of workload, was something the CS community "overlooked" until Bitcoin showed it could have a purpose.
Bitcoin, being a network that doesn't scale in terms of workload, was something the CS community "overlooked" until Bitcoin showed it could have a purpose.
As much as I dislike cryptocurrencies, I do think the whole concept of distributed ledger is/was interesting from a theoretical point of view. There are still several unsolved problems in the field, so I could see some researchers working on them. I wouldn't, cause I don't like the application, but I can see the theoretical appeal.
No, it’s all derivative. The main innovations center around fraud and crime and exploring human gullibility, not computer science.
Most of the innovative parts of bitcoin have been done independently as pieces; it's novelty is the combination of things like Proof of Work (Hashcash, Bitgold) with p2p consensus and asymmetric cryptography.
Nothing special about its structure or operation inherently.
Nothing special about its structure or operation inherently.
Nope. None of those are new concepts.
People claim it to be: * Trustless, Proof of Work * Immutable append only ledger (Blockchain) * Smart Contracts
Are any of them new concepts?
While solving their problems, has the Crypto community invented any new general purpose Algorithms (or Data Structures) that could be used elsewhere?
I'm curious to understand those Algorithms.