rpietila Altcoin Observer

[Este Nuno]

A ("the") fundamental problem is that Turing-complete insures viruses will appear and mess up the state (i.e. on the block chain).

Or someone exploits their VM code and breaks out.

That alone would give me nightmares if I were using Ethereum.

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[AnonyMint]

...appcoin and we all know they are pretty much snake oil

Well I agree with that. If Ethereum's currency offers nothing that Bitcoin doesn't already offer, then should allow Bitcoin to be the currency used on their smart contracts blockchain.

But Ethereum is talking about some innovations on the currency also, e.g. 12 second block period and transactions.

Then again it is apparently mostly vaporware and many other aspects aren't even decided, e.g. the Pow algorithm.

[AnonyMint]

A ("the") fundamental problem is that Turing-complete insures viruses will appear and mess up the state (i.e. on the block chain).

Or someone exploits their VM code and breaks out.

That alone would give me nightmares if I were using Ethereum.

Running the contracts on mining nodes is in my analysis a non-starter. That will be your only hint as to the direction I would take this if I were creating a Turing-complete scripting for block chain.

[binaryFate]

Something simple I don't understand is: why to raise considerable funds so early when many things are not close to final (not even talking about implementation, but design)?
It is not like they need the money short-term to work on this... or if that's the case, then it's really a company.

[superresistant]

Something simple I don't understand is: why to raise considerable funds so early when many things are not close to final (not even talking about implementation, but design)? It is not like they need the money short-term to work on this... or if that's the case, then it's really a company.

You can go on trip around the world, have all the girls you want, buy some sport cars, a manor with a swimming pool,...
You know plenty things to do with millions of dollars non refundable (thank you Bitcoin).

EDIT :
The Ethereum contract say it  We have no time schedule and no obligation of delivering anything which mean We'll spend all our life enjoying your BTC while you wait for your vaporware, thank you. 

[AnonyMint]

Claims that botnets would be a threat make no sense to me, why would we mind few botnets even with 100K machines under them if we have 100M machines successfully mining coins? Botnets can not have double digit percentage of machines polluted, they would be detected since it's obvious they are working in the background, so let them mine their few percentage of mining power.

I've written similarly, but note that getting to 100M takes time and perhaps much of the supply is mined before you get there, especially with coins that have diminishing % rate of debasement (i.e. most all of them).

Problem is that it's very difficult to find the hashing algorithm that would be really ASIC resistant, not to mention GPU.

GPU can be defeated because it doesn't have specialized instructions and the CPU does, but preventing ASICs is impossible (if the incentive is large enough).

I had thought of both of the ideas mentioned in the "ASIC Resistance" section. Neither will defeat ASICs. And I see that Vitalik hasn't seen my analysis of Cuckoo hash, because I argued it can also defeated with an ASIC.

Instead I think the best goal is the algorithm should be one that it is likely to be highly needed for general computing and thus Intel will continue to accelerate it and motherboard vendors might even build on an ASIC to each motherboard. Bitcoin USB ASICs with the similar power efficiency of the bigger models now cost only $15 at Amazon.com.

[Skinnkavaj]

GPU can be defeated because it doesn't have specialized instructions and the CPU does, but preventing ASICs is impossible.

I had thought of both of the ideas mentioned in the "ASIC Resistance" section. Neither will defeat ASICs. And I see that Vitalik hasn't seen my analysis of Cuckoo hash, because I argued it can also defeated with an ASIC.

Instead I think the best goal is the algorithm should be one that it is likely to be highly needed for general computing and thus Intel will continue to accelerate it and motherboard vendors might even build on an ASIC to each motherboard. Bitcoin USB ASICs with the similar power efficiency of the bigger models now cost only $15 at Amazon.com.

Isn't Bitcoins SHA256 used widely not only for mining already?

[AnonyMint]

Instead I think the best goal is the algorithm should be one that it is likely to be highly needed for general computing and thus Intel will continue to accelerate it and motherboard vendors might even build on an ASIC to each motherboard. Bitcoin USB ASICs with the similar power efficiency of the bigger models now cost only $15 at Amazon.com.

Isn't Bitcoins SHA256 used widely not only for mining already?

Intel is proposing to accelerate SHA2. But this is going to take years to be implemented and adopted by a majority of computers.

AES is already accelerated on Intel CPUs. And every one is going to need encryption in this brave new NSA world.

I'd bet on AES instead of SHA2 as reaching ubiquity sooner.

[Skinnkavaj]

Instead I think the best goal is the algorithm should be one that it is likely to be highly needed for general computing and thus Intel will continue to accelerate it and motherboard vendors might even build on an ASIC to each motherboard. Bitcoin USB ASICs with the similar power efficiency of the bigger models now cost only $15 at Amazon.com.

Isn't Bitcoins SHA256 used widely not only for mining already?

Intel is proposing to accelerate SHA2. But this is going to take years to be implemented and adopted by a majority of computers.

AES is already accelerated on Intel CPUs. And every one is going to need encryption in this brave new NSA world.

I'd bet on AES instead of SHA2 as reaching ubiquity sooner.

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.
Is AES better?

[coinsolidation]

Intel is proposing to accelerate SHA2.

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.

Sha256 is Sha-2.

[superresistant]

Intel is proposing to accelerate SHA2.

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.

Sha256 is Sha-2.

...and sha3 is sha512

[dga]

Intel is proposing to accelerate SHA2.

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.

Sha256 is Sha-2.

...and sha3 is sha512

No.  Sha512 is also sha-2.

Sha3 is keccak, and it's a completely different algorithm.

[smooth]

Problem is that it's very difficult to find the hashing algorithm that would be really ASIC resistant, not to mention GPU. For instance, Primecoin which included large integer algorithms that should be difficult for GPUs was soon transferred to GPU mining. All scrypt algos are prone to GPU mining. I tried to find some hashing algorithms that would favor RISC processors, since they dominate modern smartphones, but I've failed to find any. If anybody has some info about such algos it would be very nice to share that info here.

I find it hard to believe that any form of PoW mining (regardless of algorithm) on a smartphone would ever be popular given battery life considerations.

[smooth]

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.
Is AES better?

Bitcoin is not a big phenomenon on the scales Intel cares about.

[illodin]

1. A programmable blockchain has 100s more applications than Bitcoin alone. This could be what is required to increase adoption by 10 or 100 fold.

If all goes well and the team will deliver, how long does it take before there are 100s of useful apps running on ethereum? And that there are people actually using those apps? Probably takes a while after the launch before there are anything useful, and the miners start mining and selling, and there are huge amounts of people with loads of presale ether. And, if bitcoin skyrockets to 5x-10x people are wanting to sell ether for fiat.

If I knew the answers to those questions, it would be easy to decide between buying from presale or markets after the release.

[itod]

Problem is that it's very difficult to find the hashing algorithm that would be really ASIC resistant, not to mention GPU. For instance, Primecoin which included large integer algorithms that should be difficult for GPUs was soon transferred to GPU mining. All scrypt algos are prone to GPU mining. I tried to find some hashing algorithms that would favor RISC processors, since they dominate modern smartphones, but I've failed to find any. If anybody has some info about such algos it would be very nice to share that info here.

I find it hard to believe that any form of PoW mining (regardless of algorithm) on a smartphone would ever be popular given battery life considerations.

Why do you think so? My smartphone is on charger almost every night, regularly, and I would be very happy if it would do something useful instead of waiting for the alarm clock to fire up. It's trivial to set preference in any application to work only when the phone is on charger.

Just read the John Tromp's paper and I believe he is on the right track with memory-swapping constrained algorithms. Probably there's a need to examine some algorithms that prefer the RISC based instruction pipeline, and try to incorporate them somehow with Cuckoo Cycle hashing. Idea is to further bias the smartphones since they have less memory and slower processors than desktops, and are almost without exception RISC based. Such combination would be a winner.

[smooth]

I find it hard to believe that any form of PoW mining (regardless of algorithm) on a smartphone would ever be popular given battery life considerations.

Why do you think so? My smartphone is on charger almost every night, regularly, and I would be very happy if it would do something useful instead of waiting for the alarm clock to fire up. It's trivial to set preference in any application to work only when the phone is on charger.

Yes I agree mining while charging makes great sense. Given the number of smartphones out there it could represent a huge resource of computing power, possibly larger than computers someday even if only operating for part of the day.

[Roy Badami]

Yes indeed.  Satoshi's real genius was to create a system with the right incentives, at all levels.

Amen.  A heartbreaking work of staggering genius.  Mining decentralization has been the most persistently obvious weak point.

As I said, this is still a "thought in progress".  But I worry less about the evil SHA-256 ASIC plant then about the evil NSA CPU cluster.  

This +1000.  

The government actor is the only substantive challenge

Actually, "evil NSU CPU cluster" was intended just as a flippant example of an organisation that is believed to have a lot of CPU power.  If governments wanted to shut to cryptocurrency, they'd most likely do it through the courts...

I agree that the nature of cryptocurrency regulation is a big unknown, of course, and how this pans out could certainly affect values a lot...

roy

[Skinnkavaj]

Why wouldn't it make sense for Intel to use SHA256 since Bitcoin has become such a big phenomena.
Is AES better?

Bitcoin is not a big phenomenon on the scales Intel cares about.

Might be big enough not far away in the future.

[Skinnkavaj]

Problem is that it's very difficult to find the hashing algorithm that would be really ASIC resistant, not to mention GPU. For instance, Primecoin which included large integer algorithms that should be difficult for GPUs was soon transferred to GPU mining. All scrypt algos are prone to GPU mining. I tried to find some hashing algorithms that would favor RISC processors, since they dominate modern smartphones, but I've failed to find any. If anybody has some info about such algos it would be very nice to share that info here.

I find it hard to believe that any form of PoW mining (regardless of algorithm) on a smartphone would ever be popular given battery life considerations.

I don't understand why people try to make coins ASIC resistant. Nothing is ASIC resistant.