Poll: How many of you did actually read Satoshi's paper?

[raze]

This thread is full of awesome. I was actually planning on reading the paper tonight, my first night of holidays I'll probably go through those mailing lists as well.


EDIT: Well, I just read it and I'm thoroughly surprised. People weren't kidding when they said it had very little technical jargon it in. It's pretty easy to follow for the most part, still glad I finally got around to reading it. Also, voted yes

[woodrowchai]

it's easy to read and understand than many news.

[Mahn]

You have to understand concepts like hashing and basic cryptography, so it's not an easy read without at least some programming background; but otherwise don't be too intimidated about it, it is in fact pretty short and not that hard to digest. The paper itself doesn't go into much detail, though, I feel like if I truly wanted to understand how it works I would still have to dig into the source code. I guess I'm doing that some day.

[notme]

Can someone post an accurate précis please so I can bluff my way through this question the next time I'm asked?

It's 9 pages... how lazy are you?

[raze]

Can someone post an accurate précis please so I can bluff my way through this question the next time I'm asked?

It's 9 pages... how lazy are you?

And some of those 9 pages have pictures!

[Razick]

I voted yes, but I only briefly looked through it. It's not too long, much easier read than I thought.

[bg002h]

I'm putting together a lecture on the pre-history of Bitcoin for the Bitcoin Education Project (btcedproject.org). Digital currency has been heavily researched since the 1980's (including DARPA funded groups). For some background reading, this book is good (start on page 230-ish):

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Trust-and-Risk-in-Internet-Commerce/L-Jean-Camp/e/9780262531979/?itm=7&USRI=l+jean+camp

[agnostic98]

It's a very interesting read. It's not super technical and you can get a lot of it by simply skimming, but I've read it several times since and each time I read it I learn something new about bitcoin that makes it a lot easier to work with technically. I highly recommend reading through it several times, especially as you learn more about the system.

[Stunna]

Surprisingly very easy to understand.

Really enjoying reading through these at the moment:
http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=cryptography@metzdowd.com&q=subject:%22Re%3A+Bitcoin+P2P+e-cash+paper%22

[The 4ner]

I read it. Though I didn't understand all of it at first I did look through it.

[TippingPoint]

If they aren't going to read it, people should at least look at the pictures.

[ecliptic]

Reading though every one of his forum posts is interesting too

[mprep]

I didn't actually read it. I tend to loose interest quickly if I'm not entertained or really amazed by something. Due to such amount of attention span I don't even have the will to start reading though I'm immensely interested in Bitcoins. Might read it some time if I'm really bored.

[tinus42]

I skimmed it through but I'm not a mathematician or a programmer so I didn't understand half of it.

It's amazing though that he only needed 9 pages to present his idea. Quite refreshing in a time where the average college thesis is over 100 pages and the average government report is 1000+ pages long.

[raze]

I skimmed it through but I'm not a mathematician or a programmer so I didn't understand half of it.

It's amazing though that he only needed 9 pages to present his idea. Quite refreshing in a time where the average college thesis is over 100 pages and the average government report is 1000+ pages long.

Occam's razor anyone?

[pand70]

I read it when i was a complete newbie.
Even then it was easy to follow because it is well written.

[paraipan]

I'm quoting this wonderful piece of text from the mailing list:

James A. Donald wrote:
> It is not sufficient that everyone knows X. We also
> need everyone to know that everyone knows X, and that
> everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows X
> - which, as in the Byzantine Generals problem, is the
> classic hard problem of distributed data processing.

The proof-of-work chain is a solution to the Byzantine Generals' Problem.  I'll
try to rephrase it in that context.

A number of Byzantine Generals each have a computer and want to attack the
King's wi-fi by brute forcing the password, which they've learned is a certain
number of characters in length.  Once they stimulate the network to generate a
packet, they must crack the password within a limited time to break in and
erase the logs, otherwise they will be discovered and get in trouble.  They
only have enough CPU power to crack it fast enough if a majority of them attack
at the same time.

They don't particularly care when the attack will be, just that they all agree.
 It has been decided that anyone who feels like it will announce a time, and
whatever time is heard first will be the official attack time.  The problem is
that the network is not instantaneous, and if two generals announce different
attack times at close to the same time, some may hear one first and others hear
the other first.

They use a proof-of-work chain to solve the problem.  Once each general
receives whatever attack time he hears first, he sets his computer to solve an
extremely difficult proof-of-work problem that includes the attack time in its
hash.  The proof-of-work is so difficult, it's expected to take 10 minutes of
them all working at once before one of them finds a solution.  Once one of the
generals finds a proof-of-work, he broadcasts it to the network, and everyone
changes their current proof-of-work computation to include that proof-of-work
in the hash they're working on.  If anyone was working on a different attack
time, they switch to this one, because its proof-of-work chain is now longer.

After two hours, one attack time should be hashed by a chain of 12
proofs-of-work.  Every general, just by verifying the difficulty of the
proof-of-work chain, can estimate how much parallel CPU power per hour was
expended on it and see that it must have required the majority of the computers
to produce that much proof-of-work in the allotted time.  They had to all have
seen it because the proof-of-work is proof that they worked on it.  If the CPU
power exhibited by the proof-of-work chain is sufficient to crack the password,
they can safely attack at the agreed time.

The proof-of-work chain is how all the synchronisation, distributed database
and global view problems you've asked about are solved.

Double quoting Satoshi for posterity.

[No 1]

too damn long.. i was done after the first paragraph lol

[nimda]

This mailing list is great

...and indeed we have to
build a layer on top to bring the transaction cost down
to the level that supports agents performing micro
transactions, as needed for bandwidth control, file
sharing, and charging non white listed people to send us
communications.

With this optimisation, candidate branches are not really any burden.  They
just sit on the disk and don't require attention unless they ever become the
main chain.

It's very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it
properly.  I'm better with code than with words though.

No, it is very attractive to the libertarian if we can
design a mechanism that will scale to the point of
providing the benefits of rapidly irreversible payment,
immune to political interference, over the internet,
to very large numbers of people. You have an outline
and proposal for such a design, which is a big step
forward, but the devil is in the little details.

[To Satoshi]
BTW, could you please learn to use carriage returns??

There is no reliance on identifying anyone.  As you've said, it's
futile and can be trivially defeated with sock puppets.

The credential that establishes someone as real is the ability to
supply CPU power.

And unrelated,

I also find it frankly shocking that it seems like nobody in the world
has heard of a password manager.

[The 4ner]

too damn long.. i was done after the first paragraph lol

So is it safe to assume you're never read a book?