Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

[Thul]

Twitter message of another Crypto Currency:
"Centralized businesses and governments tend to have interests that are in conflict with the individual. Here at [xxx], we fight against that. Read more here: [xxx]

THIS is marketing, and also reaches the right target group.

Bite ball, on the other hand, develops in the opposite direction: KYC is the Holy Grail here.

[pineapple express]

There is no inherent incentive to work together as miners, and if there is, a group of miners has no in-system way to punish miners who do not behave as the group wants them to.

You are right about incentives.  But there is something else.  PoW mining is an economic activity.  You have capex, you have opex, almost all your profits are burned in your huge costs, and you have to care about efficiency in order to stay in the game.  And in any economic activity, you have economy of scale.  As your mining farm gets bigger, it becomes more efficient and stands better against the competition.  You get volume discounts for miners, you will be the first in line for the new generation of miners, you can get cheaper electricity when you buy wholesale, it becomes worthwhile to relocate to a more favorable location, and you can hire the best talent in the industry.  It doesn't matter if the PoW algorithm is ASICable or not, the economy of scale is universal.  It might be not very important in the growing market when everyone, even a smaller and weaker miner, gets a portion of the growing pie, but nothing lasts forever and as the market matures and gets more competitive, the weaker players are darwinized, and the hash power gets concentrated in the hands of a few bigger miners.  Miners, not mining pools.  This looks like an end-game of any PoW based blockchain, because it has a heavy "hook" into the economy, and the economy favors scale.  You can call it emergent centralization.  Incidentally, Byteball moves in the opposite direction.

tonych i'm so glad you're back. Where have you been all these years?

[pineapple express]

How can one prevent the state power from simply eliminating the witnesses?

the community at large will decide to replace that particular witness address for someone else's.

hmm Rogier Eijkelhof 5% support... Community can't cooperate to replace witnesses

[julian071]

There is no inherent incentive to work together as miners, and if there is, a group of miners has no in-system way to punish miners who do not behave as the group wants them to.

You are right about incentives.  But there is something else.  PoW mining is an economic activity.  You have capex, you have opex, almost all your profits are burned in your huge costs, and you have to care about efficiency in order to stay in the game.  And in any economic activity, you have economy of scale.  As your mining farm gets bigger, it becomes more efficient and stands better against the competition.  You get volume discounts for miners, you will be the first in line for the new generation of miners, you can get cheaper electricity when you buy wholesale, it becomes worthwhile to relocate to a more favorable location, and you can hire the best talent in the industry.  It doesn't matter if the PoW algorithm is ASICable or not, the economy of scale is universal.  It might be not very important in the growing market when everyone, even a smaller and weaker miner, gets a portion of the growing pie, but nothing lasts forever and as the market matures and gets more competitive, the weaker players are darwinized, and the hash power gets concentrated in the hands of a few bigger miners.  Miners, not mining pools.  This looks like an end-game of any PoW based blockchain, because it has a heavy "hook" into the economy, and the economy favors scale.  You can call it emergent centralization.  Incidentally, Byteball moves in the opposite direction.

This.

The irony of BTC and its clones is that the goal is to break free of control by large corporations (and the governments which support them), as demonstrated by the BTC whitepaper and the date it was published. However, we might end up having BTC controlled (= determined in which direction the code develops) by more and more centralised entities. Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

[Thul]

How can one prevent the state power from simply eliminating the witnesses?

the community at large will decide to replace that particular witness address for someone else's.

hmm Rogier Eijkelhof 5% support... Community can't cooperate to replace witnesses

That is quite clear. A witness is as bad or as good as any other. One can also stay where one is.

If bite ball were a company that first has to earn its money instead of simply "printing" it itself, it would already be broke.

The bite ball dictatorship ticks however completely special. According to their agenda the user has to follow the given ideas. Criticism is either ignored or embellished.
Oh, not to forget some fanboys who also cheer this attitude on.

[ttookk]

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

[julian071]

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

I stongly disagree with that statement too!

I said purely monetary.

[tarmo888]

I understood it as Bitcoin becomes more and more centralized as bigger miners get more powerful. You don't know when it is happening because these few people are decentralizing their mining operations, so it would not be too obvious that they have the most power. Sounds nuts, but hashrate of Bitcoin network is steadily going up. Who are they, we don't know, but I doubt they are Venezuelans or Iranians who don't have enough money even for food, let alone buying ASICs. https://news.8btc.com/bitcoin-hashrate-increases-in-a-bear-market-investors-are-still-optimistic-in-the-long-term
Byteball on the other hand, becomes more decentralized as more witness candidates and better witness candidates will join and since they are public, they can't be the same rich person.

Think of this way, you kind of know who are the rich guys today, but you can't do anything about it, they rule the world and the banks and the real-estate and the companies. You can't even vote them off from lobbying to the government because they will lobby to whoever is currently in parliament. Just check what's happening in EU with upload filters, that's Facebook and Google lobbying result.
With Bitcoin, you don't know who the rich guys are and you don't know how many rich guys are there, there could be 10, but there could also be only 1. And you can't do anything about it, you could fork and make their hardware useless, but you probably don't get the miners because the rich guys are becoming the majority of the miners.
Byteball moves in the opposite direction, eventually there will be so many witness candidates that if they breach your trust, you replace them and if enough people feel the same, better witness gets elected.

If one day, all Byteball current witnesses are replaced then your only hope that Bitcoin is more decentralized is because you think that the big miners are not the same people, but you can't be sure. Also, if some of those people become so powerful that they could pull off 51% attack, your hope is that they will not do it because it will destroy the value of their holdings, but you don't know how much they hold BTC by that time, they could have been planning for exit or fork for very long time.

Hmm, dPOS actually totally makes sense. I am not saying don't invest into BTC, it will still for sure have nice returns, but it will not be nr1 forever.

Ok, so still talking about Bitcoin rather than Byteball. What's up with that?

Maybe you didn't notice, but I compared not only Bitcoin and Byteball, but also current monetary & power system.

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

Ever heard what comparison is? Oh, right, it is too difficult for some because Byteball is not a fork of Bitcoin and the consensus mechanisms are totally different, so it much easier to just look the amount of validators and yell: this is not decentralized.

[tarmo888]

Months ago I stopped my efforts to bring this project forward. One does not make friends with his customers.

Don't leave us hanging just like that, would love to know what were your efforts to bring this project forward.

[tarmo888]

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

I stongly disagree with that statement too!

I said purely monetary.

It is not a first time by ttookk for not understanding the whole sentence, he jumped to my "not comparable" too, ignoring that i said "not DIRECTLY comparable". Attention span nowadays
But could be language issue too, don't know.

[julian071]

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

I stongly disagree with that statement too!

I said purely monetary.

It is not a first time by ttookk for not understanding the whole sentence, he jumped to my "not comparable" too, ignoring that i said "not DIRECTLY comparable". Attention span nowadays
But could be language issue too, don't know.

Could be. Also, I'd like to hear if he/she or someone else disagrees with the more interesting part of that statement, namely that basing a consensus mechanism purely on monetary reward will automatically lead to total centralization.

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

[tarmo888]

You are right about incentives.  But there is something else.  PoW mining is an economic activity.  You have capex, you have opex, almost all your profits are burned in your huge costs, and you have to care about efficiency in order to stay in the game.  And in any economic activity, you have economy of scale.  As your mining farm gets bigger, it becomes more efficient and stands better against the competition.  You get volume discounts for miners, you will be the first in line for the new generation of miners, you can get cheaper electricity when you buy wholesale, it becomes worthwhile to relocate to a more favorable location, and you can hire the best talent in the industry.  It doesn't matter if the PoW algorithm is ASICable or not, the economy of scale is universal.  It might be not very important in the growing market when everyone, even a smaller and weaker miner, gets a portion of the growing pie, but nothing lasts forever and as the market matures and gets more competitive, the weaker players are darwinized, and the hash power gets concentrated in the hands of a few bigger miners.  Miners, not mining pools.  This looks like an end-game of any PoW based blockchain, because it has a heavy "hook" into the economy, and the economy favors scale.  You can call it emergent centralization.  Incidentally, Byteball moves in the opposite direction.

Bitcoin is not run by miners, it's run by a community. (If miners were in charge, we would have big blocks right now.)
This in the beauty and strength of bitcoin. It is multi-leveled, > full nodes, miners, devs and community all able to check each other and keeping each other honest.

I like byteball as a concept but critisism must be taken seriously if you want to improve.
Imo, not being able to run a Byteball full node on a desktop computer is a massive problem.

What you are saying it totally true about the community. Yes, there is not only miners, but miners have the upper hand.
You say that without full nodes there would be bigger blocks, but you are forgetting that BCH is still alive. We don't know if it ever take over BTC, but the ball is rolling.
I guess people are already starting to forget empty or full blocks and $50 transaction fees too. Your full node is useless without the block producers.

And it is not only weaker miners who get darwinized, weaker full nodes too because not everybody can keep up with the growing size of the blockchain, especially Ethereum, which grows crazy fast. Big miners doesn't mind about bigger blockchain, they have to run a full node either way. Mass adoption happens with light clients, not with full nodes.

It is great that community has still some power over miners, but it could be what dooms Bitcoin if it takes so long to adopt SegWit and Lightning or whatever sharding method is needed in the future to scale full nodes. If it takes Ethereum for another 2 years for that, I wonder how much it will take for Bitcoin.

On Byteball, there is no empty blocks because there is no blocks and it doesn't matter how much you pay for fees, your transactions will be confirmed in 5-15 minutes. Even faster the more popular it gets. And once it is confirmed, it will be final, no way to rewrite it. Also, Byteball has evolved so much in past 2 years that when it finally actually needs layer-2 solutions or sharding then these improvements can be introduced more easily because if the witnesses don't agree with it then they can be replaced with those who do (gradually, giving the other witnesses the time to re-think).

[pineapple express]

byterbal community can't change even one witness. Rogier 5% support
we are passive hamsters with balls
can i buy something on Amazon with my balls?

[jbreher]

If miners were in charge really wanted big blocks , we would have big blocks right now.

^^^FTFY

[sefirotius]

I had coins, it’s a pity that I lost access to my wallet

[jbreher]

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

The only monopolies that exist in unfettered free trade are those that already provide optimum product or service at optimum price for the consumer. Otherwise, a new entrant will either provide a better solution at same price or same solution at lower price, thereby eliminating the monopoly.

This is all quite foundational.

So with that understood, are you trying to malign the very existence of such a monopoly?

[julian071]

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

The only monopolies that exist in unfettered free trade are those that already provide optimum product or service at optimum price for the consumer. Otherwise, a new entrant will either provide a better solution at same price or same solution at lower price, thereby eliminating the monopoly.

This is all quite foundational.

So with that understood, are you trying to malign the very existence of such a monopoly?

Haha!

A new entrant will get squashed by the all powerful monopolist, as happens all the time in the oligarchies you can observe in poorly regulated markets around the globe. They get bought up, and their ideas either implemented by the monopolist or shelved (e.g. Shell buying green energy innovations. They have a big shelve full of them, waiting for the right time).

It's all easily observable throughout history. Any new cell phone network operators recently in your part of the world, providing better or cheaper solutions?

[ttookk]

Oh, good, we finally arrived on the verge of ad hominems. Questioning my intelligence and all that. Great.

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

I stongly disagree with that statement too!

I said purely monetary.

It is not a first time by ttookk for not understanding the whole sentence, he jumped to my "not comparable" too, ignoring that i said "not DIRECTLY comparable". Attention span nowadays
But could be language issue too, don't know.

Could be. Also, I'd like to hear if he/she or someone else disagrees with the more interesting part of that statement, namely that basing a consensus mechanism purely on monetary reward will automatically lead to total centralization.

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

Yeah, maybe I was skimming over that part a bit quickly, but "purely monetary" in the strict sense doesn't exist; there is always other factors associated with it. Do you have to run hardware 24/7, do you have to stake coins/tokens etc.

To answer your question, I can see the danger of centralization in Bitcoin, yes, but I think it is largely mitigated by a strong division of the different interest groups (miners, devs, users, etc.) and the gametheoretical underpinnings that give cooperation on a protocol layer little to no advantage.

Let me try to rephrase the whole question I have:
As tarmo888 has so condescendingly stated, Byteball operates on a very different basis than Bitcoin, so why aren't you guys looking for more comparable real-world projects?

I brought up the witness voting mechanism to DPoS comparison multiple times, because I think it is far more comparable than Byteball/BTC. If you want to see how a future system that is based on voting can look like, there are a lot of DPoS systems out there in which on-chain voting as part of the consensus mechanism is a thing and their behavior can be studied. Lisk, EOS, Ark, Tron, Shift, just to name a few.

…Oh, and by the way, here is something no one in the altcoin space wants to hear: technology is absolutely overrated. Things don't have to work optimally with tons of headroom, they have to work good enough. Almost all Bitcoin clones were trying the "better than BTC" narrative, be it faster blocktimes, bigger blocks, more GPU-friendly mining algos etc. Where are they now? Currently, we are seeing the same phenomenon with ETH and its competitors. If tech would actually matter as much as so many people think it does, at least Ethereum would have been dethroned by now.
In the end, it doesn't matter if something is theoretically better than the competition, if no one uses it. History is full of better versions of the things that became mainstream, where simply the circumstances, like the network effect, helped decide the race.
Bitcoin is more decentralized than all the other projects out there (maybe except for Ethereum in some fields), including Byteball. Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain/distributed ledger. Maybe there are implementations out there which are theoretically more secure, if they had the userbase, the development base, the miner base and all the other metrics of Bitcoin, but they don't. In the end, users will not (and should not) give two shits about whether the system they use to pay their coffee or whatever uses a blockchain or a DAG, PoW, PoS or a different consensus mechanism.

Alright, but now I guess this turns too much into incoherent rambling from my side, plus, I don't like to be insulted, so that's it from my side. You have fun playing with your Byteballs.

[julian071]

Oh, good, we finally arrived on the verge of ad hominems. Questioning my intelligence and all that. Great.

It's funny how no one really talks about Byteball, but rather about Bitcoin…

(…)

Only a different consensus mechanism then one purely based on monetary gain can solve this, otherwise the process towards total centralization is automatic.  

I strongly disagree with this. If you have no built-in reward, the ones running the system will eventually make damn sure that they get rewarded in some other way.

I stongly disagree with that statement too!

I said purely monetary.

It is not a first time by ttookk for not understanding the whole sentence, he jumped to my "not comparable" too, ignoring that i said "not DIRECTLY comparable". Attention span nowadays
But could be language issue too, don't know.

Could be. Also, I'd like to hear if he/she or someone else disagrees with the more interesting part of that statement, namely that basing a consensus mechanism purely on monetary reward will automatically lead to total centralization.

Just like totally free (unregulated) capitalism in a market will automatically lead to a monopoly.

Yeah, maybe I was skimming over that part a bit quickly, but "purely monetary" in the strict sense doesn't exist; there is always other factors associated with it. Do you have to run hardware 24/7, do you have to stake coins/tokens etc.

To answer your question, I can see the danger of centralization in Bitcoin, yes, but I think it is largely mitigated by a strong division of the different interest groups (miners, devs, users, etc.) and the gametheoretical underpinnings that give cooperation on a protocol layer little to no advantage.

Let me try to rephrase the whole question I have:
As tarmo888 has so condescendingly stated, Byteball operates on a very different basis than Bitcoin, so why aren't you guys looking for more comparable real-world projects?

I brought up the witness voting mechanism to DPoS comparison multiple times, because I think it is far more comparable than Byteball/BTC. If you want to see how a future system that is based on voting can look like, there are a lot of DPoS systems out there in which on-chain voting as part of the consensus mechanism is a thing and their behavior can be studied. Lisk, EOS, Ark, Tron, Shift, just to name a few.

…Oh, and by the way, here is something no one in the altcoin space wants to hear: technology is absolutely overrated. Things don't have to work optimally with tons of headroom, they have to work good enough. Almost all Bitcoin clones were trying the "better than BTC" narrative, be it faster blocktimes, bigger blocks, more GPU-friendly mining algos etc. Where are they now? Currently, we are seeing the same phenomenon with ETH and its competitors. If tech would actually matter as much as so many people think it does, at least Ethereum would have been dethroned by now.
In the end, it doesn't matter if something is theoretically better than the competition, if no one uses it. History is full of better versions of the things that became mainstream, where simply the circumstances, like the network effect, helped decide the race.
Bitcoin is more decentralized than all the other projects out there (maybe except for Ethereum in some fields), including Byteball. Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain/distributed ledger. Maybe there are implementations out there which are theoretically more secure, if they had the userbase, the development base, the miner base and all the other metrics of Bitcoin, but they don't. In the end, users will not (and should not) give two shits about whether the system they use to pay their coffee or whatever uses a blockchain or a DAG, PoW, PoS or a different consensus mechanism.

Alright, but now I guess this turns too much into incoherent rambling from my side, plus, I don't like to be insulted, so that's it from my side. You have fun playing with your Byteballs.

Good points about practical circumstances and not just technical specifications deciding the race. VHS vs Betamax etc (look it up kids). if history teaches us anything, we just need to use new tech to publish porn in order to make a project succeed.

As for the monetary reward and costs, there is hardly any of that in Byeball, the role of a witness is very different and it is much more about trustworthyness, reputation. In fact the point is, they are only witnesses because they are reputable and to continue to be recognized as such, they should not have any other interest in the ecosystem other then that. Very different from the interests of miners in a PoW-scenario.

Sincere apologies if I was to impolite.

[ttookk]

(…)

Sincere apologies if I was to impolite.

… alright, just for you I'll write another post here: no apologies needed, this was not addressed at you.

As for the monetary reward and costs, there is hardly any of that in Byeball, the role of a witness is very different and it is much more about trustworthyness, reputation. In fact the point is, they are only witnesses because they are reputable and to continue to be recognized as such, they should not have any other interest in the ecosystem other then that. Very different from the interests of miners in a PoW-scenario.

Bitcoins base premise is that you don't have to trust the miners because the system as a whole is built in a way that makes bad behavior expensive and ultimately not worth it. Anyone, regardless of reputation, is able to mine and you as a user should not need to care who confirmed your transaction.
I can see how soe people might feel uncomfortable with this. What if the block was mined by a state-sponsored mining facility in North Korea (to my knowledge not happening right now, but a possible scenario)? Having real world entities who keep the system running may be the preferable choice for some.

Now, this may sound silly, but can you imagine being one of twelve witnesses on a system with the marketcap and transaction throughput of Bitcoin, or even more? I would be terrified. What if there was a bug and I messed something up and someone lost a big amount of money? What if someone knocked on my door and asked me politely but "convincingly" not to confirm transactions on a certain branch of the DAG or something? We were talking about scaling in a different sense, but maybe thinking about scaling in that direction would be worth a thought or two.

if history teaches us anything, we just need to use new tech to publish porn in order to make a project succeed.

Oh god, does that mean the real future of crypto is Verge? I think we can both agree on that not being a good thing

Ok, now that's it I think.