NXT :: descendant of Bitcoin - Updated Information

[pandaisftw]

IMO, forging is fine. In the future, there will be supernodes (service providers) that are basically be high-bandwidth pools people can lend their stake to. This won't be a problem of centralization, because NXT is resistant even against 90% attacks. So unless 1 single pool gets that much forging power, we will be fine. These high-bandwidth pools can support 1000+ TPS easily.

[abctc]

IMO, forging is fine. In the future, there will be supernodes (service providers) that are basically be high-bandwidth pools people can lend their stake to. This won't be a problem of centralization, because NXT is resistant even against 90% attacks. So unless 1 single pool gets that much forging power, we will be fine. These high-bandwidth pools can support 1000+ TPS easily.

- agree.

[chanc3r]

IMO, forging is fine. In the future, there will be supernodes (service providers) that are basically be high-bandwidth pools people can lend their stake to. This won't be a problem of centralization, because NXT is resistant even against 90% attacks. So unless 1 single pool gets that much forging power, we will be fine. These high-bandwidth pools can support 1000+ TPS easily.

Panda - stating this is fine... we need the building blocks in place enable these to happen if this is the way it will be, I'm not sure I entirely agree with the 'super node', the issue with over centralisation is not attack but reliability of the network particularly if you are promising instant or near realtime transactions.

So the way in which the network grows is important rewarding both the node providers and the stakeholders (and even someone with 1 NXT is a stakeholder)

[CIYAM]

sorry to nitpick ciyam but just to be fair it does help to protect against ddos.

Granted it does do that (so yes - saying *zero* benefit was going too far).

My main concern is that simple economics will likely lead to a small number of "super nodes" because I think *most* stakeholders will lease their forging rights to pools (why wouldn't you want to get money for doing absolutely nothing?).

So the problem is that if those pools are suddenly shut down (due to court order lets say) then the transaction confirmation rate is going to slow down *dramatically*.

It would look rather bad if our amazing 1000+ TPS network suddenly ended up struggling to handle much more than 10 TPS because it was actually now only being run on a few hundred Raspberry Pis!

[jl777]

Finally, I think I understand a little better now. The question has been nagging at me regarding how big of a problem it would be if most Nxt users didn't bother with forging, which is what I think MOST people would not do if Nxt became a big enough thing (UNLESS it was made EXTREMELY easy to do) . As long as enough honest, large stakeholders are doing it then I guess that should not be a problem.

I hate to ask this, but have you guys examined  or considered stealing some ideas from the way Ripple manages their system? Right now the "servers" are run by ripple Labs, but supposedly they will have users run them in the future. I wish I understood it better, but I know it has something to do with using a large enough and diverse enough pool of 'verifiers' that could not possibly collude with one another because people who don't know each other are incapable of coordinating in large numbers to do something dishonest, even if individually they are not trustworthy.

I wish I was more qualified to ask better questions, but all I know is that XRP is transmitted extremely quickly and there might be an idea or two to steal there. They seem to feel that a very very tiny transaction fee is enough to eliminate spamming.

As I posted a few pages back... its great NXT solves the problem of CPU for confirming transactions, but you still have the problem of network bandwidth and memory, now you can forge on your mobile but in future (when NXT is successful) unless you have the bandwidth you won't be able to keep up with the block download and it will fry your data plan and similarly you will chew through more of your home broadband plan.

I don't think bandwidth will be a problem when clients can sign transactions locally and broadcast it to a public node.  Most users with less than 1000 Nxt will not have to download the entire blockchain. They will run a lightweight client. The network will only need a few hundred nodes that will maintain (upload/download)  the entire blockchain.

Bandwidth will not be a problem




 

If 300 hub nodes are enough, then isnt that a cost of ~$5000/mo?

Infrastructure committee has 3 million NXT means worst case, 2+ years subsidy. By that time there should be plenty of businesses that are running their own servers, or NXT is worth significantly more than 5 cents, or both

On the issue of pools for forging, my understanding was that the NXT is "loaned" to the forging acct, so that even though there might end up being 10 pools, maybe it is not a problem at all. Each pool's chance is the sum of all of its participants chances and all participants share the block's fees. However, which node actually issues the block? Wouldnt it be the one with closest to the magic number? So any node that is part of the pool could end up the chosen one, just the fees end up in a pooled account. If people will get fractional NXT 144 times per day (1440/10), even though statistically it is the same reward I think they are more likely to be connected to the network.

Do we know for a fact that with pooled forging, an acct can be forging even though they are not connected to the network? Maybe all we have to do is make that a requirement?

In any case, I am designing a NXTcoin development kit that builds on top of NXT for our mining friends. They will need to run NXT in order to mine the NXTcoins. If we get just a single successful NXTcoin the network will have thousands of nodes. We could easily have a dozen successful NXTcoins.

Anybody that wants to offer a NXT service, will have to run a node. As NXT gets more and more features, it will attract more and more businesses that utilize these features.

As long as the infrastructure committee figures out what we need for varying levels of NXT network usage and a way to monitor where the current level is and is prepared to subsidize any shortfall of capacity, there are no worries.

We have 3 million NXT to figure out the requirements, monitor it and subsidize it if necessary.
In the meantime, we build tools to help people offer NXT services.

James

[igmaca]

sorry to nitpick ciyam but just to be fair it does help to protect against ddos.

Granted it does do that (so yes - saying *zero* benefit was going too far).

My main concern is that simple economics will likely lead to a small number of "super nodes" because I think *most* stakeholders will lease their forging rights to pools (why wouldn't you want to get money for doing absolutely nothing?).

So the problem is that if those pools are suddenly shut down (due to court order lets say) then the transaction confirmation rate is going to slow down *dramatically*.

It would look rather bad if our amazing 1000+ TPS network suddenly ended up struggling to handle much more than 10 TPS because it was actually now only being run on a few hundred Raspberry Pis!

my proposal is to just give in to the pools forging fees rights. Not forging power. Not funds

forging power and funds stay in bob account

forging fees rights stay in pool if bob wants.

if bob forge and forging fees rights are in the pool bob must split forging fees with other people in the pool proportionally with amount of funds in this moment.

I think for that direction is the right solution.

The number of pools and the size of them I reach an optimum value beyond which no interest be bigger.

with this solution the network will always be extremely decentralized and every body have the same opportunities to forge.

you just have to adjust the transaction fee for the annual return to forge all year continuously is equivalent to the cost of maintaining the node. if for example it is estimated that with 10000 nodes is enough then we must assess how much maintaining 10000 nodes for a year and evaluate the number of transactions in the year and adjust the fees.

[CIYAM]

Do we know for a fact that with pooled forging, an acct can be forging even though they are not connected to the network? Maybe all we have to do is make that a requirement?

As far as I am aware you do not have to be online for pooled forging but perhaps CfB could confirm/refute that.

[CIYAM]

The number of pools and the size of them I reach an optimum value beyond which no interest be bigger.

How many major pools are there for Bitcoin?

Understand that those pools have hundreds (and maybe even thousands) of "hashers" who can simply, quickly and easily "change pools" if there is a problem with on or even start mining for themselves if the pools were being "shut down".

So the Bitcoin network can quickly repair itself even if *all* the pools were stopped.

I am worried that Nxt will not be able to do that if a majority of its stakeholders aren't even concerned with running the software.

So shutting down the pools in Nxt could be a much bigger problem IMO.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Do we know for a fact that with pooled forging, an acct can be forging even though they are not connected to the network? Maybe all we have to do is make that a requirement?

As far as I am aware you do not have to be online for pooled forging but perhaps CfB could confirm/refute that.

If u leased ur power u don't need to be online.

[abctc]

Update on Android TV stick public node:
Got message: "killed" in command window and node is down. What is that?

- your node just runs out of memory.
You can try 0.8.0.e with parameter nxt.dbCacheKB=128000 or even less.

[CIYAM]

If u leased ur power u don't need to be online.

So I predict that in the future the vast majority of stake holders will not have much technical expertise and will simply have given their forging rights to a pool and we are likely to end up with a small number of large pools (say 10).

If those pools are attacked in any serious manner then the 1000+ TPS network will be slowed to a "crawl" with a lot of non-technical stake holders probably blissfully unaware (too busy enjoying cocktails on a tropical island).

Even if they become aware reasonably quickly they won't have enough computing power to "bring the network back up to speed".

Doesn't any else see this as being a problem?

[igmaca]

The number of pools and the size of them I reach an optimum value beyond which no interest be bigger.

How many major pools are there for Bitcoin?

Understand that those pools have hundreds (and maybe even thousands) of "hashers" who can simply, quickly and easily "change pools" if there is a problem with on or even start mining for themselves if the pools were being "shut down".

So the Bitcoin network can quickly repair itself even if *all* the pools were stopped.

I am worried that Nxt will not be able to do that if a majority of its stakeholders aren't even concerned with running the software.

So shutting down the pools in Nxt could be a much bigger problem IMO.

Perhaps there will always be to have a public node that completely cover the network as a security measure and then the other people who want to participate in the form of pools or individually.

The fees shall be calculated by dividing the cost to keep 2 times the public nodes between the number of expected transactions annually.

This ensures the network with 2 times (like the double safety of aircraft) and you keep an extremely decentralized network

[CIYAM]

Perhaps there will always be to have a public node that completely cover the network as a security measure and then the other people who want to participate in the form of pools or individually.

The fees shall be calculated by dividing the cost to keep 2 times the public nodes between the number of expected transactions annually.

This ensures the network with 2 times (like the double safety of aircraft) and you keep an extremely decentralized network

Am not sure exactly how this would work but I do like the concept of redundancy.

[Eadeqa]

If u leased ur power u don't need to be online.

So I predict that in the future the vast majority of stake holders will not have much technical expertise and will simply have given their forging rights to a pool and we are likely to end up with a small number of large pools (say 10).

I doubt people with no technical expertise will be bothering to give forging right to pools.

If this becomes a problem (I doubt it), it would be much easier to remove this "feature"

[CIYAM]

If this becomes a problem (I doubt it), it would be much easier to remove this "feature"

You have completely missed the point - once our "much hyped" 1000+ TPS has been slowed down to 10 TPS people are going to dump NXT and run (making the network even more fragile) rather than "go out and by a powerful computer to help restore the network" and that could turn out to be a catastrophic event.

[Come-from-Beyond]

So I predict that in the future the vast majority of stake holders will not have much technical expertise and will simply have given their forging rights to a pool and we are likely to end up with a small number of large pools (say 10).

If those pools are attacked in any serious manner then the 1000+ TPS network will be slowed to a "crawl" with a lot of non-technical stake holders probably blissfully unaware (too busy enjoying cocktails on a tropical island).

Even if they become aware reasonably quickly they won't have enough computing power to "bring the network back up to speed".

Doesn't any else see this as being a problem?

I see no problem here. If a part of the stake becomes seized then the network will start forging with another part.

[CIYAM]

I see no problem here. If a part of the stake becomes seized then the network will start forging with another part.

The question is "forging with what"?

If let's say 100 powerful machines are shut down by an authority and the majority of stake holders are "rich old men" who aren't that technically savvy then you are now running a network of maybe a few thousand desktop computers (or even less powerful devices) that are run by hobbyists and that is not going to do 1000+ TPS.

I am not saying the network would *die* but that it would be *seriously damaged* in terms of the TPS it could process and that in itself could cause *panic*.

[xcn]

Any news about buying Nxtchg.com?

[Eadeqa]

You have completely missed the point - once our "much hyped" 1000+ TPS has been slowed down to 10 TPS people are going to dump NXT and run (making the network even more fragile) rather than "go out and by a powerful computer to help restore the network" and that could turn out to be a catastrophic event.

Who says you need powerful computers to forge?  And 1000+ TPS is pure marketing. There is no way in hell Nxt is getting anywhere close to that amount of transactions in the next 5 years.

[CIYAM]

Who says you need powerful computers to forge?  And 1000+ TPS is pure marketing. There is no way in hell Nxt is getting anywhere close to that amount of transactions in the next 5 years.

You need powerful computers to handle 1000+ TPS (a little Raspberry Pi isn't going to be handling large numbers of transactions even though it can forge) and this figure is not "pure marketing" but the very *point* of TF (i.e. BCNext's *plan*).

If it is just a "marketing slogan" then I'd vote to dump TF now as we might be better off without it.