[ANN][XEL] Elastic Project - The Decentralized Supercomputer

[Evil-Knievel]

EK, can you please clarify if this proposal is just for the validation of ElasticPL submissions / solutions.  The blockchain would still be secured by POS, right?

Exactly, supernodes would be only responsible for work related stuff.

[jibble]

Well, the thing is that the current system is absolutely trustless. That means that we have no "central authority" verifying anything (such as all BOINC based coins do, since they rely on an external service controlled by a single entity which anytime can turn blackhat and cripple the entire coin) so we have to make sure every node in the network verifies work by himself. Others, very well hyped project deal with it in their very own way: they just drop all that shit and assume everyone trusts everyone ... problem solved ... NOT!
Anyway, in this context we have several issues:

a) Every node must be able to verify the work, the more memory we allow, the "higher" the "required minimal hardware specifications" become.
b) Verification of work must be performed quick. Imagine the verification (one iteration of a work algorithm) takes 10 seconds and the network is so mature that we get 100 POW packages in every second: this would result in a very large back log and eventually stall the network.

What we talked about recently in private was to out-source verification to a subset of nodes, so-called supernodes which have a very potent hardware and which just sign off POW packages and bounties. I thought it might be possible to use such scheme:

- Work may use up to 5 GIG of memory
- Work may take up to 10 seconds to verify
- Verification is only performed by supernodes
- Supernodes deposit an amount of 300,000 XEL and earn x% of all work they confirm
- If a supernode behaves maliciously (when it can be proven that a result was accepted while it's bad) the 300,000 XEL are gone
- Supernodes must be permanently online and have very decent hardware
- If supernodes decide to stop, they have to wait for 1000 blocks without verifying anything to unlock the 300,000 XEL deposit.
- Problem: Malicious billionaire supernodes that do not care about money, and the danger of ending up with no supernodes at all.

This is a change I can make in one weekend, it's just the question if we want it or if we can come up with something better?

if supernodes are doing the validation , does this give the network any different abilities , different possible work cases or anything?

[Blake Birk]

missed the ico...cant wait to get some xel/elastic once it hits an exchange

[Bgjjj2016]

missed the ico...cant wait to get some xel/elastic once it hits an exchange

wait till end of this month, hopefully !

[ImI]

EK, can you please clarify if this proposal is just for the validation of ElasticPL submissions / solutions.  The blockchain would still be secured by POS, right?

Exactly, supernodes would be only responsible for work related stuff.

Question: How easy would it be to implement supernodes at a later stage? I guess we would need a hardfork right? Another thing is security. Supernodes could cause security risks like DDOS on those few supernodes or some other nasty stuff. (Dash should have theoretically the same issue with their masternodes.)

[wpalczynski]

EK, can you please clarify if this proposal is just for the validation of ElasticPL submissions / solutions.  The blockchain would still be secured by POS, right?

Exactly, supernodes would be only responsible for work related stuff.

Sounds like this approach would make the system much more versatile and therefore marketable to a much wider client base.  The risk around these supernodes needs to be assessed and mitigated.  My thoughts on the initial issues raised by EK.

Problem 1: Malicious billionaire supernodes that do not care about money.
- If such a problem presents itself some kind of a voting mechanism based on community trust could be implemented.  Very unlikely to happen due to the proposed penalties for mis-behavior.


Problem 2: The danger of ending up with no supernodes at all.
- The threshold of entry vs. reward could me manipulated to incentivize this function more.

 

[Evil-Knievel]

EK, can you please clarify if this proposal is just for the validation of ElasticPL submissions / solutions.  The blockchain would still be secured by POS, right?

Exactly, supernodes would be only responsible for work related stuff.

Question: How easy would it be to implement supernodes at a later stage? I guess we would need a hardfork right? Another thing is security. Supernodes could cause security risks like DDOS on those few supernodes or some other nasty stuff. (Dash should have theoretically the same issue with their masternodes.)

At a later stage a hardfork would be required.
I have been brainstorming last night and I think we should also introduce guard nodes.

So we have normal nodes (they just broadcast unverified POW/bounties)
Then we have super nodes who do the verification work and broadcast the verified POW/bounties
And then we have guard nodes who cross verify a certain percentage of the super node signed POW/bounties to detect malicious behavior

This way we do not even need to hard fork when we add new features / other work types later on since the supernode-signature-verification will remain the same!

[provenceday]

XEL  get more progress than golem.

[Alohaboy?!]

EK, can you please clarify if this proposal is just for the validation of ElasticPL submissions / solutions.  The blockchain would still be secured by POS, right?

Exactly, supernodes would be only responsible for work related stuff.

Question: How easy would it be to implement supernodes at a later stage? I guess we would need a hardfork right? Another thing is security. Supernodes could cause security risks like DDOS on those few supernodes or some other nasty stuff. (Dash should have theoretically the same issue with their masternodes.)

At a later stage a hardfork would be required.
I have been brainstorming last night and I think we should also introduce guard nodes.

So we have normal nodes (they just broadcast unverified POW/bounties)
Then we have super nodes who do the verification work and broadcast the verified POW/bounties
And then we have guard nodes who cross verify a certain percentage of the super node signed POW/bounties to detect malicious behavior

This way we do not even need to hard fork when we add new features / other work types later on since the supernode-signature-verification will remain the same!

I like the idea behind this. We can relate to science by calling those nodes "sentinel nodes"

[Bgjjj2016]

XEL  get more progress than golem.

true , but most of the world besides this bitcointalk thread don't know us !

[crypt0biwan]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr

https://i.imgur.com/ihOXrIx.png

[notsofast]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr



/EDIT

I cannot embed the image link somehow.. Don't know why

[loomdart]

Anyone willing to sell some $XEL OTC?

[dranster]

Anyone willing to sell some $XEL OTC?

noone can sell coins now

Dont get rekt kid

[aleksand]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr



/EDIT

I cannot embed the image link somehow.. Don't know why

What is MIR amount?

[jeffthebaker]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr



/EDIT

I cannot embed the image link somehow.. Don't know why

These numbers don't seem right? I got just north of 9k XEL for .05 BTC deposit.... based on average ICO price this is now worth close to 2 BTC? I don't think that can be right lol

[HmmMAA]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr



/EDIT

I cannot embed the image link somehow.. Don't know why

The amount of coins to be distributed has change from 5 million to 100 millions , so use as mir amount 100 million . ICO price per XEL should be  ~ 710 satoshis .

[trader19]

I made a little page to show the ICO statistics, based on the JSON which was available on Github: http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ZLJjBr



/EDIT

I cannot embed the image link somehow.. Don't know why

The amount of coins to be distributed has change from 5 million to 100 millions , so use as mir amount 100 million . ICO price per XEL should be  ~ 710 satoshis .

at price of 18k sat XEL would be valuated 16mio$ or 1800btc in market cap.. for this great (working) project, totally duable imo!

btw. maybe we should start pitching poloniex to consider adding XEL
here one example: https://www.reddit.com/r/GolemProject/comments/5cf70j/lets_request_poloniex_support_here_to_get_it/

[HomoHenning]

Anyone willing to sell some $XEL OTC?

noone can sell coins now

Dont get rekt kid

you can buy xel for delivery on launch date with escrow

my price: 20K sat (0,0002 BTC)
17500 available for sale at this rate
delivery on launch date with bitcointalk escrows

[13Darko]

EK, what is your current opinion about 5 stage launch you offered to the community in December? Do you still think we need some excessive testing, followed by "hard forks", to fix all potential bugs?

Personally I think this is a must. The final product is easier to promote and it can bring much more attention and benefit to all XEL holders despite having competitors on out tail like SONM, Golem and iEx.ec. I believe, they won't be used in real life cases as fast as Elastic anyway.