Topic: The Ethereum Paradox - page 27. (Read 99908 times)

Pick a seed? No different to authoring a website, really in that regard.

It's just an example, trying to understand how a random function would work.

Can't you grab it out from latest block hash?

If I make a simple program to get a random number from 1 to 100, or base my program on a randomizer, how can that be repeated in every single node? Shouldn't they give different outputs? How can that be validated?

Let's say I want to make a betting app, based on the random rolling of dice. How can that work?

Fault-tolerant is a good term I think. Perhaps that helps define its (possible) utility too.

What if there are calculations that are so important and valuable that they can't be left to any one system or even a redundant cluster of system under any sort of common control? That might be worth something, but I don't think any of the currently-envisioned Ethereum use cases are that.

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

Hmm, I was wondering about that too... if the "fuel" gets too expensive, then how can you run apps? It's like an economic disincentive to go well (price-wise) because increased "fuel price" will hamper use and growth...

Despite being involved with altcoins, I haven't really looked into ethereum, primarily because I consider it a rule* that when a coin is too complex to be understood by most, it stands little chance in the marketplace. That principle has served me well over the years in that most cryptocurrencies that claimed to be 2.0 or something, tanked.

The second reason was that when I was trying to find monetary information (amount of coins, futureproofing, inflation model etc etc) these were buried or lacking - and I was like "wtf? how can I even touch this?". It was also heavily promoted and I found this "fishy".

Anyway, what I'd like to know, is, if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform, then what prevents someone from using Ethereum (as a distributed computing platform) to ...mine Ethereum or cpu-based altcoins? I'm reading about all nodes wastefully repeating the same computation to validate it but, as far as I understand, that could only be applied to something predetermined like 1+1=2. If I have a simple program that asks, say, a random number from 1 to 1000, then all nodes executing and verifying this program would give me a different value. The computation would be the same (in terms of cost) but it would allow me to perform work like random-brute force on a hash, or something.


* https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7114149 & https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7116563

Shit. The cute blonde asks the right question here after 15 min...

http://youtu.be/6f0o0Xwad0w

New Poll:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/will-vitalik-flee-the-country-after-the-eth-scheme-implodes-1394842

I read a paper a few years ago. In certain conditions, 25% is enough to launch attack. But for Ethereum, it is GPU mining, so it is difficult to have vast amount of hashing power.

In some conditions even 34% is enough.

You can add historical evidence of forks/transactions to the LCR to give you what you're calling objectivity, but it won't help and it should be obvious why: at 50% of the hash rate, the attacker can generate every single block, consistently winning the LCR contest such that no evidence of forks would ever make it into the chain.

edit: At under 50% it's fine, but then there is no need for historical evidence of censored transactions, because they wouldn't be censored in the first place.

monsterer I revealed that my design is a stacked block chain:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49a14r/how_the_heck_are_actual_bitcoin_users_who_want_a/d0rsi8u

Actually I did briefly some months ago state that I thought the honest miners could fork away from the 99% adversary if they could identify which transactions were censored on the dishonest chain. I hence explained in the Decentralization thread to monsterer why that is not possible because there is no objectivity other than the longest chain rule.

Amazing he forgot that discussion, since that was another thing I taught him that he thought was possible. If he denies that, I will dig up the link.

"Impossible" was more about impossibility of you claiming such the nonsense than about impossiblity of such a protection.

Oic. Monsterer is referring to something I wrote many months ago then, which I told him was flawed and was abandoned (that was well before I started the Decentralization thread about the CAP theorem and the Satoshi Didn't solve the Byzantine Generals Problem thread wherein it is has become quite clear that 33 - 51% is the maximum ... it also happens to be when I was in delirium in the August to October timeframe due to a 10 day water only fasting and precipitous decline in my health which I have since improved considerably). He somehow conflates that with the design which has gelled since I started the Decentralization thread.

I am not claiming resistance against a 99% hashrate share proof-of-work adversary.

I thought standard assumption of an adversary controlling 99% of the hashrate had been used.

What does that even mean? How can something be impossible when it is ill-defined.

Impossible.