It seems to me that the only point of IOTA is to send and receive IOTA tokens.
To that end, it makes sense in that all IOTA users will process transactions as mini-miners in order to keep costs low. What doesn't make sense, however, is the IOTA token. Why should the IOTA token be worth anything? A group of malicious users could get a bunch of legit IOTA tokens, isolate their network, double spend/duplicate the tokens, bury and "validate" their tokens with the weight of 100 or 1000 transactions, reconnect to the external network, and spend those tokens. Plus those tokens are all already premined so there's no electricity costs. I must be misunderstanding something.
Topic: The tech behind Iota (Read 794 times)
Maybe ask this question in the IOTA announce thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1216479.9040
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1216479.9040
Iota introduces an interesting new concept in the crypto scenario: the directed acyclic graph, or DAG. Basically it's an evolution of the usual blockchain, requiring no fees and without scaling issues.
Nevertheless, after having a quick look at the white paper I still don't understand how the nodes will keep working continuously. In the "tangle" there are no miners, the beloved greedy workers of the Bitcoin blockchain. Instead, here to perform a transaction, you should verify other transactions first. In the white paper (http://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf) they say:
I'm not convinced by this statement. In fact, let's say that I'm a node and I don't want to be excluded by other nodes (and even on this I would like to understand what it means to be excluded. If you start again working hard can you be re-admitted? I could work only if I need to do transactions).
If my fellow nodes work x, I could work 0.99 x to not get excluded and minimize my work. But this reasoning can be applied to every node, since electricity has a cost, so everyone one will lower its effort, resulting in a system that perform poorly.
What do you think about this?
Nevertheless, after having a quick look at the white paper I still don't understand how the nodes will keep working continuously. In the "tangle" there are no miners, the beloved greedy workers of the Bitcoin blockchain. Instead, here to perform a transaction, you should verify other transactions first. In the white paper (http://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf) they say:
Quote
what motivates the nodes to propagate transactions? In fact, in our setup the nodes do not have motivation
not to propagate. Every node calculates some statistics, one of which is how many
new transactions are received from a neighbor. If one particular node is “too lazy”, it
will be dropped by its neighbors. So, even if a node does not issue transactions (and
hence has no direct incentive to share new transactions that approve its own one), it
still has incentive to work hard.
not to propagate. Every node calculates some statistics, one of which is how many
new transactions are received from a neighbor. If one particular node is “too lazy”, it
will be dropped by its neighbors. So, even if a node does not issue transactions (and
hence has no direct incentive to share new transactions that approve its own one), it
still has incentive to work hard.
I'm not convinced by this statement. In fact, let's say that I'm a node and I don't want to be excluded by other nodes (and even on this I would like to understand what it means to be excluded. If you start again working hard can you be re-admitted? I could work only if I need to do transactions).
If my fellow nodes work x, I could work 0.99 x to not get excluded and minimize my work. But this reasoning can be applied to every node, since electricity has a cost, so everyone one will lower its effort, resulting in a system that perform poorly.
What do you think about this?
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