This paper POEM: Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.04305) was just published to arxiv.  It seems like a much better way to measure the heaviest chain tip as well as minimize time to resolve orphans.  It can instantaneously resolve 67% of orphans rather than having to wait for the next block.  Additionally, it seems to have better finalization time guarantees for a given hash.  Also, it has an equation that relates to finalization that would create objective measurable preference between different hash functions.

[GridPlus 1 2 ETH Treasure Hunt]

GridPlus 1 2 ETH Treasure Hunt

In preparing for the launch of the GridPlus Lattice1, we have setup a little puzzle for everyone. There is 1 2 ETH hidden in the pattern of the Lattice1 box. Think you can find it, try your guess at gridplus . If you need a hint 1 in 10 people that retweet the last hint will get the next hint early. Learn more at GridPlus.io



 

This post was deleted from the self moderated Minisketch thread, so I decided to start a new one so people can discuss.

We don't plan on changing how the mempool works-- rather, for each peer a sketch would be kept with all the transactions that your node would like to send / expect to receive with that peer. It takes a bit of memory but it's pretty negligible compared to other data kept per peer (such as the filters used to avoid redundant tx relay today).

Although, this is a very intriguing idea at first I have a couple of questions regarding incentives and resources of nodes as well as propagation latency.

In terms of peer sketches.  What determines how often a node will update a peer sketch? Are they doing it every time they get a transaction, or right after a peer requests it.  If they are doing it every time they get a transaction, the sketch takes more resources.  If they do it every time a peer requests an update, sketch creation causes a delay, followed by the delay in determining the difference and than subsequently requesting the deltas.  It was expressed that this could be done without a hard fork because it doesn't change the incentives.  I think that this does change the incentives of nodes in an indeterministic way which could lead to various forms of selfish and resource optimization behavior especially against small nodes.

The second question I have is how does this net effect latency.  The theoretical propagation time of data across the network is actually the upper bound on network throughput. Introducing latency to aggregate, share, compute, request and share transactions likely adds a lot of latency to the network which can actually decrease throughput.  Any thoughts on where the use of bandwidth competing with latency is optimal?

Does anyone have any idea why Satoshi made all values in the block-header stored as little endian in byte code except for the Merkle root?  It is a frustrating thing when working with code and I can't figure out why it would have been done this way?  Any guesses or thoughts or reasonings for this?

BlockReduce presents a new blockchain topology that offers 3+ orders of magnitude improvement in transaction throughput while avoiding the introduction of hierarchical power structures and centralization. This is accomplished through a modification to the block reward incentive to not only reward work, but to also reward optimization of network constraints and efficient propagation of transactions. This is accomplished by creating a Proof-of-Work (PoW) managed hierarchy of tightly-coupled, merge-mined blockchains.

Please take a look at the paper:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.00125.pdf

Here is a video presentation of BlockReduce presented at the McCombs Bitcoin Conference.

Also, here is a BIP draft to review and contribute to on Github.

Any comments or questions are greatly appreciated!

[Token Model:]

Grid+ leverages the Ethereum blockchain to give consumers direct access
 to wholesale energy markets. This allows customers to respond intelligently, which
 increases efficiency, decreases cost, and helps move us all to a cleaner future.

Announcements:
07/21/2017 - Blog: Why Ethereum Needs Stable Coins
07/17/2017 - Blog: No Country for Private Blockchains
07/17/2017 - Whitepaper Updated, specifically Token Mechanics! Available at gridplus.io
07/11/2017 - Whitepaper Released!



Press Coverage & Conferences

TTRcoin:ICO: Grid+ намеревается перевернуть рынок электроэнергии
TheMerkle: Grid+ Set to Disrupt Electricity Markets
EthNews: ConsenSys Introduces Grid-Based Solution For Energy Inefficiency
Transactive Energy Systems 2017: What is Blockchain’s Role in Transactive Energy Systems?
Consensus 2017: Energy Markets Panel
Rice Blockchain Conference: Ethereum Smart Battery Swarm


Abstract

In the past ten years the cost of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar panels and wind turbines has decreased significantly. This has led to expeditious and widespread adoption. Additionally, battery prices are rapidly decreasing, making them economically viable to supplement variable generation renewable resources by storing energy for the electrical grid. The confluence of these developments has created an emergent electrical grid where the means of production are less centralized and the control systems are less likely to be strictly top-down. The concept of independently owned and controlled DERs is known as the transactive energy grid.

The transactive grid promises to increase durability of the electrical grid while simultaneously increasing efficiency and enabling the adoption of more renewable energy. However, the distributed nature of the transactive grid poses two major challenges primarily related to technical control and grid administration. Both challenges can potentially be addressed using a blockchain. The ConsenSys energy team has several years of experience building and demonstrating proof-of-concept blockchain-based distributed energy resource management solutions. Through this experience, ConsenSys identified the opportunity to form Grid+, which will build natively Ethereum-based utilities in deregulated markets. Grid+ will demonstrate production ready blockchain-based energy solutions at scale in competitive commercial environments. In doing so, Grid+ will enable the transactive grid of the future while proving the advantages of Ethereum over incumbent technologies.

Grid+ is developing a hardware and software stack to create a secure Ethereum enabled gateway and connect Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The hardware gateway, or “smart energy agent”, is an Internet-enabled, always-on appliance which will securely store cryptocurrencies and process payments for electricity in real-time. The agent will also programmatically buy and sell electricity on behalf of the user and intelligently manage smart loads (e.g. Tesla Powerwall or Nest thermostat). The software stack will work in conjunction with the smart energy agent to make payments using a combination of Grid+ designed payment-channels and a Raiden network hub (when available). Grid+ is developing a system architecture that allows a typical user to leverage cryptocurrencies while remaining unaware of it’s use. Interestingly, the implementation of a secure, always-on system with low friction payment rails provides a missing piece of critical infrastructure in the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. The Grid+ infrastructure has many uses beyond electricity and will be key to enabling the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies.

How does Grid+ Work?

Grid+ functions as a commercial utility in select deregulated markets in the United States. Grid+ agent devices pay for all electricity bills automatically and in real-time. All payments are done over state channels using BOLT tokens. Each BOLT token is equal to $1.00USD and is are 100% backed by USD deposit. All fees from these payments are held by a fee vault smart-contract called Karabraxos.




Fast Token Facts

Token Model: The Grid+ system will have a two token model.  One token known as GRID and the other known as BOLT.  GRID will be staked by Grid+ customers to allow customers access to near wholesale electricity prices.  The other token known as the BOLT will be a stable token backed by USD deposits and issued by Grid+. BOLT can be used by Grid+ customers whom do not wish to have forex risk associated with cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum.

Token Sale: We will be holding a token sale of the GRID token sometime in Q3 of 2017.

Token Sale Cap: The sale of GRID tokens is planned to take place in a Reverse Dutch Auction with a cap which is yet to be determined.





Links

Website
Whitepaper
Twitter
Medium
Slack

All,
  There have been more and more discussions about banks exploring blockchain technology for various applications, one of which of course is money.  For example there was a recent article on coin telegraph http://cointelegraph.com/news/amidst-spike-in-bitcoin-price-japans-largest-bank-tests-blockchain-based-coin which talks about a major Japanese bank issuing their own cryptocurrency backed by the yen.  I was just wondering what peoples thoughts are on banks trying to get into this space and the potential advantages and dis-advantages of such a system. 

I can see how it would be an advantage for the bank to use the blockchain in a psuedo-open way so that business and people could process payments without having to use a payment processor.  Beyond this I only see disadvantages.  First, using the coin implies you are taking counter-party risk with the bank. Second, you are tying the value of the cryptocurrency to fiat, which is taking counter-party risk against the currency.

Would anyone here choose to use a such a system? Thoughts?

I deposited some BTC a few days back in bx.in.th to trade stellar.  I am now trying to withdrawal BTC and the withdrawal says that is "Awaiting Approval" for the last several hours.  Has anyone else had issues with withdrawing BTC?

I have been reading alot about the anonymity of the blockchain and the different methods for attempting to make transactions anonymous.
The technologies that help to keep a users anonymity seem to be two fold. 

The first is to prevent a wallet from being associated with a person.  The methods for preventing wallet association are focused on using an address a limited number of times, and preventing an address from being associated with an IP.  Anoncoin helps to do this by making the use of the TOR network native to the wallet, but the TOR network could be used with any cryptocurrency it is just the functionality is not native.  Also,  I find it very interesting that everyone in the internet world seems to trust that the government doesn't monitor TOR even though it was originally funded by the Office of Navel Research and the TOR foundation continues to receive approximately 80% of its funding from the US government.  As far as I understand TOR, if enough of the nodes are controlled by one entity the origin and the source of encrypted the traffic can still be ascertained.  But I digress...

The second method is to make it difficult to trace the movement of coins from one wallet to another, so that it is hard to draw connections between people to eliminate the possibility of a persons identity being determined through the identity of a person with whom they have transacted.  This is the whole concept of a mixing service.  You send you coins to a pool of addresses and they sit there for a period of time and get mixed about with other people who sent there coins to the mixing service.  The coins are then sent to a receiving address(es) over some period of time to prevent the sending and receiving addresses from being associated.  This is what darksend is using.  The primary advantage of darksend is that you do not have to trust any of you coins to a mixing service so there is no counterparty risk.  Also, if darksend is used for every transaction rather than just one or two were you want to "anonymize" your coins, it will be many order of magnitudes harder to use network analysis to identify people in the network.

The last option that people have talked about is using the method purposed by Zerocoin.  This uses some pretty advanced mathematics which I haven't honestly dug into but involves using zero-confirmation proofs...  Anyway, the biggest problem with Zerocoin beside the fact that the method is very data intensive, so it will make for in impractically large blockchain, is it doesn't currently exist.

Therefore, I was wondering if there are any technologies that are better than Darkcoins Darksend at this point in time for anonymizing transactions?

With the new prominence of Vertcoin in the world, a large number of exchanges have added a VTC/BTC market.  Here is the list that I have compiled. Please let me know if I missed anything.

Cryptsy
https://www.cryptsy.com/

Coinedup
https://coinedup.com/OrderBook?market=VTC&base=BTC

BTER
https://bter.com/trade/vtc_btc

Coinmarket.io
https://www.coinmarket.io/market/VTCBTC

Freshmarket
https://freshmarket.co.in/index.php?page=trade&market=127

Poloniex
https://poloniex.com