Elastic - Scam or legit?

[cryptoheadd]

What do you guys think about Elastic?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1390623.0

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[poornamelessme]

Beats me if it's legit or not. I'd like to think it is, but there are certainly red flags.

Original dev (Lionel) apparently wrote a whitepaper for a coin that wouldn't work. He asked for BTC without a real plan to make a working coin and was adamant against escrow. He stated he would post his personal info in the forums, yet never did. Then seemingly vanished, and EK took over the project.

EK also had been adamant against the idea of using escrow (even though he wasn't even in charge of the coin while he was arguing this).

And I guess due to legal reasons, there is now some new guy, Lannister, who is in charge of the website and the donated funds. No idea who he is, what his background is, or his real name.

Most of the forum is full of technical discussion between 2-3 people -- stuff devs normally talk about behind the scenes or with whomever is actually coding the coin. Nothing wrong with that, but very little real info has been presented ... like who is coding the thing, or background info on whatever team they do have.

Let's just say one would need a high threshold of risk to put any serious money into it right now. Like seriously 'willing to throw away btc' type of risk threshold.

[cryptoheadd]

Beats me if it's legit or not. I'd like to think it is, but there are certainly red flags.

Original dev (Lionel) apparently wrote a whitepaper for a coin that wouldn't work. He asked for BTC without a real plan to make a working coin and was adamant against escrow. He stated he would post his personal info in the forums, yet never did. Then seemingly vanished, and EK took over the project.

EK also had been adamant against the idea of using escrow (even though he wasn't even in charge of the coin while he was arguing this).

And I guess due to legal reasons, there is now some new guy, Lannister, who is in charge of the website and the donated funds. No idea who he is, what his background is, or his real name.

Most of the forum is full of technical discussion between 2-3 people -- stuff devs normally talk about behind the scenes or with whomever is actually coding the coin. Nothing wrong with that, but very little real info has been presented ... like who is coding the thing, or background info on whatever team they do have.

Let's just say one would need a high threshold of risk to put any serious money into it right now. Like seriously 'willing to throw away btc' type of risk threshold.

Yes, I know.

I was thinking about investing in it.
They show that the total amount of BTC they have received is 61, but the address has only received 7 BTC.

http://www.elastic.pro/crowdsale
https://blockchain.info/address/3Q2aKEGFTKDw3hghsBifXp39CZVMtZukxn

Moreover, the coins they are selling would be associated to your BTC address, for which you'll need to enter your BTC address' private key. 

I don't think I'll be investing at this point.
Maybe, after the ICO.

[xxxgoodgirls]

Yes, I know.

I was thinking about investing in it.
They show that the total amount of BTC they have received is 61, but the address has only received 7 BTC.

http://www.elastic.pro/crowdsale
https://blockchain.info/address/3Q2aKEGFTKDw3hghsBifXp39CZVMtZukxn

Moreover, the coins they are selling would be associated to your BTC address, for which you'll need to enter your BTC address' private key. 

The funding address has been changed (I guess since Lanniter took over the management of the project) to a new one.
This is the original address (Evil-Knievev's) https://blockchain.info/address/3Qnj4QtdD4qtZcP82xyLq2paAEPDgfwezd , it still contains 59BTC from the crownfunding.

You do not need to insert the private key anywhere: ELC will be directly sent to the every BTC address where funds came from, therefore you need the private key of the address you used for the funding.

[TPTB_need_war]

I have no access to the project's official GitHub repository so I have the current version in my forked git:
https://github.com/OrdinaryDude/whitepaper/raw/master/whitepaper.pdf

Comments are appreciated

You did not solve the The Faster Algorithm Attack (FAA). Your proposed solution is incoherent and it doesn't matter what you propose, it will always be flawed because the problem is insoluble:

The only incentive to perform this attack is to pull of the
51 % attack. We eliminate this incentive by entirely discon-
necting the calculation of arbitrary tasks from the security
of the blockchain. In this context we suggest a pure proof-
of-stake scheme [7] for the block generation. The proof-of-
work scheme is used only for the measurement of who has
contributed how much work the payments of the propor-
tional rewards. Performing the FAA as it is described above
would correspond to an attacker which can solve his own
work quicker than everyone else and so get paid his own
money (subtracted by a small fee to prevent DDOS in this
context). This is not dangerous from the network’s point
of view. In order to maintain a certain degree of incentive
to generate proof-of-stake blocks instead of just focusing on
the calculation of proof-of-works we have decided to credit
the proof-of-stake block with all transaction fees that are
included in that particular block.

Also the attacker can DDoS the system by submitting a verification algorithm that is orders-of-magnitude slower than the attacker's proving algorithm.

This entire concept is insoluble and flawed and any fool who invests in this shit deserves to lose their money.

[TPTB_need_war]

You have not made any technology argument, because you can't.

[cryptoheadd]

Yes, I know.

I was thinking about investing in it.
They show that the total amount of BTC they have received is 61, but the address has only received 7 BTC.

http://www.elastic.pro/crowdsale
https://blockchain.info/address/3Q2aKEGFTKDw3hghsBifXp39CZVMtZukxn

Moreover, the coins they are selling would be associated to your BTC address, for which you'll need to enter your BTC address' private key. 

The funding address has been changed (I guess since Lanniter took over the management of the project) to a new one.
This is the original address (Evil-Knievev's) https://blockchain.info/address/3Qnj4QtdD4qtZcP82xyLq2paAEPDgfwezd , it still contains 59BTC from the crownfunding.

You do not need to insert the private key anywhere: ELC will be directly sent to the every BTC address where funds came from, therefore you need the private key of the address you used for the funding.

Thanks for clarifying.

Will look into it.

[Dazza]

You are simply the most intelligent person walking the planet. How could possibly anyone of us subhumans (that includes me and the IOTA devs) ever come up with an argument that holds up to your expectations? I guess this is the reason why we just don't.

Evil, it really does you no credit to respond to criticism with snarling sarcasm.

[TPTB_need_war]

You are simply the most intelligent person walking the planet. How could possibly anyone of us subhumans (that includes me and the IOTA devs) ever come up with an argument that holds up to your expectations? I guess this is the reason why we just don't.

Evil, it really does you no credit to respond to criticism with snarling sarcasm.

It is a useful obfuscation technique when a technical refutation is unavailable.

[Dazza]

Also the attacker can DDoS the system by submitting a verification algorithm that is orders-of-magnitude slower than the attacker's proving algorithm.

It's worse than that.  An attacker might be able to win PoW blocks by manipulating the buffer in ways that maintain its integrity (by which I mean, it would pass a "re-run" test), and recomputing (and re-recomputing) its SHA-256 hash.  Moreover, he will be able to do this, even with an innocent and legitimate program.  So this will be no mere DOS attack, the attacker will be able to win an innocent buyer's money without doing legitimate work for that client.  I cannot (yet) see how to avoid this, which is frustrating, because the buffer thing was my idea, and I really thought it would work.

This entire concept is insoluble and flawed and any fool who invests in this shit deserves to lose their money.

While I wouldn't have put it quite like that, this is more or less the position I took in response to the original whitepaper.

I'm no longer so negative about the project.  I think it is possible that we will find solutions to these problems.  It is possible that we could end up with something that does the job, or which fails in ways that are tolerable, rather than fatal, even if these solutions are not what the whitepaper currently envisages.  And it might take a lot longer than the current plan allows for.

So I would not now say to anyone "invest" or "don't invest".  What I would say, is that if you do invest, do so on the basis of what I said in that last paragraph, and to treat it as a punt.

But then, what altcoin isn't?

[Dazza]

It is a useful obfuscation technique when a technical refutation is unavailable.

Not really.  It is, however, a very human response to what one perceives to be unfair criticism.

[TPTB_need_war]

It is a useful obfuscation technique when a technical refutation is unavailable.

Not really.  It is, however, a very human response to what one perceives to be unfair criticism.

Perhaps he really believes he can solve the insoluble FAA problem.

I guess he doesn't like it that I know with 100% certainty he can not.

[TPTB_need_war]

Perhaps he really believes he can solve the insoluble FAA problem.

I guess he doesn't like it that I know with 100% certainty he can not.

I am really interested in the formal proof, that shows that the FAA is insoluble.
Furthermore, as Dazza already pointed out, some fault-tolerance might be the way to go.

I'd like a formal proof that FAA is soluble. When you have one, alert me so I can show you why you failed.

The reason you can't solve it is because it is impossible to know that a particular algorithm is full optimized. That is a fundamental mathematical restriction in the analysis of computation complexity. That is why the only way we can define computation complexity classes is by nebulous rules. Even Bitcoin's SHA256 is not proven to be fully optimized, but at least we only have one well studied hash function that controls the proof-of-work security. Whereas, you want to introduce unbounded number of new algorithms, and there is no means of forcing any particular level of peer review on them in a decentralized environment.

Really what you pumpers and scammers want is to be able to write some technobabble that n00bs can't comprehend and present insoluble problems as solved, so that you can sell tokens and make a profit on hype.

If you were a real career oriented software developer, you would work on things that have real world practical adoption baked in, and not be some 20 year old college dropout like Vitalik who has never accomplished any adoption in his life and waste $18 million on technobabble nonsense.

When I hear you talking, I think about someone saying "no, its 100% impossible to reliably transmit something over an unreliable channel" prior to the invention of TCP. Also, someone also predicted that decentralized payment systems just cannot work and argumented with some fancy byzantine generals ... then Bitcoin came.

Satoshi did not solve the Byzantine Generals problem, and Bitcoin is failing because Satoshi's design is forced to centralize economally:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1388887.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1388887.msg14144978#msg14144978
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1183043.msg13823607#msg13823607

[Dazza]

Perhaps he really believes he can solve the insoluble FAA problem.

I believe in his sincerity, that is, I believe that he believes.

I guess he doesn't like it that I know with 100% certainty he can not.

I am really interested in the formal proof, that shows that the FAA is insoluble.
Furthermore, as Dazza already pointed out, some fault-tolerance might be the way to go.

I'd like a formal proof that FAA is soluble. When you have one, alert me so I can show you why you failed.

My gut-feel is that an impossibility proof of some kind will be, er, possible.  The hydra-like nature of the problem - the way that a new head would appear every time you cut one off - suggests that something fundamental is going on.

But impossibility proofs, and security proofs in general, are rarely as impressive as the phrase sounds.  One can often make progress against them by stepping outside the bounds of what was proven.

The reason you can't solve it is because it is impossible to know that a particular algorithm is full optimized.

That statement does not suffice to demonstrate that a faster algorithm can always be leveraged into an attack.

That is a fundamental mathematical restriction in the analysis of computation complexity. That is why the only way we can define computation complexity classes is by nebulous rules. Even Bitcoin's SHA256 is not proven to be fully optimized, but at least we only have one well studied hash function that controls the proof-of-work security. Whereas, you want to introduce unbounded number of new algorithms, and there is no means of forcing any particular level of peer review on them in a decentralized environment.

You do understand, don't you, that we are no longer proposing to use arbitrary algorithms to secure the blockchain?  We've moved onto pure PoS for that purpose.

So where does that leave us and the FAA?  With the possibility of DoS attacks you refer to above, and which I already predicted, which is a risk I think we'll just have to live with, (just as the internet as a whole lives with DoS attacks of all kinds).  It also leaves us with the more serious manipulate-the-buffer attack I discussed above, which is, I think fixable, though the whitepaper may have a few more iterations to go through yet.

Really what you pumpers and scammers want is to be able to write some technobabble that n00bs can't comprehend and present insoluble problems as solved, so that you can sell tokens and make a profit on hype.

As I said, I don't believe EK has any such intent.  My own technical writing, and yours is just so much babble to many readers here, but we write it for the benefit of those who can understand.  Then for others, we try to explain the significance in less technical language.

If you were a real career oriented software developer, you would work on things that have real world practical adoption baked in, and not be some 20 year old college dropout like Vitalik who has never accomplished any adoption in his life and waste $18 million on technobabble nonsense.

What I said to EK in my first post to this thread applies to you too.  Please drop the invective, and confine yourself to technical objections.

Satoshi did not solve the Byzantine Generals problem, and Bitcoin is failing because Satoshi's design is forced to centralize economally:

If we do produce an infrastructure with works, then I suspect that our mining will become somewhat centralised too.  I'm not sure I'd consider that to be a failure, though.

[Ayers]

wellt he dev is trusted(unless his account was bought), and the project look intriguing, but i still don't like initial crowfunding, i avoid those like the plague
if there was a normal form of mining i would have jumped on it more easily, it remain to be seen, i remember when ethereum was labelled as a possible scam in the early stage...

[illodin]

Perhaps he really believes he can solve the insoluble FAA problem.

I believe in his sincerity, that is, I believe that he believes.

He also once believed he had cracked NXT, Bitcoin, and Darksend.

Evil-Knievel is generally a genuine technical interrogator, and has made the odd useful insight (well, one at least) that's been accepted by devs, it's just that he also has a tendency to draw conclusions bordering on hyperbolic melodrama from benign philosophical observations.

According to his findings:



References:

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345619.msg5663483#msg5663483

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wf5qb/possible_warning_btc_addresses_with_known_public/

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2ukp87/researcher_discovers_major_dos_vulnerability_in/

[4] https://bitcointa.lk/threads/private-key-cracker-apparently-demonstrated.248285/page-2

Which ended in:

Nice try though

[TPTB_need_war]

He also once believed he had cracked NXT, Bitcoin, and Darksend.

Which ended in:

Nice try though

Compare that to that I proved the math in InstantX was an order-of-magnitude too optimistic. And Evan had to admit defeat. Perhaps illodin will find the link for you.

[Dazza]

Evil-Knievel is generally a genuine technical interrogator, and has made the odd useful insight (well, one at least) that's been accepted by devs, it's just that he also has a tendency to draw conclusions bordering on hyperbolic melodrama from benign philosophical observations.

The remark that he "is generally a genuine technical interrogator" is a stronger plus than "he also has a tendency to draw conclusions bordering on hyperbolic melodrama" is a minus, in my opinion.

[cryptoheadd]

illodin: I have indeed found an exploit in the NXT protocol and got rewarded with 100,000 NXT.
And yes, there has been a serious issue with Bitcoin. I helped to fix them for which I got mentioned in the official Bitcoin change log of version 0.10.1 (see here). Do you also claim, that the official Bitcoin change log is a lie?

If you do not immediately stop your "shitstrom campaign", I will leave a deeply negative feedback in your account.

Are you the dev of Elastic?

[illodin]

If you do not immediately stop your "shitstrom campaign", I will leave a deeply negative feedback in your account.

Don't worry, there is no campaign.