[ANN] [XEL] :: XEL - The Decentralized Supercomputer ::

[clivemy]

Website updated :
- new logo applied
- new color applied
- new posts added (about logo and new ann thread)
- urls updated to secure urls (https links*)

https://talk.elasticexplorer.org/t/we-need-a-good-website/133/16?u=byrallier

So here's some txt for you that I've cobbled together for the website.  We might need EK to just check that it's accurate.

What is Elastic?[/b]/size]

What can Elastic do?
With Elastic, instead of specific use cases, a use case has to be coded by the user of the system in Elastic's own programming language - Elastic PL. It is similar to C but with limited functionality so it can be guaranteed that Elastic code can be executed on other machines without causing any harm. You can write a program in Elastic PL and be sure that if executed correctly, no exploits, no endless loops, no data leakage.

So while  Elastic is more flexible in designing tasks, it does not perform better for one particular use case over other systems. With other super computer models, If you want to do 6 different tasks you need 6 separate use cases. With Elastic you can do them all at once.  As the Elastic PL is further developed, so the diversity of tasks will become more complex.  Currently, only tasks which explore a search space can be performed, and not tasks which are divided into multiple packages (like rendering divides a large image into many smaller tiles).

Elastic PL will get better over time with the flexibility that Elastic PL provides.  The system is built and designed this way from ground up to allow user configurable tasks.  This makes Elastic the only system that currently offer this.  The potential of Elastic is basically limitless.

Other design features
The current system is absolutely trustless. That means that there is no central authority verifying anything (such as all BOINC based coins, which rely on an external service controlled by a single entity and which could become rogue and cripple the entire coin), so we at Elastic have to make sure every node in the network verifies work by itself.  To further act as a safeguard, Super Nodes check work processed by the nodes and a final level of security is in the Guard Nodes that check that the SuperNodes are doing their job.

So we have:
Normal nodes that broadcast unverified POW/bounties
Super nodes that verify work and broadcast the verified POW/bounties
Guard nodes that cross verify a certain percentage of the super node’s signed POW/bounties to detect malicious behaviour

[frajervitalny]

Hi, how can I get my hands on XEL tokens?

[olkah]

how can I get my hands on XEL tokens?

[Bgjjj2016]

https://talk.elasticexplorer.org/t/we-need-a-good-website/133/18?u=byrallier

@clivemy @unvoid @BeanutPutter @spaceMonkey
I need to some content:
-Why Elastic
-What is different other projects
-roadmap
-revised whitepaper
-faq (https://talk.elasticexplorer.org/t/faq-for-the-website/122)

could you change the logo at wallet.elastic.pw as well ? Also I don't see the warning " you're in Testnet....." when you go to the wallet page.

[by rallier]

https://talk.elasticexplorer.org/t/we-need-a-good-website/133/18?u=byrallier

@clivemy @unvoid @BeanutPutter @spaceMonkey
I need to some content:
-Why Elastic
-What is different other projects
-roadmap
-revised whitepaper
-faq (https://talk.elasticexplorer.org/t/faq-for-the-website/122)

could you change the logo at wallet.elastic.pw as well ? Also I don't see the warning " you're in Testnet....." when you go to the wallet page.

I will put elastic-light wallet. The logo change on it. When I upload elastic-light wallet, it will appear with new logo.
You don't see testnet warning because I was testing for mainnet with mainnet settings like SSL, ports etc.

[HomoHenning]

can you please add this video to OP or website about this use case (Bitcoin Mining in ElasticPL) from dev?
https://vimeo.com/216378462

[unvoid]

can you please add this video to OP or website about this use case (Bitcoin Mining in ElasticPL) from dev?
https://vimeo.com/216378462

+1 @ImI

Most probably we will not be able to mine any block in BTC network but it's nice show-off of Elastic capabilities.

[by rallier]

can you please add this video to OP or website about this use case (Bitcoin Mining in ElasticPL) from dev?
https://vimeo.com/216378462

+1 @ImI

Most probably we will not be able to mine any block in BTC network but it's nice show-off of Elastic capabilities.

+1 I will add website as a blog post.
can somebody write content for this video for blog post?

[Mrboot]

Great to see a new post, good luck to the team cant wait for lightnetwork to be online as mainnet.

[13Darko]

Dev algo   !!!!

Elastic uses PoS algorithm. And at the same time, it has PoW to solve tasks sent to the distributed network, but
it's not gonna be implemented in the first version of the release.

Developers:
Core: Evil-Knievel
Miner: coralreefer
Elastic forum, blockexplorer, faucet: unvoid
Elastic site: by rallier, clivemy

P.s. Ping me, if I forgot someone.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I guess with masternodes you mean so called SNs (supernodes), right?

Yes, I just use the generic, age-old p2p terminology for any form of systematic recentralization, regardless of the trendy term-of-the-day for it.  (... which seems to vary month-to-month anymore.)

Well, I didn't like them too. Not sure if it's possible at all at this stage, but perhaps with your support, it could be possible to think it over again, and get rid of those special nodes.

I doubt it is something that would get sorted out before you guys proceed with the lite wallet launch.  It isn't entirely clear to me what the XEL transition plan is from there, though.... so maybe it is something that could be done after or maybe it is something where we'd be talking about a new, distinct network.

[trader19]

I guess with masternodes you mean so called SNs (supernodes), right?

Yes, I just use the generic, age-old p2p terminology for any form of systematic recentralization, regardless of the trendy term-of-the-day for it.  (... which seems to vary month-to-month anymore.)

Well, I didn't like them too. Not sure if it's possible at all at this stage, but perhaps with your support, it could be possible to think it over again, and get rid of those special nodes.

I doubt it is something that would get sorted out before you guys proceed with the lite wallet launch.  It isn't entirely clear to me what the XEL transition plan is from there, though.... so maybe it is something that could be done after or maybe it is something where we'd be talking about a new, distinct network.

lite wallet will have "only" basic functions to redeem, receive and send XEL. fancy full client with SN, ElasticPL and such will get wrapped up later, or did i miss something?

[HunterMinerCrafter]

The great thing about an open source project like this is that any developer can take it any direction they'd like as long as the community adopts it.

I'm open to ideas other than the SNs, just keep in mind there are a lot of constraints that need to be met.  So if people have alternate solutions for how a distributed network can fully validate the POW / Bounty submissions without creating a bottleneck, please provide your ideas.

I've also pitched a couple of alternate ideas to EK, but really he's pretty busy right now so this would probably be the best opportunity to revisit this topic before he has time to work on the Core Server again.

One last thing...regardless of what we do, maybe it would be best to change the name of it...even in the current design it's not a SuperNode the way other blockchains think of it.  It's simply a Core Server node that has the ability to run the ElasticPL engine to validate POW / Bounty submissions.

The very short version:  A job requester would annotate an SSA form program (in a specific machine model resulting in a particularly structured (binary) flow graph)  with a simple liveness/reachability model so that miners could (quickly, and without running any example case inputs) verify the necessary complexity bound of the job's individual work task before selecting.  PoW solutions would operate a little differently (still using "per user" generated inputs incl nonce data, but basically hashing/checking "instruction by instruction" instead of at the end of each input run) so that PoW solution rates become uniform across jobs, being able to be found at any point mid-execution.  (PoW prize pool would probably also need to work a little differently, with any amount of proof-of-work certificates able to be submitted before a bounty is found, and the PoW pool being divided proportionally after.)  Bounty solutions would include an annotation of the original model with information about the eventual I/O relation, such that verifying the output submission can be reduced to an instance of a satisfiability problem.  Nodes (all of them) would validate solutions against this model. (They would still need to "re-run the program" by a symbolic interpretation, but could know that they are doing so in an optimally efficient way - effectively skipping any "unrelated loops" encountered.)  Jobs would always end after one bounty is found.

I'm summarizing a lot, but that is the basic idea.

[frajervitalny]

is there place to buy XEL?

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I'm summarizing a lot, but that is the basic idea.

Even shorter version:  Instead of giving a machine and getting an input/output pair, you give a model of a machine's behavior, and get back an input/output pair's relationship to that machine.  Instead of having a chance to find a PoW certificate at the end of each work attempt (effort of which varies run to run) there is chance to find a PoW certificate for each individual value propagation in the program, which would be uniform both run-to-run and job-to-job.  A job requiring on average twice as many assignments per attempt would generate twice as many work proofs on average for the same number of attempts run.

[coralreefer]

I guess with masternodes you mean so called SNs (supernodes), right?

Yes, I just use the generic, age-old p2p terminology for any form of systematic recentralization, regardless of the trendy term-of-the-day for it.  (... which seems to vary month-to-month anymore.)

Well, I didn't like them too. Not sure if it's possible at all at this stage, but perhaps with your support, it could be possible to think it over again, and get rid of those special nodes.

I doubt it is something that would get sorted out before you guys proceed with the lite wallet launch.  It isn't entirely clear to me what the XEL transition plan is from there, though.... so maybe it is something that could be done after or maybe it is something where we'd be talking about a new, distinct network.

HunterMinerCrafter, the SuperNode (or whatever we decide to call it) logic has not been coded yet and has no ties to the Lite Wallet being released soon.  I have coded the logic to perform the validation of POW / Bounty submissions, but EK has not had time yet to interface this logic into the Core Server, so we may have some time to refine the approach here...

Originally, I think EK's plan was to have all nodes (the Core Server) run the validation logic; however, the algorithms written in ElasticPL can potentially take quite a bit of time and memory to solve (i.e. seconds...depending on the complexity), so the validation logic could easily be used to attack the network (i.e. submit a complex job and throw 100's of solutions to the nodes to validate).

The next thought was to just have nodes running on higher performance hardware run the validation logic...but you'd still have to have all these nodes perform the validation so there was still too much traffic and overhead on the network, so at that point we looked at just having a small number of nodes to the validation, but then you'd still have the issue of a job author running their own malicious node.  So I believe this is when EK added the 250K XEL requirement...to deter anyone from creating a malicious node...basically, the network would trust the decision of a single node....which leads us to where we are today.

Clearly this idea can be improved upon (I have concerns over the 250K requirement as well as relying on a single SN's decision), but I am just coding the logic for the validation, so I can't really say what the best approach....and EK has been so busy I don't think he's had much time if any to think about it.

So as I posted earlier, I think its work discussing again...

[tomkat]

I guess with masternodes you mean so called SNs (supernodes), right?

Yes, I just use the generic, age-old p2p terminology for any form of systematic recentralization, regardless of the trendy term-of-the-day for it.  (... which seems to vary month-to-month anymore.)

Well, I didn't like them too. Not sure if it's possible at all at this stage, but perhaps with your support, it could be possible to think it over again, and get rid of those special nodes.

I doubt it is something that would get sorted out before you guys proceed with the lite wallet launch.  It isn't entirely clear to me what the XEL transition plan is from there, though.... so maybe it is something that could be done after or maybe it is something where we'd be talking about a new, distinct network.

From my understanding the plan would be:
a) lite wallet for (1) increase awareness from outside world - specifically more developers and other specialists incentivized by a possibility of having XEL stake, (2) XEL internal fundraising possibilities, (3) distribution from early donors to an outer space, which is now not possible even with OTC trading
b) a series of hard forks towards fully functional system - I think it means there wouldn't be new distinct network, but the initial one would rather evolve and expand.

There was no plan to change current SN-based model - that's just my personal doubts caused by aversion to complexity, but perhaps it's worth discussing before we go too far with too much intricacy in the system.

[ImI]

can you please add this video to OP or website about this use case (Bitcoin Mining in ElasticPL) from dev?
https://vimeo.com/216378462

done

[coralreefer]

I'm summarizing a lot, but that is the basic idea.

Even shorter version:  Instead of giving a machine and getting an input/output pair, you give a model of a machine's behavior, and get back an input/output pair's relationship to that machine.  Instead of having a chance to find a PoW certificate at the end of each work attempt (effort of which varies run to run) there is chance to find a PoW certificate for each individual value propagation in the program, which would be uniform both run-to-run and job-to-job.  A job requiring on average twice as many assignments per attempt would generate twice as many work proofs on average for the same number of attempts run.

I posted my last comment before I saw this.  These are great ideas and definitely worth exploring further...

[clivemy]

can you please add this video to OP or website about this use case (Bitcoin Mining in ElasticPL) from dev?
https://vimeo.com/216378462

+1 @ImI

Most probably we will not be able to mine any block in BTC network but it's nice show-off of Elastic capabilities.

+1 I will add website as a blog post.
can somebody write content for this video for blog post?

On it.  :-)