Bitcoin Guinness World Records

[wareen]

3. The exact measurements of the distributed computing network must be given in
petaFLOPS and floating point operations per second.

The speed of the bitcoin network, measured in FLOPS, is exactly zero.

Well, that depends on what you mean by the "bitcoin network" - most of the underlying hardware is quite capable of floating point operations so we can very well assign a FLOPS rating to the Bitcoin network (meaning all the mining hardware).

The problem is of course that we don't know exactly which kind of hardware makes up the whole hashing power. The other problem is that since we don't use floating point arithmetic, we could only quote some theoretical performance values anyway.

I'd say the best thing would be to point out that we're just doing IntOPS and then offer a transparent calculation for a FLOPS estimation: Assuming that the vast majority of the calculations is performed by ATI GPUs (I know that's debatable...), one hash requires about 3800 IntOPS with current OpenCL kernels - so with a hashing power of 13000 GHash/s that would equate to about 50 PIntOPS.

FLOPS-ratings of GPUs are usually 2*IntOPS, so theoretically about 100 PFLOPS peak. Of course there are other estimations but you could as well offer various different estimations if they insist on a FLOPS rating.

Just make the calculations transparent and quote sources. The ultimate proof of the computational power is of course condensed in the last block of the blockchain and the way it was created (ie. the Bitcoin system). Any mathematician can objectively estimate the current computational power of the network from that alone - albeit just INTOPs.

Maybe you could start a wiki page with all the calculations and we can together collect references and refine the arguments.

[phelix]

5. Two (2) independent witnesses must attest to the computing power.

I have a good contact to a german publicly certified computer and network assessor (in german: öffentlich bestellter und vereidigter EDV-Sachverständiger). I will ask him if he has time to attest for bitcoin. Will there be a bounty for this?

[de_bert]

GUIDELINES FOR ‘MOST POWERFUL DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING NETWORK’
1. For the purposes of this record, a distributed computing network consist of
clients and servers connected in such a way that any system can potentially
communicate with any other system.

The mining nodes do this by uploading and downloading blocks to/from each other. Any transaction that one node receives will be communicated to every other node. Any node that finds a block meeting the proof of work conditions will have their block communicated to every other node.

That's not even relevant. It says "[...] clients and servers [...] can potentially communicate with any other system.". "potentially" means - they don't have to, they just have to be interconnected. And, being connected to the internet, that's a given.

[PatrickHarnett]

Interesting link - Folding@home shows as 6PFLOPS

Individual contributions (an indication) at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/chart_list.php so the top BOINC guys are well behind some of the bigger mining people - but then, BOINC doesn't pay any bills.
Sample single project Milkyway is running around 400TFLOPS http://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/server_status.php
Combined http://boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=bo says 5 PFLOPS, and is also cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS running at 5.3PF.

As a post-it-note calculation, I have about 20TFlops for 3Ghash out of 15,000Ghash.  I can can turn in about 2M RAC out of the 1B RAC over in boinc as a comparison.  Implies BTC network is running around 100Peta flops +/- a lot.

[TiagoTiago]

...

How did the folding@home people fill that in then?

Aren't they way more centralized than Bitcoin?

[shads]

Some more interesting stats...

http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/e107_plugins/boinc/bp.php?project=1

I looks like since may all the BOINC projects have been dropping.  Folding@home peaked at around 8 and is now around 4. Coincided pretty much with the bitcoin price bubble and the Silk Road publicity.

[phelix]

technical discussion here on how to best prove the record:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38064

[phelix]

this is not going forward.

I suggest we figure out how to prove the bitcoin network performance in a community effort and hand the information to any expert that will review it and hand it in. Please note the other thread in my post above.

Bitcoin could well need some positive publicity at the moment.

[wareen]

this is not going forward.

I suggest we figure out how to prove the bitcoin network performance in a community effort and hand the information to any expert that will review it and hand it in. Please note the other thread in my post above.

Bitcoin could well need some positive publicity at the moment.

Agreed - I suggest to start a wiki page with all the information and references that were posted so far and try to form it into a conclusive and well written article. Once we have that, we can probably find some experts within the community for a review.

[d.james]

And we better do this quick as the network is shrinking.

[phelix]

this is not going forward.

I suggest we figure out how to prove the bitcoin network performance in a community effort and hand the information to any expert that will review it and hand it in. Please note the other thread in my post above.

Bitcoin could well need some positive publicity at the moment.

Agreed - I suggest to start a wiki page with all the information and references that were posted so far and try to form it into a conclusive and well written article. Once we have that, we can probably find some experts within the community for a review.

A page on the bitcoin wiki for this purpose sure would be very nice. I am not sure if we can start a movement to use it, though. Even in the technical thread about this topic on this forum the wild discussion has not yet started...   (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38064)

[phillipsjk]

The Guiness Book of world records lost all credibility to me when they started allowing geographically-distributed records such as "x people walking at the same time." I suppose any Folding@home or Bitcoin record would be similar. The Internet has acces to more FLOPS than any individual project .

My point is records for doing things everybody else is many other people are doing anyway don't really mean much.

[phelix]

The Guiness Book of world records lost all credibility to me when they started allowing geographically-distributed records such as "x people walking at the same time." I suppose any Folding@home or Bicoin record would be similar. The Internet has acces to more FLOPS than any individual project .

My point is records for doing things everybody else is many other people are doing anyway don't really mean much.

I think the record would convince a lot of people that bitcoin is big. at least it would get us publicity.

[phelix]

what about this new strategy:

just claim the record until someone can prove the opposite.

by my estimate we are quite a bit faster than all the competitors, so it is pretty obvious to me: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38064.new#new

[phelix]

[...]
3. The exact measurements of the distributed computing network must be given in
petaFLOPS and floating point operations per second.
[...]

Can you ask them about IntOPs?

It is like this: bitcoin has a box of oranges and folding@home has a box of bananas. We could only theoretically exchange our oranges for bananas and have much more bananas than they have. Still, we actually have more than ten times more fruits than they have.

[Gabi]

But they only accept bananas. Our oranges are TOTALLY useless.

Only an idiot would measure computing power only in flops

[phelix]

But they only accept bananas. Our oranges are TOTALLY useless.

Only an idiot would measure computing power only in flops

as far as I know we have not yet asked them about anything else. we need to explain the problem and convince them to add an IntOPs category and a general category where it is ok to use voodoo converted OPs.

[phelix]

I'd really like this thing to take off...  Bitcoin for World Record!

updated the original post with correct link to the Guinness website... feel free to add your comments there

suggested this issue in the bitcoin foundation thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49841.msg689941#msg689941

[finway]

Watching

[phelix]

added a claim to wikipedia - who want's to bet how many minutes it will stick? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin&diff=prev&oldid=476478475