Topic: DECENTRALIZED crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion (any solutions?) - page 63. (Read 91144 times)

Interesting ..i read *some of your comments and will have to come back later OP

"They" need to be centralized ?
I think i get it..

And i say it already is to some extent.
And this is a bigger problem with a less popular coin where no one is watching the code.
Compared to Bitcoin for example.

But i don't say any digital currency as decentralized.
Take that DVC topic on here.. we see users trapped by the guys who hold the keys.
So who has the Monero Github login details or the web site domain etc ?
ALL of these are run by a central authority.. guys with agenda's and a long history of 100 previous coins.
Later at any time they can do what ever they want.
i Seen Shakezulu post a compiled wallet with a keylogger in it for example on his official CENT site.
NONE of these coins are really decentralized.
So..
What should be done maybe is to just bite the bullet and make a centralized authority of some kind ?
And no i don't mean like Ripple.. or ETH or StartCoin etc LOL

I also formally call bullshit on idiots like Moenro dev's who claim Monero is secure and Untraceable (as printed on their Merch)
These are wild claims that can never be backed up.
And not only that it's shooting yourself in the foot for adoption.
Coin dev's should be trying to be MORE compliant not more secretive !

No coin is going to live with out FIAT.. because Fiat is not going anywhere for 100+ years easily.
So it has to worked with not working against it.
And trying to tack on pseudo anon features to BTC etc is just going to enrage the world economy / Fed reserve etc.
A stupid move on coin dev's part.. that will drastically hamper potential adoption.
All that will happen is you will get it abused like crazy by SilkRoad types..
The coin will get a reputation just like Bitcoin has right now across the world..
And again just like BTC we will have average users not interested in some digital crime currency.
This is already a massive problem with Bitcoin RIGHT NOW !
And isn't the point of Altcoins to solve a problem and improve Bitcoin ..NOT make it worse ? ROFL

No Altcoins have improved anything.
All we see is a slew of features etc that make a coin that is worse than Bitcoin.
And all these feature altcoin dev's tack on are really just a gimmick for them to have fun with and profit from.
Some anon IPO coin is making a better version of Bitcoin ?
Flash mining a coin is some how a better version of BTC ?
Try coming up with a non-scammy method of initial distribution guys and lose the Anon bullshit.

I agree with your statement "decentralized crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion".

This is a quote by Dan Larimer that has stuck with me for a while and was part of the reason I got into supporting alternatives to PoW:

I feel like there may be some way to do this using oracles and recurring auctions: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-achieve-fair-pos-distribution-675333

your scam idea is delusional. the purpose of bitcoin is decentralized money and bitcoin have achieved just that. all this crap scam ideas/add-on smart contracts, smart ledger, crypto 2.0, crypto 9.0 are just delusional scam idea, simple as that.

I was referring to you both.

No temporary partitions can be tolerated at all if the resolution of said partitions is the total destruction of one partition or another.  This is the only resolution method possible if the data structure is block based with POW or POS.

If you think otherwise, explain how two blocks secured with POW (or POS) could be merged between two block chains without loss of data?  You don't need details on my, or anyone's protocols to explain how this is so.

You must be referring to monsterer's comments. I was always emphasizing that 2 or more temporary partitions can be tolerated if there is a resolution mechanism.


 I think only PoS or PoW with blocks can be that mechanism. I will have to wait for details of your protocol to point out why.

Lots of good point in your post but this stood out.....mainly because only half an hour ago I was considering exactly this (for the millionth time).  

Bitcoin is not the Google, Facebook, or Amazon of crypto....its the Yahoo, Myspace or Pets.com and it will get usurped at somepoint.  The best bits will live on, the others will be improved.

I think ultimately you are perhaps concentrating on the issue of 2 or more partitions existing for an extended period of time.

There is no consensus algorithm now or in the future, which can solve that issue without the destruction of data or entire partitions.  Not POW, POS, POI, trust models or anything else.

If the partition duration is short, the more likely it is that you can merge and resolve P with no data loss.  It is my opinion based on fact and research that blockless data structures can achieve better results and less data loss than block based ones.

I think I already stated it in this thread and it maintains the concept of a block chain and attempts to fix the issues with Satoshi's design (but I reserve to declare a flaw as I think more in detail the specific ideas I shared in this thread).

Also I think I explained recently during the Monero vs. Dash debate that the only entirely anonymous and permissionless block chain will be Zerocash. And afaics, you need a block chain consensus to implement Zerocash.

In any case, if CfB or Fuseleer think they have something worthwhile in what they are doing, then I don't want to say I am omniscient. For example, there may be tradeoffs in every design and also as CfB wrote, there are also marketing factors. My goal in this thread was speak frankly on which designs if any are going to remain decentralized. I can't really speak about eMunie because I am lacking detailed information on its design. As for Iota, my understanding was stated but I am not up close with every aspect of Iota, and I am not prepared to write a white glove paper on it so my comments should be taken as information sharing but not authoritative nor canonical.

The upthread comments on Proof-of-Stake (a.k.a. Proof-of-Share) were well vetted recently by smooth, monsterer, and myself.

Correct with regard to your first scenario where 2 partitions never talk to each other in the future, you dont need to consider it.   If they do talk to each other in the future, and have to merge, this is where Bitcoin, blocks, POW and longest chain rule falls on its arse.  Only one partition can exist, there is no merge possibility so the other has to be destroyed.   Even if the 2 partitions have not existed for an extended period of time you are screwed as they can never merge without a significant and possibly destructive impact to ALL historic transactions prior to the partition event, so you end up with an unresolvable fork.  I feel this is a critical design issue which unfortunately for Bitcoin imposes a number of limitations.

CAP theorem certainly doesn't imply you can't ever fulfill C, A and P, as most of the time you can at least enough to get the job done.  What it does state is that you cant fulfill all 3 to any sufficient requirement 100% of the time, as there will always be some edge cases that requires the temporary sacrifice of C, A or P.  This isn't the end of the world though, as detecting an issue with P is possible once nodes with different partitions communicate, at which point you can sacrifice C, or A for a period of time while you deal with the issue of P.

If you structure your data set in a flexible enough manner, then you can limit the impact of P further.  Considering CAP theorem once again, there is no mandate that prohibits most of the network being in a state that fulfills C, A and P, with a portion of the network being in a state of partition conflict.  For example, if there are a network of 100 nodes, and 1 of those nodes has a different set of data to everyone else and thus is on its own partition, the remaining 99 nodes can still be in a state of CAP fulfillment.  The rogue node now has to sacrifice C or A, in order to deal with P while the rest of the network can continue on regardless.

All of this can be done without blocks quite easily, the difficulty is how to deal with P in the event of a failure, which is where consensus algorithms come into play.

Bitcoins consensus of blocks and POW doesn't allow for merging as stated, even if the transactions on both partitions are valid and legal.  

DAGs and Tangles DO allow merging of partitions but there are important gotchas to consider as TPTB rightly suggests, but they aren't as catastrophic as he imagines and I'm sure that CfB has considered them and implemented functionality to resolve them.

Channels also allows merging of partitions (obviously thats why Im here), but critically it allows a node to be in both states of CAP fulfillment simultaneously.  For the channels that it has P conflicts it can sacrifice C or A to those channels, for the rest it can still fulfill CAP.

maybe an invention of an algorithm or formula could get things done...thinking out of the box...a game changing idea...

a four wheeled vehicle would not make it to real world application without the invention of the steering wheel(including mechanisms). because in the real world you have to deal with cross roads and curves.

But there is no way longest chain can merge partitions that have double-spends without reversing transactions that were long ago confirmed. Which includes reversing all the derivative transactions. Our (Fuseleer, myself and apparently CfB) point is partitions can only be tolerated with clearly defined resolution of a well defined temporal condition (and I think this requires blocks but seems Cfb and Fuseleer are attempting to escape from blocks but I think those designs will be found to be unsound[1]).

[1] Which I can say with more confidence than in the past, because I think now I have envisioned every possible design and found issues with all the designs (except perhaps the improvement I mentioned). But readers should note I have not seen a detailed description of eMunie's protocol, so I could possibly be wrong but I will put a very very low chance of that.

PoW doesn't insure permissionless nor decentralized if mining is inherently centralizing.

There are many reasons that Satoshi's design is centralizing. One is for example that mining is profitable, thus there is a competition to drive difficulty higher and higher such that EACH transaction costs ~$10 in electricity (which is currently paid by "mining the investors" given that professional miners who have loans from the oligarchy+banksters mine with huge farms near hydropower at $50 per BTC cost and sell all that they mine thus extracting money from those investors fools who buy crypto as there is always a downward pressure on price). Even if no debasement was paid to miners, they have a monopoly on transactions added to blocks, so they can charge what ever transaction fees they want if they control 51% of the hashrate. It begs for a oligarchy on mining to develop (which is the direction it appears to be headed and normally government steps in with regulation to aid the oligarchy).

And increasing the transactions per block also forces centralization, thus furthering a trend towards oligarchy control, so saying cost per transaction will fall as transaction rate increases is only true if the resultant oligarchy decides to go for market share first (perhaps as a longer-term strategy of 666 enslavement and world government trend).

Also since mining is only done for profit, then pools are required to deal with huge variance of winning a block for typical (non oligarchy) miners. Pools centralize mining, even if we argue that miners can switch pools, the government can more easily target the pools even if miners switch since by definition there will never be as many pools as miners (not even close).

There are many flaws in Satoshi's design which make it entirely broken from my view. I can't support Bitcoin (nor Monero). I support things that I feel enthusiastically could work out well for mankind and be successful. Bitcoin will succeed only because it is fitting in well with the existing oligarchy's (e.g. Peter Thiel) plans for world domination (and that includes that an illusion of decentralization will persist long enough for the centralization to finally take hold).


I had thought so, but I think I explained in this thread how to break the impasse I thought I had hit. But I reiterate I will go over all the details when I am offline to see if I haven't missed something in my thought process while I am writing here online.

It seems like you have hit an impasse, but without knowing the details of the problem, we are powerless to assist. In principle, if only you can mine your own transactions, then decentralisation increases and sticking with POW ensures permissionless behaviour - is there some related subtlety that you have encountered?

Temporarily allow inconsistency where the risk is very low and/or limit access to a single partition for each UTXO (different UTXO limited to different partitions). Then full resolution at block confirmation time. Also by employing partitions interblock, the data that needs to be propagated on block announcement is radically reduced, thus the block period can be significantly reduced without driving up the orphan rate to unacceptable levels.

The thing was halting my programming lately is I wasn't satisfied that I had solved the permissionless and decentralization principles. But I think sending PoW with each transaction solves it, but I need to go over all the details again to make sure I haven't missed something.

If I feel I have the Bitcoin killer and something that can really help the world, then I will be motivated to program. I don't want to waste my effort. I am in extremely bad situation in my life and I can't afford to go down any nonproductive forks at this juncture of my life.

Edit: for me if there isn't a very viable chance of maintaining decentralization, then I am not motivated to code it. I feel with near certainty that Bitcoin (and other coins that employ Satoshi's PoW design, e.g. Monero) is headed towards centralization and 51+% control (even if the block size isn't increased). And for the reasons stated upthread, I view PoS (and DPOS) as non-viable direction to invest my effort long-term (they have served some transitionary role in crypto given Satoshi's design is also flawed).

Sure - partition tolerance I was referring to is the extreme case where an island of connectivity emerges, separate from the main consensus group. Of course there must be a way to objectively merge the two groups together should they be united, and bitcoin's longest chain rule is as good as any model I have heard of.

I agree with Fuseleer it is possible to have temporary partition tolerance, which apparently is in essense what Iota is doing (but I am contemplating that it can be done another way with blocks that I think might have superior qualities). But you still need a global longest chain rule (or the inferior PoS rule) to resolve interpartition activity (which afaics DAG+PoW=Iota seems to lack?) and thus no unbounded partition tolerance (only temporary). Apparently Fuseleer, CfB, and myself all discovered the same conceptual insight.

P.S. I edited my prior post. CfB I also edited the post you replied to.

You can still obey CAP and produce a viable, decentralised cryptocurrency IMO. Losing partition tolerance is the lesser of three evils, but like I say, how can you agree with someone you've never spoken to?

Well I agreed with Fuseleer that Partitions can be created (for example those who will never have contact with each other or other scenarios), but this doesn't change the problem that consensus still needs to be attained within each partition and a global consensus is still needed for those who wish to spend to another partition; and afaics (after all our discussion and analysis) consensus will always require PoW or PoS. My prior post illustrated that even DAG requires PoW (yet it forsakes blocks which I think makes it more quirky).

To me, bitcoin's approach of longest chain rule is perfectly acceptable.