Topic: Can sidechains mimick Maidsafe features as well? (Read 1240 times)

The 10 minute block time does not prevent its usage.

A shorter block time means an easier puzzle to solve which in turn means more confirmations are needed to have certainty that a double spent won't happen.

Large values, you wait.

Small values, as long as the TX fee isn't abnormally small, seeing the TX is enough to have high confidence it won't be a double spend. A block reward is worth $10k and will be worth $5k after the halving (at current rates), the only double spend attack that don't risk losing a block reward is a race attack where two transactions with the same inputs are put out on the network at the same time and sending the one you hope loses the race to the blockchain directly to the node the vendor uses.

That can be defended against by not accepting connections from other nodes and making sure your node connects to well connected nodes. Doesn't make race impossible but makes it extremely difficult.

BitPay accepts transactions with 0 confirmations and instantly the vendor indicates it is paid and I get my goods. The time between blocks isn't an issue since most attacks that aren't race require risking a very valuable block reward.

Reduce the time and not only do you make it easier to mine a block and do these attacks, but you reduce the financial loss if the attack fails because the block reward would also be reduced.

Bitcoin's time between blocks does not need to be changed and should not be changed.

Making micropayments easier on sidechain so it doesn't use space in the block however is a change worth considering.

A tweak to the PoW that takes into account the total tx in a block would achieve this. Since the total fees are being ignored. Just add the txn_count to the PoW weight, since most of the competing blocks will have the same PoW weight, any small increase will win.

But now that can be attacked by a miner including a bunch of 1 satoshi tx, just to win the block and bloating the chain... And since it is hard to tell whether a tx is "real" or not, if the miner is willing to ignore the extra fees (that is what they are supposed to want more of), there really isnt much that can be done to force them to include transactions

James

Still in my mind: Give some bonus here (time or hashrate), so that blocks get really packed with many tx - (but not just fake & generated ones for exact that reason)... so no empty blocks gets rewared....

Thanks for posting that. I feel I'm too junior, and don't have enough technical knowledge to justify my comments, so I'll let somebody else do it.

Actually I can see another long term advantage in reducing block generation times. As mining becomes less profitable, it will become more centralised, and because of the influence of miners, this will be bad for Bitcoin. I understand that some banks are now refusing to provide loans for mining equipment purchases because of the questionable RoI. Coin reward halving, and possible increases in energy prices will further reduce profits, and this doesn't take into account the increase in hashing difficulty because of improved hardware. With more frequent block generation, it may become possible for some nodes to become miners in a fee based system, and this will help to decentralise mining.

Pretty sure it would take a hardfork, but it would change the emission rate unless we adjusted the block reward at the same time. The code changes would be minimal.

Actually, that would solve the blocksize problem!

Just go to 5 minute blocktimes with half the block reward. Even with 1MB blocksize we get 1MB per 10 minutes so it matches the 2MB blocksize increase.

At 5 minutes I dont think we would get too many of the small reorgs. If to go to 1 min, we get 10MB per 10 min capacity, but at that frequency there would be a fair number of reorgs. I dont think going below 3 minutes is wise.

It was your idea, so you can submit the 5 min blocktime BIP

James

Do you see a time when this blocktime could be reduced?

I think it is more a matter of decentralized solutions that transact in crypto.

Since BTC is the most liquid crypto, it is the natural one to use for crypto transactions. As long as ALT/BTC pairs are what the market trades, this allows converting from ALT0 <-> ALT2 via BTC as the most efficient path.

So, not sure how important it is if is running on blockchain A, B, or C, the transactions flow through BTC.

Like the DE usecase, it has BTC on one side and all the other altcoins on the other side.
The decentralized poker usecase, the gameplay really cannot be on any blockchain due to speed and space constraints, so the blockchain uses will need to be the function of the cashier.

The 10 minute blocktime of BTC prevents its usage directly for many use cases. So if a 1:1 price peg to BTC is required and the 24+ hours latency is not a problem, then it seems a side chain can have whatever characteristics desired. It is definitely an interested method.

BTC -> (~24hrs) -> sidechain ... [side chain functions] ... -> (~24hrs) BTC

BTC -> (~4hrs worst case, 3 confirms normally) atomic swap -> altcoin ... [altcoin functions] -> atomic swap back

I think I have the above timings correct. The difference going to the altcoin is there is no price peg. So there are issues with both appoaches.

I like:

(realtime app) <-> BTC cashier

The above model puts the speed and space consuming data flow internal to the realtime app and avoids bloating the BTC blockchain and if the app denominates in BTC, it avoids needing a peg

James

Could You pls be a bit more precise and point me to what you ve seen with Rootstock?

SafeCoin runs with proof of resource, correct?

I don't know the specifics of Maidsafe, but Andreas Antonopoulos mentions various crypto currencies being turned into sidechains about 20 mins into this recent interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSq-58ElBzk

There's this notion of side-chains basically deprecating everything that altcoins have to offer, including ambitious projects like Ethereum. As we have seen with Rootstock, we can have Ethereum basically using BTC thanks to sidechains. Of course I will need to see further development to fully buy in, but it's looking promising.

My question is if sidechains would allow to run something like Maidsafe, which is a mega ambitious project (older than Bitcoin) to run through BTC as well thanks to a sidechain. Let's remember that Maidsafe basically attempts to replace the entire internet into a decentralized network where apps can be built for this network and so on, and the SafeCoin would be a token that you get by giving some hard disk space to the network.

Im just wondering what devs think of Maidsafe and if in the future a sidechain could mimic it's features therefore rendering SafeCoin as a token as a yet another irrelevant altcoin. Right now Maidsafe is the only thing that isn't BTC that I consider holding long term, and maybe some XMR as well even tho Bitcoin is starting to look better and better privacy wise for the future so I may sell my XMR at some point and stay 100% BTC only.