The Ethereum Paradox

[Fuserleer]

AnonyMint thank you so much for this video. This is coming from a guy who has been into ETH from day one. You may remember me from Reddit. I was the first one to bring up this issue on their thread. (Sorry again for the drama queen remark), I never sold my stake, but it did cause me concern that nobody took your analysis seriously. Instead you were called a scammer. Not cool for a community that prides itself on being different from this cesspool. As of now, I sold all my ETH. I would love to reinvest, but I am not satisfied that Ethereum is future proof.  I am done with cryptos for the time being, so my money is going back to Silver. I will keep an eye out for your project, but this is it for me. Take care trolls, shills, pumpers, dumpers, traders, devs, investors, bagholders, and Shelby.  

Doesn't sound like a real story to me.  Sounds like something you completely made up.

stoat. All you have to do is look at my post history on reddit (farage11) to see I was a fanboy for well over a year. You can also check my history and see that I went all in a few months ago after selling my IPO during the last run up in August. I could care less what you think. Imo, you are nothing more than a unkowledagble shill who badgers AnonyMint with sticks and stones, while he comes back with nukes. Your incessant shilling is juvenile. Name once where you have countered AnonyMints analysis with technical verbiage? Not once! You think people can't read your rebuttals? Show us your techical accumen and put AnonyMint in his place. Show us... that's what I thought. You are out of your depth, and that fact is a fact. Take care stoat, and know thyself. Something tells me that may be harder to attain then ETH's scaling problem.

Can you explain anonymints technical complaint as you understand it?  Because not one time has he explained it clearly and unobscurely.  And also explain why EXACTLY it is a completely unsolvable problem?  My reading comprehension is second to none and I'm university educated, I have no problems understanding everything else I read but I can't seem for the life of me, able to reach that "aha moment" when anonymint explains this "completely unsolvable problem".

What was your "aha moment"? And can you explain how you arrived at it.

Being someone with first hand experience, and the technical knowledge to present challenges to TPTB's arguments when applicable, I can tell you its just too damn painful to do so.

No developer worth any salt is going to engage with him because it simply devolves into name calling if you don't align with his thoughts.  Before long the n00b, b-lister, you are not worthy comments start regardless of if he's right or not and its just a noisy waste of time.  The discussion ends in a blaze of fire with one of the parties leaving, usually it's not TPTB that has departed (he can argue all damn day) so it "looks" from the outside that he won, even if in reality his "facts" are wrong.

These days I'd rather go and pull my own teeth with a set of pliers than engage in any kind of discussion because its a less painful experience.

You could simply say where he is wrong, bringing infos, arguments and facts. I'm somebody without much knowledge about the tech, that's why I read discussions about it. My impression in general is (and over months) that there is a lack of controversial discussions about ETH. It's nearly always about the price. My questions about Casper, just for example, were never replied - in no topic.

This is the first thread I know of that focusses on the technical side and the lonterm-potential and if ETH can be what it is aimed to be. And I don't believe that one side is completely right and the other side is totally wrong, but what I see is: All the concerns in this thread are not rebutted yet.

He very well might be correct, but its a difficult task to figure it out as everything from him is a brain dump wall of text, with added shouting.

Not to mention that he changes his mind on things frequently, one day something isn't possible, then it is, then he has invented the best thing since slice bread relating to the issue at hand, then it isn't possible again.

Simply put, partitions for transactions are possible (we've done it, both with a block chain and with a ledger).  Block chain based partitions are inefficient, ledger based partitions are not.  ETH will be hard pressed to scale transactions with partitions on a block chain in excess of 2k+ tps, we've had public tests of partitioned ledgers nearing 3k tps (anyone is welcome to come and test it), and small WAN tests up to 10k+tps and I'm still not finished.

Partitions with scripts/contacts are a different kettle of fish, depending on the architecture, this may or may not be possible and the jury is still out on it.  

The main issue is that you have a lot more data, or states, and have to ensure that there are no cross-partition conflicts of those states.  

Further adding to the issue is that the states can be arbitrary, and a script/contract can have many of them.  In the case of a transaction it is defined in the core protocol what the state of a transaction is and how that transaction can behave.  With a script/contract you don't have that luxury as they can define their own states, sub-states and sub-protocols depending on the functionality.

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[stoat]

Or he gets called out on his bullshit and then quits the thread claiming he's tired when he lost the argument.

[tempus]

AnonyMint thank you so much for this video. This is coming from a guy who has been into ETH from day one. You may remember me from Reddit. I was the first one to bring up this issue on their thread. (Sorry again for the drama queen remark), I never sold my stake, but it did cause me concern that nobody took your analysis seriously. Instead you were called a scammer. Not cool for a community that prides itself on being different from this cesspool. As of now, I sold all my ETH. I would love to reinvest, but I am not satisfied that Ethereum is future proof.  I am done with cryptos for the time being, so my money is going back to Silver. I will keep an eye out for your project, but this is it for me. Take care trolls, shills, pumpers, dumpers, traders, devs, investors, bagholders, and Shelby.  

Doesn't sound like a real story to me.  Sounds like something you completely made up.

stoat. All you have to do is look at my post history on reddit (farage11) to see I was a fanboy for well over a year. You can also check my history and see that I went all in a few months ago after selling my IPO during the last run up in August. I could care less what you think. Imo, you are nothing more than a unkowledagble shill who badgers AnonyMint with sticks and stones, while he comes back with nukes. Your incessant shilling is juvenile. Name once where you have countered AnonyMints analysis with technical verbiage? Not once! You think people can't read your rebuttals? Show us your techical accumen and put AnonyMint in his place. Show us... that's what I thought. You are out of your depth, and that fact is a fact. Take care stoat, and know thyself. Something tells me that may be harder to attain then ETH's scaling problem.

Can you explain anonymints technical complaint as you understand it?  Because not one time has he explained it clearly and unobscurely.  And also explain why EXACTLY it is a completely unsolvable problem?  My reading comprehension is second to none and I'm university educated, I have no problems understanding everything else I read but I can't seem for the life of me, able to reach that "aha moment" when anonymint explains this "completely unsolvable problem".

What was your "aha moment"? And can you explain how you arrived at it.

Being someone with first hand experience, and the technical knowledge to present challenges to TPTB's arguments when applicable, I can tell you its just too damn painful to do so.

No developer worth any salt is going to engage with him because it simply devolves into name calling if you don't align with his thoughts.  Before long the n00b, b-lister, you are not worthy comments start regardless of if he's right or not and its just a noisy waste of time.  The discussion ends in a blaze of fire with one of the parties leaving, usually it's not TPTB that has departed (he can argue all damn day) so it "looks" from the outside that he won, even if in reality his "facts" are wrong.

These days I'd rather go and pull my own teeth with a set of pliers than engage in any kind of discussion because its a less painful experience.

You could simply say where he is wrong, bringing infos, arguments and facts. I'm somebody without much knowledge about the tech, that's why I read discussions about it. My impression in general is (and over months) that there is a lack of controversial discussions about ETH. It's nearly always about the price. My questions about Casper, just for example, were never replied - in no topic.

This is the first thread I know of that focusses on the technical side and the lonterm-potential and if ETH can be what it is aimed to be. And I don't believe that one side is completely right and the other side is totally wrong, but what I see is: All the concerns in this thread are not rebutted yet.

He very well might be correct, but its a difficult task to figure it out as everything from him is a brain dump wall of text, with added shouting.

Not to mention that he changes his mind on things frequently, one day something isn't possible, then it is, then he has invented the best thing since slice bread relating to the issue at hand, then it isn't possible again.

Simply put, partitions for transactions are possible (we've done it, both with a block chain and with a ledger).  Block chain based partitions are inefficient, ledger based partitions are not.  ETH will be hard pressed to scale transactions with partitions on a block chain in excess of 2k+ tps, we've had public tests of partitioned ledgers nearing 3k tps (anyone is welcome to come and test it), and small WAN tests up to 10k+tps and I'm still not finished.

Partitions with scripts/contacts are a different kettle of fish, depending on the architecture, this may or may not be possible and the jury is still out on it.  

The main issue is that you have a lot more data, or states, and have to ensure that there are no cross-partition conflicts of those states.  

Further adding to the issue is that the states can be arbitrary, and a script/contract can have many of them.  In the case of a transaction it is defined in the core protocol what the state of a transaction is and how that transaction can behave.  With a script/contract you don't have that luxury as they can define their own states, sub-states and sub-protocols depending on the functionality.

Thank you for that answer and the further explanation! First: I don't care that much about personalities but sure, sometimes it can be a problem in discussions. In general I just try to filter out what's relevant.

I have to admit that I still don't understand it deeply but your explanation in the context of the discussion and my own researches about ETH seem to me like a confirmation that ETH is highly doubtable. I mean, it's a multi-million-dollar-project and there are obviously issues without solutions. Or with other words: It seems to me as if the ETH-team itself does not know yet how to solve these problems.

My own concerns were mainly about the eco-system if they switch to PoS. I know more about economy than about the technical side and I believe even if it would technically work, a PoS-System must lead into centralization and centralization would make the project irrelevant, impossible to trust it - even more when it comes to contracts. And if I'm right it has no chance in the real economy. Companies won't trust a system if it has no chance in longterm. Not totally sure if I'm right, maybe there are solutions to avoid centralization but if I understand this thread rudimentary correct, there are a lot more problems to solve.

And that in combination with the impression of a highly manipulated market... doesn't look good. As a speculator it's most likely possible to make some profit in the future, because of the hype, but if all those problems are real it's just a question of time that it's more widely discussed and more people would be careful with investing.

However, I'll continue to watch it and trying to understand if ETH has a chance or is doomed by design. But I won't invest any time soon.

[Fuserleer]

Being someone with first hand experience, and the technical knowledge to present challenges to TPTB's arguments when applicable, I can tell you its just too damn painful to do so.

No developer worth any salt is going to engage with him because it simply devolves into name calling if you don't align with his thoughts.  Before long the n00b, b-lister, you are not worthy comments start regardless of if he's right or not and its just a noisy waste of time.  The discussion ends in a blaze of fire with one of the parties leaving, usually it's not TPTB that has departed (he can argue all damn day) so it "looks" from the outside that he won, even if in reality his "facts" are wrong.

These days I'd rather go and pull my own teeth with a set of pliers than engage in any kind of discussion because its a less painful experience.

You could simply say where he is wrong, bringing infos, arguments and facts. I'm somebody without much knowledge about the tech, that's why I read discussions about it. My impression in general is (and over months) that there is a lack of controversial discussions about ETH. It's nearly always about the price. My questions about Casper, just for example, were never replied - in no topic.

This is the first thread I know of that focusses on the technical side and the lonterm-potential and if ETH can be what it is aimed to be. And I don't believe that one side is completely right and the other side is totally wrong, but what I see is: All the concerns in this thread are not rebutted yet.

He very well might be correct, but its a difficult task to figure it out as everything from him is a brain dump wall of text, with added shouting.

Not to mention that he changes his mind on things frequently, one day something isn't possible, then it is, then he has invented the best thing since slice bread relating to the issue at hand, then it isn't possible again.

Simply put, partitions for transactions are possible (we've done it, both with a block chain and with a ledger).  Block chain based partitions are inefficient, ledger based partitions are not.  ETH will be hard pressed to scale transactions with partitions on a block chain in excess of 2k+ tps, we've had public tests of partitioned ledgers nearing 3k tps (anyone is welcome to come and test it), and small WAN tests up to 10k+tps and I'm still not finished.

Partitions with scripts/contacts are a different kettle of fish, depending on the architecture, this may or may not be possible and the jury is still out on it.  

The main issue is that you have a lot more data, or states, and have to ensure that there are no cross-partition conflicts of those states.  

Further adding to the issue is that the states can be arbitrary, and a script/contract can have many of them.  In the case of a transaction it is defined in the core protocol what the state of a transaction is and how that transaction can behave.  With a script/contract you don't have that luxury as they can define their own states, sub-states and sub-protocols depending on the functionality.

Thank you for that answer and the further explanation! First: I don't care that much about personalities but sure, sometimes it can be a problem in discussions. In general I just try to filter out what's relevant.

I have to admit that I still don't understand it deeply but your explanation in the context of the discussion and my own researches about ETH seem to me like a confirmation that ETH is highly doubtable. I mean, it's a multi-million-dollar-project and there are obviously issues without solutions. Or with other words: It seems to me as if the ETH-team itself does not know yet how to solve these problems.

My own concerns were mainly about the eco-system if they switch to PoS. I know more about economy than about the technical side and I believe even if it would technically work, a PoS-System must lead into centralization and centralization would make the project irrelevant, impossible to trust it - even more when it comes to contracts. And if I'm right it has no chance in the real economy. Companies won't trust a system if it has no chance in longterm. Not totally sure if I'm right, maybe there are solutions to avoid centralization but if I understand this thread rudimentary correct, there are a lot more problems to solve.

And that in combination with the impression of a highly manipulated market... doesn't look good. As a speculator it's most likely possible to make some profit in the future, because of the hype, but if all those problems are real it's just a question of time that it's more widely discussed and more people would be careful with investing.

However, I'll continue to watch it and trying to understand if ETH has a chance or is doomed by design. But I won't invest any time soon.

You're welcome.  If I had more free time maybe I could get more involved with discussions and cut through the chaff, but unfortunately I don't.

I think you are right to have concerns about POS, its drawbacks from a technical and economical point of view are well documented and I myself was surprised that they even considered it, let alone roll on with an implementation.  To me it feels a bit like a knee jerk reaction with a rushed "betting" solution built on top that won't have had extensive testing performed upon it to see if it actually provides any protection where POS is lacking.

As for the centralization, the road to that with POS is short.  At least with POW there are recurring costs, electricity, hardware maintenance, and at Bitcoin's current hash rate you need a lot of infrastructure just to keep up if you want to hold anything close to influence.  With POS you simply need more money to maintain or increase your stake with little additional or on going effort in comparison.  Sure pure POW is very wasteful, but that is in part what provides the bulk of the protection.

When it came to a consensus mechanism for eMunie I first looked at what was currently available,  POS was the first one struck off the list and swiftly, so make of that what you will.

[TPTB_need_war]

I am very sleepy now. That is it for me today.

My gosh I slept 13 hours. I didn't want to wake up except I was so hungry (which isn't good for my gall bladder to go such a long time between meals).

Btw, I spoke on Skype with my friend from Australia (who was in the Philippines with me back in the early 1990s) and he said yesterday that he has gallstones and the doctors want to remove his gall bladder. He is experiencing nausea every day so he is very close to being forced to have the surgery. I urged him to start taking curcumin immediately and hope the stones don't dislodge and hope it will dissolve them over the long-term. Most advice is to not take curcumin if one has gallstones, but some few have recommended small doses over the long-term to try to dissolve the stones without dislodging them (which is incredibly painful and if they are too large to pass through the duct then emergency surgery becomes necessary). I am perhaps dealing with a similar issue (bile duct blockage) or pancreatic cancer (obviously not the fast moving variety which killed Jobs). My condition has improved dramatically since the worst of September 2015, because I started taking specific supplements to replace the glutathione (and B vitamins) I wasn't getting due to lack of proper digestion of food (glutathione is very protective of my brain and neurological effects such as the peripheral neuropathy symptoms I used to have but now which are virtually non-existent). And then I started the high dose (3 - 6 grams per day) curcumin about 5 weeks ago and significantly increased the dose to 20 - 30 grams per day roughly 3 weeks ago, which seems to have radically good effects. My symptoms now have nearly entirely stopped involving my brain and neuropathy and now nearly entirely focused on my gut and sleep. So in spite of being tired (and wishing I could work with full energy always), I am very happy with the improvement and inspired that this might be leading to the cure to this shit I've had for the past years.

I explained that asset transfers (crypto currency, etc) are compatible with partitions. I explained that scripts are not and explained the distinction in terms of external chaos that destroys the Nash equilibrium.

In case the video wasn't succinct (and some of you may have missed the end of the video as it was still uploading when I posted the link), if there exists external input/output ("I/O") (meaning the data on the block chain can be written to from a source external to the block chain independent of the data already on the block chain[1]), then the system is Turing complete (which was Nick Szabo and Gregory Maxwell's error when they didn't comprehend Wright's point[1]) thus it is not possible to bound the effects at partition boundaries. Although the validators will see a Nash equilibrium w.r.t. to their incentives (block rewards and in Casper consensus-by-betting penalties), the external effects will be chaotic and thus the value of the coin would collapse due to incorrect outcomes (from the perspective of the users of the system) and thus the Nash equilibrium collapses because validators need for their block rewards to have value in the external market. Apologies I didn't state this succinctly as I was already feeling somewhat tired yesterday evening when I started the video.

Whereas, the I/O for transactions (transferring assets such as crypto coins) is a directed acyclic graph and there is no external processing of coin outputs to input the values into another partition as a external input, thus the above does not apply to asset transfers in the context of strict partitioning (see below for caveat). For scripting on block chain, strict partitioning is impossible to obtain due to the point in the prior paragraph. That is why Ethereum's planned future Casper upgrade will not work.

I don't think UXTO or account balances has anything to do with why asset transfers are compatible with partitions while scripts are not.

I meant in the case where there are no transactions that cross partitions (i.e. where all transactions are fully contained within their partition). Once cross-partition transactions are considered, the design is much more complex as Fuserleer noted. In fact, I do believe that perhaps the same Nash equilibrium failure that applies to scripting (as stated above) may apply in the cross-partition design for asset transfers because there is a cascade of history. I need to think about this more. I will try to remember to comment on this point later.

[1]

please note the distinction that although asset transfer transactions (i.e. not scripting) can be written from external source, the data that can be written is dependent or restricted by the data that is already on the block chain, e.g. the UXTO. Wrights claim that Bitcoin's scripting is Turing complete hinges on the ability to store meta-data in the block chain from an external source, thus external state can be recorded in the block chain. However since Bitcoin does not support partitioning, I don't think (but I am not 100% certain yet) the smart contracting layers built on top of Bitcoin such as CounterParty can destroy the Nash equilibrium of Bitcoin.

Sounds like you just stumped yourself.

It is humorous to watch people who lack technical understanding try to judge what they read based on how they misperceive the emotions/demeanor of the person writing.

Dude you have no fucking clue. I am not stumped. I have a very clear understanding as explained in this post.

He very well might be correct, but its a difficult task to figure it out as everything from him is a brain dump wall of text, with added shouting.

Not to mention that he changes his mind on things frequently, one day something isn't possible, then it is, then he has invented the best thing since slice bread relating to the issue at hand, then it isn't possible again.

As the above clarification shows after a 70 minute video explanation, these issues have many subtle points that are very difficult to explain such that no one has a misunderstanding. For example, you were upthread assuming that in my video I was talking about cross-partition spending, but I was not. I have now clarified that for you in this post (and my prior post just before I slept).

I'd prefer if you stop the erroneous generalizations ad hominem. Thanks.

This area is very difficult to discuss in a forum setting. Not only the technical aspects are easily misunderstood if one detail is not mentioned, but also there are all the egos to deal with such as stoat's above. Please stop putting all the BS of a forum on my shoulders. I do what I can.

I got upset with monsterer inciting you in my Decentralization thead to go spam the thread with 25 posts of nonsense because you were not ready to reveal your entire specification and monsterer was trying to reverse engineer your design by asking a zillion questions and I asked him to take it else where but he refused. Readers can't benefit from that noise at all.

Look I like organization. I like clarity. I like specifications. And yeah I get frustrated with those who don't prioritize those. Asking questions about a specification I understand. Asking questions about an enigma (because you Fuserleer stated you weren't ready to reveal a specification and monsterer was challenging you to release a summary) is far too noisy. If monsterer and you were interested to have that sort of public discussion, you could do it in your own thread. I created my Decentralization thread to talk about issues that I was prepared to completely specify. Then you somehow blamed all of that on me. Then later monsterer didn't understand that a DAG such as Iota is a mathematical model, not a structural model of the trees. I asked him to please discuss it with me outside of my thread until he understood, because his posts were getting noisy because he was pursuing a line of inquiry that was inapplicable. Any way, these are examples of what you refer to as "shouting". Yeah I have to shout over the noise and say "Stop".

As for changing designs again this where I have to deal with your ego. You have changed designs numerous times. Accusing me of changing designs as if that is some sort of sin, thus makes you a hypocrite. Do you think I like to write this? Do you think I love to put the mirror in your face? Not really. You force me to.

[TPTB_need_war]

I have yet to see someone that gives a detailed technical Counter Argument to the Guys here which making me have doubts about ethereum "Long Term". Following this thread now

do you have a summary of what these doubts are long term? 8 pages is a bit much to read.

Just read the 1st Page and 1st TPTB_need_war first replay on the thread. Basicly i was very enthusiastic about CASPER and Scalability potential of ethereum.
Until i read some good technical counterargument, i'm reducing my investment in the ethereum project long term, which is best now since prices seems to be good enough for me.

I just read: http://www.multichain.com/blog/2015/11/smart-contracts-slow-blockchains/

they have some very good arguments, but does it mean ethereum is doomed? hard to say until they reach that point and possibly come up with another solution. you got to give it to them on the marketing front.

That multichain.com article is talking about the lack of parallelization, but as I (and CIYAM and even Vitalik) have pointed out (both upthread and in my video), parallelization can be fixed by simply restricting the inputs of scripts to data from already confirmed blocks (i.e. do not allow scripts in the current block to impact scripts in the current block).

Edit: by parallelization we mean the ability of a validator to validate more than one script simultaneously. Distinguish this from partitioning where we have validators who trust other validators (since not all validators validate all scripts).

That multichain.com article does not address my point about partition boundaries being impossible for scripting. That is my point and I am sure no one else has thought of it. I am the first to make that point. And this is a damning point because it means all validators (full nodes) must verify all scripts. And from that comes the other points I have made about why mining is forced economically to become centralized (and this applies to Bitcoin as well). Thus I have argued don't pretend that crypto currency has decentralized validation (verification) because it can't. And thus I argued just make the validation centralized and try to put the decentralized control else where in the design. Which is what I have contemplated for my design. Which I am working on.

Ethereum could hire me to solve their problem perhaps. I wouldn't charge $18 million.  

Fuserleer has been trying to teach the masses that miners of a successful coin always get rich. It is a necessary evil.

Not true in my contemplated design, because the mining is unprofitable.

[tokeweed]

I have yet to see someone that gives a detailed technical Counter Argument to the Guys here which making me have doubts about ethereum "Long Term". Following this thread now

do you have a summary of what these doubts are long term? 8 pages is a bit much to read.

Just read the 1st Page and 1st TPTB_need_war first replay on the thread. Basicly i was very enthusiastic about CASPER and Scalability potential of ethereum.
Until i read some good technical counterargument, i'm reducing my investment in the ethereum project long term, which is best now since prices seems to be good enough for me.

I just read: http://www.multichain.com/blog/2015/11/smart-contracts-slow-blockchains/

they have some very good arguments, but does it mean ethereum is doomed? hard to say until they reach that point and possibly come up with another solution. you got to give it to them on the marketing front.

That multichain.com article is talking about the lack of parallelization, but as I (and CIYAM and even Vitalik) have pointed out (both upthread and in my video), parallelization can be fixed by simply restricting the inputs of scripts to data from already confirmed blocks (i.e. do not allow scripts in the current block to impact scripts in the current block).

That multichain.com article does not address my point about partition boundaries being impossible for scripting. That is my point and I am sure no one else has thought of it. I am the first to make that point. And this is a damning point because it means all validators (full nodes) must verify all scripts. And from that comes the other points I have made about why mining is forced economically to become centralized (and this applies to Bitcoin as well). Thus I have argued don't pretend that crypto currency has decentralized validation (verification) because it can't. And thus I argued just make the validation centralized and try to put the decentralized control else where in the design. Which is what I have contemplated for my design. Which I am working on.

Ethereum could hire me to solve their problem perhaps. I wouldn't charge $18 million.  

Fuserleer has been trying to teach the masses that miners of a successful coin always get rich. It is a necessary evil.

Not true in my contemplated design, because the mining is unprofitable.

Good luck with that.  One of the things that made Bitcoin great is consensus via economics that's advantageous for the individual and the group.

[TPTB_need_war]

Edit: by parallelization we mean the ability of a validator to validate more than one script simultaneously. Distinguish this from partitioning where we have validators who trust other validators (since not all validators validate all scripts).

That Etheruem didn't even define their terms well and write up a specification for Casper (rather we received a disjoint set of technobabble "oh thats cool and sexy" speculators-wet-thy-pants hype presentations), I think exemplifies how disorganized they are ostensibly because they are rushing and/or still in design mode (perhaps because they were running out of funding before the recent pump to raise the price and because after a year they still basically have only vaporware in the sense that nothing they've released could actually scale and be used for anything serious).

I am not sure if it was intentional on the part of Vitalik. I tend to see him as oblivious. Perhaps that is why Peter Thiel awarded him $100,000 and anointed him to lead the faithful to this destiny. The professionals know how this game is played and so I assume they think strategically from the get go. Vitalik is likely caught up in an investment scam he is oblivious to. Any way, that is my conspiratorial hypothesis. However perhaps it is just another example of Murphy's Law.

Can Ethereum fix this? Yes perhaps. They could try to implement some of my ideas about census design. Note the consensus-by-betting is apparently orthogonal to the partitioning design. I would prefer my unprofitable PoW design instead of the PoS consensus-by-betting, because I don't see how the latter can remain decentralized (we've discussed the flaws of PoS, some of which continue to apply to consensus-by-betting).

Consensus-by-betting attempts to solve the issue whereby normally in PoS, then every stakeholder can mine on every chain (which smooth pointed out may devolve to a proof-of-work computational problem yet with other bad aspects of PoS remaining intact). Because in consensus-by-betting, every stakeholder has to put their stake at-risk on every chain according to their bet of which chain is the consensus. But consensus-by-betting does not fix the nothing-at-stake and the self-referential aspects of using stake instead of external entropy.

But why would anyone continue to invest in a $400 million marketcap even if the zero-adoption, vaporware is fixed with my design (and soon to be $1.6 billion market cap even with no price rise) when it is clear that someone such as myself and others understand the technology better than Ethereum does and we can easily create forks with smaller market caps.

Just because I caught Szabo in a dull moment and have called attention to his myopia in promoting Ethereum when they haven't even solved the fundamental issues, that means I am bragging  

Ethereum now has a $400 million market cap and even if the price doesn't increase, the market cap will grow 18% per year due to new coins being created. If without any price increase the market cap in 10 years will be $1.6 billion just due to new coins created.

Any one think that is a good investment   Hell even if it is a good design, it will be forked. It will never reach critical mass like Bitcoin to sustain a market to a $trillion market cap.

The upside is gone. Only bag holders buying or HODLering now. Any sane person would obviously sell at these prices.

Guys about the issue of whether Ethereum is running out of funding, my point is that they were running out of funding, except for the ETH they own which before this recent rise in the price was not valued very high. Moreover, there was not sufficient volume so if they had tried to sell, they would have driven the price down (especially factor in the amount of ETH being created from mining ongoing).

Thus I am saying this recent shrilling for the Casper vaporware is likely to drive the price AND VOLUME of ETH upwards to take more money from speculators.

And I am saying they have wasted the $18 million they got. Heck I could probably design a solution for ~$20,000 (or not more than $100,000). It doesn't take $18 million to make smart contracts work with a centralized verification which is what they will eventually realize is the only way to make it work (per my upthread posts explaining why).

They will waste more $millions, because that is what they do. The pattern is already clear. People/organizations don't change (until they are forced to by economic reality, which apparently is discipline the market is unwilling to do as you all are giving Vitalik more money to play with).

How new Alts / Scamcoins steal your Bitcoins


It seems every day a new alt coin pops up. They are easy to make - most are just clones of coins
that were programmed by someone else and just given a new name, a few graphic tweaks, etc. to make it look new.
It doesn’t take much work - a new scam coin is born.   Most of the devs who create these coins have only one intention - to steal bitcoins from others.  This explains how they do it.  


First they clone an existing coin, make a few tweaks, make a website (which helps scam coins look legit) then they pre-mine a good amount of coins which they will dump later on.
After the coin is up and ready for launch it is  Announced on various sites - bitcointalk.org, reddit, etc.


They get the coin listed on an exchange or two and then deposit a portion of their pre-mine coins they already
have saved up. They may make a few Bitcoins after their coin gets listed, but this is not the way they
intend to get your Bitcoins.   They let their coin do whatever the market wants for a month or two, maybe try to hype it up a little thru various forums and trollboxes to help legitimize it.  They don’t want to pump it as soon as it gets listed on an exchange - this would be obviously suspicious.


Then the day comes where they decide to make their move. They start by buying up the orders on
the exchange(s) to start driving up the price to give the illusion that their coin is starting to take of.  This doesn’t cost them anything because they pre-mined the coins for free and the Bitcoins they are using to buy up the orders go back to them because they are buying the scamcoin from themselves anyways.  After us innocent, unsuspecting users see that this alt
is moving up a large percent is when we start putting our bitcoin orders in so we don’t miss out on this coin that seems to be really taking off.  As soon as enough orders are put in / coins are bought - when the scammer devs are happy with the amount of BTC they have acquired, they dump the rest of their pre-mined coins on the order book to buy
up any lower bitcoin orders still on the books.   Congratulations, you have just become a bag holder of a worthless scamcoin that is back to its previous price of next to nothing, the devs have conned you out of your bitcoins and will let their scam coin die to start working on their next scam.

[monsterer]

Look I like organization. I like clarity. I like specifications. And yeah I get frustrated with those who don't prioritize those. Asking questions about a specification I understand. Asking questions about an enigma (because you Fuserleer stated you weren't ready to reveal a specification and monsterer was challenging you to release a summary) is far too noisy.

And yet you are happy to cross post the same thing in multiple threads at the same time repeatedly. I've seen three separate threads with quoted cross posts from you being updated at the same time. If that's not noise, I don't know what is. If you wanted control over your thread, you should have made it moderated.

Then later monsterer didn't understand that a DAG such as Iota is a mathematical model, not a structural model of the trees.

A DAG does not inherently say anything about the model used upon it. There is a DAG with deterministic ordering, for example, however, Iota is not that, and that was my mistake.

[TPTB_need_war]

Then later monsterer didn't understand that a DAG such as Iota is a mathematical model, not a structural model of the trees.

A DAG does not inherently say anything about the model used upon it. There is a DAG with deterministic ordering, for example, however, Iota is not that, and that was my mistake.

Well that is what I meant by "such as Iota", and the other case that you are working on doesn't make any sense afaics (but we'll wait to review your white paper when it is published), so that is why I tend to dismiss that there is any other case worth associating with a DAG. Could I be wrong? Perhaps. Doubt it.

[monsterer]

In fact, I do believe that perhaps the same Nash equilibrium failure that applies to scripting (as stated above) may apply in the cross-partition design for asset transfers because there is a cascade of history. I need to think about this more. I will try to remember to comment on this point later.

I've touched on this before, but you've reminded me again; partitions are the antithesis of consensus. Taking things to the extreme is helpful to illustrate the problem: with infinite partitions, in bitcoin, you are left with the DAG of the UTXO set, and no blocks or any agreement on what the order of transactions should be, in other words, no consensus. The LCR in bitcoin constantly forces miners to chose between candidate potential partitions (orphan chains). The nash equilibrium results in rational miners always choosing the longest branch to mine on to maximise their profits.

Talking about partition unification for a moment; if two partitions are totally separate, merging them doesn't have any consequences for ordering because the individual transactions in each partition have been separate from each other, you can order them however you like as long as you obey the  parent/child relationship in each partition.

[monsterer]

Another point, I wanted to touch on this idea of 'Turing completeness'. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to the discussion on Ethereum because, even the computer I am writing this message on cannot be classed as 'turing complete' in the true sense of the definition.

I believe your point is related with script inputs being external to the blockchain? If the inputs to a script must come to that script via a transaction, that internalises the inputs - so I must be missing something?

[TPTB_need_war]

In fact, I do believe that perhaps the same Nash equilibrium failure that applies to scripting (as stated above) may apply in the cross-partition design for asset transfers because there is a cascade of history. I need to think about this more. I will try to remember to comment on this point later.

I've touched on this before, but you've reminded me again; partitions are the antithesis of consensus. Taking things to the extreme is helpful to illustrate the problem: with infinite partitions, in bitcoin, you are left with the DAG of the UTXO set, and no blocks or any agreement on what the order of transactions should be, in other words, no consensus. The LCR in bitcoin constantly forces miners to chose between candidate potential partitions (orphan chains). The nash equilibrium results in rational miners always choosing the longest branch to mine on to maximise their profits.

More completely stated, the Nash equilibrium is that there is no other strategy other than the strategy of mining on the longest chain which is visible to all nodes, i.e. that there is no superior strategy other than the one that nodes are already doing and which is known to all nodes. Whereas, as I pointed out in my video, when a node (or colluding nodes) have > 33% of the hashrate, then for Satoshi' PoW design they can apply the selfish mining attack by withholding block solutions until the rest of the network catches up, thus the Nash equilibrium is destroyed by selfish mining in that case.

Also I have pointed out in my video and the follow up posts in this thread about a meta issue that destroys the Nash equilibrirum, that for the case where there are external failures (external to the block chain's perspective of itself) due to external actuation of cross-partition state (even if the block chain thinks it is enforcing a strict partitioning with no cross partition state), the Nash equilibrium fails because the entire coin fails, thus the validators of partitions can't trust the validators of other partitions (because although they get their block reward, the external market value of the reward fails). It remains under study whether this applies to asset transfers too (or just to partitioning of scripts) and whether it applies for asset transfers in the strict partitioning block chain (which I argued in my video is immune to the problem) and/or in the cross-partitioning block chain (which I did not address in my video and Fuserleer raised this point hence).

I hope readers don't get confused that I am making a distinction between when cross partitioned state is occurring by-design on the block chain and when it occurs externally because it can. For scripting it is impossible to enforce a strict partitioning because it is very clear that the external actuation can inject state from one partition into another partition (and even though the block chain can't determine this, the external users can and the external users can experience failure that the block chain is entirely unaware of due to this external Turing completeness, which is a very deep, meta, high IQ concept that apparently most people wouldn't think of ... note smooth indicated to me in a PM that he had thought of this issue of external Turing completeness before too). For asset transfers (no scripting), it is not yet 100% clear to me. I need to think about it more.

Talking about partition unification for a moment; if two partitions are totally separate, merging them doesn't have any consequences for ordering because the individual transactions in each partition have been separate from each other, you can order them however you like as long as you obey the  parent/child relationship in each partition.

Yes as long as the state from the two partitions did not leak into each other by any means (including the external meta case mentioned again above).

[monsterer]

Also I have pointed out in my video and the follow up posts in this thread about a meta issue that destroys the Nash equilibrirum, that for the case where there are external failures (external to the block chain's perspective of itself) due to external actuation of cross-partition state, the Nash equilibrium fails because the entire coin fails

If all inputs to a script arrive via one transaction, you must be forced to conclude that there is no difference between said scripting blockchain and an asset transfer chain in terms of equilibrium breakdown?

edit: actually, I see what you're saying - if the script author's cause a cross partition dependency, that dependency can affect the resulting ordering on partition merger. The problem is when this dependency is not visible to the system.

further edit: however, I still struggle to see why this would result in anything more than the failure of the script in question?

[TPTB_need_war]

Another point, I wanted to touch on this idea of 'Turing completeness'. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to the discussion on Ethereum because, even the computer I am writing this message on cannot be classed as 'turing complete' in the true sense of the definition.

I believe your point is related with script inputs being external to the blockchain? If the inputs to a script must come to that script via a transaction, that internalises the inputs - so I must be missing something?

Also I have pointed out in my video and the follow up posts in this thread about a meta issue that destroys the Nash equilibrirum, that for the case where there are external failures (external to the block chain's perspective of itself) due to external actuation of cross-partition state, the Nash equilibrium fails because the entire coin fails

If all inputs to a script arrive via one transaction, you must be forced to conclude that there is no difference between said scripting blockchain and an asset transfer chain in terms of equilibrium breakdown?

edit: actually, I see what you're saying - if the script author's cause a cross partition dependency, that dependency can affect the resulting ordering on partition merger. The problem is when this dependency is not visible to the system.

You got it with the edit. You must have re-read my prior post and the edits I had done on my prior post.

The issue is the system thinks it has strict partitioning, but the external users can violate that partitioning of state (at least with scripts, not sure yet about only asset transfers). The system thinks that the state of one partition can't impact the state of another partition, but the external users can violate this assumption if there exists the ability to apply external input to the block chain (which obviously must exist otherwise the scripting is mostly useless, i.e. no new accounts, etc).

For asset transfers, I need to think about the harm that can be done and whether the same problem applies. For scripting (with external I/O) it is clearly impossible to assume/enforce strict partitioning of state.

further edit: however, I still struggle to see why this would result in anything more than the failure of the script in question?

No script fails from the perspective of the block chain. The external users see failure, because only the external users are aware they violated the strict partitioning of state. And thus the spaghetti of external failure becomes as intertwined as inputs and outputs from many partitions cross-pollute cascades and intertangled scripts.

Edit: the block chain thinks it is validating the block chain because it erroneously thinks strict partitioning is enforced. External users see that validation is failing, because they violated the assumption of strict partitioning by cross-polluting the state via the external I/O of the block chain. Thus holistically and systemically there is failure (from the perspective of the external users and thus the coin's market value plummets as users abandon the system due to failures).

[monsterer]

For asset transfers, I need to think about the harm that can be done and whether the same problem applies. For scripting (with external I/O) it is clearly impossible to assume/enforce strict partitioning of state.

Case in point: atomic cross chain transfers. That's the realisation of the failure in contemporary blockchains. I don't believe it causes a breakdown of the nash equilibrium, though - the miners still follow their usual rules.

[TPTB_need_war]

Note edit I made to a post on the prior page:

But why would anyone continue to invest in a $400 million marketcap even if the zero-adoption, vaporware is fixed with my design (and soon to be $1.6 billion market cap even with no price rise) when it is clear that someone such as myself and others understand the technology better than Ethereum does and we can easily create forks with smaller market caps.

Speculators who think Szabo and Vitalik are gods deserve what the Bible says in the Ten Commandments:

4 “You must not make any idols. Don’t make any statues or pictures of anything up in the sky or of anything on the earth or of anything down in the water. 5 Don’t worship or serve idols of any kind, because I, the Lord, am your God. I hate my people worshiping other gods.[a] People who sin against me become my enemies, and I will punish them. And I will punish their children, their grandchildren, and even their great-grandchildren. 6 But I will be very kind to people who love me and obey my commands. I will be kind to their families for thousands of generations.

These guys took $18 million to go work on vaporware and didn't even produce a scalable prototype.

The first sin was taking ICO money when all they had to offer was their reputations and no actual product or even completed research.

Why do humans base so much on perceived reputation. Reputation is overrated. Completed production talks, all the other BS walks.

There are so many smart people in this world. Smartness isn't enough.

You all have destroyed this young man. You spoiled him. I had to cut lawns and I developed my first commercial software success by sleeping under my desk and programming from my room. Sacrifice.

[monsterer]

No script fails from the perspective of the block chain. The external users see failure, because only the external users are aware they violated the strict partitioning of state. And thus the spaghetti of external failure becomes as intertwined as inputs and outputs from many partitions cross-pollute cascades and intertangled scripts.

Edit: the block chain thinks it is validating the block chain because it erroneously thinks strict partitioning is enforced. External users see that validation is failing, because they violated the assumption of strict partitioning by cross-polluting the state via the external I/O of the block chain. Thus holistically and systemically there is failure (from the perspective of the external users and thus the coin's market value plummets as users abandon the system due to failures).

You might argue that the author of any script which disobeys these hidden dependency rules isn't following the rules of the system.

The question is: is this problem actually fixable in theory? Can you imagine a system whereby a single transaction contains multiple downward dependencies which potentially merge partitions? Is there a case where a conflict in ordering dependency can occur between scripts?

[TPTB_need_war]

For asset transfers, I need to think about the harm that can be done and whether the same problem applies. For scripting (with external I/O) it is clearly impossible to assume/enforce strict partitioning of state.

Case in point: atomic cross chain transfers. That's the realisation of the failure in contemporary blockchains. I don't believe it causes a breakdown of the nash equilibrium, though - the miners still follow their usual rules.

For readers, what monsterer is pointing out here is that the design of decentralized cross-chain (meaning two coins' block chains, not two candidate chains for the same longest-chain-rule block chain) exchange suffers from if either block chain orphans the block that the other block chain depended on, i.e. that a chain reorganization on one block chain of one coin isn't enforced on the other coin's block chain, thus one of the parties in the exchange steals from the other (because the one keeps the coins on both chains).

So monsterer is offering this as an example where even for only asset exchange block chains (i.e. no scripting), there is the case that external factors can cause the "system" to fail from the perspective of the user.

And this is the main problem with Blockstream's proposed Side Chains, in that chain reorganizations could cause a cascade of failure, which thus seem to make Side Chains totally insecure and unworthy of adoption. Some people have argued that exchanges could be delayed by sufficient confirmations, but remember that with proof-of-work a lie-in-wait 51% attacker can rewrite the entire block chain. Then again others point out that we are screwed any way with a 51% attacker and that the community will organize. Note I rebutted this in my video, by explaining that community can't organize. Please watch my video to get the full explanation. Note that the Chinese mining cartel already controls 65% of Bitcoin's hashrate and has vetoed any block size increase, not even allowing the doubling of block size for Bitcoin Classic, thus this has shown the community can't overcome a 51% attack.

You might argue that the author of any script which disobeys these hidden dependency rules isn't following the rules of the system.

For monsterer's example (not Side Chains), I argue that the user is capable of associating that failure with incorrect use of the system and localized to use of a decentralized exchange. Whereas the distinction from the partitioned scripting case is that users wouldn't even be able to know what service they used had caused the failure, because the failure could occur derivatively due to intertwined cascade from other scripts. In short, the users (or programmers) of violating scripts may be aware that the assumption of cross-partition has been violated, but the rest of the users would be incapable of making this determination!

The question is: is this problem actually fixable in theory? Can you imagine a system whereby a single transaction contains multiple downward dependencies which potentially merge partitions? Is there a case where a conflict in ordering dependency can occur between scripts?

Even the script can't stop a user from copying data from one partition to another. So even if Ethereum only runs authorized and vetted scripts, this afaics wouldn't totally ameliorate the issue.

Edit: Of course (external) I/O from scripts can input to other scripts in a myriad of cascade and permuted entanglement.

When I write 'external I/O', I mean differentiated from referencing some data on the block chain as an input, e.g. UXTO. You see that for asset exchange, the data is deterministic because all I/O must sum to 0 and the directed acyclic graph assures us there is no recursion of the state.

Edit#2: It appears to me that for asset exchange all I/O is deterministic. For scripting, this is not the case due to external I/O, not even without partitions! But at least without partitions, then scripting apparently doesn't violate the Nash equilibrium in the sense that all scripts are validated by all validators (thus there is no way for the validators for a partition to lie to the other validators). Whereas in partitioning, sufficient (w.r.t. to the consensus-by-betting resolution) validators might lie about their partition (i.e. pursue another strategy) since that is another game theory strategy that is introduced by the partitioning given that the partitions can't be enforced externally. The distinction is about Nash equilibrium. Per the definition of Nash equilibrium, then validators pursing another strategy (i.e. lying) destroys the Nash equilibrium.

No script fails from the perspective of the block chain. The external users see failure, because only the external users are aware they violated the strict partitioning of state. And thus the spaghetti of external failure becomes as intertwined as inputs and outputs from many partitions cross-pollute cascades and intertangled scripts.

Edit: the block chain thinks it is validating the block chain because it erroneously thinks strict partitioning is enforced. External users see that validation is failing, because they violated the assumption of strict partitioning by cross-polluting the state via the external I/O of the block chain. Thus holistically and systemically there is failure (from the perspective of the external users and thus the coin's market value plummets as users abandon the system due to failures).

[monsterer]

Even the script can't stop a user from copying data from one partition to another. So even if Ethereum only runs authorized and vetted scripts, this afaics wouldn't totally ameliorate the issue.

Edit: Of course (external) I/O from scripts can input to other scripts in a myriad of cascade and permuted entanglement.

When I write 'external I/O', I mean differentiated from referencing some data on the block chain as an input, e.g. UXTO. You see that for asset exchange, the data is deterministic because all I/O must sum to 0 and the directed acyclic graph assures us there is no recursion of the state.

What I mean is, is it possible to specify a set of non cyclic dependencies for any given transaction, which when ordered by the system results in a complete resolution of this dependency entanglement?