Re: Are cryptocurrencies ready to handle large number of transactions?
Clearly they are not, yet. The problems are somewhat multi-dimensional and the way forward isn't assured. If some counters wanted to scale a "Bitcoin-like" chain to handle, on-chain, the average transaction volume of PayPal (about 120/sec.), quite a coup, it would require (by my reckoning) a block size of about 64 MB. The Bitcoin Unlimited people are planning to test blocks much larger. Clearly, this would likely result in considerable miner concentration, unless, as Garzik's recently announced Bitcoin United (which includes a "our" Escher feature) takes over Bitcoin Corey's mantle. On Dec 25, 2017 8:21 PM, "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> wrote: On 12/26/2017 12:58 AM, Michalis Kargakis wrote:
Not a ready implementation yet but the mimblewimble protocol solves a lot of the scalability issues plagued in other blockchains.
https://scalingbitcoin.org/papers/mimblewimble.pdf https://github.com/ignopeverell/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.md
Maybe I am understanding this imperfectly, but this hides how much you are paying, and thus how much you have, but does not hide whom you pay it to. Suppose HHitler create an evil fascist website, and requests donations in mimblewimble coins. Let us call the public key advertised on that evil fascist website HHitler. Ann buys mimblewimble coins on an exchange, using US$, and has to give her true name and an image of her true face. Won't the mimblewimble blockchain show that Ann gave an unknown amount to HHitler, whereupon antifa goes around and kills some girl whose face superficially resembles that of Ann, and then the judge lets them off as well intentioned good guys? As the judge recently let off a black man who killed a white man and then took his wallet, and subsequently claimed, without racist inconvenience of actually needing to produce any evidence, that the white man had called him a n****r --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On 12/26/2017 4:04 PM, Steven Schear wrote:
Clearly they are not, yet. The problems are somewhat multi-dimensional and the way forward isn't assured. If some counters wanted to scale a "Bitcoin-like" chain to handle, on-chain, the average transaction volume of PayPal (about 120/sec.), quite a coup, it would require (by my reckoning) a block size of about 64 MB. The Bitcoin Unlimited people are planning to test blocks much larger. Clearly, this would likely result in considerable miner concentration, unless, as Garzik's recently announced Bitcoin United (which includes a "our" Escher feature) takes over Bitcoin Corey's mantle.
Every peer has to download every transaction, in order to judge it for validity. If relying on someone else's claim about validity, not truly a peer. It is having many peers that makes the network resistant to control and attack. This inherently limits the number of transactions that can be made fully on the blockchain and fully peered to something that is not compatible with taking over the world. Thus scalability, up to world conquering scales, requires an architecture where most people do not have peer wallets, but client wallets, and most transactions are consolidated into fewer and larger transactions by important peer wallets functioning somewhat like banks before the transactions are entered into the blockchain. The Lightning Network is intended to have transactions consolidated by important peer wallets functioning somewhat like banks, but it is not altogether clear how this will work in practice, or if it will work in practice.
On Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 10:04:23PM -0800, Steven Schear wrote:
Clearly they are not, yet. The problems are somewhat multi-dimensional and
Are there attempts to mitigate dishonest majority?
For obvious fraud and thefts, yes. Stashcrypto's multi-sig Voting Pools, if widely adopted, have a good chance to quell some of the illicit activities. However, there are so many ways markets and exchanges can and are manipulated (e.g., "painting the tape") that it will clearly take some time and maturing of exchanges before this can happen. On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 4:32 AM, Georgi Guninski <guninski@guninski.com> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 25, 2017 at 10:04:23PM -0800, Steven Schear wrote:
Clearly they are not, yet. The problems are somewhat multi-dimensional and
Are there attempts to mitigate dishonest majority?
On 12/29/2017 10:13 AM, Steven Schear wrote:
For obvious fraud and thefts, yes. Stashcrypto's multi-sig Voting Pools, if widely adopted, have a good chance to quell some of the illicit activities. However, there are so many ways markets and exchanges can and are manipulated (e.g., "painting the tape") that it will clearly take some time and maturing of exchanges before this can happen.
Bitcoin is obviously broken in so many ways, but is working because of social coordination by a behind the scenes group who simply refuse to allow those breaks to happen. This, however, is obviously unsatisfactory. Instead of relying on the obviously corrupt and hostile federal reserve, we are relying on a secretive conspiracy that we have some reason to hope is friendly, but it is still a secretive conspiracy.
On Fri, 29 Dec 2017 11:06:34 +1000 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
On 12/29/2017 10:13 AM, Steven Schear wrote:
For obvious fraud and thefts, yes. Stashcrypto's multi-sig Voting Pools, if widely adopted, have a good chance to quell some of the illicit activities. However, there are so many ways markets and exchanges can and are manipulated (e.g., "painting the tape") that it will clearly take some time and maturing of exchanges before this can happen.
Bitcoin is obviously broken in so many ways, but is working because of social coordination by a behind the scenes group who simply refuse to allow those breaks to happen.
and what group is that?
This, however, is obviously unsatisfactory. Instead of relying on the obviously corrupt and hostile federal reserve, we are relying on a secretive conspiracy that we have some reason to hope is friendly, but it is still a secretive conspiracy.
you mean blockstream?
jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Bitcoin is obviously broken in so many ways, but is working because of social coordination by a behind the scenes group who simply refuse to allow those breaks to happen.
On 12/29/2017 11:35 AM, juan wrote:
and what group is that?
As I said, a secretive and conspiratorial group, acting behind the scenes. World travelling crypto anarchists from the USA met up with the Chinese diaspora, both of whom are noted for doing stuff from the shadows.
participants (5)
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Georgi Guninski -
James A. Donald -
jamesd＠echeque.com
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juan -
Steven Schear