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Topic: The Ethereum Paradox - page 2. (Read 99876 times)

hero member
Activity: 909
Merit: 508
July 25, 2017, 10:09:20 AM

What a roller coaster ride~!

$30 Million: Ether Reported Stolen Due to Parity Wallet Breach

http://www.coindesk.com/30-million-ether-reported-stolen-parity-wallet-breach/

It seems it is better t use the old test wallet instead of innovative wallet.
legendary
Activity: 2296
Merit: 1126
July 20, 2017, 10:54:06 AM

What a roller coaster ride~!

$30 Million: Ether Reported Stolen Due to Parity Wallet Breach

http://www.coindesk.com/30-million-ether-reported-stolen-parity-wallet-breach/
hero member
Activity: 909
Merit: 508
April 28, 2017, 06:52:26 AM

Ethereum's Casper shit is more of the same proof-of-stake (nothing-at-stake or centralization by economic weight, e.g. DPoS) nonsense. The betting stuff enables what Vitalik refers to as "dark uncles" or "dunkles", which Vitalik incorrectly thinks will solve the nothing-at-stake problem. Also Casper has the problem that all deterministic finality PoS and Byzatine agreement systems have, which is a 33% liveness threshold which if that many validators balk or stop processing, then the chain can't move forward without a hard fork.

Major casper issues have already been solved, i think you're stuck with 2015 infos about casper. https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/minimal-slashing-conditions-20f0b500fc6c
https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/simple_casper.v.py
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ

Also casper does not assume rational attackers, so if a 51% attack happens in POS, at curent prices, the attackers would have to burn 100-500mil $. In which case they would rather do it now than later because it would cost them 10 times less. With ~30$ mil you can even attack bitcoin.

I think it better to increase the block size and let the miners earn more so that they will better protect the network.
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
April 15, 2017, 06:51:33 AM

Ethereum's Casper shit is more of the same proof-of-stake (nothing-at-stake or centralization by economic weight, e.g. DPoS) nonsense. The betting stuff enables what Vitalik refers to as "dark uncles" or "dunkles", which Vitalik incorrectly thinks will solve the nothing-at-stake problem. Also Casper has the problem that all deterministic finality PoS and Byzatine agreement systems have, which is a 33% liveness threshold which if that many validators balk or stop processing, then the chain can't move forward without a hard fork.

Major casper issues have already been solved, i think you're stuck with 2015 infos about casper. https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/minimal-slashing-conditions-20f0b500fc6c
https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/simple_casper.v.py
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ

Also casper does not assume rational attackers, so if a 51% attack happens in POS, at curent prices, the attackers would have to burn 100-500mil $. In which case they would rather do it now than later because it would cost them 10 times less. With ~30$ mil you can even attack bitcoin.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
April 15, 2017, 06:04:22 AM
From my deep study of the range of plausible designs for a blockchain consensus system (and I studied much deeper than in than what is contained in that linked thread), I conclude that it is impossible to have a fungible token on a blockchain in which the consensus doesn't become centralized iff the presumption is that the users of the system gain the most value from the system due to its monetary function.

However, I was able to outsmart the global elite, because I realized that if the users of the system gained more value from the system for its non-monetary function and iff that value can't be financed (i.e. its value can be leeched off by control of fungible money), and if I provided a way for the users to provide the Byzantine fault DETECTION as a check-and-balance against the power of the whales and if I provided this in a way that is not democracy and is a crab bucket mentality Nash equilibrium, then I would have defeated the problems with the concept of fungible money.

The elite simply weren't aware of these concepts, because I invented them. Nash didn't know this.

And that is what I intend to launch with BitNet.

Quoting, because this post is too valuable  Cheesy

More on that...

You could just remove the reward, any one can mine new block out of the mem pool, if two blocks or tx are in common, a determinstic algorithm could be used to select between the two.

I agree with you.  The error in most crypto is the reward, which gives rise to strategies that do not necessarily induce the desired properties.  I also think that the only viable kind of crypto currency is where the validation/consensus decision is taken on a voluntary basis, the "reward" being that the system in which you are invested, keeps running correctly.

However, you still need a kind of deterministic decision *that is hard to game* (because you can do "proof of work" like calculations to get the deterministic solution in your advantage).  This is why a kind of PoS signature scheme is necessary in my opinion.

@dinofelis, how many times do I have to repeat to you that voting is not free.

Ethereum's Casper shit is more of the same proof-of-stake (nothing-at-stake or centralization by economic weight, e.g. DPoS) nonsense. The betting stuff enables what Vitalik refers to as "dark uncles" or "dunkles", which Vitalik incorrectly thinks will solve the nothing-at-stake problem. Also Casper has the problem that all deterministic finality PoS and Byzatine agreement systems have, which is a 33% liveness threshold which if that many validators balk or stop processing, then the chain can't move forward without a hard fork.

The only way to replace PoW is with an Inverse Commons consensus protocol, which is my new invention.



And all together your comment also show that you dont see my perpective, and why the thing you point doesnt matter, and what I meant with checkpoint is that you would only need real pow consencus on this checkpoint to "harden" The chain if you want to enforce a particular order on the tx/block, but that would just be about one packet saying this block height is this block hash, and having a pow once in a while on this checkpoint instead of every block.

I invented that already in collaboration with @jl777 for Komodo in 2016. It is named dPoW (delayed proof-of-work).

CounterParty does something somewhat analogous as well.

And really it isn't a secure and sound solution, but more of a gimick. Because the local consensus still have to decide what to submit for checkpoints because the PoW system isn't validating every thing and can't resolve conflicting double-spending orderings that occurred between checkpoints.
member
Activity: 65
Merit: 10
March 13, 2017, 01:39:43 AM
what's the issue with running a monty python type simulation for the probability?
hero member
Activity: 532
Merit: 500
March 12, 2017, 08:46:04 AM
So your point is they haven't implemented POS yet and it's delayed part because of the dao hack and the attacks, part because it took longer than they expected. We know that, it is expected in 2018. Thing is, they're transparent about everything ethereum related, proffesional, and are building something that wasn't done before. They were so transparent about things you can't even suspect them of being dishonest or trying to enrich themselves by scamming everyone else, as opposed to some dev teams over there ( dash ) that hype the project themselves, which is immoral at best.

You're like those who kept saying that anything heavier than air can't fly, and several people around the world independently of eachother were trying to do the same thing while proving them wrong; building a working prototype. Either prove you're better or step aside. Seriously, you're like the average football player that hopes everyone else gets injured so you could have a chance to enter the field.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
March 12, 2017, 05:28:45 AM
Btw, the centralization (i.e. it can be gamed) flaw in Paul Sztorc's idea to use prediction markets to gather information or consensus amongst possibilities, is per the concerns he mentions in his conclusion and also analogous to the flaw of the consensus-by-betting of Ethereum's research on Casper, is that the determination of the outcome either requires a centralized oracle to declare it or it is self-referential so thus it devolves and distills down to the essence of "might makes right" aka Byzantine agreement voting. This is why so far only Satoshi's PoW solved the self-referential aspect by referring to an external burned resource (electricity) but this resource is also subject to power-law aggregation of economies-of-scale.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
March 12, 2017, 12:45:11 AM
Two years after the following post by Paul Sztorc, Ethereum is still talking about PoS...

Notice the comments addressing Hearn in the very link you supplied, and Hearn's use of "hope", "there will eventually be something better", suggesting that there currently is not anything better. Ethereum is closer to the "doing" than "talking" stage, but not by very much. The best would be, of course, if someone would just (shut up and) actually do PoS.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
March 06, 2017, 02:31:25 PM
Re: Synereo, Rchain, Ethereum -- How do they relate

The longer Greg can stay involved with Vlad and Vitalik on Casper, the better. The longer they will be mired in technobabble nonsense. Please support Greg.

Greg is a reasonably smart mathematician trying to find use cases for his math which are nonsense. I am not a mathematician of his caliber, so definitely don't listen to me. Please support Greg and please keep him involved with Ethereum's Casper.

Greg is smart. I am not disputing that.

I guess it's over your head, must be nonsense then. Vlad and Vitalik must be retards"having fun doing Star Trek research" running a 1 billion dollar network.  RIP Ethereum.

ftfy

But you had the correct conclusion.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1042
White Male Libertarian Bro
March 06, 2017, 01:20:21 AM
that noob don't know what he's talking about

The n00b is you. Read on...


I just stumbled across this critique and wanted to add a response:

1. Users attempted to flood the steem network with transactions, validating nodes included transactions at the specified limit.  
2. There is a limited supply of computational power

Well yeah if you have bounded set of validation computational resources with the bound enforced by whales, then you have a centralized monopoly lacking free market competition. Replicating VISA isn't interesting. I was referring to a decentralized blockchain, which your DPoS is not.


Your remaining points about POW on each script and Nash Equilb are completely missing the point by getting lost in the weeds.

An attacker can submit a transaction for validation that fails after the allowed time (say 2ms).  The attacker generates the transaction but doesn't run it themselves, which gives them an advantage over the defender.

If the defender sets an arbitrary POW requirement on a per-connection basis, then they can force the attacker to perform a 2ms POW that is validated in 1 us before attempting to process the script.  The attacker would have to redo their POW for each peer they want to broadcast to.

You entirely missed the point which is that the asymmetry is relative to the other honest users which have to do this PoW and don't have access to a mining farm (or at least a very efficient ASIC) whilst the attacker may. Of course verifying a PoW solution is always asymmetrical to finding a PoW solution. So that could not have been my point.

Anyway, preventing SPAM is a trivial problem compared to attempting to scale ETH.

Neither are trivial problems if you want a truly decentralized blockchain. In fact, no one has yet solved these issues for a blockchain that doesn't become centralized due to economies-of-scale.

Good job for standing up to the Larimer Gang, but arguing with Dan is pointless except for the fact that you are pointing out the fallacies of DPoS to the uninitiated.  Dan and Stan Larimer's only goal in DPoS was to enrich themselves and their Chicom backers at the expense of everyone else.  They are sellouts pure and simple.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
March 05, 2017, 05:18:09 PM
that noob don't know what he's talking about

The n00b is you. Read on...


I just stumbled across this critique and wanted to add a response:

1. Users attempted to flood the steem network with transactions, validating nodes included transactions at the specified limit.  
2. There is a limited supply of computational power

Well yeah if you have bounded set of validation computational resources with the bound enforced by whales, then you have a centralized monopoly lacking free market competition. Replicating VISA isn't interesting. I was referring to a decentralized blockchain, which your DPoS is not.


Your remaining points about POW on each script and Nash Equilb are completely missing the point by getting lost in the weeds.

An attacker can submit a transaction for validation that fails after the allowed time (say 2ms).  The attacker generates the transaction but doesn't run it themselves, which gives them an advantage over the defender.

If the defender sets an arbitrary POW requirement on a per-connection basis, then they can force the attacker to perform a 2ms POW that is validated in 1 us before attempting to process the script.  The attacker would have to redo their POW for each peer they want to broadcast to.

You entirely missed the point which is that the asymmetry is relative to the other honest users which have to do this PoW and don't have access to a mining farm (or at least a very efficient ASIC) whilst the attacker may. Of course verifying a PoW solution is always asymmetrical to finding a PoW solution. So that could not have been my point.

Anyway, preventing SPAM is a trivial problem compared to attempting to scale ETH.

Neither are trivial problems if you want a truly decentralized blockchain. In fact, no one has yet solved these issues for a blockchain that doesn't become centralized due to economies-of-scale.
hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 566
fractally
March 04, 2017, 01:42:30 AM
Somewhat relevant: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@dantheman/a-better-approach-to-turing-complete-smart-contracts

The performance difference is impressive. And it also allows for zero-fee txs/contracts (I guess until someone finds a way to spam it).

That is not the correct solution because of course it gives the spammer an asymmetrical advantage. And the problem with sharding is not just that messages between shards are multi-threading (this can actually be solved by requiring messages to be queued to the next block), but rather that then both shards have to verify the entire history chain of those cross-chard "transactions", which defeats the performance improvement of shards. Vitalik probably proposes to have shard validators trust each other with forfeitable deposits, but that like PoS destroys Nash Equilibrium. As well as I explained my video, external business logic can conflate shards even if cross-shard messages are restricted, leading to chaos, discontent when a shard validator set has lied (for profit obviously), and a drop in the value of the token. Bruce Wanker will be laughing again.

I finally realized the solution to last sentence in the prior paragraph, which I alluded to in my prior comment. It suddenly just popped into my mind when I listened to myself.

Dan Larimer is rushing and making mistakes:

Quote
Steem, on the other hand, easily survived the flood attacks thrown at it without disrupting service and all without any transaction fees!

Were those bandwidth DDoS attacks filtered by perimeter nodes, or validation attacks absorbed by validating nodes?

Quote
The price of GAS would go up until it stunted the growth of all three applications.

Incorrect. If the price of GAS would increase due to higher demand but the lesser amount of GAS needed would still reflect the unchanged cost of validating a script at that higher price.

Quote
The native implementation would cause all the same outputs given the same inputs, except it wouldn’t know how to calculate the GAS costs because it wasn’t run on the EVM.

It could simply compute its own cost based on some counters. If it knows its optimized implementation is less costly than the EVM, then it doesn't harm (i.e. remains compliant) by keeping the GAS if it is depleted before the script completes. Others verifying the depletion case would run the EVM, as this wouldn't cost them more than running native version. For non-depleted scripts, validators run their most efficient native version.

Quote
Require a proof-of-work on each script

Unless this is more expensive in resources than the cost of validating the script, then the attacker has an asymmetric DoS advantage. So all you've done is shifted the cost of paying the fee to generating the equivalent proof-of-work.

And unless each script consumer has access to a premium ASIC, then the attacker still has an asymmetric advantage. And if you say the script consumer can farm out this ASIC, then you've shifted the DoS attack to the said farm.

Quote
Local Blacklist / White list scripts, accounts, and/or peers

That is effective for bandwidth DDoS, but Nash Equilibirium can be gamed by an open system w.r.t. to submitting data for validation.

I just stumbled across this critique and wanted to add a response:

1. Users attempted to flood the steem network with transactions, validating nodes included transactions at the specified limit. 
2. There is a limited supply of computational power, thus people bid up the price they are willing to pay to transact and it results in increased profit margins due to the fixed (unchanged computational cost) of validating a script.  Just like BTC fees rise now that blocks are full, the cost to transact on ETH will rise once the single-threaded performance limit is hit.

Your remaining points about POW on each script and Nash Equilb are completely missing the point by getting lost in the weeds.

An attacker can submit a transaction for validation that fails after the allowed time (say 2ms).  The attacker generates the transaction but doesn't run it themselves, which gives them an advantage over the defender.

If the defender sets an arbitrary POW requirement on a per-connection basis, then they can force the attacker to perform a 2ms POW that is validated in 1 us before attempting to process the script.  The attacker would have to redo their POW for each peer they want to broadcast to.

Long-lasting connections can build up "trust" and reduce POW requirements for nodes that demonstrate they do not relay invalid transactions.  First violation of trust reverts back to POW.

Anyway, preventing SPAM is a trivial problem compared to attempting to scale ETH.
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
November 08, 2016, 04:21:33 PM
Ethereum has pruned Vitalik's blogs, removing most of the comments. For example, the following is a reply by Vitalik to a comment I made pointing out a math oversimplification:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/#comment-958

My comment has been purged from the comments and only Vitalik's reply remains.

Unfortunately archive.org didn't archive the comments (because probably the comments load separately from the page with some AJAX code).
sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
October 29, 2016, 10:11:12 PM
From what I can gather you will require a minimum of 1250 ethereum and even then only 250 persons will be chosen or elected as validators? even then you could be fined ether if you dont have the required bw or resources to validate at any given time?

Is there a reason only 250 people will secure the network? Is the reason speed?  would it not make it more vulnerable to attack having so few validators? or not?

Who understands the ethereum POS method and the reasons behind it?

So ETH will become centralized ! and 1250 is not a amount can everyone can have ! epic.. just grab 50ETH and leave them for ever just in case..!

Pay attention to where I wrote, "Vitalik probably proposes to have shard validators trust each other with forfeitable deposits, but that like PoS destroys Nash Equilibrium. As well as I explained my video, external business logic can conflate shards even if cross-shard messages are restricted, leading to chaos, discontent when a shard validator set has lied (for profit obviously), and a drop in the value of the token. Bruce Wanker will be laughing again.".

Also listen to my video about why validation must always become centralized, and read the Ethereum Paradox thread.

Readers I was telling you last year that Casper can't work technically. Sigh.

sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
October 29, 2016, 02:48:33 PM
Somewhat relevant: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@dantheman/a-better-approach-to-turing-complete-smart-contracts

The performance difference is impressive. And it also allows for zero-fee txs/contracts (I guess until someone finds a way to spam it).

That is not the correct solution because of course it gives the spammer an asymmetrical advantage. And the problem with sharding is not just that messages between shards are multi-threading (this can actually be solved by requiring messages to be queued to the next block), but rather that then both shards have to verify the entire history chain of those cross-chard "transactions", which defeats the performance improvement of shards. Vitalik probably proposes to have shard validators trust each other with forfeitable deposits, but that like PoS destroys Nash Equilibrium. As well as I explained my video, external business logic can conflate shards even if cross-shard messages are restricted, leading to chaos, discontent when a shard validator set has lied (for profit obviously), and a drop in the value of the token. Bruce Wanker will be laughing again.

I finally realized the solution to last sentence in the prior paragraph, which I alluded to in my prior comment. It suddenly just popped into my mind when I listened to myself.

Dan Larimer is rushing and making mistakes:

Quote
Steem, on the other hand, easily survived the flood attacks thrown at it without disrupting service and all without any transaction fees!

Were those bandwidth DDoS attacks filtered by perimeter nodes, or validation attacks absorbed by validating nodes?

Quote
The price of GAS would go up until it stunted the growth of all three applications.

Incorrect. If the price of GAS would increase due to higher demand but the lesser amount of GAS needed would still reflect the unchanged cost of validating a script at that higher price.

Quote
The native implementation would cause all the same outputs given the same inputs, except it wouldn’t know how to calculate the GAS costs because it wasn’t run on the EVM.

It could simply compute its own cost based on some counters. If it knows its optimized implementation is less costly than the EVM, then it doesn't harm (i.e. remains compliant) by keeping the GAS if it is depleted before the script completes. Others verifying the depletion case would run the EVM, as this wouldn't cost them more than running native version. For non-depleted scripts, validators run their most efficient native version.

Quote
Require a proof-of-work on each script

Unless this is more expensive in resources than the cost of validating the script, then the attacker has an asymmetric DoS advantage. So all you've done is shifted the cost of paying the fee to generating the equivalent proof-of-work.

And unless each script consumer has access to a premium ASIC, then the attacker still has an asymmetric advantage. And if you say the script consumer can farm out this ASIC, then you've shifted the DoS attack to the said farm.

Quote
Local Blacklist / White list scripts, accounts, and/or peers

That is effective for bandwidth DDoS, but Nash Equilibirium can be gamed by an open system w.r.t. to submitting data for validation.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1049
October 29, 2016, 09:08:13 AM
Somewhat relevant: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@dantheman/a-better-approach-to-turing-complete-smart-contracts

The performance difference is impressive. And it also allows for zero-fee txs/contracts (I guess until someone finds a way to spam it).



sr. member
Activity: 336
Merit: 265
October 29, 2016, 04:35:38 AM
How I Fixed Satoshi's Design


There was a really good summary of why Casper's planned sharding is flawed.

Apparently everybody is still oblivious to my solution.

If you shard the blockchain, you've still got to verify it. You can't have shards trusting each other, as that breaks Nash equilibrium (there are game theories other than the one that guarantees the security of the long-chain rule).

But if you have every shard verify every other shard, then you don't have sharding any more.

My hypothetical solution is a statistical one (where the economic interests of all shards become intertwined) combined with eventual consistency where it is required to maintain the Nash equilibrium.

SegWit is (in one aspect but not entirely as afaik it really just centralizes proof-of-work) generally analogous to a similar conceptual idea I had thought of and dismissed, because it relies on the trust that the economically impacted parties will verify before eventual consistency is required, not on the proof that those parties did verify before it was required. The game theory gets quite complex because there are externalities such as shorting the coin. So it is possible I may have a mistake and we will find out once I publish.

Reviewing the video I had done for this thread back in February where I critiqued some aspect of Casper:

I did make one video on Ethereum when I was feeling not so energetic, so you can sort of get a feel for myself as a public speaker but note I was suffering from my illness when I made this:

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Shelby_Ethereum_Paradox.avi (Feb 15 2016)

At the end of that rambling video, I finally got to the point. But amazingly I didn't come to the very obvious conclusion on how to fix the problem that computation on a blockchain faces. I basically stated it in the last part of that video, but I failed to connect the dots.

Now I see the solution. It was right there in front of our face all along. Why has no one seen it  Huh

(Of course I am not going to tell you. You tell me. I want to see if anyone else can figure it out)
hero member
Activity: 909
Merit: 508
October 27, 2016, 01:06:13 PM
to be extended:


How paradox is it to have 2 ETH now ?

Do we get more soon ?

Thats maybe the idea to increase the block size - just run forks ... uhhh


Some times, maybe many versioin of the Etherereum can be good. People can select the one they like most.
hv_
legendary
Activity: 2520
Merit: 1055
Clean Code and Scale
October 17, 2016, 07:33:55 AM
to be extended:


How paradox is it to have 2 ETH now ?

Do we get more soon ?

Thats maybe the idea to increase the block size - just run forks ... uhhh
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