Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I was just wondering, how to understand differences in these kind of blockchains and its combinations.

Public - open for public
Private - closed for public
Permissionless - no further permission to read, propose TXs or take part on consensus
Permissioned - some restriction on different levels (read, propose TXs or take part on consensus)

Now combinations:

Public permissionless - just bitcoin and other staff (free and open)
Private Permissioned - Maybe just internal blockchain in some organization
Private Permissionless - doesnt exist

Public permissioned - Now the intersting part begins (at least for me)

How to define this kind? I can imagine some blockchain which is open source and doesnt restrict at least Read or Proposing TXs permissions for public, but the consensus part is restricted to certain entities.

In real world (dont hate me, Im not fan of it) it could be something like Ripple, or is there any other project which suits better?
Do you have better explanation for these terminology nuances? or Public permissioned blockchain is just same as Private permissioned blockchain at all

(thx. for your time, looking forward for constructive answers and suggestions )

Public permissioned means that the track records can be seen in a blockchain explorer, but in order to transact you need permission from a third party. Im not sure if Ripple would fall intos this category. In theory you can send a transaction to anyone you want, but I don't consider it decentralized at all so in theory it is permissioned.

Private permissioned means just the opposite, or the records being obfuscated or not available at all, and you would also need permission from someone else. I don't know what the use for this would be, probably bureaucratic government stuff which wouldn't be on their interest to make it public, and it would also need permission from someone with higher authority to transact and modify the blockchain at all.

The only true innovation in blockchain is Bitcoin, the rest are just spreadsheets which may or not improve current spreadsheet setups.

Thx for your anwer, if i understand well u count is as a public  if it fits atleast into the first criterion

1) Read - blockchain explorer
2) Submit TX - send money
3) be part of consensus mechanism - validate TXs, create blocks

The question was theoretical, and decentralization is not important within this question.
(I wondered where is the line to tell that its public and not private)

I think thats a pretty clear line.
If its accessable by everyone (without any limitations) = public
If only a specific circle of people has access / if access is granted in dependence from properties = private

One critical difference between public and private blockchains: private blockchains don't need miners.  Since the blockchain is private that means all nodes connected to the blockchain are known and trusted there is no need for miners.

An example of a private blockchain would be smart contracts for settlements between banks.

Obviously an example of a public blockchain is Bitcoin.

How does a private, permissioned blockchain exist? What is the incentive for a miner if they aren't rewarded with anything?

Surely at that point it'd just be a centralised database.

In a private blockchain, miners aren't needed.  This is because all nodes in the private network are known and trusted.  Users of the private network create signed messages that are recorded in the blockchain.  Any computational or storage costs are shared by the private blockchain users.

Think of a consortium of 100 banks seeking to reduce costs and increase efficiency by clearing transactions among themselves.  (Right now banks use clearinghouses for this)  Every bank has its own copy of the blockchain so it's not centralized.  They communicate over a secure network (i.e. not the internet) and use their own servers for storage and processing.

Keep in mind that the private blockchain I described is not Bitcoin but probably some kind of smart contracts like Ethereum.

I have seen one blockchain based startup that raised funding via private sale. I forgot the name, I will try to recall it and tell you when I remembered it. The blockchain company is building a blockchain for shipping industry and logistic industry. But the clients don't want their logs and records to be available for competitors. Because they think when competitors know their logistics record via open blockchain, the competitor company could use this against their business model or could affect the operation and trade secrets. As you all know, almost any data now is crucial for business, hence the "data is the new oil". This blockchain startup is building a permissioned blockchain. Where any businesses could use, but only certain individuals could only access their own records. Company A, B, and C could use this blockchain. But only approved individuals can access data from for specific company, employee 1 can access it's own company A blockchain records, but there's no way he can see the records from company B and C. That's how they put it. Sorry for long post. I am still catching up the whole blockchain thing.

I don't understand why you'd use a blockchain for that purpose. It just seems like people are using it as a buzzword that means "[centralized and proprietary] immutable database".

Agree

I was thinking about a same approach. Just want to know another opinions.

just note. The topic is about deffinition of Public Permissioned

Hyperledger fabrics are examples of the implementation of the allowed blockchain framework and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by The Linux Foundation. It has been designed to meet the needs of this company.

I think permissioned mean it is not anonymous.

(anonymous mean anyone can create infinite identities for free with the same right and privilege as others.)



permissioned identity cannot be created for free, because if it was possible some kind of central authority, or some kind of reputation score is needed to provide permissions to new identities.

so identities became a valuable collateral that can be used to provide trust in the environment.
So it is not possible to perform sybil attack

If permissions are provided by central authority, central authority IS the owner of the environment, identities have to be connected with central autority, to check other identity permissions so central authority can check identities and ban them if they try to cheat. End of history, no blockchain needed.

If permissions are provided by some kind of reputation score, identities have to know each others and can comunicate to share signed data. If an identity became uncooperative others identity can simply ban it. so, the same as centalized, no blockchain is needed.

I don't know hyperledger at all, but as if it is a tool to build  permissioned blockchain it is a no sense and a waste of time and resource.
I'm really sad to see the The Linux Foundation involucrated in this kind of crappy technology.
If you verify you don't need to trust.

'Anonymous' means there is no way to link a digital identity (or transactions/addresses/whatever..) to the person (or an identity) itself.
This does NOT mean that one can create 'infinite identities'.

Take bitcoin for example. You can create as much addresses as you wish. But this does not mean bitcoin is anonymous.
It can be traced (if not concealed). Bitcoin is pseudonymous.

Monero on the other hand is anonymous. You can also create as much addresses as you wish (like in bitcoin), but the transactions itself are not visible to everyone.
Withou an attack on the network, monero is anonymous. Since you can't link a transaction to a public key / identity.

I'm sorry, you missed the point, sometime my answer was missing something.
bitcoin IS tool to solve a specific problem: creating permissioned identity inside an anonymous environment.
if you already have a permissioned environment you don't need the blockchain, it is already permissioned, as permissioned identity can give permissions to permissionless identity

i'm sorry it is a little complicated, but I'm trying to show how pointless it is.
so a tool to create tools to create permissions is totally pointless,
You are trying to sell a product to create products to solve problems already solved.!!!!!!!

talking about private/pubblic permissioned blockchains, is pointless. It is only marketing, trying to resell the technology behind bitcoins, to create inefficent and insecure environments, inside an efficent and secure environment! You are evil.
SEPA or SWIFT already use pseudonimous(your account number) and they far better, more efficent than blockchain. Using blockchain for their business is totally pointless. You are complicating something simple for marketing purpose.


sure I can create infinite addresses every address is a different permissionless identity

you are right, anonimous != different than pseudonymous,
it can be traced until you don't hide yourself in a correct way, obfuscation cannot be trusted to hide. it is simpy the wrong way to do things.

monero is pointless too. you can not obfucate to hide, it is simply stupid. It is like trusting WEP can protect your wireless link ever, or md5 will never be collided. It is wrong history have shown us. You don't know which secret technology someone other have. You don't know if tomorrow someone discover how to crack elliptic curves.
If you would like to hide, you have to hide not obfuscate.
Bitcoin don't trust encryption, it uses encryption for very specific replaceable task.
Bitcoin have a double protection where he use encription. it is using double sha256 for mining, and ripmed to protect your public key. signing have a temporal validity, as if someone crack elliptic curves, tomorow, you can trust up to today the identity(real owner) signed it. but new signed message cannot be trusted. Thats why pgp key pais should allways have an expiration date. you can't trust them forever.

I think I get the gist of what you are trying to say, but note that "permissioned" vs "permissionless" in the context of blockchains usually means something different: Permissionless means that no single entity can prevent anyone else from sending a transaction. Permissioned means that there are central entities that have the power to prevent certain transactions from being settled. I might be wrong, but I think the concept you are referring to is "trustless" vs "trusted". In both cases it's silly to apply the concept of permissionlessness and trustlessness to centrally controlled ledgers though, with that I fully concur.



SEPA and SWIFT are not pseudonimous. There are central lookup tables, otherwise banks wouldn't know where to send the money. No such thing with cryptocurrencies, not even the centralized ones.

No, you don't fully get the point, somtime we simply think too different to understand each others.
I will try another, last I promise, example.

A public permissioned blockchain using bitcoin:
I can use vanitygen to create a permissioned system inside bitcoin by asking people to only using addresses starting with 1permissionedPublicXXX....

./vanitygen 1permissionedPublicXXX -i
Difficulty: 127776224908373048982148928882476
[491.60 Kkey/s][total 2209792][Prob 0.0%][50% in 5.712859e+18y]

a system needing something like this, is already permissioned, it don't need the blockchain. It don't need to be inside the bitcoin blockchain.

Partecipants can simply share transactions with other partecipants and be sure no one will cheat. Uncooperative node will be simply banned outside the system. thats because messages are signed, so signed messages can be proved to exists and cheater/uncooperative can be identified and banned by others partecipants.

That's my point.

EDITED:
TOTALLY EDITED

this example was a little forced as a system needing something like this can be used as some kind of authentication. but I hope it is an abuse.

The fact that you can create a large amount of addresses doesn't mean that this is the definition of anonymous.  ::)




Thats not comparable.
WEP had a bad design. Noone thought that there won't be a MD5 collision ever.. Collisions are going to happen. Thats almost certain.
There is no way a collision can't happen when the input size > output size.

It also seems you don't have a clue how monero actually works.

Despite of any 'secret technology', one can surely know that somone will NOT 'discover' how to 'crack' ECC tomorrow.

This topic is VERY important, because most people do not understand the difference between Public Permissionless and

Private Permissioned Blockchains. The Banks will probably introduce Private Permissioned Blockchains very soon, where they

as a centralized entity will have FULL control over the Blockchain. All mining will be done by them and you will need Permission

to access it. This is 100% against what Satoshi envisioned for this technology, but Banks and Governments wants to use the

technology, but THEY want to have FULL control over every aspect of it.  >:(

I see more and more people who understand this and it kind of makes me feel better about the topic. But if a marketing person of a bank wants to use the hype, and a database engineer of them really finds that a permissioned blockchain has 1% less chance of doing this, while taking 90% more of that, and they believe in their calculation (which might include marketing or not) that they need it, then I'm happy for them. There are quite some people arguing about production chains, and that somehow the blockchain would reflect they way of producing and assuring. I don't need it, but maybe they really need it.

someone is talking about a permissioned subcoin where users HAVE TO use a multisig address, and ask for reptilian permissoion,  to sign transactions and allow users and force them to transact only between permissioned address.

If a governnment force users to transact only between authorized address, using multisig in example, bitcoins will be splitted in two(permissioned or free) they can have 2 different value, and be accepted or denied by stores.
This idea was the worst thing ever. please fight for your right to be free.

One important note:

Right now, Bitcoin IS NOT a public permissionless  blockchain. You should buy hardware (get permission) from Bitmain to mine blocks on this chain. Face it!

That's not what permissionless means in the context of blockchains though.

Permissionless means that anyone can receive a transaction from anyone without any central entity being able to refuse or block that transaction. That Bitmain is the currently dominating mining hardware provider has nothing to do with it. Or would you also argue that you need to "get permission" from NVIDIA / AMD to mine alt coins?

What  ???  File a patent  ;D you just discovered a new kind of blockchain, congrats!

Being able to claim a transaction (announcing it and putting it in the mempool) is more about a blockchain being public.

To be permissionless means no need to get permission from a central authority for participating in the protocol to change the state of the machine, the blockchain , not just for claiming but for committing the transactions.

What does 'receiving' mean in this 'context' by the way?
oops! It is new terminology, my bad, I almost forgot you are an inventor, my apologies.

And there is huge difference between buying stuff from Intel, Nvidia, AMD, ... with buying a miner from Bitmain, don't you see it? In the latter case you buy a special purpose device for a special application: participating in bitcoin blockchain protocol but as for cpu/gpu  the manufacturer/distributor has no clue about what you are going to do with the device. Are you pretending or you are simply ignorant?

Apart from coinbase transactions there's no state to be changed without people sending transactions. Which transactions gets added to the blockchain and which not is not dependent on a singly entity, not even Bitmain.

Merely producing mining hardware does not put Bitmain in control of the network, regardless of the devices being specialized hardware. If that were the case Bitcoin Cash would have ended up being the canonical Bitcoin blockchain.

Whether you buy mining hardware from Bitmain, NVIDIA or AMD makes no difference, apart from Bitmain actively mining themselves. Looking at mining rigs and large scale alt coin mining operations (ie. the ones buying GPUs wholesale), GPUs stop being consumer devices once they are put to work on whatever alt is most profitable to mine. Hell, crypto mining had such an impact on the hardware market that GPU prices have risen substantially, leading to crypto enthusiasts being cursed by gamers all over the world. The impact of people mining as a hobby, on the other hand, using devices they use primarily as consumers (ie. gaming in the case of GPU) is negligible nowadays.

So yes, due to the industrialization of mining economics of scale has become more important than ever, making it hard for hobbyists to enter the mining market. But no, this does not make a blockchain permissioned or censorship-prone, as transactions are unaffected and for every miner that would wish to reject your transaction, another one will happily add it to the blockchain.

Either way, you obviously simply have a different definition of what the term "permissionless" is supposed to mean. Unfortunately it's neither useful nor being used.

People 'send' transactions to banks and it eventually changes the bank databases' states and thus banking systems are permissionless?!

In a permissionless  cash transfer system it is not enough for people to be free to produce transactions they need to be free to oversee and participate in committing the transactions. Is that so hard to understand?

Yes it does! Bitmain IS in charge of Bitcoin blockchain whether you admit it or not.

Bitcoin Cash story was written by Bitmain and it happened the way Bitmain wanted it to happen. We are not talking about what his majesty wants to do, it is about what he can do!


So, Bitmain has set free Bitcoin and the whole civilization and specially gaming community with an ASIC crack against SHA256. What a fortunate incident!  ;D


You mean, Bitmain will commit my transaction eventually, thanks god! We are free to make transactions and his majesty will take our fees and commit them in his permissionless blockchain, our money is safe and we are happy for now and who cares about the future anyway?

There is no future, we already know, don't we? Bitcoin is not an alternative monetary system, it is just an 'asset', kept safe enough by Bitmain, a company that is incentivized enough to keep it safe. Am I missing something or it is exactly how you and guys like you, re-invented bitcoin?


My perception of a permissionless blockchain requires people to be able in both generating addresses and transactions and committing (participating to commit)  transactions into the network, without buying/renting  a device/license from Bitmain or anywho to do so, is there any other definition publicly available?

Ripple for instance is known to be a permissioned system because critical roles exist there that people can not simply take without undergoing a process and get/buy a license. People can check the state, can generate transactions but can not participate in changing the state further without permission, it is a permissioned system and bitcoin, practically is not in a  better situation with ASICs and Bitmain.

Ha, nice counterpoint ;D

But no, a bank can deny your transaction, ie. prevent you from changing the bank's database. They can even reverse a transaction if they feel like it. They can even prevent you from accessing your own money for an indetermined amount of time.

A miner can do none of these things. That's the difference, and it's a crucial one.



Mining is free though. Not free as in beer, but free as in freedom. It may not be profitable, but in theory there's plenty of old miners around that you could point at the Bitcoin network.

Given enough capital and expertise, you could even develop your own ASIC hardware. There's no central entity or regulation holding you back. No one you need to ask for permission for.




So what can he do?



Bitmain was by far not the first company to enter the mining market with a SHA256 ASIC. And they likely won't be the last. It's a free market after all.

GMO will soon show whether they can deliver:
https://news.bitcoin.com/japans-internet-giant-gmo-launch-7nm-bitcoin-miner-june/

Samsung is also entering the mining market:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/263254-samsung-begins-manufacturing-asic-chips-mining-cryptocurrency



Please elaborate on what you mean by "reinventing Bitcoin"



That one for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain


Bitmain does neither control Bitcoin nor do they prevent other people from entering the network as miners. Merely having to buy dedicated hardware to profitably mine does not constitute access denial. Even as far back as 2012/2013 one could only profitably mine with a dedicated miner, except in that case you had to buy from AMD. And no one would have ever claimed that AMD is charging a "license fee" for mining BTC despite being the only company to offer a family of GPUs that could profitably mine.



Any company can produce ASICs. As mentioned above, many did before Bitmain. And likely even more will after. Permissioned blockchains require legitimization by a central entity. Bitcoin mining does not. Creating Bitcoin mining hardware does not.