Topic: What are the issues with RaiBlocks? (Read 248 times)

RaiBlocks is a highly flawed design that was debunked by experts (including @gmaxwell Gregory Maxwell Core Bitcoin developer) in 2015:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.28733469

Several old timers have been messaging me asking for AnonyMint’s analysis. It’s linked above from 2015.

You are missing the point of RaiBlocks. I know its hard to beleive it, but there's no such thing about a 51% attacks in RaiBlocks!. This is because there's no miners or stakers that build the blockchain and decide how it should be. I guess that people are so use to this concept that they don't believe that something else is possible.

In RaiBlocks, everyone build their own Blockchain and the only way for it to be valid is to follow the Blockchain rules. It is at the same time a so simple revolutionary technology.

Representatives are only needed when someone do a double spent attack, in this case they just decided which one to keep. In any case, even if you control 51% of the representatives, there will never be a double spent in the ledger because it wouldn't be valid.

I read the white paper.  RaiBlocks is just Yet Another Global Ledger Currency.

Boo. Hiss.

In contrast to Bitcoin, the RaiBlocks global ledger is not secure. There may be multiple versions of what is (hopefully) ultimately the same "truth". The RaiBlocks ledger is akin to Bitcoin's UTXO list. I suspect a 51% attack on XRB may be able to spend your balance. (Whereas a 51% attack on BTC merely stops transactions after a few revert to unconfirmed.)

Because the sender and receiver coordinate their transaction, the XRB ledger can be more compact than the BTC ledger. However, this is just a simple ratio difference. Thus all scalability concerns of a big block fast block version of BTC also apply to XRB, i.e. centralization. XRB could devolve into having a single node overseeing all transactions - no second node would be able to collect information fast enough.

Another key thing in RaiBlocks is that a transaction require 2 step: A send and a receive block. A receive block will never be appended to your blockchain if you dont create it from a valid "send" block. It is impossible in RaiBlocks that a transaction other than the latest one be invalid. I know this doesn't make sens from a Bitcoin and about all other coins perspective... because transaction are only "an amount and a destination", they are put in a pool and you can't know when or if they will be taken by a miner to be put in a block.  And only one miner is involve in creating a block so you need to wait for multiple blocks to confirm that most miners are on the same track.
RaiBlocks is very different and it is much simpler: You have you own blockchain and you create your own blocks, you decide in which order your blocks should be. So when you broadcast a block, there's only 3 option:
- The block is invalid (bad amount or invalid previous block, signature...) -> ignored
- The block is conflicting with another block (you broadcasted 2 blocks with the same predecessor) -> vote on which block to keep -> one of the 2 block is confirmed
- The block is valid and not conflicting -> the block is confirmed
You can't append a block to an unconfirmed block so only the latest block can be unconfirmed.

If i understand how this works (and if not i may be creating a new model), the blockchain is held locally and validated by remote.  If every transaction has two components, the payment itself and the broadcast that its occurred, then a reply from at least n nodes they have received/confirmed the transaction with a signature, then this all goes into the local block. next transaction there is a certified chain in the local block with every block signed, you only need to verify on the network that the signatures are genuine. 

Or something like that.  Would need a lot of testing to validate algorithm and may have a problem with equivalent of 50% attack need to ensure the size for n validator nodes is sufficiently large to prevent fraudulent authorisations, but not actually half the network or anywhere near as otherwise speed and size of the block would be substantial.

Or maybe Raiblocks is completely different.  Is there a diagram of their process flow?

How do you know that the person paying you is paying from a valid transaction?

What if a thief paid themselves in an invalid transaction, and then laundered those fake funds through a thousand accounts (all controlled by the thief)? How does RaiBlocks detect that 1000 transactions ago, there was a problem?

If RaiBlocks has solved this, then awesome! If they haven't solved this, then it is useless.

You never need to do a ruling on previous blocks because the only time that you need to do a ruling is when there's a conflicting block/transaction and in that case you can't know which block to add to the blockchain. If a transaction is not conflicting with another block then it is certainly a valid one because invalid transactions can be automatically detected by anyone, which is one of the miracle that RaiBlock brings. For example, a valid send transaction must have:
1) a signature encrypted with your private key
2) a valid previous block (thats the power of RaiBlocks Blockchain... when you build a transaction, YOU KNOW what is its previous block because only you can add block to your chain)
3) a valid amount base on previous transaction (and again, you know the maximum because you know what are the previous transaction)
Representatives task is very minimal, they are just there to make sure that everyone accept the same block when conflicting blocks are sent from the same wallet. Why is Bitcoin so complex... I don't know

Well here's another miracle that RaiBlocks brings: Representatives get votes, decentralized votes with a weight base on how much money you have. Those votes are incredibly more valuable then lets say "facebook likes" and any IT businesses crave for more "facebook likes". Those businesses will jump on this opportunity, they will not only do the task well to get votes but they will do it well which will make the RaiBlocks network even faster. Not only it costs them nothing because they already have the infrastructure and there's no "proof of work" required, it will be a way for them to show that they can be trusted.

From what I've found out, it appears that payment recipients may need to ask the representatives to rule on every payment from untrusted sources. Further, it may be necessary to get a ruling on the entire transaction history tree of that payment! What if the funds were counterfeited ten transactions ago, and nobody in that payment chain challenged them?

This necessity to contact a ruling group will probably bring the whole system to a grinding halt.

RaiBlocks may work fine between coworkers who are keeping track of their lunch tab. I doubt it will work for real commerce.


In other words, the "Elected representatives" aren't getting paid. Thus, there's no incentive for anybody to keep a server online doing that job.

I think this coin has massive potential, so much I even bought a little and I'm not usually an alt-coin advocate.

That said, the withdraw issues people note on bitgrail make me nervous, it needs to be incredibly robust before scaling.

I'd also like to see a testnet equivalent (it may already exist, just not seen it yet).

I'm keen to see an option in the wallet to 'spam network' to make sure this thing does scale as well as planned (or perhaps at 8pm GMT it does spamming automatically for 15 mins?).  If that spam network button can issue a few hundred tx's per second per client and works reliably I'll put a good part of my life savings into this project since a viable scaling solution is the next evolutionary step for cryptos.


Its design also fixes the fungibility issue seen in most blockchains so again this project has massive potential.

We finally have a coin that is designed to scale for mass adoption: RaiBlocks :
- A Blockchain for each wallet/node so you dont have to wait for a "place" in the next block (if you are luck), just broadcast right away = Instant transaction and infinite scaling
- Only "Elected" representatives will validate the blocks and prevent double spending = The fastest possible network as those elected representatives will have good machines/bandwith
- The Elected representatives dont have to do a proof of work (Proof of Stake), so they can work for free = Free transactions and not inflation (there wont be more than the 133,248,289 XRB already on the market)
- Open Source, simple code base, nicely written in modern c++

Please share the issues it may have ... I am wondering if there's a reason why it is dipping, I personally believe that it is the future Bitcoin.