Why blockchains might want to consider using AT "Turing complete" txs

[justusranvier]

This is breaking down barriers between different blockchains.

Let's see how much of a scam AT is in a year....  

You're assuming that "different blockchains" is a viable concept that's sustainable in the long term.

I know many people are wishing very hard for this to be the case, but economics doesn't care about how hard people wish...

[CIYAM]

You're assuming that "different blockchains" is a viable concept that's sustainable in the long term.

I know many people are wishing very hard for this to be the case, but economics doesn't care about how hard people wish...

The point that AT is about is that it is *blockchain* agnostic (i.e. it doesn't care which blockchain you use).

If we end up with *only one* then AT *still works* so I don't quite get your point (*economics* is not going to *get rid of AT* for some unspecified reason when I've just pointed out that multiple blockchains are not *essential* for AT).

[theblacksquid]

BUMP

Being more of a python guy, I hope to see a python implementation of this (or I'l just hack one up, assuming I find the time to learn C++).

Good luck!!!

[vbcs]

The new API is almost ready and is the key point to enable the generalization of the AT to easily be adopted to any blockchain, thus enabling the cross-chain tx's, which will be our main focus when is ready. So feel free to ask the integration of the AT to your platform ( both me and Ciyam will help on that) , and becoming one of the first platforms enabling the atomic cross-chain tx's. (we are looking for btc based platforms as stated to Ciyams post's)

Edit: Furthermore, besides the atomic cross-chain tx's, the AT will enable turing complete programs to be deployed and run on the blockchain. It already does (!) succesfully on a testnet. ( http://5.196.1.215:5876/ATs.html )

[pa]

Is AT compatible with CryptoNote coins like Monero (XMR)?

[CIYAM]

Is AT compatible with CryptoNote coins like Monero (XMR)?

It should be no harder to build AT into a CryptoNote system than any other blockchain (and I don't believe it is a huge task to do so).

[CIYAM]

Note that the bounty has been upped to 10 BTC now and that the AT API document has now been published (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=826263.msg9310030#msg9310030).

All current AT documentation can of course be found here: http://ciyam.org/at

[jabo38]

That's up to you to decide. We mostly care for the tech and we believe any coin should have this functionality.

Later steps (not very soon) on this huge project will be to create a c based compiler for translating high level languages into AT code, so anyone without *machine code* knowledge can easily create programs.

Also we are going to release a new coin with a new proof ( at some point in the future, to fully exploit the power of AT), and we also want to integrate it to a btc based blockchain.  

good luck on the IPO  

Just what the world needs - more scamappcoins.

  

Quoted for future reference .


This thread...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=827725.msg9262650#msg9262650

... is currently THE BEST  thread for examples of sneering, condescending replies while simultaneously being oblivious to outing themselves as completely ignorant of all but a tiny part of crypto development... just like the example above.

AT isn't a coin. It is everything you want in Ethereum (Turing Complete, but based in machine code and soon to be in C++ so accessible to thousands right off the bat) but you don't have to wait as it is here today. It could built into BTC (though not likely in this decade from the pace of development there). Implementation in BTC/LTC clones are planned I believe. This is breaking down barriers between different blockchains.

Let's see how much of a scam AT is in a year....  

As far as I am concerned AT is the real deal.  No obvious pump and dump get rich scheme from CIYAM.  It is open sourced and anyone can add it that wants to without giving him a cent.  The only thing it will do is make their coin more robust and capable. 

[CIYAM]

Thanks and to be quite clear CIYAM is not interested in IPOs or the likes and AT is available for every blockchain that wants to use it absolutely *free of charge*. Those that pay attention to the details will notice it is MIT licensed just like Bitcoin is.

Not only is there a bounty set up to get an open source version of the AT API that works on a Bitcoin clone but I have also offered my personal assistance with those who are interested to achieve the goal of performing atomic cross-chain transfers between blockchains (and I won't be accepting any assets or alt coins for such assistance).

To make it even easier the actual AT machine code to *do* the atomic cross-chain transfer is being constructed in the bounty topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=826263.msg9311209#msg9311209 (I expect it'll be completed well before anyone has an AT API ready to test it).

[CIYAM]

For those wondering I have read the "side chains" PDF and there is absolutely no reason why they can't use AT (so AT will have the benefit of being able to be portable across *all chains* which no other current "Turing complete" proposal is so far promising).

I noted also that the "atomic cross chain transfer" that they document follows *the exact the same process* as the AT that will be provided shortly by CIYAM for this purpose (which might be helpful for those that might be skeptical that this "use case" can be achieved).

[gmaxwell]

Kind of annoying that this has every instruction taking memory operands directly, instead of a load/store architecture like Moxie.  This makes it much harder to write a secure virtual machine, since you need to make sure there are boundary checking in many places instead of just two.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Kind of annoying that this has every instruction taking memory operands directly, instead of a load/store architecture like Moxie.  This makes it much harder to write a secure virtual machine, since you need to make sure there are boundary checking in many places instead of just two.

Doesn't splitting every operation into micro-operations and feeding the result to the VM solve the issue?

[gmaxwell]

Doesn't splitting every operation into micro-operations and feeding the result to the VM solve the issue?

For simplistic implementations, yes (though you have to get it right). High performance ones... not really. For high performance you really want to hoist the boundary checking.

I'm not sure what advantage this system really offers over Moxie... as moxie is deployed and has toolchain support.

In general, I worry that this kind of system is too low level for a consensus system-- e.g. getting high performance will require dangerous complex execution enviroments; but it's an interesting domain. It also has no facility for dead code elimination, or other facilities which are more obvious when you understand the difference between with script does in a consensus system... that it's not really performing computation, but verification of computation.

[CIYAM]

Kind of annoying that this has every instruction taking memory operands directly, instead of a load/store architecture like Moxie.  This makes it much harder to write a secure virtual machine, since you need to make sure there are boundary checking in many places instead of just two.

I'm not quite sure about the issue you've raised here - we have already written all the boundary checks and completed all the unit tests to prove that they work (it is basically just *one* function that each op code which needs to check if a memory location is valid calls and it could easily be *inlined* for better performance).

Actual AT machine code doesn't need to do any such checks as the machine will simply gracefully fail if they attempt to read or write outside of their valid memory range.

The design choices made were primarily about keeping the *code size* of the ATs as small as possible (thus only the SET_VAL op code takes a 64 bit literal value and most other op codes take one or two 32 bit addresses) and preventing anything such as "self-modifying code" or invalid branching.

Also I am neither a fan of the JVM nor Java (and haven't written any code in Java since the 1990s) so it is perhaps unsurprising I had not even heard of the Moxie project that you mention before I read your post.

Anyway - if Moxie is suitable for blockchain usage then of course people should decide which VM is the best fit for their blockchain (we are not claiming AT is *the best VM* but simply that it is *available* and that we have already built an atomic cross-chain transfer program for it so it should be quite useful even as is and without a higher level language).

In regards to "dead code" it is envisioned that ATs with no UTXOs left could be removed as part of pruning.

As far as performance goes only testing will reveal how useful an addition AT is (note that limits are recommended to prevent AT from ever becoming too big a burden for peers to handle).

[CIYAM]

While I am thinking about "higher level" languages ideally what I'd like to do is to have GCC able to compile code based on the AT instruction set so if there are any GCC gurus (i.e. people that know how to add a new instruction set for it to work with) who are interested in AT then please get in touch.

[Gavin Andresen]

...or other facilities which are more obvious when you understand the difference between with script does in a consensus system... that it's not really performing computation, but verification of computation.

This is a very important concept to internalize. I don't think Satoshi realized it, and I think if he did Bitcoin Script would be very different from what we have.

In a future ideal world where arbitrary zero-knowledge-proofs are time-tested and have robust implementations, everybody except for the N entities directly involved in a transaction would validate a short, opaque proof that some computation took place authorizing the transaction.

If you're designing a better transaction system, you should design with that ideal in mind.

[CIYAM]

I was in discussion today with some people from the music *industry* (for those that are not aware my major at uni was music and in particular music composition).

I have an idea that we can create an AT to *change the music world* and get rid of all the middle-men that currently control it (the main reason I did not become a professional musician).

An AT would be created by a sponsor (think about the sponsors that made all of the classical music we have if you have trouble believing that anyone would do this). This AT would wait for a proven signature from the artist that would include a hash of a hash of a poor quality version of the artwork.

Once the artist has seen that the sponsor has sent the hash of the hash (assuming they are happy that the poor quality version is what they want the high quality version to sound like) then they send the first hash and the final product is released (ensuring that they get paid). If they don't actually release a good quality product then everyone will know that (so the artist's rep would be damaged greatly).

The AT once it sees the valid hash will send the funds to the artist (if not done in time a refund would occur to the sponsor).

It requires no middle-men and allows sponsors to get recognition (if they choose to go public) for artworks (and gives the artist recognition whether or not the sponsor wants to be anonymous).

[CIYAM]

Another use case in the pipeline is that of "oracles".

I have been reading about other similar ideas to AT using web services and to me that is a truly terrible idea (it is just going to make forks all the more likely).

So what I think work better is that you have a number of different oracles create their own ATs that will only accept a message from their creator as a "signal" that they can pass on if inquired upon.

An AT that wants to know the "outcome of an event" could have say have 5 of these oracle AT ids hard-coded into them. When the time is right it would send a message to each which would reply with the answer and the "majority" would become the decision that is made.

This is robust in case of new nodes (that need to run all ATs no matter how old the event was) and in terms of keeping forks limited.

[DooMAD]

Is there a list of the coins that are working on AT integration?  We know about Qora and NXT.  Looking at the bounty thread, there are some other developers who "showed an interest", but do we get to know which ones?  Or are they keeping it under wraps until they have something to show?

[visual111]

Is there a list of the coins that are working on AT integration?  We know about Qora and NXT.  Looking at the bounty thread, there are some other developers who "showed an interest", but do we get to know which ones?  Or are they keeping it under wraps until they have something to show?

xcp