Bitcoin an anti-fragile network

[krishnapramod]

Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. It is a concept developed by Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragility

This is an old article from 2014, http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/02/bitcoin-is-an-open-network-that-exhibits-resilience-and-anti-fragility.html

Andreas Antonopoulos explains that bitcoin is an anti-fragile network which not only resists attack, but gets stronger through exposure to attack.

It is true, DDoS attacks, spam attacks, noise created by the media/individuals to criticize bitcoin, scaling debate and high fee has been a stressor for quite some time now, and then the ever changing volatility, but still even after all these bitcoin is going strong, a good example of antifragility.

1. Bitcoin is anti-fragile because of blockchain technology, but if I am right there have been altcoins created using blockchain technology that failed miserably. Why didn't these exhibit antifragility?

2. Bitcoin with the course of time on its own has developed anti-fragile properties. Not removing the blockchain aspect, but taking point one into consideration, popularity, increasing user base, more countries recognizing bitcoin, this is what makes bitcoin different from alts that used the same technology, but failed.

Do you think blockchain technology or bitcoin is anti-fragile?

PS: I don't want to sound stupid, blockchain technology is the core of bitcoin, but apart from its technology, does user base, popularity, going mainstream, mass recognition contribute to its antifragility?

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[OROBTC]

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I think that it may too soon to know if the Bitcoin Ecosystem is "antifragile" or not.  It HAS survived attacks and other problems, and is fairly near its all time high.

I think that we need to see what happens after August 1.  If they solve (at least for a while) the scaling problem(s), then that would mean that BTC would get stronger.

Another big test would be if the governments of the world go after BTC in a serious way...

IMO, we will have to see.

I read N. N. Taleb's book Antifragile.  Highly recommended!

[CrewKitten]

Interesting article. I agree with it wholeheartedly. The more Bitcoin gets attacked, the stronger it becomes. It is a simple fact.

[aso118]

...

I think that it may too soon to know if the Bitcoin Ecosystem is "antifragile" or not.  It HAS survived attacks and other problems, and is fairly near its all time high.

I think that we need to see what happens after August 1.  If they solve (at least for a while) the scaling problem(s), then that would mean that BTC would get stronger.

Another big test would be if the governments of the world go after BTC in a serious way...

IMO, we will have to see.

I read N. N. Taleb's book Antifragile.  Highly recommended!

True. Bitcoin may be resistant to shocks outside, but what happens when force is applied from within the community?
The biggest test of Bitcoin's resilience would be in resolving the scalability problem.

[South Park]

Interesting article. I agree with it wholeheartedly. The more Bitcoin gets attacked, the stronger it becomes. It is a simple fact.

This is in fact a known principle in nature and in humans, when an army attacked a city they tried to find its weak spot to try to enter the city, when they were successful other cites took note and adapted their defenses to withstand those attacks and improve their weaknesses, so it is attackers and not the defenders that makes your defenses better by exposing the mistakes in the way you are doing things.

[Kemarit]

Well this is also my observation about bitcoin. Specially after post ETF last March. We see that bitcoin price sank sub $1000 and a lot of people saying that bitcoin will die. But after that we see the price surge to new ATH in around May and still up to now the price is really strong. And I think you don't need to be a social scientist or something to noticed how bitcoin is anti-fragile to begin with. Bitcoin has withstood till now and proven itself to resist a lot of attacks along the way and survived it. So I'm expecting that come Aug 1, if ever bitcoin price come crashing again, it will recover and rebound to another ATH at the end of the year.

[haroldtee]

I think OP has stated most of the facts which I believe are true. Like they always say, what doesn't kill you, apparently makes you stronger. From the last questions you asked, I think it is the other way round. The antifragility of bitcoin has contributed to thr increase in its user base, popularity, mass recognition and so on and so forth. Bitcoin has seen some grievous shits which it has survived, waiting for the recent one  (scaling) which I am sure it won't just survive but will show the world how much it is here to camp.

[satoshforever]

I agree with the premise that Bitcoin is antifragile but there's an important caveat- the fact that a system is antifragile doesn't mean it can automatically survive attacks, it means that the ecosystem becomes stronger when it overcomes attacks.

[d5000]

Interesting read. Overall, I agree with Antonopoulos. The clue is the following paragraph:

During each attack, the media will confuse access for trust and write hyperbolic headlines proclaiming the end of the currency. Soon after, the bitcoin network and ancillary services will learn, adapt, thwart and become more resilient.

He is clearly talking about ''the network" (what we also can call "the ecosystem"), and in other paragraphs he explicits mentions actors like exchanges that contributed to the network to "learn" from attacks and mistakes.

So I think it's easy to answer your question:

1. Bitcoin is anti-fragile because of blockchain technology, but if I am right there have been altcoins created using blockchain technology that failed miserably. Why didn't these exhibit antifragility?[...]
but apart from its technology, does user base, popularity, going mainstream, mass recognition contribute to its antifragility?

The blockchain as the technological base is only one component - but the "network" is also necessary for anti-fragility. Altcoins that "died" simply failed to build up a network that could "learn" from attacks. Most small altcoins, for example, only operate on "multi-coin exchanges" that wouldn't bother about a single coin being attacked - they simply delist it. In the case of Bitcoin, there are many businesses that depend on the health of Bitcoin - if Bitcoin failed, they at least would have a very hard time (above all, if they are Bitcoin-exclusive like BitPay).

I think this "dependance" on Bitcoin's health is the clue for the anti-fragility effect. The more people (businesses and their employees, investors, etc.) are dependant on the network health, the more anti-fragile it becomes.

Some altcoins may have adopted the anti-fragile aspects of Bitcoin - so for example, Ethereum after the DAO fiasco seems to have gotten on track again and grew in an impressive way. But obviously that doesn't apply to small ones that have little or no network at all.

[hv_]

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I think that it may too soon to know if the Bitcoin Ecosystem is "antifragile" or not.  It HAS survived attacks and other problems, and is fairly near its all time high.

I think that we need to see what happens after August 1.  If they solve (at least for a while) the scaling problem(s), then that would mean that BTC would get stronger.

Another big test would be if the governments of the world go after BTC in a serious way...

IMO, we will have to see.

I read N. N. Taleb's book Antifragile.  Highly recommended!

Done. It's in my TOP 10 list.

Here we also learn, that we need open markets (on protocol parameters) and multiple client implementations > competition.

The best will win by evolution & selection - that's how our nature works sucessfull over millions of years = anti fragile.

[d5000]

Here we also learn, that we need open markets (on protocol parameters) and multiple client implementations > competition.

The best will win by evolution & selection - that's how our nature works sucessfull over millions of years = anti fragile.

While I agree on a general level, I think the "war" in the actual debate has gone too far.

If the community split is too deep, then we risk to partition the "network" and the separated partitions are weakened - there is less dependence on _one_ working Bitcoin, and so less pressure to learn and improve. And chain splits would lead to user base splits - we don't have to forget that a large user base is an important component of "anti-fragility", according to my own interpretation I detailed above.

[hv_]

Here we also learn, that we need open markets (on protocol parameters) and multiple client implementations > competition.

The best will win by evolution & selection - that's how our nature works sucessfull over millions of years = anti fragile.

While I agree on a general level, I think the "war" in the actual debate has gone too far.

If the community split is too deep, then we risk to partition the "network" and the separated partitions are weakened - there is less dependence on _one_ working Bitcoin, and so less pressure to learn and improve. And chain splits would lead to user base splits - we don't have to forget that a large user base is an important component of "anti-fragility", according to my own interpretation I detailed above.

Now we ARE split and need to find out WHY, WHEN and HOW this started. Try to fix it , so that this could make bitcoin stronger than before.

Stronger can only mean to me (disputable) more or same safe, but more use cases and users. So we need to scale on every option and need any ideas to be tried out (keeping up the security constraints).

[Meuh6879]

Anti-Fragile or ... in others words : The Sewer Rat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810aKcfM__Q