Innovation in the alt chains

[maaku]

Guys, let's stay on topic. If you want to debate that, start a new thread.

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[fivebells]

Maaku, are you guys still working on blockchains using folding@home etc.?

[maaku]

yes.

[Mageant]

Sometimes I wonder Satoshi is an ET, he is/was so far ahead of everybody else.
 

[markm]

Blockchains seem as if they ought to be just the kind of thing that robust distributed storage systems should be good media for. Like GNUnet, Freenet, stuff like that. Systems that let the data reside in a decentralised cloud...

I don't mean a berkely-DB version of a blockchain though, I mean the blocks, retrievable by hash, height, addresses and so on.

-MarkM-

[finway]

Gavin said innovation like OP_EVAL would be implemented in the alt chain first, but nothing happend, sadly.

[steelhouse]

How much longer are you going to keep suggesting these ideas with no action on them?  Go  make your own coin and stop flooding the forums with the same ideas...

The worst part is he has never responded to analysis the first dozen times posted.

a) how do you have a fee based as a % when the network has no idea the transaction size?

b) how do you encourage mining if that mining is a negligibly amount of money?

c) what does sales tax have to do w/ a rational on the fee cost?  US Income tax is up to 38% so is a 38% fee a good idea too?

d) why would anyone want to use a blockchain w/ a 2% fee?  Paypal isn't much more.

a) The network should know the fee.  Blockexplorer shows the transaction, fee, and size.  The fee would charged based on the smallest of the to (amount).

b) 1% fee transactions are very large compared to 0.01 fee transaction which the bitcoin network is eventually going to have to deal with.  By making this comment you are saying in the long run bitcoin will never work since the mining fees will be too small in the future.  This is nonsense, as owners of large amounts of coins have vested interest to protect the network.

c) When you buy an item say alpaca socks for 5 btc.  The owner is already going to have to pay income tax on that sale.  A 2% sale would show up as a familiar sales tax.   5 btc plus tax or 5.10 btc.  Or the seller will most likely just say tax included.

d) Because the currency is not a fiat currency that is stolen at a rate of 10% a year by congress every year so Obama can fly to Hawaii denying 5000 workers of the U.S. the same trip and Gingrich can give a $1.6 million history lesson to Freddie Mac.  The tax is not wasted it goes to miners and deflation which should attract more people to the coin.  Current owners will advertise for more businesses so the value of their coins go up.  Miners will advertise for more business so they can get more mining fees.

[netrin]

I think a sufficiently innovative altchain wouldn't be recognizable as a bitcoin derivative. For example, a crypto-currency that doesn't use a blockchain at all, or a currency based on per-demand computational power, storage, bandwidth and credits.

[DeathAndTaxes]

a) The network should know the fee.  Blockexplorer shows the transaction, fee, and size.  The fee would charged based on the smallest of the to (amount).

So if I send if I have 100,000 coins, I send you 99,999 and I send 1 coin to change address then the fee is 1 * 1% = 0.01 coin?

b) 1% fee transactions are very large compared to 0.01 fee transaction which the bitcoin network is eventually going to have to deal with.  By making this comment you are saying in the long run bitcoin will never work since the mining fees will be too small in the future.  This is nonsense, as owners of large amounts of coins have vested interest to protect the network.

1% of a tiny transaction volume = tiny fees.  So the network large enough to avoid 51% attack will be paid from a negligible amount of transaction fees.  You seem to forget the subsidy exists for a purpose.  It allows the network to be large enough to avoid attack while the transaction volume is too small to support a strong network.  Today Bitcoin could have a ~10TH network with no block rewards.  Of course it would require a ~7% transaction fee.  However it is a catch22.  A 7% transaction fee would prevent the transaction volume from growing to ever reduce that fee to a modest sum.  The subsidies (which you seem to have blind irrational hatred of) bridge that gap. 

c) When you buy an item say alpaca socks for 5 btc.  The owner is already going to have to pay income tax on that sale.  A 2% sale would show up as a familiar sales tax.   5 btc plus tax or 5.10 btc.  Or the seller will most likely just say tax included.

No reason to comment because it has no relevance.

d) Because the currency is not a fiat currency that is stolen at a rate of 10% a year by congress every year so Obama can fly to Hawaii denying 5000 workers of the U.S. the same trip and Gingrich can give a $1.6 million history lesson to Freddie Mac.  The tax is not wasted it goes to miners and deflation which should attract more people to the coin.  Current owners will advertise for more businesses so the value of their coins go up.  Miners will advertise for more business so they can get more mining fees.

Neither is Bitcoin.  Also if you think inflation rate is 10% a year in USD well that explains a lot in your failed macro economics.

[SomeoneWeird]

Maaku, are you guys still working on blockchains using folding@home etc.?

yes.

Orly? That'd be interesting to see.

[markm]

Gavin said innovation like OP_EVAL would be implemented in the alt chain first, but nothing happend, sadly.

OP_EVAL will probably be coming to DeVCoin (and GRouPcoin) along with the update to the current bitcoin codebase.

-MarkM-

[cunicula]

1% of a tiny transaction volume = tiny fees.  So the network large enough to avoid 51% attack will be paid from a negligible amount of transaction fees.  You seem to forget the subsidy exists for a purpose.  It allows the network to be large enough to avoid attack while the transaction volume is too small to support a strong network.  Today Bitcoin could have a ~10TH network with no block rewards.  Of course it would require a ~7% transaction fee.  However it is a catch22.  A 7% transaction fee would prevent the transaction volume from growing to ever reduce that fee to a modest sum.  The subsidies (which you seem to have blind irrational hatred of) bridge that gap.  

Let f(x) be the reward from an attack as a function of network value x.
It should be obvious to anyone that f'(x)>0. However, the second derivative of x is not so obvious.
Death&Taxes argument depends on this second derivative.

He assumes that f''(x) < 0, so that attack rewards are a concave function of network value. f''(x)<0 implies that the network security - txn fee relationship becomes more favorable as the network grows. However, I have not seen any empirical evidence or cogent theory supporting the claim that f''(x)<0. If f''(x)=0 (a linear function seems probable to me), then the size of the network does not affect the network security-txn fee relationship at all. In this case, a 7% txn fee (or something similar) will be necessary forever.

If f''(x) >=0, proof-of-work is a poor choice of technology. In this case, proof-of-work will eventually be supplanted by either pure proof-of-stake or a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid.

Anyone implementing an alternate chain should consider this carefully.  

I can't code at all, so don't tell me to put up or shut up. Off-hand rejection of the views of outsiders is idiotic.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Let f(x) be the reward from an attack as a function of network value x.
It should be obvious to anyone that f'(x)>0. However, the second derivative of x is not so obvious.
Death&Taxes argument depends on this second derivative.

He assumes that f''(x) < 0, so that attack rewards are a concave function of network value. f''(x)<0 implies that the network security - txn fee relationship becomes more favorable as the network grows. However, I have not seen any empirical evidence or cogent theory supporting the claim that f''(x)<0. If f''(x)=0 (a linear function seems probable to me), then the size of the network does not affect the network security-txn fee relationship at all. In this case, a 7% txn fee (or something similar) will be necessary forever.

That's silly.  Transaction fees (and subsidy currently) buy the network we have today.   

Imagine today there was no subsidy and thus all transactions had a 7% fee.   Annual transaction volume is ~40 mil BTC ($160 mil USD).  7% of today's transaction volume is ~$10M.  $10M annual revenue buys us the ~10TH network.   It doesn't matter if it is $10M in subsidies or $10M in transaction fees or a mix of both.  Now the nominal value of the network isn't that important.   In 3 years $10M in annual revenue will likely buy a 30TH network (due to Moore's law) but it won't be any stronger than today.  In today's dollars (and today's computing hardware) it costs about $1M in annual fees to rent 1TH of hashing power.

Now imagine the transaction volume increased by a factor of 10.  Transaction volume is now $1.5B.  To pay for the same 10TH network would require only $10M / $1500M = 0.7% not 7%.

Alternate method (transaction volume in transactions)
It is entirely possible the network will ignore transaction size (because due to the anonymous nature it is impossible to know the intended size of any transaction).  Instead the network would require a fee only on transaction physical size (kb).  For simplisity sake we will look at the cost for average transaction.

Today the network has roughly 0.1 tps that is ~3 mil transactions annually.  To support a network costing $10M would require a per transaction fee of $3.33 with smaller (physically smaller) transactions paying less (maybe down to half price) and larger transactions paying more. 

The same $10M results in a falling transaction fee as volume increases
0.1 tps (3 mil annually) - ~$3.33
1.0 tps (31 mil annually) - $0.33
10 tps (310 mil annually) - $0.04
100 tps (3 bil annually) - 0.4 cents (roughly paypal network sized)
4000 tps (126 bil annually) - 0.01 cents (roughly VISA network sized)
 
Now one can argue a larger network is necessary to protect a larger transaction volume.  While that is true there are a couple points to consider.
1) The network today is significantly oversized.  10TH is very powerful distributed network.  It is the larger and most powerful computing network in the world.

2) There is a non-linear relationship between transaction value and network necessary to provide security.  If the network was 40,000 times larger (in terms of transaction value) we would hope the network would be stronger but it is unlikely it needs to be 40,000 stronger.

If f''(x) >=0, proof-of-work is a poor choice of technology. In this case, proof-of-work will eventually be supplanted by either pure proof-of-stake or a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid.

I agree a hybrid of proof of work & stake would be more efficient however Bitcoin has first mover advantage.  It doesn't have to be superior to newer alternatives simply "good enough".   Good enough w/ sufficient critical mass has won out over technically superior a multitude of times.

[cunicula]

2) There is a non-linear relationship between transaction value and network necessary to provide security.  If the network was 40,000 times larger (in terms of transaction value) we would hope the network would be stronger but it is unlikely it needs to be 40,000 stronger.

This is only place where you discuss incentives to perform an attack. Again, you are saying f''(x)<0. I'm saying that there is no reason to be so sure. It could be f''(x)=0 

The other stuff is irrelavant.

[DeathAndTaxes]

2) There is a non-linear relationship between transaction value and network necessary to provide security.  If the network was 40,000 times larger (in terms of transaction value) we would hope the network would be stronger but it is unlikely it needs to be 40,000 stronger.

This is only place where you discuss incentives to perform an attack. Again, you are saying f''(x)<0. I'm saying that there is no reason to be so sure. It could be f''(x)=0 

Really?  How large of an economic impact do you think a double spender could make.  The only way that is true is that as the network gets larger the economic value of any double spend grows perfectly with the size of the network. 

Network today is $150M in annual transactions,  $10M in cost to perform 51% attack.  There is a 15:1 multiple between annual transaction volume and cost of an attack.

At the multi-million dollar scale, there is a finite amount of double spend targets.  Even if the annual transaction volume was $1.5B a year and cost to perform a 51% attack was "only" $50M (30:1 ratio instead of 15:1) how many places do you think one could perform a double spend to cover your costs ($50M).  To cover $50M in costs would require $100M in double spend value ($50M in attack cost + $50M in capital to "double").

Just because the network is that large doesn't mean the economical attack space is that large.

There are very few areas one could economically attack the network at that scale.  One would need
a) irreversible goods
b) untraceable goods
c) convertible goods (doubt someone wants $51M in alpaca socks)

Finding >$100M in targets would be much harder than finding $10M in targets.  Remember the window of attack is relatively small.  One can't slowly attack the network over the course of a year.  Finding sufficient "target goods" to cover the cost becomes increasingly difficult despite the economy growing.  So as long as the "viable double spend targets" grow at a smaller rate than overall economy the capacity necessary to make 51% attack uneconomical will shrink as a % of transaction volume.

[cunicula]

Network today is $150M in annual transactions,  $10M in cost to perform 51% attack.  There is a 15:1 multiple between annual transaction volume and cost of an attack.

The numbers result from the current subsidy equivalent to a 7-10% tax on each send. These fees are not sustainable and thus the current numbers are irrelevant.

Instead of going over these red herrings again, let me discuss the substantive issue.

Like you say, capture of a large share of currency value through double spends is implausible. The value of the currency would plummet shortly after network control passed to the attacker. Most of the network value would be destroyed rather than passed to the attacker.

However, this statement has nothing to say about f''(x) at all. Really the point you are making with this statement is that a txn network does not need to be very secure in general. Size is not relevant to this argument. I have no idea why you think the ratio between 'viable double-spend targets' to network value would decrease as the network grows. The lack of a need for security against double spends might hold just as much for a small network as for a large network (in fact I expect this is the case). For example, one year ago, there would have been very few attractive places to double-spend. Now there are people selling gold bars and such. I agree you couldn't make much doublespending these places, but you could not of made anything at all double spending one year ago. Are you sure that the ratio of double-spend opportunities to network value has gone down?

More importantly, I strongly doubt that any attack would be motivated by double spending profit. In other financial markets, it is possible to take short positions with valuations larger than those of the underlying asset (via derivatives). Why are you sure that an attack won't be motivated by a speculative play like this? Furthermore, an attack might be carried out by the owner of a competing txn technology. Paypal, for example. A competitor's motivation to attack the network would likely be directly proportional to the amount of txn business captured by bitcoin, i.e. f''(x)=0.

You might be right about f''(x). It is really an empirical question. However, the confidence you express with statements like "Really?" and "Seriously?" is rooted in ignorance and bluster rather than logical reasoning.

I tire of this discussion, see you in other threads.

[steelhouse]

a) The network should know the fee.  Blockexplorer shows the transaction, fee, and size.  The fee would charged based on the smallest of the to (amount).

So if I send if I have 100,000 coins, I send you 99,999 and I send 1 coin to change address then the fee is 1 * 1% = 0.01 coin?

b) 1% fee transactions are very large compared to 0.01 fee transaction which the bitcoin network is eventually going to have to deal with.  By making this comment you are saying in the long run bitcoin will never work since the mining fees will be too small in the future.  This is nonsense, as owners of large amounts of coins have vested interest to protect the network.

1% of a tiny transaction volume = tiny fees.  So the network large enough to avoid 51% attack will be paid from a negligible amount of transaction fees.  You seem to forget the subsidy exists for a purpose.  It allows the network to be large enough to avoid attack while the transaction volume is too small to support a strong network.  Today Bitcoin could have a ~10TH network with no block rewards.  Of course it would require a ~7% transaction fee.  However it is a catch22.  A 7% transaction fee would prevent the transaction volume from growing to ever reduce that fee to a modest sum.  The subsidies (which you seem to have blind irrational hatred of) bridge that gap. 

c) When you buy an item say alpaca socks for 5 btc.  The owner is already going to have to pay income tax on that sale.  A 2% sale would show up as a familiar sales tax.   5 btc plus tax or 5.10 btc.  Or the seller will most likely just say tax included.

No reason to comment because it has no relevance.

d) Because the currency is not a fiat currency that is stolen at a rate of 10% a year by congress every year so Obama can fly to Hawaii denying 5000 workers of the U.S. the same trip and Gingrich can give a $1.6 million history lesson to Freddie Mac.  The tax is not wasted it goes to miners and deflation which should attract more people to the coin.  Current owners will advertise for more businesses so the value of their coins go up.  Miners will advertise for more business so they can get more mining fees.

Neither is Bitcoin.  Also if you think inflation rate is 10% a year in USD well that explains a lot in your failed macro economics.

a) So you solved it.  Don't change addresses.

    1VayNert3x1KzbpzMGt2qdqrAThiRovi8: 36.226

    1VayNert3x1KzbpzMGt2qdqrAThiRovi8: 32.226
    1FBtYpdAm4YhEFW4Upb3LE2wVRHVMEbZZs: 4
  
As long as you send it back to address, no fee charged.  Fee above would be 0.08

b) The fees will be large and growing.  BTC might be $15 by now resulting in 10x the transactions.  A CPU algorithm would spread the mining around.  Possibly even pool-less share based mining to protect network to prevent it being concentrated.

c) You are still going to have to pay 38% income tax even with bitcoin.  Those are federal/state/country laws.  With a 2% tax, 1% is given back to the public as deflation.

d) A definition of inflation is the increase in money supply.  All national debt has a dollar behind it.  When the postal worker received his check was that real money?  There is a reason why M3 closely follows the national debt.  Price inflation if you compare the Year over Year change in revenues at Walmart and Exxon-Mobil you come to over 8%.  If you subtract out population growth and productivity gains you might have 5% price inflation.   However, you must also consider without subtracting those out we could have 5% price deflation.   Many economist use a 18 month lag in M1 as a predictor of inflation.  The zero month lag in m1 is about 18%, and the 12 month lag is about 8%, and the 18 month lag is about 5%.  

[jancsika]

While I generally agree with your sentiment, I take issue with a few of the details. Satoshi is an interesting case in that he clearly thought out many of the advanced use cases of bitcoin, and took baby steps toward implementing/enabling them before releasing the client into the wild. As an example, all of the contracts/scripting code was not necessary for bitcoin to do what bitcoin did at launch, and indeed some features were clearly untested as they did not work as advertised. However Satoshi was either very rushed or not a very competent programmer by industry standards, and that shows up in his code. Much of the work Gavin and others have done is just in cleaning up that mess.

What does "not a very competent programmer by industry standards" mean?

[ArtForz]

While I generally agree with your sentiment, I take issue with a few of the details. Satoshi is an interesting case in that he clearly thought out many of the advanced use cases of bitcoin, and took baby steps toward implementing/enabling them before releasing the client into the wild. As an example, all of the contracts/scripting code was not necessary for bitcoin to do what bitcoin did at launch, and indeed some features were clearly untested as they did not work as advertised. However Satoshi was either very rushed or not a very competent programmer by industry standards, and that shows up in his code. Much of the work Gavin and others have done is just in cleaning up that mess.

What does "not a very competent programmer by industry standards" mean?

Tight coupling between UI and core (somewhat reduced with 0.5), Horrible OO design in parts, data members being public in lots of places instead of having accessors, sometimes outright WTF-worthy approaches to doing things. I wouldn't say incompetent, just lazy/messy.

[maaku]

ArtForz hits my main complaints. As I said, either very rushed or not very competent. Given that we don't know the facts I'll be polite and assume it was the former. Maybe he really rushed to meet that new years deadline three years ago.