Bitcoin Forum

MIT researchers have developed a new cryptocurrency that drastically reduces the data users need to join the network and verify transactions — by up to 99 percent compared to today’s popular cryptocurrencies. This means a much more scalable network.
https://news.mit.edu/2019/vault-faster-more-efficient-cryptocurrency-0124

Could you please explain in a few words the technology they are going to use?

I mean it would be nice to write a short summary of review of what they are actually planning to do in the OP. But I suspect the they are simply going to run a couple of servers to make it look like their coin is "99 percent more efficient compared to today’s popular cryptocurrencies". Also, is this news somehow related to the other news about a bunch of scientists from a few American universities developing another Bitcoin killer coin?

MIT students are bright but do not have industry experience which counts for a lot in this world. They should simply release a journal and then let real developers get involved to challenge all the blockchains

A 'new bitcoin' or a "better than bitcoin" cryptocurrency has been created every month.So far,no coin has proven that it deserves the right to be the new king of crypto.All those articles are a bunch of BS.
It would be great if they really create such energy efficient crypto,but I highly doubt it.

The issue is - what is 'better?'

You can easily have something with more technical bells and whistles. Bitcoin has a ten year head start in terms of attracting users, developers and track record. It's had the shit kicked out of it forever and is still standing. That's an infinitely better better to have than a quicker block time.

The time for a 'bitcoin killer' would've been 2009-11 ish. After that it becomes harder every single day.

Yeah, that would likely require a new Satoshi Nakamoto

However, it is not about a new Bitcoin killer coin but rather one of the existing altcoins attracting more user attention and acquiring more real adoption in the long haul. For example, Dogecoin was created mostly for kicks and it had twice as much shit kicked out of it while it is still alive and kicking. Indeed, it can't be a Bitcoin killer as that would be beyond such ridiculous even for Dogecoin. Nevertheless, Litecoin could easily become that competitor to Bitcoin, at least as far as real use is considered

Bitcoin died for how many times with all the attacks ( government criticism) and just basing on all of the coins/tokens on the market as of now.They had tried out their
best to beat up Bitcoin in the spot but as you said having a quicker block time wont beat up a coin which is standing on the top spot for how many years. Establishing and
retaining that spot isnt something or focused only on block issues.

The question is not that everything new will be bad for Bitcoin, because it remains almost unchanged. Cryptocurrency will be improved all the same and it is very good. The current cryptocurrency is still very difficult for practical use by ordinary people. It is necessary to try to simplify it and make it more convenient, otherwise the broad masses will not join it.

So this is basically a coin which uses less data compared to bitcoin as you can join the network by downloading a fraction of the data, if you investing in mining machines who will not dime out a few hundred dollars to get a terabyte hardisk and the hard disk prices are not that huge now a days, when it comes to bitcoin every miner has the entire record of the data and i feel it is more safe and having half the data and who holds the entire data, a couple of systems running them. ::) I am not sure how they will be deleting empty accounts, if they can do that how secure it can be. ???

The situation with this new crypto vs bitcoin is similar to the situation between banks and bitcoin. Banks have been there long before bitcoin and even though they aren't working 24/7 and bitcoin is, it didn't take over and isn't going to take over just like that. There are altcoins which are faster or more anonymous than BTC and they aren't taking over. The world doesn't work like that.

They compare what's happening here with what happened during the dot com boom, so it doesn't surprise me that they bring it like that. I have seen numerous articles where Bitcoin was said to be the next pets dot com, while they complety ignore how important Bitcoin's network effect is. That same network effect is helping Ethereum shake off competitors.

In the end, basically every useful feature that is providing some sort of fundamental improvement over what Bitcoin currently has, can be implemented.

They're using some variant of sharding to achieve scaling. That immediately throws into question how secure the system is, since the concept of "fully validating node" is basically upended.

It would take decades, if ever, for such technology to be proven secure. And then it'll need to contend with Bitcoin's first mover advantage.

I personally have a lot of trust and respect towards the Bitcoin devs, because over the years I've seen how careful they are, they understand the responsibility of working with system that is worth billions of dollars, they would accept no tradeoffs that compromise security. And IMO stability and security are the ultimate values for any cryptocurrency. If your coin is potentially unsecure, no one will hodl it long term and only use it as a proxy, which could mean more volatility and problems with consensus algorithms. So, any coin that claims to be "more efficient" needs to be as secure as Bitcoin to pass the test.