Difference between revisions of "Blockchain"
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* There are some [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake efforts to reduce the power consumption]. If those work, it looks like the solution will just be some other trust framework, but with a different name. For example the proposal of Hardjono et al.<ref>Thos Hardjono, +2 ''Towards a Design Philosophy for Inter-operable Blockchain Systems | * There are some [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake efforts to reduce the power consumption]. If those work, it looks like the solution will just be some other trust framework, but with a different name. For example the proposal of Hardjono et al.<ref>Thos Hardjono, +2 ''Towards a Design Philosophy for Inter-operable Blockchain Systems | ||
'' MIT May 16, 2018 [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.05934.pdf]</ref> goes to a resilient system like the internet, which is, of necessity, single rooted even though nearly all components can work independantly for a time, just as the internet itself functions today. | '' MIT May 16, 2018 [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.05934.pdf]</ref> goes to a resilient system like the internet, which is, of necessity, single rooted even though nearly all components can work independantly for a time, just as the internet itself functions today. | ||
| − | * There has been no significant uptake of | + | * There has been no significant uptake of block chaining with distributed ledger in real world businesses other than money laundering.<ref>Andrew Orlowski, ''Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don't call back when asked for evidence.'' (2018-11-30) The Register https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/30/blockchain_study_finds_0_per_cent_success_rate/</ref> |
==Solutions== | ==Solutions== | ||
Revision as of 14:08, 16 December 2018
Contents
Full Title or Meme
Block Chain will solve all trust problems, provided you have the energy of a small sun available to power it.
Context
The technology for Block Chain itself has been around for at least 20 years. These simple chain allowed non-revocable commitments by creating a series of blocks that included a collection of all of the block hashes received since the last update plus the hash of that last update. The has of the current block update is calculated and published in a public place plus being added to the next update in sequence. Thus each entry onto the block chain cannot be changed as so is immutable.
Simple Chains
Block chains were first commercialized by Bellcore which published the hash of each day's update in the New York Times.[1] Surety. LLC is a continuation of that service that was still available in 2018.
Proof of Work
The point of proof of work is to randomize the choice for the source node for the next block in the chain. This will allow trust to be established for the case where less that 50% of the node are colluding to subvert the chain.
- The first successful block chain with distributed ledger was created by the pseudonymous S. Nakamoto[2] which resulted in the highly popular anonymous money know as Bitcoin.
- Mark Russinovich did an interesting calculation that showed that this pow scheme is now consuming as much power as the entire country of Denmark.[3]
- Other estimates put the energy requirements at the level of all electricity generated today will be needed for bitcoin in a few years.[4]
Problems
- The current problem that many architects are trying to solve with block chaining relate to the concentration of user information in a small number of very large companies.
- There are some efforts to reduce the power consumption. If those work, it looks like the solution will just be some other trust framework, but with a different name. For example the proposal of Hardjono et al.[5] goes to a resilient system like the internet, which is, of necessity, single rooted even though nearly all components can work independantly for a time, just as the internet itself functions today.
- There has been no significant uptake of block chaining with distributed ledger in real world businesses other than money laundering.[6]
Solutions
Most of the solutions rely either on permissions for participants in the block chain process, which implies some source of trust to select the participants, or some less costly source of randomness in selecting the next node to "win" in the contest to submit the next block.[7] Most of these solutions derive from the Byzantine Generals' Problem which is a cryptographic solution to making decisions when there is a lack of trust among the deciders.[8]
- Proof-of-Stake solutions use a random selection process, but maintain the value on the chain as the incentive for the selected updater to continue the chain.
- Pure Proof-of-Stake block chain systems. Also has some good comparisons against other schemes.
- ALGORAND the block chain for business contains a good collection of block chain papers.
References
- ↑ BELLCORE SPINS OFF NEW COMPANY TO OFFER DIGITAL NOTARY (TM)(SM) SERVICE http://seclists.org/interesting-people/1994/Mar/100
- ↑ S. Nakamoto. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, 2008.
- ↑ Mark Russinovich Microsoft Build (2018-05-06) https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2018/BRK2507
- ↑ Adam Rodgers, The Hard Math Behind Bitcoin's Global Warming Problem. (2017-12-17) Wired https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-global-warming/
- ↑ Thos Hardjono, +2 Towards a Design Philosophy for Inter-operable Blockchain Systems MIT May 16, 2018 [1]
- ↑ Andrew Orlowski, Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don't call back when asked for evidence. (2018-11-30) The Register https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/30/blockchain_study_finds_0_per_cent_success_rate/
- ↑ Zubin Koticha, Proof of Stake and the History of Distributed Consensus: Part 1, Nakamoto Consensus, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Hybrid Consensus, Thunderella. (2018-09-04) Thunder https://medium.com/thunderofficial/proof-of-stake-and-the-history-of-distributed-consensus-part-1-nakamoto-consensus-byzantine-176e0156316e
- ↑ Lamport, L.; Shostak, R.; Pease, M., The Byzantine Generals Problem. (1982) ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. 4 (3): 387-389. doi:10.1145/357172.357176
