Title,Score,URL,Comments
Should we work on developing a FAQ here in order to improve knowledge and discussion?,295,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nfbagl/should_we_work_on_developing_a_faq_here_in_order/,"Would be nice to be able to link people to some _objective_ site instead of writing yet another document on blockchain.
Maybe even just links to youtube videos with intuitive animations.
I’m new and just getting into crypto. So I think It would be great
I think that would be very useful - I still lose track of some of the acronyms and names for concepts - I have to sneak off and look them up!
 yes please create a wiki faq in this sub
Yes please, there’s way better mediums for explaining the basics of crypto than a reddit comment
Write some stuff up and I'd be happy to put it in the wiki.
One of Mike Maloney’s “Hidden Secrets of Money” episodes is an excellent introduction to Bitcoin and Blockchain for beginners.
sup, came across #BitCanna, what would u say? 
This would very helpful!

If you’re looking for inspiration, the Cardano subreddit have a very comprehensive sticky thread, that I’m finding very useful as a beginner

https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/lnj5ne/getting_started_guide_a_newbies_guide_to_cardano/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
100%
I'm waa
Lol oh my gosh yea. Even with community help I've had to just go from whitepaper to white paper atm
Yes, please. I'm a newbie and i'm trying to get good informations about this topic and it's hard.
Yes. I keep researching, but the amount of technobabble on some of the best cryptos is overwhelming. What the hell is a parachain, and then check out Polygon's website because it's so tech filled no one knows what they are buying.
This would be perfect! Even people who think they understand certain subjects might be surprised by other people's knowhow!
I think it would be a great idea. I'm all for learning since I'm exactly what is described, someone new who is researching
That was actually the first thing that I looked for when I started a month or so ago.
A primer on common terms  and a community curated list of significant crypto projects would be nice.

When you see thousands of coins listing it would be helpful to know what are projects that are doing something meaningful and different, technology-wise, as opposed to those that are just a fork of another project so someone can rug pull during the hype.
I posted a post about the beginning of crypto and it isn't anywhere on new. 

It would improve knowledge and lead to a discussion . . .
absolutely! it would be really nice to participate in a conversation-driven forum that seeks to educate in a healthy way. crypto is such a nuanced and interesting topic, everyone who is interested deserves to have access to reliable resources to sustain that interest.
This might be a shameless plug but the CryptoDevHub Wiki was just started a month ago to solve this exact problem.

https://wiki.cryptodevhub.io

It's a community-driven Wiki with curated articles, links and resources. The goal is to have one place to collect and categorize the signal in the crypto (technology) noise.
I totally support this idea, what it takes to have/make such FAQ？
Yes I couldn't agree more. I think it could help with the quality of the sub so we link to some standard high quality stuff, rather than people coming here and shilling their blogs and bs like that. 

Also related to crypto a lot of people are in the boat of I wana understand xyz (say writing a smart contract with Solidity) but don't know the first step. To me, that's not a good post, I'd rather see what they've done after they've taken the first step.
Yes. This would probably be most helpful. An FAQ filled with links to articles, videos, etc. would probably be best. I am very much a newbie to this, and links to reliable, educational material would be greatly appreciated.
You should all check out https://www.smartcontractresearch.org/! Its a site intended to bring together blockchain engineers and academic researchers working on blockchain adjacent subjects.

As an example of the value add: [this post](https://www.smartcontractresearch.org/t/discussion-post-flashboys-to-flashbots/411) explores the current state of Flashbots, a toolset for identifying and acting on Miner Extractible Value
A [token curated registry](https://republic.co/blog/crypto/overview-of-token-curated-registries) would be a cool way to utilize the tech to create this resource.
looking interesting with their idea on trustworthy relations on this market"
Differences between APY & APR (in Crypto),267,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nnathc/differences_between_apy_apr_in_crypto/,"Wow, I always wondered if and what the difference was. Great explanation. Thank you for posting this!
Whata do, great knowledge
Awesome! This is one of those posts where I wish I could give you gold.
Thanks for explaining, I'd been working on the assumption that they were largely the same thing up until now.
What if the yield is paid out continuously? I believe the Compound protocol does it. Has it something to do with the magic number e?
If lending APY, if borrowing APR?
Upvoted you over in r/CryptoCurrency, upvoting you here. This was a really informative post! Thanks again!
nice explanation.  The example using 100% APR seems high though.   Bernie Madoff, the famous wallstreet scammer claimed his clients were gettings 10% APR.
Has anyone noticed APY tends to break down as APR gets large, if your number of compounding events is high?
Realy Thank you for that  


I came with the Doge wave, but I'm devouring all the content I can here on Reddit and I confess I'm loving it all.  
I recently invested in some altscoins from the BSC Network, of course, I can only lose money and knowing that I am at much greater risk than with the most popular currencies, but the information is always good.  
Goose Finance (EGG), Ape Swap (BANANA) with BNB Staked in ApeRocket (SPACE), Cofe Swap (BREW), Ubu Finance (UBU), Salt Swap (SALT), Swamp Finance (SWAMP), PancakeBunny (BUNNY), ​Seascape (pCROW), Exedmee (XED), Typhoons Network (TIPH) and finally Sattis Finance (SAT)  
The latter mainly with a very low market movement in the last 24 hours, I am a little worried, I saw some updates from the developers I have already accumulated some losses, mainly from the exchange of SAT for xSAT, but I'm in this to learn and participate in this universe  
I would like to know if you have an opinion on these projects, thank you in advance! :)  
 I will take a position in the most relevant projects with the most relevant values ​​when in the future when I understand the subject better.  
please don't be rude, thanks :)
Great explanation!  


I had to learn this stuff when I got into WHEAT. I couldn't believe the APY's and how sustainable they were. Great long term passive income for sure.
Thanks for this. Great explanation.
Thanks for your post, now i know more. Hope that my ownr wallet will release in staking products with good apy
This is moon worthy. You've provided a great service by writing this
Great content on APR and APY!
Something is off here: APY = (1+r)\^n - 1

In order to get the APY here and this is based on daily ***r*** then ***n*** would be 365?
I feel like I know the answer already but could use some confirmation.  Is APY based on coin price or a number of coins held?  Tried searching and am unsure if I'm just not using the right search terms.
Play with the numbers yourself, you'll see that the marginal effect of increasing N goes down as N goes up.
Not really. APY is just APR that factors in compounding.
100% APR isn't that unthinkable in crypto in the current climate though, in traditional finance it would be insane though, for sure.
Just checked the WHEAT website.  Consensys audit makes me very interested.
They’ll be the first and only BSC project that can claim that feather in their cap. It was 6 months in the making and I’ve heard they cost nearly $100k.
6 days and counting 

Safety first - that's a good priority"
"Crypto awareness is increasing, but understanding is declining",253,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/o1z3n4/crypto_awareness_is_increasing_but_understanding/,"It's unavoidable.  As adoption in any asset class increases understanding necessarily decreases.

Early adopters are going to be those people who have the greatest interest in the underlining technology.  Who owned personal computers in the 1980s?  Who owns them now?  Does the average PC owner today know more or less about how a computer operates on a fundamental level?

On a more pragmatic level most people don't really care about how the technology they interact with works.  They just care about what it can do for them.  In the case of crypto the incoming crowd is largely concerned with price action (will it go up) more so than the underlining technology.  They aren't signing up on exchanges because they inherently believe in crypto, they are signing up because they've seen the massive wealth exchange that has so far occurred and on an institutional level they are seeing structural weakness in the dollar.

Let's imagine the price of major assets was remarkably stable relative to fiat.  How excited do you think the general public would be about the space?         

edit-typo
Not many people know how fiat works anyway.
Absolutely. Many people follow hypes and the concept of 'free money', so therefor only listen to others instead of doing their own research. I see it in many crypto projects, including ones I participate in. I believe the major takeaway from the crypto space is the concept of decentralization for finances and the massive use cases for blockchain technology. Bitcoin and Dogecoin seem to be starting points for many people, and it is sad that a lot of them don't search any further. My journey brought me to hold ALGO instead of BTC or ETH due to fee structures. I've even tried my hand at mining DOGE for a bit, but it was not worth the electrical consumption at my level. The point is that, like in so many other areas of tech, finance, fashion... (the list goes on), many people prefer to listen to others instead of doing their own research. Not much we can do about that, honestly.
Defintely. At least from my limited perspective it seems accurate. Most people I know have heard of bitcoin, something like 95%, but don't know any other coins/projects. For them Crypto = Bitcoin. 

And of those 95%, I'd say 5% understand the basics of how cryptos work. Most have heard the term blockchain, but can't explain what it is exactly. If you start asking the differences between PoW and PoS they immediately think you're talking about rocket science and lose interest.

So I'd say the awareness is increasing, but understanding isn't exactly declining because it was never high to begin with.
[deleted]
Life would stop if we try to deeply understand everything we are involved in.

The human brain is built for heuristics.
This is true for most advances, automation and the removal of barriers to entry allow widespread adoption. As someone earlier said, the understanding of how a car functions and is fixed is greatly diminished. The same could be said for personal computers or really any tech. Very few people know how to fix their computers or phones, but they are ubiquitous in most countries now. I think the worry here is a good amount of people might make poor investments because they do not understand what they are investing in or fall prey to hype/social media pump and dump schemes.
Understanding is not 'declining'. You first need awareness. Then you need people to understand after being aware of something. 

Understanding needs to catch up to awareness.
I mean people don't understand the internet even today. (Hell even idk properly how it works). But they still use it because of its impact on our lifestyle and technology.

So i feel Its more than enough for people to know ""what"" is the use of cryptocurrencies or blockchains in general rather than ""how"" it works. 

PS : im not directly comparing the internet to crypto. But the situation of transition right now its somewhat similar to that of the period of the internet
Kinda normal though. How many people fully understands https ipv4 html js? Yet here we are using the internet.
The issue here is the same as everything else when you think about it:

There's what's called the innovators and the early adopters - these people will most likely be very interested in the technology and not necessarily into making a quick buck (these people probably entered the market in the first couple of years)

Then, as time goes on, there's the early majority (up until 2020 maybe) heard about this new currency and technology and got interested. They entered at different times, and they have probably a fair amount of knowledge, although superficial about it.

Most recently, and probably as of 2021, you have the Late majority and the laggards (btw not saying no one else will enter the market, I am using the sample we have right now).

This people will invest in whatever is presented to them. If Elon Must pumps doge they buy doge, if some friends shills a shitcoin they gonna buy. If something's under 1$ they think it is the next bitcoin without any awareness about circulating and total supply, market cap, the goal of the project, tokenomics, what problem/s it solves...

​

The sad thing is this new money is flowing into really bad things, not even mentioning memecoins but even scams and all that crap.

An example - I have been invested in Loopring which is a Layer 2 solution for Ethereum (one of the few ZkRollups out there, really great tech but still lacks some liquidity and marketing to get more awareness and usability). If you ask about 100 people maybe 2 of them heard about it, maybe about half knows what Ethereum is and maybe 5 or 6 know what Layer 2 means...   


I really think we're early, but it makes me sad that people care less than nothing about what they're poring their money into. That's how you get burned in the short, medium and long run
If crypto is to become mainstream, this outcome is inevitable. How many people know how credit cards work? Heck how many know how and why banknotes are printed?
Yeah 99% of my mates trade and have no clue about the tech. I for one know all about the tech **smutty laugh**
I honestly thought it would be less than 70%. 70% of people who heard of crypto can define it, thats a good number imo
Please try to understand IOTA. It is worthy.
So I finally decided to dive into creating NFTs. And yeah this is definitely where I've noticed this.  The nft creation websites make it so easy you really don't have to know much to create an NFT and a lot of people don't seem to know what I some basics like difference between wETH and ETH, what gas is, and why gas fees vary among other things. For me personally I wanted to have a ballpark understanding atheist of how the stuff works before I dive in, but I guess the FOMO is real.
I think that the latest volatility is not helping at all for sure. People need to keep some stablecoins or some $NDAU which is an long-term value holder adaptive currency on the bag just to balance things but no.....they go full ape on any crapcoin that comes...then yeah...market goes bananas
Understanding is declining?  So last year the people that could define crypto was higher than 71%, and because you use a different sample of people it 'dropped' to 71%?  The fact that 71% can define it is huge to me.  I would have expected a much smaller %.  It is not like the people surveyed last year forgot the definition.  Lol
are you interested in gold investment dm
Given the scenario, if the government implemented regulation on cryptocurrency, their people should be really cautious. However, profit and convenience are what set it apart from the others.
Information is power nd quality Info's to any thing is scarce but wit time just like the snail movement it will arrive
It's those people that make things more interesting lol
Before anyone points the blame at Elon and Doge holders I noticed this before. As I did my research thoroughly and concluded that Cardano is the future of smart contracts and global government adoption, I've bumped into a bunch of Eth maxists who are bullish out of irrational hopes and disregard other cryptos because they don't have the first mover advantage, but if you listen to their reasoning, Eth is better because it improves upon.... drum roll... Bitcoin. Two complete different use cases. But hey, can't blame them when that's the only popular crypto Eth holds up against.
The devil is in the details
Blessing and a curse? Tons are coming for the money and even the few that stay for the tech is worth it imo. Adoption is just that and I'll take it.
I always use automobiles as an example for this phenomenon.  Probably 90% of men over the age of 60 can function as a decent DIY mechanic.  

Almost no one under 40 who isn't a mechanic by trade has a fucking clue what's going on beneath the hood of the car they drive around in every day.

Early adopters, even if they're not specifically interested in the tech behind the product, sort of necessarily end up with at least rudimentary competence because early products are kind of shitty, and require lots of extra effort.

Now that crypto is noob friendly, why bother to learn the hard shit?  Anyone who can manage online banking can buy crypto and hold it in their ""Coinbase Wallet.""
You hit the nail on the head.

I think another setback for crypto is how much mysticism and skepticism surrounds it. DeFi is great for democraticizing our financial system. It's not so great at providing a trusted, reliable source of information that people can easily look at... Without wading through the noise surrounding it.
I'm of a similar mind. I try to encourage people to explore it like its the wild west. everything in crypto is testing new grounds, you need to find a space and get cracking making a homestead to call your own, but you have to build it yourself mind. you'll get stung by bandits trying to be a tourist and scammed if you try to hire some one else.
Some of you guys are going to be the first crypto accountants and crypto advisors
Nah. I gotta disagree there mate. Even those of us with degrees in Philosophy still have regular jobs! :D

Besides, I think most of us can do our day job AND pontificate on the 'Being There' ; everyone contemplates their existence now and then, it's arguably a reflex.
The problem is big exchanges are already capitalizing on ignorance and propaganda to form easily influenced sheep flocks of returning customers. Looking at Binance in particular. Not their doc isn't good for learning, it's only good for getting the hang of their proprietary tools. I don't care that some of y'all are capitalists, personal interest comes after the health of decentralization.
This is funny because it's so accurate. My dad always knows what to do when something goes wrong with our car and I just stand there waiting for him to ask for help. Mainly in handing him the tools he needs. 

Is there an advantage to learning in depth about crypto or can you earn the same amount by knowing nothing?
the car analogy doesn't work quite as well anymore though thanks to EVs and more an more proprietary tech that gets harder and harder for a layman to troubleshoot let alone repair. 

the same is sorta true of the crypto space... much of it is open source and decentralised, yes, but as more institutional adoption comes I think we'll also see more patenting and trade secretivisms. and even if that doesn't happen, just the current state of DeFi alone is so complex and dense that it's pretty hard to wrap your head around sometimes even at an entry level.

I can explain bitcoin to my dad, and he 'sorta gets it'. but if I tried explaining uniswap to him I think he'd just get stressed and confused, and I think I would too, voz I don't fully understand it myself. something something the blind leading the blind. 

anyway point is: even though all this information is out there and is mostly freely available, it isn't necessary easy to understand, but it isn't required to be understood to be used either. so love it or hate it, but that's progress... in its own way
That's probably the best analogy I've heard for the crypto market! :)
It really is a wild frontier with more and more settlers, and too many cowboys. Much like real frontiers tho, the cowboys will eventually get sidelined (that, and the most successful cowboys will become robber barons ie whales)!
Indeed, some of you probably already are those things! :D
In this day and age, not that hard to use google..tons of other resources out there.
Sad to say, but I think you'd be better off learning the tax implications relative to your jurisdiction.
Not every two crypto are alike. Knowing how the crypto your invested works allows you to hold through bear markets. If your investment is down for years, what makes you keep holding in the face of FUD? Knowledge. Be careful with this though. Some people follow an altcoin and become convinced their chosen alt will become the next Ethereum based only on surface level knowledge of crypto. There are a ton of Dunning Kruger types in crypto that think they've invested in the chosen one. So sometimes ignorance can be bliss. 

So if you're going to learn about crypto to make you a better investor, make sure you learn enough to know what you don't know.
And not uncommon to start following someone only to realize a couple weeks later that they are shilling and not really teaching properly. Hell even what CoinBureau says needs to be dissected with further research. Honestly if I wanted to orient people to a good doc it would be Kraken's and Cryptowatch's but it's not exactly entry level. CoinBureau is a good starting point but too many people treat Guy like some saint but really he's got his own agenda.
Price you pay for free info. We all face these issues."
Finance isnt why crypto matters,220,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/oa2puu/finance_isnt_why_crypto_matters/,"I agree with you. I think the signal-noise ratio is extremely poor in crypto because of all the short-sighted money-grab projects. It's annoying but I believe we will see a shift in focus towards valuing innovation over pumpamentals.
This is very true. When I first got into crypto, I would just buy whatever coins/tokens seemed promising without doing my research.


I saw someone here suggested that if you’re going to invest in a crypto project, get some, put it in a wallet, and see what you can do with it! I think this is great advice and honestly changes the way you view things. 


Bitcoin basically manages to be outside of the extended cryptosphere as it is a simply a speculative asset that can be sent and received and not much else. Inside the DeFi world and other crypto projects, there’s a lot of innovation and new possibilities. 


Good post
What convinced me is the ""radical liberalism"" article written by vitalik and some Harvard economist. 

We can enforce a new system with rules visibles by everyone, incentives to behave correctly and somehow guarantee a ""fairer"" since there is no barrier to entry.

Also quadratic funding is fucking great.
Your thoughts are not incorrect, they are in today's direction of current blockchain products. We have indeed a ""new internet"" that works accordingly to what DAOs and project owners decide.

Here my thoughts on what you do not understand about it; financial applications are the soul of blockchain. The reason for this is exactly what you mentioned previously - The network rewards those who deliver content into the network. - We have come to a standard of rewarding system that was previously impossible. You know in crypto that if you put out X product you can expect Y rewards by Z number of users. In fact you can know exactly how much your product will make by number of transactions before putting it out or even start to work on it. This also helps you choose what network you want to work with and what kind of projects you want to dedicate your time to.

The crypto space cannot grow without the financial aspect the same way youtube would not be what it is today without all the money that it generates.

The very reason that blockchains are often designed to reward developers and users is also why it is based in financial services most of the time. Its a fair and balanced way to distribute power between those who use and produce in such networks, be it miners, nodes, developers, stakers or traders.

Why would you want to move the internet into a fair play space and leave one of the biggest issues in society behind? The stock market that blocks access for small companies that cannot open to stocks, VCs, small companies looking for investment, and everything in between?

Its understandable you would plea that we stop using crypto as a stock market, but is also naïve and leave out a very big problem that crypto currencies can solve.

In the end there is only focus in crypto products since the start because its a highly profitable technology that have no bounds when talking about funding.

The one biggest issue with ""normal"" technology is funding. But you do not have this problem in blockchains, you can create any type of product and expect to be funded very quickly. The fact that we have solved the financial issue for internet development is exactly why crypto will thrive and eventually be the new normal. There is no reason to try to stop its finacial benefits, be it trading or not. Most people only know that you can trade crypto, that is normal because aside from NFTs, DAOs and DeFi there are not many user friendly products that we don't have already on services like google, facebook, etc.

With time people will have more things to do in the crypto space and trading will be a thing for traders.

I would like to remind you about the internet itself in the late 80s and 90s was purely a trading object for most people. They did not used it. Most people in the US only bought stocks of it, they didn't know what to do with it, the internet was only used by a small minority and companies, it only became clear what its purpose really was when the World Wide Web came into place in 91, and it was not a consensus, I suggest you look at the browser wars. Microsoft did not have a browser and there was a big war between browsers, Netscape being the biggest, until windows 95 came with the internet explorer. A good show about this is ""Halt and catch fire"".
and networking, oh lord people forget about trustless networking and how this has a HUGE implication in future network building.

TCP/IP relies on complete trust between the network nodes, a failure in one will eject it from the network and in cases where it is a major node, knock out the ability to use that section of the network at all until a trusted connection is re-established.

The decentralized method that the blockchains are experimenting with is a way for computers to be networked with out requiring any authentication (trustless), since authentication is inherently part of the method (a chain of keys is agreed upon by all nodes by majority agreement).

if any one node fails in a decentralized setup, the others nodes have it covered and the network computes as normal.

This is massive, and widely ignored, because people don't see the uses for it. This is immutable internet! ever again could something be censored! it won't be long before this entire tech is big enough to take over from TCP/IP and when that happens the globe can communicate without any centralized barriers.
I too think people underestimate the use cases. Everything is stored as digital data already so we can imagine in the future the tremendous amount that will need to be both accessible from anywhere and completely secure. Centralized database servers seem like a huge liability in that future. Blockchain is the technology that solves that.
Cryptocurrency is basically just a slow database which allows people to fully push responsibility onto the consumer. 

It’s not decentralized, it’s not trust less, and it’s nothing even permission-less. It all comes down to if you can trust the code and audit the code of all these random “decentralized” garbage things. If you can’t, we’ll good luck!! Cuz you’re on your own!
Shouldn't the stock market 2.0 be on-chain? You might be underestimating the power of finance in the crypto world. This defi boom really pushes everything to want to tokenize. Let's tokenize houses, frequent flyer miles, free starbucks coffee cards, digital shares of Google. Let's tokenize everything!!! Ok, but how do they interact? For that, we need financial markets. That's why DEXs are so important. 

In the future, you could go buy a coffee that is priced in USD, but Starbucks wants to increase their reserve of BTC so they actually only accept BTC at the moment. You have some airline miles that you want to use, so the DEX converts your Flyers to $5 worth of BTC all on the fly and everyone is happy. We NEED finance for this to happen. 

Lending is another one. Almost everyone takes on a loan of some sort. Creidt Cards of the future might allow you to stake some ETH or BTC on a lending platform, and when you swipe your card a loan is generated with your crypto as collateral. This is ""The People's Loan"" we can all share in the proceeds and cut the banks out. 

Finance is a big WIN for crypto, I'm happy to have it as one of the use cases for blockchain and crypto.
Couldn’t agree more with standardization. Open source platforms can really speed up advancements in fields of development, in voting and democracy, for example, when the ability to rig elections on governments end becomes harder, for example.
Blockchain has wasteful redundancy, and inefficient consensus algorithms because of the need to prevent double spending under the 0-trust assumption. The actual authenticity of the transaction is achieved by the digital signature anyway.

Crypto is not the first nor the best way to build decentralized systems and to use it as the standard way of implementing decentralized systems is like using a drill for every task. There's plenty of distributed/decentralised algorithms and systems which you could use, and saying blockchain is the way to do things is a little offensive to anyone who has worked on them :p


Two somewhat difficult problems to solve in any decentralised system is discovery/search and why nodes would behave the way they're supposed to. One approach is how torrents work 
1. assume you know how to connect to tracker nodes and let them handle discovery - this brings some centralisation but anyone can start a tracker
2. They do it because they believe in it?

Tl;Dr: one size fits all is not a good idea. A shift to decentralized systems would be great but unless you sort out the incentives to do so, it's coming from people wanting to (which does work, like torrents and Minecraft servers)
A database with n root users.
Crypto is a lot more but then Defi leading the wave right now
I agree with you op and this is why I'm bullish on Cardano overtaking Eth. Sure Eth is great for finances and being manipulated for day trading, not denying people are making bank with it. But that's not what matters for the long term indeed, it's just a foot in the door for mass adoption. Crypto is about true decentralization against corruption. Cardano is built around true decentralized governance and adoption will be the only relevant factor, not price, not gas fees, not future hiccups in sight. It is built for fair and unstoppable adoption at all levels of society.

Right now people still think crypto is about making money with a volatile version of stocks and. The way I think of crypto is much less narrow minded. Crypto is what's going to change everything about networks as we know them. It's gonna change how your fridge gets push notifications from your doorbell to how your watch verifies you're the owner before validating a crypto transaction at the vending machine. It's gonna change how secret services encrypt their communications, it's gonna change how the medical sector keeps track of medical history, it's gonna change how the education sector keeps track of your progress, it's gonna change how the government collects taxes entirely, it's gonna let us synchronize interplanetary currencies and so much more about data!

Smart contracts are the core of blockchain technology, not a nerdy layer added on top of money. And we've only scratched the surface of what it has in store for us. ICP and SingularityNET are two hints at what's to come and change the world forever...
Fully agree really. That view has shifted my main regret from not buying earlier to not learning development earlier haha. Who knows if it all works out in the end, but I sure wanna help try.
There are a ton of great points in this thread. There are still many people in the non-crypto space whose common refrain is 'but what problem does it solve?'.  

Sometimes the problem(s) that a new technology solves isn't apparent when the technology is first implemented.

For example, the flushable toilet was invented in 1596, but really didn’t catch on for a few hundred years.
So this sub is what Cryptocurrency sub should be. Relieved to be here.
While I think you are right in saying crypto is meant to create fairer systems, I think you are understating how fucked up the global monetary system is. This is the system that needs to be fair or no other application on top of it willl be able to be fair. Providing an alternative to centrally controlled nation state currency which will continue to be debased with a permissionless, neutral currency is the game changer. This isn’t ‘finance’ it’s financial freedom to save in a currency that won’t be debased, to save without having to have access to a bank, to transact freely without a central entity telling you what is and what is not a good cause. 

Here are some phenomenal articles by the human rights foundation about how fucked up our current system is: 

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-hidden-costs-of-the-petrodollar

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-a-currency-of-decolonization
Governance = value
Until crypto would not need huge redundancies, I guess it will stay a niche application
Where are you from? I don't want to assume too much, but you speak like someone who is from a politically stable country with strong rule of law, plenty of financial access and competition. Simply because you position crypto as a societal and technical revolution, which it is.

I really like your take by the way. It's great to see how much value this technology is bringing to different needs and use cases. Specially this... *""build a framework for a decentralized network that incentivizes and directly rewards people who add value to the network."".* That people can have equal access to opportunity and be rewarded for their added value.

Crypto absolutely IS about finance to a lot of people. In that regard, decentralization doesnt matter as much as 1, **access to capital** and 2, **accountability**. This is what the vast majority of the southern hemisphere wants. Access to loans. Access to capital investment opportunities. Access to stable currencies. Remittances not subject to corruption. Visibility of their asset allocation. Accountability.
You know something mate. Use it wisely, cause most are still wondering when will it crash xD
Centralization is not sustainable. Everything is boom and bust, from nature to industry. DeFi all the way.
Just made a video on my YouTube channel about what I believe can scale quickly and compete with ethereum and Bitcoin let me know if you want to check it out
Blockchains provide two key properties: correct execution and censorship resistance.

from these properties there are a lot of interesting usecases for blockchain that can come about.

decentralised web is what im most interested in / passionate about in blockchain technology. 

""decentralised web"" can mean alot of different things but i can categories a few. all these are around removing an intermediary that could have motivation to be a bad actor / miscreant 

- Self-sovereign identity (SSI) using decentralised identifiers (DID) -  you are in control of your identity, this removes facebook / google doing this for you.

- cenorship resistant domains - e.g. unstoppable domains or the ethereum ENS system. currently the web operates on a tiered struccture of centralised authorities that allow a DNS record to exist i.e. a domain name www.mysite.com is allowed to exist and point to a server IP. These currently can be taken down, for example by law enforcement. 

- decentralised websites - the site is operating on the blockchain or at least some parts. this is probably not feasible at the current time due to how slow blockchain is for anything other than a trivial website. facebook is just a giant spying machine, with cenorship resistance and publicly visible code, there is no more spying. thjat said privacy on a permissionless blockchain is expensive to do e.g. zksnarks or maybe something simple could be used like PGP msgs.

- decentralised overlay networks - basically what TOR is but has advantages preventing sybil attacks and better measures to prevent DDOS attacks. Loki net operates like this.

- decentralised internet - instead of an overlay network, routing at the ipv6/ipv4 layer ccan be done, the sites themselves do not need to run on the blockchain, its just a way to route traffic. the advantage here is the internet cant be shutdown. this option realistically has to be a hybrid overrlay network as AFAIK the only feasiable way to create a seperate world network is via using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network. Helium works like this
Is this not Tokenomics your describing?
When I meet someone who is into crypto, I try to find out if they actually care about the application of blockchain or are just intersted in it for the money.
So having just watched the relevant Fridman interviews with the guiding crypto lights, coin founders and innovators I find myself amazed at the general lack of historical knowledge, respect for humanity and psychological insight and awareness these members represent or express.Their ability to assume that crypto is a game changer seems rooted in the computer gaming past on which so much emphasis is placed. Life is not a game. The inability in the crypto space to value every human being equally simply for existing floors me.  

I ask.

Just exactly where do think, who do you think, what shoulders do you think you stand on. Where is your respect for the blood, sweat and tears that were shed for you. I see humans acting like more like robots, like AI. I find you frightening.I have news. You will not last unless you build a system that accepts failure and all of us who failed.How in the hell do you think you got here. You are a product of selection that loved life beyond survival. Your thoughts are regressive. So bright but so cold. Humans don't fail, human beings do.We are not animals us failures, we will see your attitudes gone because if necessary we are prepared to pull the plug. Do you think tribalism and feudalism are not our alternatives and that we will not track down and destroy you and all things digital.

Do you believe that a reset will not be 'engineered' by necessity to destroy the crypto space because it is anti life because it refuses to both embrace and reward failure equal to success..How do you define evil. Is it individual or collective or both?I feel like I am dealing with children. I had so much hope but this is the perpetuation of evil genius.

The dialectic that spawned you is also your demise. History will not be kind.I haven't entered the hacker community yet but I will go there now because of who you are.Let me write this space a first principle...you can change.

​

Crypto shall write no code disrespecting an establishment of human failure, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Coin Holders for a redress of grievances relating to prior cause. No code shall limit the transparent examination of the failure of each Coin Holder or their system to determine and establish the required renumeration.billintomahawk
The real value will emerge if distributed applications are cheaper, faster, and/or better in some way than the alternatives (and those alternatives don't adapt.) Decentralization for decentralization's sake, isn't enough. Does Filecoin, Storj, Sia or Arweave do a better job than iCloud, Google Cloud, Box and other centralized cloud storage services? If they do, people will use them (and their tokens.) Thoughts?
Indeed. Crypto is the new trend and will continue to dominate the finance world. It is crazy how everything seems seemingless now and instant. I could still remember my first investment in crypto,  it was RELI. I was really clueless that time but as time went by I have learned to really absob every new ideas each day.
""Pumpamentals"" haha, im stealing that
It's basically mirroring the Internet. We're still in the late-90s era of Dot Com shitty startups. We've yet to get to all the cool parts like Wikipedia, Social Media, video/streaming, and so on.
I agree, and would go further to suggest it is a socio/economic revolution. The third way we have been waiting for.
My hope is that the memecoins and financial incentive will make it mainstream. 

Phase 2 will be the decentralized and private layer. But at this point it will already be too late to stop it.

A blessing in disguise?
What i think people miss about BTC when they call it speculative and not functional is that it really isn't, atleast not any more than any other crypto. Sure, there are *now* cryptos that are more effective at what BTC was originally designed to do, but that doesn't make it speculative. 

Its the biggest, oldest, safest network on which to transact in the crypto space. If I want a fast and cheap transaction, Im using Stellar, or Tezos, or Algorand, or Solana, or BCH.

If I have a massive amount of money and speed isn't an issue, I'm using Bitcoin or Ethereum, and if its substantially massive and speed is an issue, I'll just use Bitcoin and pay a higher fee. 

People think that just because bitcoin is expensive to use **or** time consuming that it doesn't ""work"" and thats not true. My bet is that the first big shift toward crypto adoption will be when corporations/large organizations start transacting in BTC because of how safe it is (and comparatively inexpensive compared to trust based systems).
Most of defi as of now is just tools aiding in speculation. Real world uses that justifies the costs and drawbacks of  blockchain technology are really hard to find ( I don't know of any).
The biggest fallacy in arguments like these (both your and ops) is that people are essentially trying to combat inherent problems of human nature with technology. You have to understand and solve the human problem first. Technology is merely a tool.
Excellent point, i like your take on it
good point, poorly published
I have a feeling (but I need to think about it more) that if you will want to design truly decentralized system, you will inevitably end up dealing with questions about incentivization and value in general and that will inevitably lead you back to crypto stuff - even if the system is not in DeFi and solves completely unrelated problem
I apologize if it came across as ""crypto should be the default way to build decentralized systems"". Like many technologies it is just one tool in our tool belt, however when it comes to transparently financially incentivizing small actors in a huge system i personally dont see anything coming close to crypto.

If you know of any strong alternatives off the top of your head i would love to go down that rabbit hole

EDIT:

Sorry, my reddit app is bugging out today, i only saw the first part of your comment, thanks!
Hi. Sorry for going off topic here but do you know any solutions or workarounds for the problem of irreversible nature of transactions in defi? I mean we are dealing with money here and people might send it to a wrong address accidentally. Hell even banks do these kinds of mistakes. So is there a way to do implement conditional reversal of transaction without making a central authority?
*A fully-replicated database with append only semantics and eventual consistency.

It doesn't even have the concept of a user tbh. Nobody is root :p
I feel like moons have a lot to do with the worsening quality of the cryptocurrency sub
We're also *pre-facebook,* so keep that in mind
What do you mean by third way?
I just refer to it as speculative not because it isn’t functional, but because I’d imagine about 3 out of 4 people currently only buy Bitcoin because they expect it to increase in value over time. If more people just wanted to use crypto as payment, I don’t know why USDC wouldn’t just be used.
I think this is very insightful and on point. Faster and shinier isn't always better. Bitcoin has the Coca-Cola factor. Many delicious and even cheaper or healthier options arrived to market after the fact and are even enjoyable, but nothing is Coke. I see no world where BTC doesn't hold its original mystique for a long time. It's my largest holding but I am absolutely not a BTC maxi.
Have we ever really solved human nature problems though? My impression looking at history is that better technology can help remove the incentives for some of the worst human behaviors, and that might be the best we can do in the end.
You're right. It's what always happens when I see a solution and think ""surely there's an easier way to solve that""

It may be possible to build the system itself with one architecture better suited to the purpose and offload the incentive part to a payment, possibly implemented using a smart-contract/crypto thing.

And that's probably where I completely misunderstood OP and owe them an apology. Decentralised trustless systems do indeed enable other forms of decentralized systems by solving the incentive problem.
Sorry OP.  I reread and have to agree with you. Crypto systems (smart contracts?) do solve the incentives problem and do pave the way for decentralised systems of arbitrary architectures. I needed the other comment in the thread to realize it.

(I was editing the comment to add stuff. It wasn't for app.)
I don't, but I don't think the blockchain system is practical enough to really change the game to a decentralised system
Also, I don't know blockchain too well, but for the example of a decentralized YouTube-  how do you verify that the node which served you the data actually did and that they get rewarded for it?
You could ask on a new thread. I'm a beginner in the crypto/blockchain field.

Unlikely, how do you tell the difference between a correcting a mistake and someone maliciously reversing a transaction?
Maybe you can add some sort of layer to prevent mistakes from happening by requiring the receiver to expect a transaction or something but reversing seems very unlikely.
This comment actually caused fear to well up inside me.
People have been talking for 50 years about the third way, not capitalism not communism. A better way. Decentralized systems make that possible. Strangely not many have claimed it as the third way.
Yeah, I feel you and don't disagree generally
That's what I said, technology is a tool. We need to learn to find and solve the problem with it. 

What's the problem we re seeing now in crypto? Overwhelming majority of the people are self serving and greedy and in it only for them gainz, they mention the technology just for the rationalisation of their choices... shilling the coins they invested in and putting down others. Rugpulls and scams are aplenty. 

Also makes you wonder if this technology can really solve the problem...maybe..maybe not....
Your therapist can bill me
I'm not surprised. After all New Labour were the last to use that term and look where that got us.
I thought the third way was suppose to be social democracy, free market capitalism for the economy but funding for social needs ( education, health, welfare). This is what Bill Clinton and Tony Blair say was there third way like a lot of scandanvian countries. Centrist basically
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Absolutely right. They just started attacked third countries instead though. Maybe that's what it really means.
What I want is a new DemoKratia, people power. The crypto way [Decentralized UBI with stable coin and civics](http:// https://medium.com/@davidcampbell-53219/the-problem-with-staking-in-the-decentralised-world-c63cf5c7bed8)  and the argument for it here [Fluidity the way to true DemoKratia book](https://www.lulu.com/en/au/shop/david-campbell/fluidity-the-way-to-true-demokratia/paperback/product-1dzrejgq.html)"
Uniswap in 155 lines of code!,213,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/qsuw6n/uniswap_in_155_lines_of_code/,"There is a lot of common code reuse in this line 

>'use scrypto::prelude::\*;

That's including a whole library of functions, so that hides a lot of the code.
Yeah I saw that too. Uniswap is like what 10,000 lines of code? And on Radix an AMM like Uniswap can be created with just 155. That's pretty amazing tbh. A thriving Defi ecosystem on Radix could happen very quickly.
The example code is basically Uniswap V1 which was already very small in terms of complexity / lines of code. Later versions of Uniswap introduced a ton more complexity which would also be complex to implement in Rust.

FWIW I'm an experienced Rust & Solidity dev, and neither is particularly better (more concise, easier to read) based on this example.

This isn't a comment on other attributes of RadixDLT about which I know very little, but just on the code shared.
I have started learning Rust, because of Radix.
This is the first public ledger that made me wanna start programming Dapps.
 
Ethereum, Solidity, could never convince me.
Did anyone mention the component library? Developers get royalties for their code, ON LEDGER and FOREVER from every transaction that uses the code
It's more like 100 lines if you remove the comments!
I’m making my own DEX… ctr C, ctr V
From the looks of it, it is rust and that is very welcoming. I’d have issues if it was literally it’s own language and I have to relearn yet another language.
I'm not sure I understand. Does that mean you could make a more efficient uniswap? Would it actually cost less to use? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
Sounds like DAML - Digital Asset Modeling Language

Also based on Haskell and is a functional programming language. 

It has assets and parties as first class objects and private transactions and private contacts.
Are the smart contracts that radix uses Turing complete?
What is the roadmap when defi can start on radix?
Wtf i love seeing Radix pop up in posts i didn't make! 

I'm not a programmer (i dabble, but no skills), but this is so *readable*. I can see what's happening. It's beautiful.
Can it run on top of ethereum?
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Try Verus. You can make any number of better, MEV-resistant, 100% decentralized, multi-currency, cross-chain compatible liquidity pools on chain with an API call. You can use all of it on the Verus testnet now, along with zk-SNARKs, 100% decentralized P2P exchange of currencies and IDs, and user created AMMs.
this code is awful and unreadable olyseum
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

- [/r/cryptodevs] [Uniswap recreated in 150 lines of easily readable code (down from 10000 with solidity)](https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptodevs/comments/qsxyht/uniswap_recreated_in_150_lines_of_easily_readable/)

 *^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^\([Info](/r/TotesMessenger) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=/r/TotesMessenger))*
Amazing, everyone will have their own dex now. CTRL C + CTRL V
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So it's we'll known that eth and solidity are complicated. But to play devil's advocate here, how does this compare with Solana? Can uniswap v1 be developed on Solana with <155 lines of code?
Very cool! It makes me wonder, with them using rust for this… how does Solana compare? Since it is also programmed with rust, I wonder if their contracts are similarly lightweight? Not coding inclined enough to know how to check myself but an interesting thought.
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Exactly. No need to reinvent the wheel every time, you just use the libraries and other components to build exactly what you want build, without having to rebuild the same shit again. It's like making a game in Unity rather than C.
Abstraction is very welcome!!
That's just few lines of library imports, right? It's inefficient yes but it doesn't really qualify as a 'lot of code' IMO. The code still looks far less verbose than solidity to me...
That's really freaking amazing!
You could develop all the popular apps running on ETH right now in no time.
Will people have a compelling reason to use it?  Comsumer network effect often trumps easy development.
You are correct. It is just an example. The Radix team will not be writing or deploying any Dapps. They are leaving that to the Dev community. But what saves code and reduces complexity is the asset-oriented model that is at the heart of Scrypto. Do you understand how the Rust compiler and run-time work to prevent memory issues? Scrypto applies similar logic to ensure that tokens, badges and other resources aren't lost or duplicated. Meanwhile those resources are all defined in the Radix Engine and accessed via APIs that the compiler knows about. No ERC-20 EC-1551 or such contracts to write nor depend upon to track where all the assets live.
Since you are an experienced solidity dev, may be you can dig a bit deeper into scrypto and if possible play with it and provide your honest feedback? That would be quite helpful for everyone. Also scryto allows you to create blue prints that can be imported as components in any DApp. If the blue print is audited, you don’t need to spend money to audit again. Additionally component developers get on-ledger royalties every time their components are used in an app. For example, you can develop an AMM blue print and earn royalties on every swap done on the app which is using your component. So it’s got a lot more going which you may want to look at. 

For me solidity looks more complicated as I’m expected to handle everything in my code. With scrypto I can take a declarative approach compared to conditional checking in Solidity. Plus ETH natively understands balances and you need an ERC20 contract to define an asset.
>Ethereum, Solidity, could never convince me.

Don't blame you on this one. Tried using Solidity a year and a half ago and it was a _terrible_ experience - the language changed so much between versions, the documentation was poor and web3.js was straight up a nightmare.
Any resources you’ve found most helpful? I’m about to embark on the same process
Unless developers just copy the same code and use it without royalties, which they are free to do and probably will, which means that this royalties stuff is probably just BS that won't happen.
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Why should a dev or the users pay royalties [in perpetuity!] to the first person to slap their public key on some probably fairly generic code?
That’s a very bad approach. You would want to inherit the original rather than making a copy. What happens if uniswap identified a serious bug and fixed it after you did your ctrl C and ctrl V thingy?
Ah yes. The Sushiswap + vampire attack strategy.
To explore the big picture, you can start here: [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today)

A 4-part series on the build-ability of smart contract platforms
Since it’s asset oriented (like you have object oriented) the underlying ledger understands what an asset is and the engine(like kernel/runtime environment ) on top of which the programming language runs takes care of a lot of things automatically so you don’t have to handle it in your code. While coding the DApp, you focus on what you want the DApp to do instead of spending time doing all the checks and validations. This makes your DApp secure too as you don’t have to worry about missing a validation here and there and introducing bugs and loopholes. Developing a DEX from scratch in 2 hours with less than 200 lines of code is a huge deal for any developer.
It runs on the Radix protocol, which has lower fees
You reduce the number of lines required to code the program. This removes layers of complications, makes it much less prone to exploits and bugs. Makes developing such apps and innovations much easier for the general developer and provides wings to entrepreneurs looking to build their vision and ideas.
Check Defi Plaza for more efficient -> cheaper DEX swaps: [https://jazzerradix.medium.com/defiplaza-making-defi-on-ethereum-affordable-again-b533724a0885](https://jazzerradix.medium.com/defiplaza-making-defi-on-ethereum-affordable-again-b533724a0885)

From pair-based DEX to a multi-token pool-based DEX  
On average 2-3x cheaper than uniswap & co
Scrypto is a Turing complete language yes.
Yes turing complete with additional purpose built features for DeFi
They want developers to first play with it and develop apps for few months and provide feedback after which they will port it to run on the ledger next year with Babylon release, where you will have apps live from day zero. After Babylon they will upgrade to Xian release in 2023 which will be the final sharded network that supports unlimited linear scalability.
Scrypto gets released for devs on 15. Dec so they can start building. Next year smart contracts will go live and we will see DEXs and other applications from day 1.
No. Scrypto need the Radix Engine to run.
You can find some good articles about scrypto and Radix engine here https://www.radixdlt.com/blog
For the application layer of their DLT-solution stack, you can start here: [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today)

(This is the first of 4 articles on buildability on Radix)
Don't know about this aspect but Radix has significantly less hardware requirements for nodes and will have unlimited linear scalability.
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I am old enough to have written a complier.

 I am glad we don't need that any longer!

 I love python now, but have programmed many languages along the way!
Essentially how Substrate works.
That’s not abstraction. That’s a shit tonne of code.
I’m not a programmer so could you shed some light on why importing libraries is inefficient? (I’m bullish on radix so just want to be aware of technical details & critiques)
Not a dev but scrypto allows devs to monetize in a pretty interesting way, could work at getting folks involved
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Radix has built a service called Instapass that allows single sign on for KYC compliance for any app built on Radix (that want KYC compliance).

The first use for this is Radix’s Instabridge service which allows a 1:1 swap of their Ethereum wrapped erc-20 token (eXRD) with the mainnet token (XRD). I believe there are plans to use Instabridge to wrap more tokens, which means that it may be easy to swap ERC-20 tokens etc over to their wrapped versions on Radix and trade at a much lower cost. Hopefully they’ll be aggressive and try to wrap more types of tokens and with different L-1’s and dApps
Rust & Scrypto Forum on discord is a free training community with over 240 members. See invite on radguild.org
Sorry, we’re all in a tizzy for going over $0.15.
It’s more than just copying the code. If the blue print is audited, you don’t need to audit again. However if you copy the code you would need to spend money on auditing. If you import the component, you can also import any future changes to the component which makes maintenance easy. It’s a free market and you can always copy the code but inheriting a component is always better than making copies. Also the competition should keep the royalties competitive.
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There's nothing stopping you writing the code for the component yourself! 

However on Ethereum this is the ONLY way, and it results in bugs/exploits on many DeFi protocols!!
You fork and do the same
That’s great and all. But what I’m saying is that piggybacking and reusing the rust ecosystem is 1000x better then reinventing yet again, another language.

There’s no reason why rust can’t make web assembly memory safe packages for the smart contract platform to run and maintain
what are the downsides? what if you wanted to build something new? im not a dev so pardon me if this is a dumb question
Could something similar be built as an L2 on top of L1s like Ethereum or Cardano?
Sounds like DAML - Digital Asset Modeling Language
Also based on Haskell and is a functional programming language.
It has assets and parties as first class objects and private transactions and private contacts.
I think this is a huge positive. Remember how Web 2.0 exploded when things like Ruby on Rails went mainstream to help simplify app development?
Interesting, I'll have to look more into it
A shit ton of code that devs won't have to deal with right?
It's not that importing libraries are inefficient but importing unnecessary libraries are.  The asterisk (\*) at the end of this line - `'use scrypto::prelude::*;` implies that all file under certain directory will be used.   


Eli5 - say you took lot of pictures on your friends mobile in your vacation. You are back home and request him to send you only the pictures with you in it but instead he just dumps all the pictures to you.   


The above line of code does something like this photo dump but it is insignificant or completely tangential to our discussion about actual code (pertaining to swap operations) size or verbosity.
They are creating their own chain because none of the existing chains can scale without compromising either decentralisation, security or atomic composability.
OK it becomes like a SaaS. That's cool if we reframe it that way. Needs strong trust between parties.
That’s going to be a maintenance headache
Downside is, that you have to learn a new language and the community about the new language is rather small, so searching online for help (which is like 80% of coding), is a lot harder.
It’s turing complete so there is no limit to what you can build. It just makes it easy for DeFi apps. They can always add more features based on the developer feedback.
Achieving decentralization is the problem for most projects
On top of what others said, scrypto works with Radix which is asset orientated, rather than balance orientated. This is quite fundamental to the way scrypto works, so would require some dramatic rethinks on the way the l2 interacts with the l1
Yep, you can have any programming language of your choosing to support your smart contracts on L2, doesn't have to be solidity. It's just gonna be interfacing with an L1 contract to batch data.
ETH suffers from a fundamental problem that is true for every block chain (including Algo). Radix is a DLT(decentralised ledger) which has properties like blockchain (decentralisation, security and immutability) without the scalability issues blockchain suffers from by design. You can think of DLT as an improved version of blockchain. 

L2s and sharding break one of the key aspects of DeFi called atomic composability. Atomic composability allows you to braid multiple DApps in a single all or nothing transaction. Without this property you will be limited with what you can do. For example if you see an arbitrage opportunity you can take a flash loan from one DApp and swap in another DApp and return the loan, all in an atomic transaction (all or nothing) within a single block
That’s probably possible, I can’t see why not.
But don’t know how long it would take
Check out Notoros project - they’re doing something like this on Radix.
You do have to deal with it. Just not maintain it.
Thank you.

It makes me wonder:

1) will people or the radix team be able to build more efficient libraries that are used for explicit purposes, rather than anticipating everything and dumping the whole boat into the program?

2) could the need to import the whole library be part of Radix’s focus on atomic composability (apps/components can integrate with each other fully and execute complex tasks as one transaction.  Would one piece of the puzzle not having all the libraries hurt it’s composability with other apps, or is every individual app siloed and only needs the libraries used within that app)

Just thoughts, no need for anyone else to ponder the answer if not apparent.
That is undoubtedly so, my good sir (original comment; that's absolutely true didn't have enough characters)
If it’s based on rust then it opens crypto to a great bunch of developers.
The community's kinda small but also extremely solid and welcoming. I'm happy to dm anyone interested some resources to help link up with, learn from and teach scrypto to other devs.
I prefer a good tool that's relatively new to a worse tool that has a lot of resources public

The community/resource part can be more easily overcome than the quality of the tool

Even more, the community/resource part will naturally be overcome because of the better quality of the tool
Powerpoint is turing complete as well. So it really has nothing to do with that. 

I do like what they are doing at Radix. Only reason I have some healthy skeptisism is because it seems too good to be true. I might check their script language out if it is really that much easier.
I thought Radix was finite state & not Turing complete? (Which they own up to and sell as a feature not a flaw)
Yes that’s why they were iterating for 7 years. Radix scales without compromising decentralisation, security and atomic composability.
> L2s and sharding break one of the key aspects of DeFi called atomic composability. 

This isn't true, a zkRollup on L2 can settle data on as many L1 shards as it wants and you'll still keep full atomic composability within the rollup itself.
This is wrong. Composability will remain though L2
Regarding the decentralized ledger, isn't the lightning network like a decentralized ledger? I'm sure it works differently from Radix, but it still isn't as linear and centralized as traditional blockchain, so it addresses the scalability issues.

And regarding atomic composability, can't atomic operations be implemented as a higher level interface? For example, lets take your example of a loan+swap+return operation. At the L1 or L2 level, this is three operations. But at the L3 level, we can represent it in a single operation. And the L3 has checks and locks and synchronization mechanisms, to ensure that multiple loan+swap+return operations don't interfere with eachother (or in more technical terms, there is no [undesirable interleaving](https://cis.temple.edu/~giorgio/old/cis307f98/readings/interleave.html#:~:text=here%20is%20an%20example%20of%20undesirable%20interleaving)). And if they don't interfere with eachother, they're all effectively atomic operations, at least when viewed from the L3 layer right?
Perhaps my other reply is a little confusing.  The scrypto code in the above example is not optimized for performance but rather for lesser lines of code ( for the sake of flexing scrypto brevity).  The library imports for required files can already be done with explicitly mentioning their names each time seperately instead of '\*'. It just increases the code length by few lines which is why the dev decided to dump them all. It has nothing to do with atomic composability or with actual ledger at all...
Honestly I heard it's quite a lot like rust.

As a dev of my own (nothing crypto related), I might look into it.
Are there good couses, like w3school for scrypto?
Sounds too good to be true. 5 months ago, i felt that way too. That's why I gravitated more on other L1 alternatives like Near, Fantom, Harmony while keeping an eye on the likes of HBAR. I also invested in said projects. At the same time, I still read about radix, learned more about it. Eventually I realized, radix is the next logical step to finance. Xi'an is where it's at, and will launch in 2023. It will be parabolic once we get there.
This is what Matt(Radix product head) has to say about it:

And in fact Scrypto ends up being as turing complete as Solidity is, if that's your hot button. But really what developers mean by that is they want a flexible, expressive language. The Rust basis of Scrypto provides an enormous amount of flexibility and expressiveness. And if you really want to shoot yourself in the food re-implementing asset features in your own code, you can... there's just really no reason to at all (and you'll be less compatible with the rest of the Radix world doing it the better way).
See this comment thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/qbfhm1/can\_i\_get\_some\_help\_about\_deciding\_whether\_or\_not/hh979nc/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3  


It's turning complete. However, I've been digging through the radix scrypto/engine code since last night. Scrypto has introduced some native types that interface with the engine api.

My assumption is the FSM code is likely implemented within the engine, but I'm still ramping up on learning how the internals work.
Where can I find metrics on network growth and health?
I think the within the roll up itself is an issue zkrollups have because they don't have atomic composability between both the L1 and other L2s, Radix solves this 🤔
Only L2 solution that promises to maintain synchronous atomic composability is zkPorter but that hits the transaction limit at 20k TPS. While this may be enough in the near future, will fall short of the demand if you want DeFi to eat into traditional finance. You would want something that has no inherent limitations.
How many layers up you want to go? Isn’t it better if the L1 handles everything natively? Rollup is fixing the limitations of L1 but they too hit the scalability limit.
There's resources but the language literally got released yesterday, so ive dm'd you links to some ""study groups"". They can get you started
You can go to Radix Developers group on Reddit. There is also a Radix developers discord group led by Rock Howard that is preparing courses.

Scrypto is asset oriented programming. It is a layer on top of Rust with Rust-compiler set up to do mission-critical finance projects.

One important element is that assets are part of the language; they can be instantiated, requested, transferred, and the core language then takes care of that rather than some generic smart contract with room for many mistakes.
How does radix solve this? I looked briefly and they see to want to be a fully scalabe L1, so how is ""composability with the rollup itself"" an issue but not ""composability within radix""? If you see having to bridge L1->rollup as breaking composability, so should having to bridge ETH->Radix.

Unless I'm missing a crucial detail?
I mean composability across L2, not instant composability L2 -> L1
The modern PC already has many layers of abstraction, from the hardware layer all the way up to the browser layer. Splitting things into layers is better design, it separates concerns, and allows different components to evolve independently. Also, I think at this point the decentralized community should be actively fighting fragmentation, working together, and avoiding new mutually exclusive technologies (and by definition, an L1 solutions like radix is mutually exclusive with all other L1 tech). So if an existing big L1 like ethereum or cardano can integrate some of Radix's ideas (eg via additional layers), while preserving the existing communities, I think that could be a more preferrable solution. Though to be clear I'm not totally against new L1s, if their benefits are really worth sacrificing all the investments of the existing communities.
Interoperability between 2 different L1s(Eth to Radix) isn't what they've solved but Radix as a L1 that maintains atomicity across all shards within the 2^256 shardspace is the difference.

Sidenote: Notoros is deploying ethereum on top of the Radix ledger as a ""layer 1.5"" where sol devs can easily deploy existing SC to.
If Radix pulls off what it aims to, there won't be much need for interoperability with other chains. Why build elsewhere when you can build easily, quickly and safely, and you'll never need to worry scalability limits being hit.
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So according to you the base layer (CPU, Memory) need not scale? The space is still evolving and I feel we haven’t matured at the L1 level yet that it doesn’t need innovation. Radix has tried to fix the base layer so that the eco system can thrive on top of it. There is an L2 solution on Radix called Notoros which is working on providing EVM compatibility so any existing ETH DApps can run on top of Radix.
My point is this also applies exactly to rollups
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Not at all, I'm saying there are ways to improve the base layer without wiping out investments made to that layer. Intel and AMD improve the performance of their chips every year, without breaking compatibility with Windows and MacOS. Perhaps we can do the same, after all Ethereum seems open to evolving their base layer as can be seen with the Casper migration. It's nice that Radix is working to support ETH DApps, and that's a big step towards preserving existing communities. We need more like that. I wonder if Radix would also support migrating data over as well, so that existing transactions on the ETH blockchain would be preserved, and people wouldn't have to rebuild their assets from scratch. For example, currently the vast majority of NFTs exist on ETH, does Radix have a way o automatically transfering them over? Or do they have to be minted and resold on Radix, which essentially wipes out all the purchases people already made on Ethereum? This is also a form of fragmentation that significantly hurts the average user in the decentralized ecosystem.
But rollups don't scale infinitely and composably. They do a bit, but after a certain point you need another rollup, which isn't atomically composable with the first one.
The problem with ETH is it suffers from the inherent limitations of a blockchain. Blockchain cannot scale beyond a point. Also fixing things on ethereum is like repairing an engine while it’s running. When you have a clean slate to start from scratch, you can innovate much more.
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Unfortunately the engine is already running, there are millions of people already on bitcoin, eth, solana, etc. And they have already invested time, money, and infrastructure towards these efforts. I can see the reason for moving away from Bitcoin since Bitcoin refuses to move away from PoW, which has horrible environmental implications. But Ethereum and Cardano and other major L1s do seem willing to evolve, and already have massive communities. Wiping out those communities and existing investments for better scaling, just may not be worth it, especially since those coins are already improving scalability themselves. 

If we want mass adoption of crypto, newcomers need to be confident that the currency is stable, and they can safely use it for years to come. So the crypto community either needs to stick to one coin, provide ways to migrate assets (while preserving value), or have some sort of interoperable global coin that is supported by all major L1s (eg Polkadot, Cosmos). I'm hopeful in the progress made in those spaces, But until then, new L1s like Radix just adds to the fragmentation and volatility of the global crypto ecosystem.
I don’t think the tech has already evolved to an extent that we don’t need new innovations. Demand has outgrown ETH capacity and its very difficult to scale it while maintaining backward compatibility. Other L1s are better but they will also hit their scalability limits sooner or later. Radix, Kadena and cosmos are trying things differently and some how I feel these are going to rule the future and attract most TVL as they don’t have any scalability limits by design. 

Honestly ETH has the first mover advantage and there was really no other choice. All the L1s that followed provide incremental improvements. The demand and user base we have currently is nothing compared to the demand we are going to see in the future. ETH is already prohibitive and all the L2 solutions have their own limitations. We need an L1 that can support the global traditional finance scale. Like any industry, you start with multiple players but eventually consolidate to top few. It would be interesting to see which of these L1s command the most TVL in next few years.
I totally welcome innovations, and I'm not against competition either. I just think the crypto world has a habit of isolating too much. It's like every innovation deserves its own coin and its own blockchain. I would prefer if there were more standards and collaboration, and if assets were universal and interoperable, so that regular casual users don't have to dig into the tradeoffs of each blockchain to try and choose which one to commit to. And I don't think it's fair to compare this to other industries, because with things like Apple vs Windows, if I switch between the two I can still keep all my files and personal data. With banks, I can switch without losing all my money. Crypto L1s don't have that luxury, and it's hurting adoption.  I don't want to care about the optimizations and infrastructure behind digital currency, I just want to use it like cash. And I'm sure the vast majority of people feels the same. But from what I've seen, it feels like many crypto developers don't _want_ to work together, they want their own stake of the pie. And that's gonna make interoperability a really big hurdle."
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability ~vitalik,205,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nji0gc/the_limits_to_blockchain_scalability_vitalik/,"Vitalik’s post is clear and deep at the same time. Great read.
5 replies, 4 of them shilling a coin. Sigh. 

Vitalik's points on tweaking parameters flies over everyone's head, this includes other DLT's not just regular blockchains.
I’ve learned from Vitalik that sharding is key, but largely misunderstood by so-called Ethereum killers.
> If we want the data to be not just accessible, but accessible conveniently, we would also need metadata (eg. decompressing rollup transactions), so make that 4 petabytes per year, or **40 petabytes after a decade.** 🧐🤏 

That is 4,000 terabytes per year. Only banks and large institutions will be able to conveniently audit the blockchain. I am surprised no one else pointed this out here.
People all around take this piece as being against onchain scaling. On the contrary it is for *practical* onchain scaling, as Eth does.

In Mr Buterin's [own words](https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/njgodi/comment/gz8ju6m), BCH's evidence based approach to onchain scaling is ok.
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I think eth's sharding decision was the wrong one. Anything with solid numbers that just extends something temporarily never works out in the computing world.

I think what chains like Polkadot and Iota are doing where you run sidechains and get people to support your project and run your sidechain nodes where most of the code and data is stored and executed to eventually decentralize is the way forward.
2021 is surprising with the growth, what projects do u add to the portfolio?
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We surely need to create an infrastructure for the crypto echosystem and the best way to a sustainable scalability and fighting inflation seems to be integrated in a project called zenon that uses a dual coin system and aims to be the to go framework for developers through its unique way of voting the zApps investments
It just so happens that the team behind my heaviest bag has already solved all of these problems without making any undisclosed tradeoffs.
Dlt's are the solution. Eg: Nano
Hasn't all of this been solved by hashgraph already?
Fantom suffers not these restrictions
This makes Filecoin, Ada and PI Network more useful with high potential?  They have adressed these limitations that Vitalik is talking about. What u think?
Thanks for posting this! It keeps me up with the latest papers
Thanks for the read. 
Scaling is something that's bugs me a lot about blockchain.
In theory, shouldn't it be possible to establish a new ""genesis block"" that recaps all non-empty accounts every N blocks? You loose the ability to audit transactions historically (not fully trustless) but if there is consensus, everything still works right?
no such thing as war or etc
He posts regularly articles on his site. Worth bookmarking , he breaks down complex subjects quite well
With no supporting arguements . Ppl parrot what they see on Reddit or medium without understanding . By the looks of it they didn't even read the article either
Tweaking parameters won't change the issues with the ledger structure. In order to meaningfully make progress on vitalik's point I think it requires a different ledger structure. Like a block-lattice structure.

If consensus is not needed, then append-only logs ([CRDTs](https://crdt.tech/)) are excellent for bringing about the distributed web and are already starting to get wide usage ([go-ipfs-log](https://github.com/berty/go-ipfs-log), [ceramic](https://ceramic.network/), [textile](https://docs.textile.io/), dat/hyperledger). You can just about recreate the vast majority of applications & services on these structures. These structures can actually operate in a completely distributed manner unlike applications built on-top of blockchains that require gateways and APIs (i.e. Infura).

As for DLTs, if you don't need atomic composability (i.e. smart contracts) and simply want to allow for the transfer of a unique piece of digital property then a ledger structure like a block-lattice may be the way to go. I don't think enough people fully appreciate the potential of this design. You can run a node that operates independently using little bandwidth, below average CPU and almost no storage (<2mbs in the case of nano) since you can prune away everything but certain frontiers. The trade-off is global ordering and atomic composability (would be achievable as a side-chain or L2).
If you shard a shitcoin, it just becomes a bigger shitcoin. Blockchains don't provide at the time being sufficient user experience and a worldwide p2p payment system. Sharding will help a bit with scaling but won't magicaly solve every problems.
4000 tb per year isn't unreasonable for just an audit. It will take awhile but can totally be done on a consumer pc.
bigger blocks in bch was the right move that bitcoin should have done. there are no reasonable arguments to justify 1mb block every 10 mins (~4mb with segwit). LTC does 2.5min 1mb segwit blocks, no issues with orphan chains afaik. it was satoshis original writing in the white paper to scale this way.

the only benefit 1mb blocks gives is higher fees for miners when the network gets congested. but like the article points out, there is an upper limit to blocksize. if you are too slow in the gossip network to propagate a large block ull miss out on blockrewards if there is someone else who finds a block in a time slightly behind you with a better connection with other miners.
> already settled in 2018 when the majority of the community went with the original block size and not the forked versions.

On the one hand, yes. There was a clear winner there. But also, technology does not stand still. Harddrive storage space gets more affordable by the year. 1MB blocks in 2010 are not the same as 1MB blocks in 2020, which are not the same as 1MB blocks in 2030. The Bitcoin split is almost four years old. By 2030, do you think it will still be unreasonable to increase block size? What abut 2040? 2050? To me it seems ludicrous that anyone might argue we should not increase block size at least once per decade.
What's the difference between a shard and these sidechains?
Are you already calling sharding technical debt? 😁

Anything with solid numbers that jus extends something temporarily never works out in the long run.

My hope is it will fix the problems in the short run. Later down the road a fundamental fix will fix the sharing `fix`.
Well iotas solution is very similar to being able to host rollups.

Its just plasma that is a bit meh
What do you think about the approach Radix took?
Yea but at this point it's more akin to Edison vs Tesla, best marketing team that does roughly the same thing will win in the future.
Is holochain like a POW DAG?
Dlt stands for distributed ledger technology's. Every crypto is a DLT.... 

what you are referring to with nano is mostly called DAG, directed a cyclic graph, to be exact even that could still be a blockchain, it's just a simple graph network, you are referring to block lattice a special kind of DAG... So saying dlt is the solution here shows very little knowledge of the topic.
Hashgraph still hasn't achieved permissionless decentralization. To run a node you need to be approved by a council, that is the opposite of vitalik's point of ""regular users should be able to run a node""
Wow what a bunch of butt hurt little children. Downvote away you pathetic scum buckets.
I’ll add that he addresses topics honestly too. He’s not shilling for ETH in these posts, he’s giving a clear view of how something works.
>As for DLTs, if you don't need atomic composability (i.e. smart contracts) 

Isn't this a pretty bold assumption? Most of the top platforms besides btc are smart contract platforms. that's a pretty big part of the value proposition. I agree if you want simple trx some DAG structure may be much better for scalability (im no expert, just a student of blockchain) but don't most people think dApps are where most of the value will come from? honest questions 

Can you elaborate on the limits of complexity you can compute with a lattice or DAG structure?  Is composability the bottleneck or complexity of what you can do on chain?* hope this doesn't come off dickish I'm genuinely interested in other DLT

e. add*
This sounds like the route Radix took. My knowledge doesn't go deep enough but it seems like they solved the trilemma and have atomic composability.
Or you could skip the ledger altogether. The Safe Network is using digital bearer certificates (DBCs) instead of a ledger. They were using AT2 and a set of non-shared asynchronous ledgers, block-lattice like design, but has now switched to DBCs. The first testnet using DBCs should be out in a couple weeks. It's also using CRDTs for storing data.
What you mean bruh? Doge coin to the moon?
I think you made a mistake with wording. If you shard a shitcoin, you get multiple smaller shitcoins. This is what ICP is doing, they specifically mentioned that there's no global consensus in their AMA.
I’m not sure if you are joking or have a different definition of auditing. 4000 tb is equivalent to downloading/storing 120 4K Hollywood-length movies (90GB) every day for a year.
Yes. BSV and Musk both need to get *practical* with their approach.
Ideally, chain size should grow with hard drive space. In practice, this increase wouldn't scale to keep fees low enough. Instead of trying to tweak block size, it makes more sense to focus on L2, which is the direction BTC is going.
That's fine I just think it sounds sketchy to invest in someone who doesn't have the actual fix yet over companies that are already implementing fixes for it.
Honestly haven't looked at them yet, I've just been going from docs to docs for the past few weeks and reading though em xD  


I'm midway though the holochain docs now. It stinks that these chains think they need to hide technical details deep in the docs and just don't say ""we're a DAG based chain"" or something lol. From an overview it looks like Radix might use something similar to iota or smartchain where they don't store the full code on the main chain but store a hash of it for validation, and subchains host each app? I'll need to look more though!
Actually, just took a closer look at Radix, Sadly I think they make some contradictions. For one they say Solidity and turning completeness is a bad idea but then in another article claim that what made Eth so successfull is how variable it's Smart contracts can be, meaning they seem to just be justifying decisions and not questioning them.
They have a system where you can use other peoples apps but they can charge you extra fees just to use components they made in your app, and the charge is added to every transaction fee for your app, oof.
They have fees in general, compared to something like holo or iota which doesnt

Also red flag they say ""we're the ONLY xyz"" a lot which is kind of just weird to me and a bit narssacistic from my pov.
Yes that's what I meant. I was half asleep while typing it. My bad. 
Every user in the Nano block lattice has its own blockchain and only that user can make any changes in it. What I've read is that dags like Nano only have hardware as the limit to scalability although decentralisation might take a hit.
technically speaking all blockchains (aka DLTs) are a directed cyclic graph (DAG). Bitcoin is a single chain synchronous DAG with uncles. Despite hashmiabrar just spouting out a nonsensical answer, the example of Nano speaks directly to vitalk's point.

Nano's design is extremely lightweight in all the areas that matter (cpu, bandwidth, storage) and can support embedded use on a ledger of around 2mbs right now. Basically taking ""regular users should be able to run a node"" to another level as it can be embedded directly into applications run by users. For those interested, here is one approach to an embedded design here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/n9dgfh/lightweight\_nano\_node\_with\_a\_ledger\_under\_2\_mb/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/n9dgfh/lightweight_nano_node_with_a_ledger_under_2_mb/)
For someone replying to my question, you don't seem to actually have an answer. Hashgraph is it's own technology rivaling blockchain. Not just another crypto trying to perfect Blockchain, it literally isn't Blockchain at all. You people don't seem to understand the basics here. Hashgraph doesn't need to solve a problem to decentralize, it just needs to decide to do so. Blockchain still can't solve the scalability problem making it effectively useless for mass adoption. Can someone with a brain answer my question?
Ledger structures fall on a spectrum that ranges from globally ordered (single chain synchronous DAGs like bitcoin) to some global ordering (tangle and byteball) to loosely ordered (block-lattice). As you move away from the monolithic structure of a blockchain, you lose global ordering. This ordering is what helps achieve atomic composability. Vite uses a block-lattice structure (pretty much clone of Nano) but adds a snapshot chain (basically a blockchain) to achieve global ordering.

As for the importance of smart contracts: Ultimately, the goal of these projects is achieving wide spread utility while maintaining all the properties that make them so valuable. Solving the problem of scaling distributed digital money is simpler than solving the problem of distributed smart contracts. Thus, I think we will practically achieve the latter before the former. We are very far away from ""real"" dapps built on smart contract capable networks. Almost every single ""dapp"" is a centralized application that goes through a third-party API (i.e. infura) to access the decentralized network.

I'm more confident in the approach of projects that use CRDT like structures for building distributed applications and block-lattice for solving the problem of digital money. I think these approaches are the likely path forward and warrant more exploration so that they can be confirmed or ruled out. The path forward is not yet clear to me when it comes to ""programmable"" and unique digital assets. I think it will become more clear once the problem of distributed digital money is solved.

A couple sidenotes:

A lot of things do not need distributed ledgers, for instance here is a proof of concept version of soundcloud where each application is a ""full"" node — a genuinely distributed application.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/lrqx7m/record\_a\_distributed\_audio\_file\_system/](https://www.reddit.com/r/musichoarder/comments/lrqx7m/record_a_distributed_audio_file_system/)

I more or less ignore ""market cap"" as a worthwhile signal for the design or approach of a project. It seems to me that the fastest way into the top 20 is a network that does not work or is good at marketing.

Bitcoin was actually released with quite a bit of scripting ability (smart contracts), though it was so half-baked that it was more of a problem then useful so elements of it were removed.
I'm still reviewing their [latest infographics](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i). It's really interesting, and I hope their solution works out in the long run without any major attacks. This would change everything for cryptocurrency efficiency if they succeed. It basically turns DLTs from linked list-efficiency to hash table-efficiency.

I love how they re-imaged the blockchain trilemma as a DLT dilemma: https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i
often times it is the better approach if you just want to build a scalable distributed application 🙃

I'll check out the new safe network design. This system falls into the ""consensus is not needed"" category, as it won't support having a global unique property that can be transferred without a double spend. It is a more comprehensive alternative to ceramic/textile/go-ipfs-log. Is that accurate?
I’m so confused by this sub lol
Why would it need to store it?
Sure, but we want *both*. And we can easily get both. L2 solutions exist and are being improved upon. Great. Doubling the block size once per decade (On the very low end) will still help as well.
Interesting, thank you. From my limited understanding they tried to create a tool specifically for the DeFi market. Therefore Radix doesn't need to be as versatile as ETH and they can still point out a possible reason for ETH's success.

*Also red flag they say ""we're the ONLY xyz"" a lot...*

I think this comes really down to wether it's true or not. They seem to be the current world record holder with 1.4 million TPS. So clearly nobody else can do this. The other claims have to be proven yet, I guess we'll see.

As far as I understood, the app fee has the motivation to reward app developers and let them earn for their effort. Sounds rather good for me as a layman.
The answer was no. To be considered a solution, the network would need to be permissionless and decentralized. That’s a core part of the problem.
It does support having a global unique property than can be transferred without double spend, that's what the digital bearer certificates are for. It's similar to ceramic/textile/go-ipfs, but with the addition of support for objects that can be transferred without double spend that can be used for tokens or NFTs. This means for example that an NFT can be a file that is 10 gigabytes and not just a hash or URL. 

I'm not sure of the exact details of the DBC implementation and how double spends are prevented as it's not really documented yet, but I think the gist of it is that there's essentialy a large list of spent DBCs. When you receive a DBC you check that it's not already spend and then you spend it by registering its hash to the spent DBC list. The global state is the list of spent DBCs, but it's split into many sections (shards). When someone spends a DBC, a request for the hash of the DBC is sent to the network and it will find the section with the XOR name that is closest in XOR distance to the hash of the DBC.
That's like saying you want a drop of water along with your Big Gulp to quench your thirst. Doubling the block size every decade is inconsequential.
It doesn't seem like they have a full chain online, isn't only their test chain online? 
Also it claims the fee is 100% burned so I'm sorry but I don't think you are correct. In fact I also just asked in their Discord and they said the only reason for the fees is to prevent spam. And that's kind of sad to me because I know of other solutions that don't involve such a high barrier of Entry to your product.
What are talking about? You again don't seem to understand what you are talking about. Decentralization is just a nice trigger word for you it seems. Hedera has a whole page on their site about the ""state of decentralization"". People need to actually use and adopt the technology for it to be decentralized. Someone missed the 101 class on the basics. Again, hashgraph doesn't need to solve any problems to be decentralised, they just need people to build the nodes. Blockchain still has to solve the scalability problem. And why are you so obsessed by what one guy says when your so into decentralization. Why can't you people educate yourselves before vomiting B.S. everywhere?
hmm okay I'll do some digging. Often times reading the code is the best bet but it does not appear the code is public yet.

My general understanding of DBC is that it is issuer based and thus not necessarily global. Appreciate your response. Seems like the DBC outputs are stored in a DHT for retrieval. I think most of my confusion / questions relate to DBC issuance.
Then surely you have no objection to doing both.

Again, one doubling per decade is on the very low end, and we are certainly behind and have some catching up to do.
Sound research. Their mainnet will go online end of June.

You seem skeptical. My feeling tells me that this will be a successful project but only time can tell.
I assumed your question was in reference to the article OP posted, which is about distributed systems...

“It's crucial for blockchain decentralization for regular users to be able to run a node”

“For a blockchain to be decentralized, it's crucially important for regular users to be able to run a node, and to have a culture where running nodes is a common activity.”

“But it's going to take work to do this without sacrificing the decentralization that makes blockchains so valuable.”

It is not possible for regular users to run a hedera node without approval of some council, nor is the network even decentralized at this moment. 

p.s. There are permission-less and decentralized projects that solve the scalability issue.
Yeah it's a DHT.

All the code should be public. DBC code is here

https://github.com/maidsafe/sn_dbc
There's already a community focused on bigger blocks- BCH. Their main challenge is finding a Schelling point for block size. It's a political problem, not a technical problem.
I'm skeptical but it's exactly the kind of thing I'd love to see succeed. I think blockchain is a good idea but it's got a clear bottleneck and DAG/DLT is the future there

Just need to see who gets it first. Iota, Holochain or these folks. The lack of Turing completeness also makes me kind of lean to holochain more too as it allows webasm.
Again you are going off without knowing what you are talking about at all. How exactly is a single team of developers aka ETH ADA less ""centralized"" than a council of developers? Less useless quotes from your hero and more logical explanation please. Your answers are getting more and more desperate.
As I said ""decentralization"" is just a trigger word for you people. You don't even understand what it means but you love to lecture about it. I don't even own any Hbar. But after seeing how pathetic the arguments against it are. I think I might invest.
I think you are the one that doesn't understand what decentralized AND permissionless means. Bitcoin for example is decentralized because there are many nodes securing the network spread throughout the world and no one user or corporation controls more than 50% of the nodes, i.e. just because Satoshi Nakamoto created it, it does NOT mean that they control the network. It is permissionless because any new user can start mining the blockchain without permission from the creator of the blockchain.

Hashgraph, due to their deliberate governing strategy of being owned and governed by a collective council of corporations, requires permission from said council before you can run a node on the network. So for one, it is not permissionless because by definition you need permission to run a node, and for two, the council could either already control >50% of the network, OR they could potentially flood the network with only their own nodes and dilute the network such that they control >50% of the network, making it not decentralised.
Bitcoin for one is not decentralized, that is just another bullshit line you are toting. The fact is that massive server farms account for the vast majority of BTC mining which means that BTC is no more decentralized than a few massive data centers. Talk about not knowing what ""decentralization"" is. For all your hot air this just sounds like a bad joke.

You're still ignoring the fact that at any given moment someone can indeed buy enough BTC to take control and it will most likely be the major financial institutions that it was meant to get away from, if they haven't already that is. BTC ETH ADA are all subject to this. And the fact that you are ignoring that all of these projects have sole developers and there for the potential for absolute corruption is purely ignorant. It is purposefully disingenuous to argue that something developed by a sole entity is superior to something developed by a group because the group has the potential to be corrupt. So does the individual. Your unwillingness to accept that is alarming to say the least and disastrously stupid at it's worst.
Who is Satoshi? Hmmm? Who developed BTC? Tell me. Seriously, I want to know. How do I know Satoshi doesn't own 51% of BTC across any number of accounts and wallets? Please explain. I really would love to hear this.
It doesn't matter who developed bitcoin. We don't have to trust that they didn't corrupt it we only have to trust that the code itself is not corrupt. As bitcoin is open source anybody can view the code and verify for themselves that nothing shady is going on.

And no, one person cannot buy all of the bitcoin and attack the network that way. In theory they could, but in practice not. For one, people have to agree to sell their bitcoin, and because of this and a little thing called supply and demand, the price will not remain constant, and will at some point be unsustainable to keep buying.

It's the same reason that whilst Jeff Bezos is worth an incredible amount of money, most of it is tied up in Amazon shares and if he tried to sell them all at once, the price of shares would crash and he would be left with a lot less than he was originally worth.

Regardless, Bitcoin is only truly centralised if one server farm or collective controls >50% of the network. There are obviously issues with server farms, but just because they exist does not mean that they can do anything to compromise the network.
Because we can literally just look at all the transactions on the blockchain and see where those transactions went. And due to the very nature of signing transactions, bitcoin can only be sent by the person who controls the private key of the wallet of the sender.
Bitcoin and the entire crypto market just got taken for a ride by the big financial institutions. But you still think it's somehow decentralized and will blindly and ignorantly quote the company line until you sink into a pool of strangled death by the very banks you meant to escape. You know what, I don't think I'm going to ""take your word for it"". Prove to me that BTC can't be bought up and controlled. The banks just did it right under your noses but you all are too stupid and blind to pay attention. I was really just trying to see if anyone had any valid arguments against hashgraph as a technology. But since none of you even know what BTC is, you just have spoon fed rhetoric. I'll go ask some folks who actually know what they are talking about and don't just copy and paste from a Wikipedia page.
[Yes, of coarse, as you were saying, it's ""decentralized"" right. Nothing central banking related with Goldman Sachs. Nothing at all.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/njw171/bitcoin_is_officially_a_new_asset_class_goldman/)
You can look at a list of arbitrary wallets that you have absolutely no way of actually tracing back to any particular individual, sure. How does that stop me from personally having the keys to a bunch of different wallets that I make transactions from? If I'm a bank I literally just create a new shell company for each new wallet and treat each company as a real person. Please tell me how BTC prevents this from happening. It doesn't prevent it, and it is already happening. You people are purposefully ignorant, which is called stupid. You are stupid, and getting fleeced hard.
Yes because 20% of all Goldman Sachs assets are held in Bitcoin. That's what it would take for them to own 50% of all bitcoin.
Well Goldman Sachs has 1.2 trillion in  reported assests. 20% of 1.2T is 240 billion. The current market cap on BTC is 731 billion. So Goldman Sachs alone by these numbers owns at least 1/3 of all BTC. Now go in and add all the other major investment banks who also own BTC. Guess what buddy, the public doesn't own BTC anymore. The institutions do. 

Thanks for proving my point for me though. That was quite generous of you."
Is anybody working on voting systems for political elections that use blockchain to ensure an accurate count?,205,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nnxs4q/is_anybody_working_on_voting_systems_for/,"You might enjoy Vitalik Buterin's recent post on blockchains as a tool for elections.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html
99% of people do not have any idea what a blockchain is, how it works, or why it would be beneficial for elections.  In fact, most people outside of the ""cryptosphere"" consider the technology to be somewhere between hacking and a Ponzi scheme.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with you.  I think blockchain is an excellent solution for voting security, and I would love to see it happen.  But if anyone is currently working on it/investing in it, I'd say they might be a bit early.  Not sure the world's population or its governments trust or understand the technology anywhere near well-enough yet to bet our entire democracy on it.

We already have people who think the COVID vaccine is an attempt by Bill Gates to install microchip trackers on the masses and that the California wildfires were caused by space lasers.  Imagine if the next Presidential election in the US was tallied by blockchain.  I can already see the shitposts.  ""Elon Musk used DOGE transactions to steal peoples' crypto addresses and change their votes!""  You know, or something equally ignorant.

You're absolutely right about the tech being a viable solution to the problem, but the tech isn't the issue - it's the people.  Give it a couple decades, then maybe.  I think we'll see crypto being used for things like daily transactions and contracts before the public would be ready to accept it as the technology that powers their elections.
Can anyone explain how this would actually work?  I ask that in general, but, I also have a few specific questions

1) How do you match someones identity to a verifiable entity on the blockchain?

2) How do people actually vote, in a verifiable manner (you know it's them and only them)?

3)  Does a centralised entity (the government) run the blockchain, or is it decentralised?

For what it's worth, I find current voting methods (in the UK) hilariously easy to falsify and generally just, shitty, but, allegedly fraud is in <0.1%.  You literally walk in to your local polling station, say your name, you're given a piece of paper and a pencil, which you mark with a cross and then you put it in a box.  I think someone ticks your name off the list when you do that.  No I.D required at all.  (I know there's strong arguments for not requiring I.D, so that voting doesn't marginalise certain people, though I'm sure having an address is the biggest hurdle for them).  

Really though, is that all we've got.  You go in and say your name and they tick it off?  After that, they collect all the votes into piles and count them.  Often quite inaccurately and requiring multiple recounts.  Fuck me. I would love a blockchain solution to this.  I've always been baffled by claims the technology for online voting isn't there yet.    

Thanks in advance.
https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article-pdf/doi/10.1093/cybsec/tyaa025/36276521/tyaa025.pdf
This article comes to mind
You might be interested in reading up on Flux. More an implementation of direct democracy through blockchain than a simple ledger based setup. 

Disclaimer: Not affiliated politically or via development, but I have attended presentations in the past out of interest.

https://voteflux.org/about/how/
USPS has a patent on such technology since a few months.
You should checkout Verus. Almost 3 years ago, shortly after the first mainnet release, we laid out a vision for confidential, verifiable, and transparent voting and elections at any scale. We now have all of the technology described running complete on testnet, with some pieces, like a decentralized, revocable, recoverable, privacy-preserving ID on mainnet. You can go try everything out for free on testnet. No scale limit, zk-SNARKs, everything described in the vision paper. We also created a multi-chain network protocol with DeFi currency baskets and fee conversion between blockchains inside or outside the Verus network of independent, rent free blockchains. All the capability is there, but there is not yet a voting app, which could be done as an extension of the open source, multi-currency wallets or a separate app.

Here's the vision paper I'm referring to from 3 years ago: [https://verus.io/docs/VerusVision.pdf](https://verus.io/docs/VerusVision.pdf)

There is a helpful Discord community and it's completely decentralized, no ICO, no premine, etc., so if you want to create a solution using it, people in the community are generally quite helpful.
Yeah but if its on a blockchain how would I hack it and change votes easily?
Not only that, you could do it privately as well using secure multiparty computation. I think digital elections will be the future.
Would be so surprised if they aren’t.. blockchain voting is actually a storyline in the series Billions, I think the third season
Ok I’m in this sub to learn not because i know stuff, so someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a blockchain not “private” for lack of a better word? 

Like from what I understand blockchains are pretty transparent so anyone can see the interactions. So wouldn’t this mean that anyone could see who voted for who?
Only thing that would result is blockchain conspiracy theories.
Estonia, the Baltic country has blockchain set up in their ""e-democracy"" and do electronic voting, with blockchain. They can even vite at the EU election online.  https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-voting/ 

Also the Democracy earth foundation, and they have a solution based on etherum for voting and decentralized democracies.
Good luck explaining that to people in Florida.
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I have the impression that the number transaction per second limit of decentralized ledgers would strongly restrict the domains of application.
R/eos

Even patented processes

https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2020/08/06/daniel-larimer-patent-on-blockchain-voting/
flux party in australia is interesting
Switzerland did a test for blockchain based election.

[https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/crypto-valley-\_-switzerland-s-first-municipal-blockchain-vote-hailed-a-success/44230928](https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/crypto-valley-_-switzerland-s-first-municipal-blockchain-vote-hailed-a-success/44230928)

There is another test in West Virginia for military service members.

[https://www.govtech.com/biz/west-virginia-becomes-first-state-to-test-mobile-voting-by-blockchain-in-a-federal-election.html](https://www.govtech.com/biz/west-virginia-becomes-first-state-to-test-mobile-voting-by-blockchain-in-a-federal-election.html)

I am sure the technology can bring a lot of value in this area but we're still far away from bringing it to mainstream.
Vechain is for a some EU countries. It's still in the works and entirely unconfirmed other than the creator stating he's working with some governments to implement it and are planning to use it for voting systems for authenticity.
Time for them to use blockchain for their voting systems. SpiderDAO oh first solution for this this could be a start actually. They use a router which is then combined with one person makes one vote.
Really good interview on how homomorphic encryption would work in an actual election. Great possibilities!

https://think.kera.org/2020/10/01/how-we-might-fix-election-security/
That would assume they want accurate counts which of course they don't
Why stop at voting? We can use blockchain to enforce regulations and collect taxes. We can monitor political donations and automatically issue ID. We could even use blockchain to vote on software that automatically drafts bills and votes on legislation based on what the voters want.
Charles Hoskinson talked about it in one of his livestreams, and he is planning to implement this into cardano afaik

Not into Cardano per se, but as a smart contract that will run on the blockchain
Vechain sounds right for the job!
I can only imagine trying to explain blockchain to people who believe there is bamboo in the ballots.
If the goal is only about accuracy, then the existing system in the US works just fine. A blockchain voting solution would have to improve on other aspects of elections besides accuracy in order to gain traction, in my opinion.

It should be worth noting that driving a technological innovation based on a “problem” that is the product of a political disinformation campaign would not be a good look for a blockchain project since it would be solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist.
No because the democrats wouldn’t be able to cheat.
Most developers including me could deploy a blockchain network, feeless, fast, focused in voting in a few days, maybe even in 24h, if there was a demand for it by some country, there isn't. Creating this kind of product without oversight of the authority you are planning to ""sell"" it to does not work. They will always want to be involved. That's how they gain votes and make policy.
Voting is a joke. (Blahblahblahblahlblahcharlimitbkahstupid)
Block chain would be better than the “block Captain” like in Mayor Daley’s machine.   I just want a clean vote and not another 6-12 months of burning what’s left of our major cities.
I think the question mises the point...solving trust issues in elections isn't a problem with a technical solution.
Came here to say this. I read this today and have been diving into a rabbit hole of zero knowledge technology because of this.
I’ve never seen his blog before, thanks for sharing. 

But why does he have a .ca domain? Is he secretly Canadian?

Edit: TIL Vitalik is Russian-Canadian. Awesome.
> ""Elon Musk used DOGE transactions to steal peoples' crypto addresses and change their votes!"" You know, or something equally ignorant.

That was Saturday's belly laugh.  Thanks.
Does the average person have a clue how voting systems work today?  They wouldn’t necessarily even know the difference.
Yes but always have paper ballots, I personally don’t trust tech in elections.
Check out Estonia voting system.
That’s a very us centric perspectives. Afaik at least Estonia and Dubai are working on voting via blockchain. Also some african nations are big into blockchain. I don’t suspect that the us or Europe will lead the way. Smaller nations will be the first to really implement blockchain into the real world. Also China is big into blockchain and working on smart cities/Iot
99% of people don’t understand how the current voting tech works either, so
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The thing with paper voting is it doesn't scale. And that's actually a strenght. 

You need a lot of people to manage and recount, but you also need a lot of people to pull off a meaningful double spend against such system. Let's say you go in multiple times posing as your neighbor's dead grand parents. How many votes do you think you can fake in a day before getting noticed, how many attacker is needed to sway an election, how to organize thousands of them so one doesn't slip up and get caught? 

Alledged voter fraud is not only low in UK but also low in other relatively democratic countries, even the US. It has never been the problem. And for non democratic country, like China, blockchain is not going to do a damn thing.
That's an interesting article about the perils of online voting.  I was thinking specifically of using blockchain to ensure that no votes are changed inside of individual voting machines, or in mail in ballots after they are tabulated.

I must admit, I'm a fan of paper backups of everything, including votes.
I spent 20 minutes skimming through the 18000-word US20200258338A1 patent. Seems like a blockchain that uses a **centralized database** (or 2 of them) and **Proof of Authority** to validate the votes.

>  In some embodiments, the parity authorities 112 a-c can be used as part of a consensus mechanism known as Proof of Authority (PoA). Instead of using miners to validate and create blocks on the blockchain, PoA relies on a group of nodes referred to as authority nodes or validators contained within the parity authorities. Using a round-robin structure, each authority node gets a time slot per round in which it can create and sign one new block. In case a validator is offline or not responding, it will be skipped. The validator signing a block is called the primary. In some embodiments, at least five authority nodes will be allocated among the parity authorities. 

I also see mention of an **API system** to access the data, which is really exciting.

Voters are assigned **tokens** in the form of QR codes or whatever gets mailed to them that allows them to cast a vote. I'm not sure how the system will prevent proxy voting by someone other than the voter.

(Disclaimer: It would probably take many hours to study the patent, so this was a very hasty skim.)
Thanks for that!  I googled it and google auto filled ""blockchain voting"" after I typed ""USPS Patent.""

I appreciate your help.
Interesting looking project.  Best of luck to you.
It doesn't have to store personal data on the blockchain. It could be a unique hash that references a person in a secure offline database as well as be printed on the physical ballot though. Perhaps not even use a physical ballot at all, but give them the the hash and access to the blockchain so that they can confirm their vote was counted as intended.
A blockchain tabulation would be one more way to verify votes counted in a voting machine.  Paper backups of every vote being essential for a transparent audit that all can understand.
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Nothing secret about it.

His family moved to Canada at age 6.
Oh, I totally agree that smaller countries and nation states will be the first to adopt this technology.  It's called ""leapfrogging"" and it happens all the time.  Same way nearly every US household had a landline for telephony, and most developing countries went from little-to-no telephony straight to cell phones and skipped landlines altogether.

This is definitely the best counter-argument to my position, and I don't have a counter-counter-argument.  You make an excellent point for consideration, and who knows what kind of impact it could have if it plays out that way.
Sure. They tell us who they want to fuck us and we pretend we get to pick.

But I am the 1%
I have a lot of respect for what Tom Scott says about voting.  But, I think he is a bit alarmist about blockchain voting.  

First off, the introduction of blockchain voting doesn’t mean you abandon paper ballots.  Grandma can still go and vote the same way she has for 80 years.  The paper ballot system should remain in place as the primary method for as long as necessary, and then a bit longer. 

Also, it’s going to be a slow process to mass adoption.  First it will start with things like corporate shareholder voting and other small scale relatively low stakes elections.  This will allow time to work out the bugs and increase trust in the technology.

Eventually blockchain voting should become an option for people who already have digital identity (and know how to use it) on the blockchain.  The security risks Tom Scott is so concerned about will be the same risk factors that these people with digital identity and blockchain banking deal with on a daily basis.  If there is a mass vulnerability, hackers are going to steal as much money as they can long before they bother with changing votes.  

Basically, if blockchain cant be used to send a voting transaction, why is it fine to send millions and millions of dollars?
I haven't read this one but maybe https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3366424.3382708
Cool, I think it would be better as a more decentralized ledger, but I'm ok with them starting somewhere. The way we vote now is terrible.
Why do you make words bold?
The orignal anti yoda bot may have given up but I too hate you Fake Yoda Bot. I won't stop fighting.
        
         -On behalf of u/coderunner3
Welll consider my mind blown. I’m Canadian and I had no idea. I always thought he was European.
There s a term for that? Neet. Thx
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Very cool.  I like that it's an ACM publication.  They have very high standards for publication.
But why? I wouldn't want a decentralized blockchain for a national voting system. It's not practical.

As long as all the nodes and validators are within in a single nation, there's almost no benefit for having a decentralized blockchain for a national voting system. A nation isn't going to sabotage itself. PoA is way more efficient and secure than other decentralized consensus algorithms as long as the central authority is trusted. And if the central authority isn't trusted, we'd know instantly by checking the public blockchain. If someone in the nation decides to do an attack, it'll be easy for anyone to audit the public blockchain, and a central authority could invalidate it.

The whole point of PoW and PoS is to host a lottery system that's resistant to Sybil attacks by making the lottery based on something scarce. There's no need to have a lottery for picking the next transaction in voting. Everyone's going to vote. Both PoW and PoS also have the additional issue of favoring the rich since they could buy up miners or validation nodes, and that's the last think ordinary citizens want.

Nearly all decentralized consensus algorithms are weak to nation state attacks. And the more secure it is, the more inefficient it is in terms of energy use or storage use. They're just either too risky or too inefficient.

--------

On the other hand, if you can think of a Nakamoto consensus algorithm for a voting system based on PoW and PoS that's both as efficient as PoA and resistant to nation state attacks, feel free to detail it. I haven't spent much time studying blockchains for voting.
I think he's Russian by birth, but now lives in Canada
>	A million votes is worth a hell of a lot more than a million dollars!

I completely agree.  However, I can target a single person for a million dollar payout, which is multiple orders of magnitude easier than targeting a million people’s votes.   If I could target a million people’s wallets, it would likely be worth billions.  Think about it.

>But it's essential that you can't prove who you voted for after an election, even if you want to! Otherwise I could ask you to email proof you voted for my candidate to collect $1000, or I could sack you on Monday if you went my choice as your boss, or have a mob kick your door in if you can't prove you voted for the way I want you to vote, or countless other ways to subvert democracy.

All of the problems you describe exist equally in today’s voting world, why do you think they are more likely with blockchain voting?

For example, today I already can coerce you to bring your phone into the ballot box with you and video record your entire voting process.  Surely you’ve seen photos on Facebook with filled out ballots.  

But with blockchain, this situation improves.  First off, I will argue that it is a *good* thing to be able to verify that your vote was recorded in the ledger correctly.  Think about the previous election in the USA where there are all of these claims of ballot tampering, etc.  With blockchain you could verify that your vote counted correctly.  

And then, regarding the “email proof for $1000” issue, that issue is far easier to resolve with blockchain.  You simply give the blockchain the ability to produce a false receipt as prescribed by the voter.  You can only know which receipt is real if you have access to the digital identity.  People don’t even need to use the feature, simply having the feature is enough to thwart those who would make the offer.  In this way blockchain voting is actually *more* secure and solves more problems than the legacy system.

>	Financial transactions and democratic elections are not the same thing. They’re not even remotely similar, so why are we expecting the same tool to fix both issues?

Bitcoin was specifically designed for financial transactions.  I definitely agree that we *should not* use bitcoin to vote.  

But voting requires a ledger to tally all the votes.   Do you agree?

And centralized ledgers are less trustworthy and more easy to target than decentralized ledgers.  Do you agree?

And because of this, blockchain, not specifically bitcoin, is the *perfect* tool to tally votes.
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Decentralized doesn't have to leave our country, it doesn't have to be public either. Every voting machine, voting location, or county/district could run a node that is PoA. Having one, or a handful of locations that are running the chain could leave them potential open to hacking or insider manipulation.

Plus, this isn't just about voting in the US... Ideally, you would want a system where it's cheap, easy to setup, decentralized, and secure, where it would be easy for a 3rd world country to setup secure voting booths. They would only be so secure, there is a physical control part, and identity management and all that, but the ""voting booth"" part should be as straight forward as possible. If you could run a voting booth on a raspberry pi and just have a config file to set it up, that would go a long way to help nations democratize."
Could quantum computing make crypto redundant?,198,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nh2npk/could_quantum_computing_make_crypto_redundant/,"> 3. Quantum computers can solve these kind of mathematical problems virtually instantaneously

No, they transform discrete logarithm problems and prime factorization problems from exponential time to polynomial time.
It is not virtually instant and we are very far from factorizing RSA1024 while current deployed RSA is RSA2048 (which is x^1024 stronger) and recommended is RSA3072.
For elliptic curves, it is the same.

Furthermore cryptography can be made quantum resistant via many schemes being researched and standardized at the moment, in particular lattice-based cryptography.

All blockchains can rederive quantum secure keypairs from a seed phrase in the future once a Quantum resistant authentication/transaction signing scheme is chosen in the future.
There are 2 known quantum algorithms relevant for classic cryptography, Grover's and Shor’s algorithms. There are post-quantum cryptography that can be used for blockchain, including post-quantum signatures.

Partially replied in [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/mpgmoe/quantum_computing_and_key_files/). Furthermore, modern hash-based signatures started and evolved from Lamport Signatures, if you want to know.
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The NIST has already standardized a quantum resistant signature scheme: XMSS. This is used by the QRL.
There are already encryption methods Available to classical computers that are uncrackable by quantum computers with thousands of qubits. Current estimates for cracking bitcoins code are around 4000 qubits and you can assume the same quantum properties will be utilised in future blockchain technologies to protect against such a threat. Since we're not even remotely close to having consumer quantum computers with thousands of qubits I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I think the opposite will happen - quantum computing will make cryptocurrencies scalable to the level of throughput required for general societal use. It will make them viable as a global scale medium of exchange. In a broad sense I see a future where your device does not store the whole blockchain directly, but instead can access a secure copy of the entire blockchain via a uniquely entangled key.
Quantum computers may affect crypto in two very different areas:

1. Mining. ""Breaking"" this would allow a single actor to *control* cryptocurrencies.
2. Public/private key infrastructure. Breaking this would allow to *destroy* cryptocurrencies (and a lot of other security protocols, as you mention!)

Mining relies on hash algorithms that are considered to be safe from breaking via quantum computers. Even though it has not been mathematically proven, there are no reasons to think that a quantum computer could ""break"" SHA-256, and there are reasons to think that it could not. Fast search is possible with a quantum computer, but I would not consider is to fast enough for breaking hash functions as such! Quantum search only gives quadratic speedup in theory (think: 1000 years of computation needed instead of a million years); in practice it could be even less that. I'm not even sure if anyone knows how to exploit this quantum search speedup for faster cryptocurrency mining, which is not quite the same problem that quantum search algorithms solve!

The current public/private key infrastructure is *probably* vulnerable to quantum computers. Bitcoin uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm for public/private keys, and there are known algorithms that can break elliptic curve cryptography on quantum computers! Obviously, no such computers have been built in practice - so far. The long term solution here appears to be migrating to quantum-safe cryptography. Currently it is an area of active research. My impression is that quantum-safe algorithms do exist, but there are no universally agreed standards. It makes more sense for Bitcoin to continue using a current gold-standard (haha) cryptography until further progress in the area, and then switch to a quantum-safe algorithm via a code upgrade on wallets and on mining nodes.
These are things that Vitalik/Ethereum have written about already, for example [here](https://consensys.net/blog/blockchain-explained/zero-knowledge-proofs-starks-vs-snarks/). Quantum computing is very far away from being practical (a key indicator of this is that the timeline of quantum computers ""taking over the world"" keeps extending farther and farther in the future, analogous to the nuclear fusion energy argument) and most of the cryptoverse will not be focusing on this issue for the next 5-10 years at least. It's definitely something to worry about in the future, but there's a lot of technical issues hindering quantum computing right now (e.g. quantum decoherence)
Crypto will just switch to this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum\_cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography)

It's always just a fork away
Quantum networks today exists as early prototypes like arpanet back in the days. In a few decades we'll probably have a fully built out quantum internet. 

Quantum networks have some use cases already today, but quantum computers will make them much more useful and is how you'd network them, not through the classical internet.

I expect this will eventually lead to the development of cryptocurrencies based on quantum cryptography. I have no idea if it will make blockchains reduant though.

According to the no-cloning theorem it is impossible to copy data encoded in a quantum state. Could that be used to prevent double spends somehow perhaps?
While a huge breakthrough technology could invalidate all the current blockchain technologies, it seems likely new blockchains (based on the new tech that broke the old blockchains) could be developed.  Nothing about the future is guaranteed but this seems likely.

The big question is how does the destruction of the old blockchain tech happen?  Imagine a first world intelligence agency builds new compute capacity that allows them to easily attack existing blockchains?   How do they use this capability?  How long before everyone realizes that current blockchain tech is compromised?  What happens to all of the economy for which the blockchain is a single point of failure?

One possibility is the public is able to see the future failure of current blockchains far enough in advance and create new blockchains that are resistant to new attacks on the horizon and there is an orderly transition.  Like the transition from DES -> 3DES -> AES.
Have a look at Dragonchain
This is a good podcast that explores it:

https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/bitcoin-fundamentals/bitcoin-quantum-computing-andrew-fursman/
The main effect is you would need to *never* reuse an address you have spent from.

The Bitcoin address is a hash of the public key. When you spend from the address, you have to reveal the public key. A Quantum computer could then start cracking that public key to find your private key for that address.

If at a later date someone sends funds to that same address, someone with a quantum computer could spend them, as they will now have the private keys.

So the first thing to do is never never reuse addresses. That way you are safe from Quantum Computing! 

Exchanges and so on would need to give a different paying in address every time, rather than their current practise of reusing the same address for holding all of their funds.
If quantum computing can crack crytpo, then it can crack all the other securities we have in place and the effect on the crypto world would pale in comparison to the banking and information security shitstorm that would follow.
I suggest you watch this clip of Silvio Micali talking about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjwXDuuMW0s
If crypto goes down then so do the banking system.
Quantum computing could make any type of encryption or security worthless.
I was just thinking about this earlier today but also thought that if a quantum computer is powerful enough to reverse engineer Bitcoin and disrupt algorithms of crypto as a whole then wouldn't it be also powerful/advanced enough to crack the code to any bank account, 2fa, government system, nuclear bomb controls etc? Im actually clueless to the answer, could someone please enlighten me on this?

If that's the case then we would have much much bigger things to worry about that Quantum computing destroying crypto.
I read that a small crypto called $CELL is meant to be quantum resistant, but not sure how sure you can be on that.
Possibly. But there are quantum resistant cryptos like ADA.
Quantum computing is literally hundreds of years away from being even remotely usable. And that’s coming from leaders in the industry.
Pretty sure Cardano is already quantum resistant.
I almost reposted this with question marks all over.... You want us to assume algorithms written by the man in the first place are far more complex just because they have gathered too much data to be re-written by you? First of all, Let me knock you down to a coder's perspective.   


To invent something new which hasn't been created cannot be subjective to what has already been attempted and or created. One attempt even isn't enough to define the aspect and scope to deny the possibility.   


I would like to say even if you as a human can't compute with self-taught programmers. What we aim for is something faster and better working. Most teachers will argue that it wouldn't work but most of the best inventions are created despite them.   


Quantum computers cannot solve anything without the creation of code to do so. You have to write a function and or create a code that operates beyond what has been created already. Even the packages themselves cannot operate on that type of level. So any pre-written languages would have to operate 1000x together to even remotely get close to your theory.   


Not saying it's a bad theory to brighten the minds of narrow-minded folk. As for the others, it took us by storm and created somewhat of a topic.
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Ooh! Ooh! I know at least the short answer! I can contribute something for once!

The short answer is that once quantum computing gets to the point of being useable, that same technology can be used for encryption. So while quantum computing may render certain types of security obsolete, that doesn't mean tech which currently relies on that security will become obsolete. It just means it will move to quantum encryption.

Admittedly I have no idea whether quantum computers actually would make current security methods obsolete. I did read an article on this ages back but all I remember is there are certain types of problems they can solve very fast and others where they'd be no different to a normal 1's and 0's computer.
This is a good video about quantum computing and how the fears might be overblown:

https://youtu.be/h_XALIBdz_0
Wtf is quantum computing? Can you quantum compute???
Refreshing to see some actual r/cryptotechnology, this sub has gone down in quality significantly in the last few weeks. 

How'd you reckon quantum computing will affect PoW or others?
All I understood was no, gj
Lots of things are using 256/512 bit encryption and won’t get updates. How long does a quantum computer take to break those?
Wow thank you so much for this insight!! To be perfectly honest I don’t understand half of what you said but [i hope] I get the gist/principle.

Regarding your work...so just how far _are_ we from getting Eth2.0??
Nano is based on block-lattice. Do you know if that’s the encryption algorithm (AES?) or the arrangement of the nodes? Or are the nodes arranged in a DAG and the data structure is a block lattice and encryption is ECC?
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To add on. One of the many reasons segwit in bitcoin was such an important upgrade is that many quantum resistant schemes will have much larger proofs that are part of a transaction. 

In non-seqwit transactions, this would have caused a larger scaling problems since it would have put more stress on the long term storage of transaction data. With seqwit, we can easily discard all the witness after a block has been validated and added to the chain.
When you say “rederive secure keypairs from a seed phrase in the future” are you describing a method (using quantum technology) to update the blockchain to secure it against quantum “attacks” - I’m trying to check my understanding here
Awesome post.  Thank you for the insight.  I just left this subreddit due to lack of any actual technical posts.  I'm rejoining for now due to your post.  Thank you.
Is recognise the words but not sure what they say...

Also is it correct BTC mining uses RSA256 so we are way off.

Ignore me I was thinking SHA-256
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Quantum computing is not going to break modern cryptographic hashing.

Matter of fact, quantum computing is *worse* than classical computing in many respects. I think this is one of them.

It's ready to get sucked in by the ""quantum"" part but while there are some really cool potential applications, it's not some magic bullet for computing.
I agree! And from looking at what you and others have replied i realise that there would then simply have to be a leap to a 1-way function created by quantum computers. So quantum computing could render classical computing security obsolete but the world would then just have to upgrade to quantum security functions. And in the interim, as you suggest, there could be massive disruption.
Wow I love this take, I hadn’t even thought about it! So you think quantum computing tech will be brought forward to the level that normal individuals will have access to it? Like what happened with classical computing in the 60’s to present day era?
Xrp is already that scalable though
Not all mining relies on hash algorithms \[1\]. Only the hashcash PoW does. Some non-hashcash PoW such as Cuckoo Cycle, are already quantum resistant.

\[1\] https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-mining-hashing/
Just watched it - thanks, gives a great perspective!
I think some people are researching quantum resistant encryption which could be implemented in current systems.
Quantum computing doesn't break all encryption. As I understand it, collision searches (finding a private key that yields the same public key) are still not possible as quantum computers don't offer enough acceleration in the process (traditional computers are actually faster at this today). And finding the public key from an address is also not possible as it's encrypted with a SHA algorithm, which is generally considered to be quantum resistant.

What's at risk is the elliptic curve cryptography (which is used as the link between a private key and its public key). Finding a private key from a public key is called the 'discrete logarithm problem', and this is also what puts other forms of encryption such as RSA at risk.

I've only read up a bit on this a while ago, so if anyone actually is an expert please do correct me :)
No, not with known quantum algorithms.
In theory yes, in practice the brute forcing would need to send requests/receive response as to the result - and the server that will be targeted won't have quantum speed to deliver those, so in theory network safety protocol should actually prevent brute forcing from quantum computers.
How is ADA quantum resistant? I'm pretty sure it's just as resistant as most cryptos, meaning it is vulnerable to quantum algorithms that break the discrete log problem.
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I'm curious, where did you hear this? I can absolutely envision people hawking crypto to one another under the false pretenses of 'quantum resistance'.
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>How'd you reckon quantum computing will affect PoW or others?

For most hash functions, not that much.  For SHA-256 it cuts the collision resistance in half, to 128-bit security.  This is on the lower end, but generally seen as *okay*.  The much bigger issue is the being able to undo discrete log.
Quantum computers won't break encryption (AES) and hashing (SHA256).
They accelerate them be ""square root"" so AES-256 on quantum would be as complex to solve as AES-128 on a classic computer (which is still impossible in practice).

What is broken is authentication/identity (proving that a transaction was done by X) and public key cryptography in general.

Now for me this is a bigger problem than encryption anyway:
- to negotiate an encryption key over insecure channels, you need public key cryptography (Diffie-Hellman) as a first step.
- Websites, banks, government websites, healthcare use authentication all over the place
- Signing a transaction on a blockchain use public key cryptography


Updating will be progressive and likely messy especially for legacy systems. It will likely look like the progressive deployment of SSL/TLS scheme with browsers marking websites as insecure. 
Old systems will need to be isolated from the Internet as well.
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Here with you. But glad to bookmark it now for when I can finally understand it fully in 3 to 4 years!
I too would like some insider trading... I mean dates for the upgrade.
Different kind of lattice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography
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So all private keys in blockchains are currently generated with either a 12-word seed phrase or 24-word seed phrase.

12 words are what you need to encode a 256-bit private key and the associated public key/address. 

24 words are using HD key derivation path (Hierarchically Deterministic) to generate an ""infinite"" number of (private keys, public key/address) pairs according to BIP32 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki, https://ledger.readthedocs.io/en/latest/background/hd_keys.html).

A quantum algorithm like Shor algorithm and a sufficient amount of qubits would allow an attacker to find your private key from your public key and steal your funds. This is the (Elliptic Curve) Discrete Logarithm Problem that underlie most of the security online today.

This means 12-word seed phrases like Metamask will be problematic because you would need to completely change seed phrase to use a new quantum secure scheme. 

However assuming you use BIP32, an attacker can find the (private, public) keypair but cannot go back to your 24-word seed phrase because HD derivation is quantum secure. So ""only"" funds at that address are in jeopardy. 

In the future, once a new quantum secure (private, public address) key pair scheme is added, we can update the HD key generation while keeping the same 24-word seed phrase.
The new address would not allow a quantum attacker to deduce the private key. 
We can then provide tools to move funds from non-quantum secure addresses to quantum-secure addresses in bulk.

Note: Ethereum 2 will not use BIP32 but EIP2333 for HD key derivation but it's the exact same reasoning: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2333 (The spec mentions post-quantum backup as well)
Different kind of lattice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography
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Yeah eventually! It will take a long time though. I think the global adoption of cryptos is actually dependent on quantum computing becoming available to the general public. The amount of data throughput required to run a node on any blockchain is exponentially growing as more people are transacting on them. Classical computers can certainly handle it, but not elegantly like a quantum device could in both processing power and storage of this immense volume of data.

Using entangled states to securely access data remotely is even further out as maintaining entanglement in thermally 'noisy' environments is extremely difficult and costly, but the research and technology are progressing.
XRP sacrifices decentralization for scalability. It's basically visa with ""blockchain"" slapped in for marketing purposes
I do not know all that much about XRP. What is their approach to scaling?

It certainly isn't impossible for this level of scaling to be done with classical computers, but quantum computing will make every chain faster and far more efficient as it is implemented.
Already been done. Or current (strong) algorithms are considered ""quantum safe"".
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Is that *currently* only what they're using after the Shelley release?
We can take for example RSA where the difficulty is based on integer factorisation. 

This is an NP problem and if we don't consider special cases where you can use special algorithm, it has exponential complexity. A quantum computer could use shor's algorithm which has logarithmic complexity. So here it's clear that this problem becomes a lot easier to solve.

What does complexity tell us about execution time? Not much actually. With those complexity bound you know how many computations (steps) you have to do but to know the time you have to know the clock speed of your CPU and ""multiply"" these two numbers. So you see that this depends heavily on the machine you are using.

Can we conclude something? Yes! While we don't know how much it would take, we still have exponential complexity vs logarithmic complexity. Now in RSA keys are becoming longer and longer to make the problem harder to solve, with a quantum computer the length would not matter as much since the difficulty increases a lot slower. 

Suppose factoring 10 digits number takes 10 second with both algorithms, then a 20 digits would take 100 seconds with traditional computer and 20 seconds using quantum and as you increase the number the difference becomes larger and larger.
i bookmarked before i saw this comment lol
Wow this is real interesting stuff, this CKD function mapping out an infinite tree and whatnot. Is this all very new stuff? Are there a lot of funds on non-quantum secure addresses that need to be migrated?
So if you have Metamask based on 12 word seed phrase you'll need to create a new quantum secure address at some point?
Welp, I’ll cross off “resistant to quantum computing” off the list of Nano pros and I’ll slowly back away from these complex ideas I don’t understand
[Here is a relatively accessible article on the topic.](https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/25/implications-of-quantum-computing-for-encryption-policy-pub-78985) 

The short of it is, while some encryption algorithms will become broken in the sense that they will be trivial to crack, encryption itself is safe. There are plenty of methods that are less susceptible to the ways that quantum computing *is* efficient. 

So this is more of a matter of institutions transferring over to quantum-safe encryption. The most you will likely see in terms of societal issues from quantum computing is institutions lagging behind in securing their data rather than some security doomsday of encryption becoming ineffective.
This is where quantum brings an advantage. There would be no need for this sacrifice when the actual hardware is exponentially more powerful and can store far more data with the same amount of physical material. Quantum computing enables the promise of true decentralization.
Decentralisation is pretty much a myth at this point especially with proof of work coins
Also check out the stellar network that uses xlm. They both have working and tested systems.
I think it's currently 1500 transactions per second and end to end in 3 seconds. Ripple claim it can reach more than 50000 tps. For reference visa can do 24000 tps. Usual cost for transaction on the ripple network is around 0.0001 xrp so almost nothing.
Interesting, it is possible to download a full Blockchain node locally ?

That would do the trick yeah
All Bitcoin, Ethereum, <insert blockchain> addresses at the moment are NOT quantum secure and will need to be migrated at one point. So trillions of dollars.

I'm not sure how old it is but it's basically an application of KDF (key derivation function) like PBKDF2 and HKDF to blockchain keys/identities.
Even if they did have it already, it wouldn't really be a pro, because literally every blockchain could upgrade to be quantum resistant.
Theoretically that's possible, but at the moment, it doesn't seem to be technology that will practical in the next 5 years. As the technology becomes more mature, I'm sure everyone will be looking at how to take advantage of it
Yes decentralization ""in theory"" but in practice, no.
Decentralized is hard to achieve, but PoS does an incrementally better job at decentralization then pure PoW
Very cool, thank you for answering all my questions 🙏
It would save a transition, which to me is a pro. These are messy processes, and not everyone is active enough or understands what they’re holding to do it in a timely manner.
If it was the type of lattice I misunderstood it to be (block-lattice) I imagine it would be fairly difficult to transfer to. And as we’ve seen making “upgrades” to a blockchain is rarely a smooth process.
The taproot upgrade on bitcoin is going quite smoothly so far. Adding quantum resistant keys would likely be a similar kind of soft fork. And I can hardly imagine it would be contentious."
Why 99% of cryptocurrencies centralize over time + a way to possibly fix this,181,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/odj8gu/why_99_of_cryptocurrencies_centralize_over_time_a/,"The pros on nano are good, what are the cons ? It doesn't help anything if you don't offer the problems with nano, humanly speaking nothing can be perfect, so what are the shortcomings with nano ?
Allow me to push back a little bit on the Proof of Stake criticism. Algorand also does not give rewards for participating in consensus. The trick is to make participating in it so low-effort, with very low barrier to entry, that it is ridiculous to even think about giving rewards.

In Algorand, at any given round the vast majority of nodes are just chilling, taking note of what's going on, passing messages around, maybe adding its own pending transactions, and so on.

Every round, however, every node runs a lottery for themselves. A block proposer and a committee of \~1000 block validators wins. The lottery itself is a ""verified random function"", which is completely trivial to run. If your node gets included in that (the likelihood of which is proportional to how much ALGO you own, hence the PoS part, or Pure PoS as we say), that's when it engages in consensus, validates transactions and smart contracts, and so on. Otherwise, just normal network participation.

So low barrier of entry and requirements --> no reward justified, or even gas right now --> no centralization. Transaction fees are only an anti-spam measure and are currently just accumulating and will be used for rewards or whatever is decided on, as voted on by the network. Very cheap too so you're not dis-incentivized to actually use the currency.
Cryptocurrency does centralize over time. Running a node still limits the system as who chooses the block. Which is set to the businesses and or malicious players. An everyday man needs to have a say as-well. 

If there was a chain that chose a random token out of the circulating supply. THEN, have 1,000 other random tokens validate that 1 token (or invalidate it). Then that would be the system I choose. Let’s call it ALGOrithmic RANDomness.
I've accepted that some degree of centralization is inevitable, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. It should be treated the same way as antitrust decisions in court cases: ""Does it hurt the consumer?"" That's the bottom line.

Bitcoin and Ethereum, centralization is bad. For IOTA and Cardano, it's probably ok to have some coordination to ensure that the rest of the network is secure. For any corporate solution (Consensys and Hyperledger Fabric), you definitely want centralization.

The blockchain trilemma will always be an issue, and it's time the cryptocurrency community invests more research into non-blockchain DLTs. Nano and IOTA are a step in the right direction with DAG.
Couldn't a Cryptocurrency remove its rewards and transition to a far more simple validation method once it's established? I don't feel like the initial incentives necessarily dooms a project; a technology in use gives a natural incentive to run validators to those who benefit from it.

Edit: Great post btw!
Another day, another Senatus Nano shill post.

They basically go like this:

> Every other crypto has the same problem!

Not all of them do.

> How about Nano? ;D

Nano is [centralized](https://nanocharts.info/p/01/vote-weight-distribution). They used to tout their Nakamoto coefficient being better than bitcoin. Only 2 reps are needed to overcome their consensus (33%). It's also slower TPS, only 100 validators, and doesn't do much besides being feeless.

All of Senatus' posts grab at the lowest hanging fruit and then pretend nano is the best solution.
At first I thought this post was about Iota : )

Fully decentralized by Q2 next year (maybe Q4 this year). 

Smart contracts, NFT, colored coins, digital identity, data streams, fixed supply, highly distributed, and feeless.

In addition to value transfers, can also be used to transfer data. 

I think the big advantage (only?) Nano has over Iota is faster confirmation times (super fast with Nano) (this is also assuming IOTA achieves decentralization).  The Iota devs have boldly claimed that they can get confirmations down to sub 2 seconds.
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Agree w analysis.

However problem with nano is that 
1. There is no mechanism driving validator decentralization (people assigning their vote to smaller nodes)
2. Its point to point voting? So more nodes -> slower. Or did they switch to gossip voting? So limitation on number of nodes that vote.
Good write up! Saving this post to read links later
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Too bad Nano has been consistently lame for 5 years as a brand, Rei etc.

Banano on the other hand is amazing
NANO has already fixed this. It has zero mechanisms that contribute to centralization over time: no Mining + No Fees = no Inflation = no Cantilon effect = no Miner first-mover advantage to grow into a monopoly. 

That’s why all of the projects that rely on Inflation and Fees for security and maintenance hate NANO, cuz it makes them obsolete.

NANO is the ultimate decentralized pseudo-anonymous cryptocurrency.
Nano doesn’t offer « instant » transfers. At some point I had to wait DAYS for a normal transfer to clear because the network can’t withstand attacks from malicious actors. Another person had been waiting for more than a week. Nano is a joke
tl;dr just read the Ethereum FAQ on PoS and their their methods of battling centralization using game theory and code
Idena solved this problem and still has rewards. It is the so called ""proof of person"", where each person can have only one node (if they want to cheat the system they will have at most 3 nodes).
I quit reading when I got here: ""Mining is terrible for the planet anyway""
Honestly centralizing over time is probably good. There’s really no need for most cryptocurrencies to be decentralized
Sup ppl, what up with some payment projects to invest, usecase- money to investors           
Just set up the PoS reward structure so that the reward rate decreases for larger pools.
Identity is missing. Without it all these systems end up in the same mess in the end.
Root server decentralizations a possibility. Hopping data info between root servers, though that means area 51 and the dod might swoop
Yet again Holochain provides a solution. It's one of the very few that _cannot_ centralise.
How much effect does making your PoW algorithm ASIC-resistant have on centralization? 

It seems to me that the ASIC miners would move on to a different algo/chain like BTC or ETH, but then you get a second class of centralized miner, the ppl still running GPU rigs.
Why do these sort of posts always assume POW to be in its final state? There can be updates to the consensus algorithm in the future that can make it much more competitive re validator centralisation.

It also depends very much on the purpose of a cryptoasset. Not every cryptoasset aims to be a currency, so fees, low fees in particular, can be inconsequential.
I'd say the biggest question point with Nano is spam resistance. I have an article on it here (https://senatus.substack.com/p/nanos-latest-innovation-feeless-spam), but in short Nano was vulnerable to being spammed prior to V22. We *believe* V22 works at becoming more spam resistant, but it's not been tested strongly enough to say so convincingly.
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Literally no cons or undisclosed tradeoffs, bro.

Please buy my bags. Please buy.
Thanks! There is still some centralization in there then though, right?

But actually, since you seem more knowledgeable about Algo than I am, let me just ask:

1. Is there a minimum staking amount in Algo? 
2. Every node runs a lottery. Costs to run a node are low, I assume. How many nodes are being run? Do you choose a node to delegate to?
3. Where are transaction fees accumulated? Who holds sway over that now?
4. Are there lock-up periods for staking? 
5. Are there differences in staking rewards? Or does literally everyone who holds 0.1 Algo get 6%, so to say?

Sorry for the many questions. I looked at Algo a long time ago, so seems I forgot most about it by now.
I hold both Nano and Algo, but I'm a little confused by this response, could you explain in more detail?  The OP's thesis is that POS centralizes over time due to the largest stake holders growing faster.  I don't see how that is not true in Algo.  The ""verified random function"" reduces this, but doesn't eliminate it.  As you said in replies, the more Algo you own the higher the likelihood you participate in consensus.  The more Algo you own, the more the amount of pre-minted 10B Algo you will receive.  The more Algo you own, the more say you have in governance and also where fees will go.

Another aspect of Algo that is concerning in this regard is through Algorand Inc. and Algorand Foundation they own 2.5 Billion of the 10 Billion supply.  Now some may counter there is no saying what percentage of supply other coins founders/early adopters own which is fair.  I also appreciate Algorand being honest with that [explanation](https://algorand.foundation/the-algo/algo-dynamics) of Algo token dynamics.  However, 25% of supply is concerning, especially when the foundation extended by 5 years the distribution of circulating supply, not that I necessarily disagree with that decision, but it shows the power over the protocol and distribution they hold.
Circulating Supply 3.11B ALGO 31%

Max Supply 10,000,000,000

Total Supply5,586,566,486

That's all I needed to know about ALGO.
I own both Nano and Algo, but could you explain more in detail because I am not seeing how the largest holders of Algo don't grow faster (which is OP's thesis-  centralize over time as larger stake holders grow fastest)?  The ""algorithmic randomness"" does reduce this, but doesn't eliminate it because although it's chosen at random, the more Algo you own the higher the likelihood you participate in consensus. The more Algo you own, the more the amount of pre-minted 10B Algo you will receive. The more Algo you own, the more say you have in governance and also where fees will go.
> Cryptocurrency does centralize over time

Most does, I'd say.

> Running a node still limits the system as who chooses the block. Which is set to the businesses and or malicious players. An everyday man needs to have a say as-well. 

What do you mean by who chooses the block? 

> If there was a chain that chose a random token out of the circulating supply. THEN, have 1,000 other random tokens validate that 1 token (or invalidate it). Then that would be the system I choose. Let’s call it ALGOrithmic RANDomness.

Right, but that still doesn't mean there won't be centralization over time, right? Does Algo have minimum staking amounts? Fees? Lock-up periods? Differences in rewards?
What does « validating a token » mean?
Yes, I think theoretically it should be possible. It would stop the centralization inherent in the protocol from that point on, essentially. 

I think it might be hard to transition, though. You'll have a lot of the community against you, those that profit most from the current arrangements, right?
Once the crypto is set up with PoW mechanism and there is money involved, there's no way to changing such a fundamental property as rewards.
33% isn't consensus though, it's stalling. The consensus Nakamoto coefficient is 11, last I checked.

>  It's also slower TPS, only 100 validators, and doesn't do much besides being feeless.

Slower TPS than what? As for being ""just feeless"", it's also near-instant, zero inflation, and as mentioned in this post has proper game theory.

Can I ask - how do you feel about the general trend described in this post, rather than about what you feel about Nano's current status specifically?
Yep, the first time I was writing about this I had IOTA in there as well. What I find the difficulty with IOTA is essentially two-fold, but most importantly currently is that I don't see it as a good example to mention in a post like this since it's about as centralized as can be on mainnet now with the coordinator, right?
> Ethereum POS has a deterrent to centralization which is the threat of increased penalties and slashing if a validator is offline at the same time as many other validators.

That's not a deterrent against centralization, right? Just against misbehaving.

> how that particular network will function under the same kind of traffic as BTC or ETH. 

Nano has done fairly more traffic than ETH and handled it just fine, and way more than BTC. At one point it did 4.5 million txs in a day or so, I don't think either one has ever done that, right?
> 1. There is no mechanism driving validator decentralization (people assigning their vote to smaller nodes)

I'd say that there is no mechanism, but there is an incentive for it, right? 

>  Its point to point voting? So more nodes -> slower. Or did they switch to gossip voting? So limitation on number of nodes that vote.

Tagging /u/t3rr0r here, because I'm not sure how this works exactly.
Thanks for your reply. Let me reply to a few, because I think I got into a discussion with a Cardano holder about this before. And don't get me wrong with these criticisms/questions, because I do quite like Cardano. I haven't dived deep enough into the tech to be able to judge it, but the community around it seems very helpful and positive.

> There is no locking/freezing tokens on Cardano. Everyone who stakes do it with all the tokens, all the time.

I think this is great. That ameliorates some of the concerns. Is literally 100% of Cardano staked, then?

> Most people, specially the small ones, choose to stake with a pool rather then build a node, yes. But pool fees are generally 340 ADA + 0%~5% (for the whole reward to be distributed. So the static fee is really small, when there's a big pool).

That essentially means the first 340 ADA to be rewarded goes to the pool owner, plus 0-5%, right? I believe Cardano has 5 day epochs (roughly?), so how much would an average pool be rewarded in those 5 days? That'd allow to quantify the centralization a bit more, I'd say.

> Also, a node costs 502 ADA to create (which is refundable if you close down the pool, and worth about 0.3 ether), far lower then the 32 eth requirement.

Far lower for sure, but at Ethereum's market cap (6x as high as ADA) that would mean $4,300, right? Lower than ETH by far, for sure, but still rather a hurdle.

> your third point about transaction fees are valid. But Cardano's fees are fixed at ~0.17 ADA per transaction (it can be a little higher, like ~0.23 ADA, if you send multiple tokens or execute contracts in a single transaction). (Yes, this creates its challenges, but still solvable ones).

Really interesting one! So first off I'd say that 0.17 ADA at $1.45 per ADA is quite high already, no? Second off, that makes me wonder how they do spam resistance/prioritization. What if throughput gets filled?

> A final note on that, Cardano's decentralization is very slowly increasing, not decreasing.

I think this is hard to measure, right? The same goes for Nano, just to be clear, but I'd say that in Cardano there is perhaps even more incentive to try to ""hide"" centralization as (last I was told) larger pools get a smaller reward. So there is a clear incentive to try to split up your stake, right?

> My only criticism is about Nano's sustainability. Since it's feeless, and some nodes has ever increasing demands, how do you sustain it over the longer term?

Yup, that can definitely be a worry. The general thinking behind it is that full nodes will increasingly be run by businesses. That's what we're seeing happen right now as well, for what it's worth. Nodes are currently roughly $20 or so per month, but it's easy to imagine that that cost will increase ten+fold if usage far increases. The thing is that usage would be increasing due to more adoption of Nano, which also means it is worth it for more people/businesses to run Nano nodes. 

When we look at how much Binance and Kraken make off of fees for Nano trading, for example, nodes getting a fair bit more expensive would be no problem. When we look at businesses like 465 DI and Kappture, more expensive nodes would not be an issue for them. Same holds for many larger holders, and other businesses.

It does mean that running full nodes for individuals will probably become rarer. They might run pruned nodes, or we might see improvements in other ways to keep it possible to run nodes as a ""regular"" person. Someone recently came up with a way to trustlessly [use the network with just 2 MB storage for example](https://np.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/n9dgfh/lightweight_nano_node_with_a_ledger_under_2_mb/).
I agree. Saying “proof of stake” are all the same is like saying all cars are made the same. 
Each has very different consensus algorithms. ouroboros  is nothing like Casper. Or grandpa. 
And then you have a tone of others. Proof of time and space. Delegated proof of stake. 
I could go on. 
But each was developed to Deincentivize centralization in there own way. 
Cardano is the most Scientifically created consensus algorithm to date. 
Moreover. There is a very good reason that most reward the operators. Without them, why would someone pay the money to host the infra? 
Speaking as an SPO of a small pool, running with 0% margin, and 340 Ada fixed fee, I’m still underwater. We won’t always be, but if we got 0 rewards, no way I would pay Azure 400 bucks a month for servers. I love this stuff and love the community, but rewards and promise
Of them attract top talent. And make it possible to pay and upgrade infrastructure. 
Take that away and you better find a lot of rich people that want to pay for infra just because they are nice. Which again, would lead to even more centralization.  
A better solution would be to limit entities to a certain number of pools. Say 5 a blockchain. 
Which is hard but not impossible. 
And even better. Disallow exchanges from participating in pos pools. They are the main problem anyone. Cardano is a great example. There are some reallly big YouTubers that have 4-6 pools. Ccv. Bloom. But Binance has more then 40. 
Because good blockchain have governance. Users could easily vote for this.
My reply to your comment keeps being removed for some reason. I have no links in my comment, any idea what might be causing it? DMed the mods about it anyway.
Cardano is a straight up ponzi... Stealing from Peter to pay Paul via inflation. Not to mention ADA doesn't even work yet.

Just empty promises so far.
Rei? Not sure what you meant there.
I've experienced similar delays using BTC and eth as well, when the mempool fills up and ridiculously high fees take precedence. Are they jokes too?

Nano underwent a concentrated weeks log intensive DDOS attack, and came through the better for it with new protocol updates. During the attack I was still able to send Nano, it just took a little longer to confirm (mostly under 10 seconds).
That doesn't exactly stop it though, right? I could just make more pools with my holdings.
This doesn't work.

Larger pool will split up using bot accounts.
It’s still not spam resistant. They’re lucky the spammer stopped and gave them a break. Their solution was a bandaid and still can’t fix the spam solution
I remember the spam problem
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>Is there a minimum staking amount in Algo?

We just had a protocol upgrade, and for it to go through 90% of ALGO participating in consensus needed to vote for it to go ahead. One guy took out most of his ALGO to use in a dApp, leaving only 3 ALGO ($2.7) behind 😅 I think maybe you need 1 ALGO as a minimum? 

> Every node runs a lottery. Costs to run a node are low, I assume. How many nodes are being run? Do you choose a node to delegate to?

The keys used in participation can be signed for someone else if you wish to, so yes you can delegate. They're not the same as your ""actual"" keys. You could have many accounts, delegated to your one node - no way to tell the difference.

https://metrics.algorand.org/

1277 nodes right now, but it has gone up and down over time.

> Where are transaction fees accumulated? Who holds sway over that now?

In the FeeSink account. It can in turn only be accessed by the Rewards account, which the Algorand foundation controls. But the plan is to one day control it with a smart contract. 

Algorand's consensus mechanism is very decentralized, but governance itself is still controlled. But with the governance voting coming now, we will become more and more decentralized on the governance level.

> Are there lock-up periods for staking?

No. Your account can be either ""offline"" (what the vast majority of accounts are that have Algo), or ""online"" (has generated participation keys, is engaged in consensus). If you turn off your node, you are asked to take it ""offline"" first. But there is no penalty, e.g. like losing ALGO or something.

> Are there differences in staking rewards? Or does literally everyone who holds 0.1 Algo get 6%, so to say?

I think staking rewards is a misnomer here. ""Staking"" your Algos for participating in consensus does not result in a reward. What's happening is that they pre-minted 10B ALGO at the creation of the network, and are now distributing it to the world.

As you might be aware, this is one of the challenging aspects of an Proof-of-Stake blockchain - it is assumed that a majority of coins are owned by ""honest actors"", but you need the coins to get into the hands of a *wide set* of ""honest actors"" to ensure not just security but that decentrality is maintained as well.

For ALGO what they're doing is giving some ALGO per ALGO people have, as a form of early-adopter gift. Soon we will have governance rewards. And then once all coins have been entered into circulation, we will have the transaction fees to draw from to do stuff.
 I can answer some questions, someone else can chime in.

1. The Algorand rewards are earned by everyone holding at least one Algo proportionally to their holding of Algos.
3. Rewards are currently sitting in treasury that is managed by Algorand foundation. Right now they are not being used for anything. Later community can decide on what to do with them. 
4. No
5. Everyone who holds at least 1 Algo in non-custodial wallet gets the same reward (If you have your Algo on Coinbase, then they can take a cut from those rewards).
These are fair issues you are presenting, and everyone investing in Algorand needs to consider that and compare it with other cryptocurrencies. As always with PoS coins it's a pain to ensure that ""the majority of coins are held by honest actors"", the tenet behind it.

In regards to this post, we are capped at the pre-minted 10 billions. We are not going to keep rewarding for the sake of staking, which is what leads to centralization in the thesis.

\> The more Algo you own, the more the amount of pre-minted 10B Algo you   
will receive.  The more Algo you own, the more say you have in   
governance and also where fees will go.

This is a possibility but it's highly unlikely. There is not a big enough whale that could commandeer the vote in that way, to have it all be given to them. If the distribution of tokens was so broken, we would have much bigger problems with the basic assumptions regarding the consensus mechanism themselves no longer being valid.
In all systems, people who put down more $ have a heavier say. I wouldn’t want someone with a 20 Algo balance have the same say as someone with 20 million. 

The key difference from Algo and let’s say BTC is this, people who have a big bag of Algos have incentive and a purpose in the system. While people who mine BTC are just computational heavy machines with varying amounts of Bitcoin holdings. Their holdings have no say in the consensus methods. So they can be malicious players who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Like opposing governments or wealthy players.

Decentralization, on a technical viewpoint, is having no single point of failure. China banning Bitcoin has caused it’s system to slow down. That is centralization on a technical level.
So in blockchain, there needs to be a block proposer. This proposer says to the system “these are the valid transactions” boom! A block is made with those transactions. 

With BTC for example, heavy computational equations are brought forth and those with the best computers/hash rates propose the next block. So someone with 0 stake in BTC can propose a block. That can introduce malicious players with nothint to lose and everything to gain. 

With Algo for example, a random token is selected out of the billions in circulation. That proposer is then voted on their validity for the transactions brought forth by 1,000 other random tokens aka wallets aka users aka holders. 

Well Algorand does not centralize over time. But what do you mean centralization? Many people throw that word around with no meaning. There are no minimum staking amounts but in order to receive the early holder reward, you get automatic APY from just holding. No extra steps needed. Fees are .001 which is 1/10 a penny and by the time you transact, you will already receive that back through the rewards currently up. The fee can also be lowered by community voting starting october. 1 token = 1 vote and you get rewarded for voting. 7-33% APY.

The voting mechanism will let the community change, adopt, and steer Algo to new heights. A “locking” period is there but the tokens stay with you and you can spend them. If you hold the amount you used to vote with them. You get interests. 

Fees are important as it prevents spams and meaningless txs from happening. Which i believe nano had over 1 million transactions stuck at one point. Algo had a day where around 4 million NFTs were uploaded from an Italian Copyright Agency with no downtime or difference in the system. I don’t think any other system has proven such flexibility as of today.

Edit: centralization needs to be combated by the system’s consensus methods.
Validating the block proposer’s transactions, if they are committing some kind of false transactions or something on those lines.
BFT consensus ensures integrity as long as 67% vote honestly. That means if more than 33% vote dishonestly then it can break. But you already know this: you just feign ignorance every week that you post these. People discuss it with you and even if they make valid counterpoints to you, you just post the exact same crap next week.

Maybe if you don't want to talk about nano then stop posting about it as the solution every week.
Yes, this is extremely fair point. Until coordicide and fully decentralization, all of IOTA's claims are essentially hot air.  

But, I have 100% faith in coordicide and decentralization will be achieved.  My entire portfolio basically is dependent on it : )
>There is no mechanism driving validator decentralization (people assigning their vote to smaller nodes)

I would argue that the value of the network is reliant on it being decentralized to maintain self-sovereignty, censorship-resistant, reliability, etc. Thus, every holder is incentivized to maintain sufficient decentralization to maintain the value of the network and their asset (I would think holders would respond decisively against any censorship). The incentive is there. What is missing, and needs development, is awareness and tooling to make it effortless. 

Some view this as a drawback, but it has the potential of being one of its stronger advantages. The reason holders have responsibility is because they have power. I'm curious to see how this experiment evolves and plays out.

>Its point to point voting? So more nodes -> slower. Or did they switch to gossip voting? So limitation on number of nodes that vote.

Basically, there is an inverse relationship between the distribution of voting weight and throughput. It doesn't preclude the network from being sufficiently decentralized. The network currently does gossip about votes. A voting node only sends out a vote to `2 * sqrt(peers)`, from there other nodes will rebroadcast the vote if it has enough weight to impact consensus (greater than 0.1%). 

The network will eventually have a kademlia-esque (DHT) overlay for vote storage and retrieval to help scale bootstrapping and support a large number of non-voting nodes, but you will still have that inverse relationship as consensus needs to be reached on every operation.
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the automod bot removed it because of keywords, u just got unlucky with which words you chose, this time, it usually does a pretty good job of fitlering out spam
the automod bot removed it because of keywords, u just got unlucky with which words you chose, this time, it usually does a pretty good job of fitlering out spam
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Nano used to be balled Raiblocks
> It’s still not spam resistant.

I think nothing is ever *fully* spam resistant, it all just depends on how much money/effort someone is willing to throw at it. So what V22 has done is create stronger spam resistance, while V23 will give Nano far stronger spam resistance, essentially.
Nano needs another spam attack. If it doesn't happen, they must do it themselves. This is the only way to re-establish the legitimacy it has lost.

I was disgusted by the lead dev's whiny woe-is-me comments on the 2021 spring spam attack and don't encourage anyone to buy in before he's willing to put it all on the line and explicitly *invite* the next attack.
Thanks for your replies! Let me go through them point by point as well.

> We just had a protocol upgrade, and for it to go through 90% of ALGO participating in consensus needed to vote for it to go ahead. One guy took out most of his ALGO to use in a dApp, leaving only 3 ALGO ($2.7) behind 😅 I think maybe you need 1 ALGO as a minimum? 

1 ALGO is a low requirement indeed. Though I guess if Algorand got to BTC-level market caps that'd still be a minimum of about $400 or so to be able to stake, right?

> 1277 nodes right now, but it has gone up and down over time.

Am I correct in thinking that that means there are 1277 people running nodes at max, and the rest delegates to a node? Is there any sort of fee for those that delegate rather than run their own node?

> Algorand's consensus mechanism is very decentralized, but governance itself is still controlled. But with the governance voting coming now, we will become more and more decentralized on the governance level.

Alright, fair enough. Centralized for now and decentralized later, but I guess the sums in there aren't huge yet anyway, right?

> For ALGO what they're doing is giving some ALGO per ALGO people have, as a form of early-adopter gift. Soon we will have governance rewards. And then once all coins have been entered into circulation, we will have the transaction fees to draw from to do stuff.

I think my main misunderstanding here is that if everyone is staking, and everyone gets equal rewards, then.. what's the point, sort of? If I hold 100 and get 6% reward I have 106, but if total supply also went from 1000 to 1060 then there's no actual change, right? So is it to discourage transacting as that'll cost fees, or something of the sort? I'm a bit confused about it, as you might be able to tell.
May I ask what is stopping someone from splitting their coins into hundreds of nodes? Giving them a higher chance to win the 'lottery'. 

Navcoin launched as pow in 2014 and switched to pos in 2016. It uses a model that seems to be comparable with Algo except for the lottery aspect, no minimum to stake, no locked coins, +-8% for every staker and every stake gives you one vote for onchain consultations and the community fund.

 I think one of the fairest systems in the market right now ofcourse the whales get more coins but relative to other users its the same percentage for all users.
> So in blockchain, there needs to be a block proposer. This proposer says to the system “these are the valid transactions” boom! A block is made with those transactions. 

In Nano, there isn't. Anyone can publish blocks to their own chain, which are then validated by validators. But fair enough, I can see how it makes sense for other chains.

> Fees are .001 which is 1/10 a penny

Are they dynamic in the sense that they can be prioritized at higher usage? 

> Fees are important as it prevents spams and meaningless txs from happening. Which i believe nano had over 1 million transactions stuck at one point. Algo had a day where around 4 million NFTs were uploaded from an Italian Copyright Agency with no downtime or difference in the system. I don’t think any other system has proven such flexibility as of today.

Nano is feeless, but not costless. There is a small PoW that needs to be done before every transaction, as anti-spam. It's extremely small, but means that there is some cost. Nano also had such days, for what it's worth :) [See here](https://cdn.publish0x.com/prod/fs/images/d5965374403af10de3bc96b7f05267fd8c4646495ddfe00813b12799ba67bb1f.png).
What do you mean by if more than 33% vote dishonestly then it can break? No, this is not something that I'm feigning ignorance about, I'm legitimately wondering what you mean.
Here's to hoping. I was quite enthusiastic about IOTA years ago, but got burnt on it a bit too many times (or too long, rather) to still be able to be very enthusiastic about it currently. If they can pull off what they say they can it'd be fantastic, though.
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> Thanks for a thorough response!

You too, loving how much effort people put into their comments here and you especially.

> No. Because the user has to actively delegate to someone, it's never going to be 100%. I don't know why there is a portion of people who don't stake, but currently 70.7% of all ADA is staked (it's sloooowly rising, but it appears it's not going to be much higher than this).

Would it be correct to think this leads to some further centralization? At the very least, the 70% keeps getting bigger while the 30% don't stake. I think it's fair to assume that the 30% not staking are mostly those with smaller holdings - they have less incentive to actively delegate as the rewards are apparently too low for them to do so, right?

> Yes, that's right. I'll give you some real life examples from Adapools.

This is great, thanks. I think it might be interesting to see someone do an analysis for a total epoch, see how much ADA went to delegators and how much went to pool owners. Not sure how hard that'd be to do for for example the person running the website you linked.

> it's just a matter of setting up a parameter.

Is this parameter currently centrally controlled? Being in Nano, I find the spamming cost aspect pretty fascinating. If it's $0.2465 per tx (roughly) and 7 TPS, it's $1.7255 per second or $150k per day to saturate the Cardano network. Expensive, sure, but being able to render a $45 billion market cap network relatively useless for $150k a day doesn't seem expensive. Am I missing something?

> Right. Binance, for instance, has ~40 pools I believe. You can measure it through the Nakamoto Coefficient (minimum number of entities needed to highjack the network. Meaning if the largest ones collude with each other efficiently). Last I checked (I can be wrong in the exact numbers), Bitcoin NC was 4, Cardano was about 13, and Ethereum about 27. It's hard to find sources for this information though, requires some minutes on google.

Ah, that's fair. Nano has the same Binance issue, for what it's worth. Too many people keeping their coins on exchanges.

> Yeah, I don't see any system scaling to billions of users doing it with home run nodes from regular people. Maybe with future tech it can somewhat change though. As long as small businesses are able to do it, it should be somewhat fine.

Agreed. Nano's vision is to have the full nodes, the validators, getting increasingly stronger and being run by businesses and such. That doesn't mean ""regular people"" won't be able to trustlessly use the network, but if we want to keep increasing the throughput more and more one of the easiest ways to do that is simply to run stronger hardware. We could stick with consumer hardware only (say max $50 per month) but then throughput would, given current software, likely remain limited to 200-1000 TPS.
It's been posted now it seems!
Yeah, Bitcoin is shit too. Crypto should have 0 (spelled ZERO) inflation.
Ah, that I know. Wasn't sure whether you meant something else with Rei.
Except it doesn’t really cost resources to spam Nano due to no fees
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>May I ask what is stopping someone from splitting their coins into hundreds of nodes? Giving them a higher chance to win the 'lottery'.

The likelihood of being chosen is proportional to the ALGO the node in question holds. 

I'm taking a look at Navcoin now (reading their FAQ). I like that they have a privacy option available. It's a L2 solution but still, seems interesting.

I see that it has a 30 s transaction time vs ALgorand's 4.5 s and instant finality (no forking). That's a detractor. The ""lottery"" thing is one of the very important things about Algo*rand*.

If it gives you staking rewards ad infinitum, what is stopping the centralization issue that the OP is highlighting in their post?
First off HOW DO YOU REPLY TO EACH PARAGRAPH?! that is cool. 

Dynamic fees as in the higher the fee the higher the prioritization? If so, yes but it’s pointless as each tx has finality of 4.5 seconds or less. Unless you need it in 1 second but I haven’t heard of anyone paying higher fees. 

Does nano have smart contracts? I believe when I looked into it, it was strictly a currency with rumors of supposed smart contracts coming.

When crypto takes a better hold of global economies. I believe people will be oblivious to fees regardless of the chain. The cost will either be joined in bi-hourly or daily transaction clusters to level out the fee burdens. Which can be done through smart contract implementation. Algorand is implementing multi-signature transactions where 1 party can pay the fee and have the other transactors have a “feeless” purchase. 1/10 a penny tx with APY accumulation is free as can get. 

Nano seems too niche as in, if its solely a currency with no other attractive offers, ETH and BTC would be favorable as a currency.
I've told you literally 3 times already in previous posts and you stop replying. Even if I told you again you will just post the same thing next week. There's literally no point going over it again with you.
I do think the sentiment of your post is 100% correct though.  There will always be centralization that will eventually gather when there is a reward to do so.
That's more or less my understanding as well. Though the cost of running a voting node is very low right now. I run four different nodes and two of them are capable of being among the most powerful on the network.

If you want to rent from a VPS, it is about $20-40/month. Basically the same or a bit more than running a bitcoin full node.

>So the only way to improve that is if other nodes help storing votes... which requires much more space than just the ledger.

I've started experimenting with vote storage, it's not that bad. The rate/throughput can be an issue but I think redis should be able to handle it for me.

You only need so many PRs to be sufficiently decentralized. Keep in mind that PRs are just a vessel for holders. It's the delegators who are truly in control of the network.

What's incredible is how fast it is to propagate a block and get votes back from all the needed nodes. At 300ms I would assume it is the fastest cross-border settlement network in existence.
Except that no fees does not mean no cost.

A small client-side PoW needs to be done before a transaction is done. Also - the issue isn't getting spammed per se, it's about how it impacts regular users, right?
Ah, didn't realise not everyone would be staking. Mostly agreed with your take though, it seems like an odd system. Can only agree also that staking and defi rewards are what people seem to want - the amount of times I've had to explain that 5% staking rewards with 7% money supply increase actually *isn't* in your favor..
>The likelihood of being chosen is proportional to the ALGO the node in question holds.

Ah, understood. 
Wouldnt this make algo more centralized over time then? If the biggest nodes win most rewards they are the ones growing the most. I am not fully understanding how this would be good for decentralization. 


>I'm taking a look at Navcoin now (reading their FAQ). I like that they have a privacy option available. It's a L2 solution but still, seems interesting.

Yep, xNav released this year and is still in its infancy. Only available with core wallet at this moment, devs are working to bring xNav to light/mobile wallets sometime this year probably. 

They also build a bridge in the form of wNav to binance smart chain. Pretty cool what they are doing with it if you ask me. 

All these different 'coins' are just Nav on another layer, always redeemable 1:1. There were no airdrops or anything like that, and thus basically no hype. 


>I see that it has a 30 s transaction time vs ALgorand's 4.5 s and instant finality (no forking). That's a detractor. The ""lottery"" thing is one of the very important things about Algorand.

Nav certainly isnt the fastes or cheapest out there, devs are working on new scaling solutions too, but i am not sure how or when these will launch and i dont understand what you mean with no forking.

>If it gives you staking rewards ad infinitum, what is stopping the centralization issue that the OP is highlighting in their post?

It wont stop centralization but at least it gives anyone a equal share of the fixed staking rewards and lets every single user participate in the direction the network is taking.

Unlike most projects Nav does not have a 'foundation' or any central figure that decides which upgrades get added to the network. Every single line of code is open, and devs come and go although we are lucky we have some brilliant minds that stuck around for years now.

Last year for example the community voted to stop development on another privacy protocol because it relied on a central figure, it was a variant of the zerocoin protocol. The community fund didnt pay and another protocol got developed based on moneros ringCT. 

There will always be wealthy and unwealthy, centralization shouldnt be seen as it is or isnt imo. Its more a spectrum were projects should aim to be as far on the decentralized side as possible.
> First off HOW DO YOU REPLY TO EACH PARAGRAPH?! that is cool. 

Add > in front of something you want to quote, haha.

> Dynamic fees as in the higher the fee the higher the prioritization? If so, yes but it’s pointless as each tx has finality of 4.5 seconds or less. Unless you need it in 1 second but I haven’t heard of anyone paying higher fees. 

There must be a maximum throughput it can handle though, right?

> Does nano have smart contracts? I believe when I looked into it, it was strictly a currency with rumors of supposed smart contracts coming.

No smart contracts. The reasoning for that is the limited throughput argument - there is only so much bandwidth and such available, Nano wants to utilise all of that for transactions.

> Nano seems too niche as in, if its solely a currency with no other attractive offers, ETH and BTC would be favorable as a currency.

Why do you see BTC as favorable as a currency?
https://np.reddit.com/r/AltStreetBets/comments/ob0iz5/nano_dd_part_2_community_effect/h3lom3l

Is this what you're referring to? Because I think u/t3rror cleared it up quite well, right?
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No fees no cost to the spammer. “Fast and feeless”.

Uh how it impacts users is a result of the issue of spam…. It also affects the entire network and the security of it…

It’s an extremely serious issue. Also pushes Nano down to a point that it will never reach mainstream use until it fixes this.
>Ah, understood. Wouldnt this make algo more centralized over time then? If the biggest nodes win most rewards they are the ones growing the most. I am not fully understanding how this would be good for decentralization.

Because the ""rewards"" people are getting now are basically airdrops to early adopters, and are set to disappear over time. There will be no rewards on the basis of participating in consensus.

Eventually all the 10 Billion ALGOs that were minted at launch will be out and circulating. Then the only rewards will be those taken from transaction fees and voted on by the community on what to do with - but it certainly won't be on the basis of rewarding whales.

>Nav certainly isnt the fastes or cheapest out there, devs are working on new scaling solutions too, but i am not sure how or when these will launch and i dont understand what you mean with no forking.

So Algorand does not fork. Each round there is one leader who gets to propose a block, and then it gets voted on by the randomly chosen members of the validation committee.

This means that when you make a transaction, and it gets included into a block, and you see the chain that has the block, you are guaranteed that that block is not going anywhere. This property does not hold for the vast majority of blockchains, where the chain your block ended up on is one of several that might be eventually reverted, so you need to wait and see a couple of blocks ahead to be sure. Look up Nakaomoto consensus and how it works with the constant forkings.

> It wont stop centralization but at least it gives anyone a equal share of the fixed staking rewards and lets every single user participate in the direction the network is taking.

So the 8% reward is split evenly among the different accounts engaging in consensus, and not by how much stake those accounts have?

If it is spread evenly - is there anyway to prevent whales from spreading their coins out on many accounts to accumulate more?

If it is not spread evenly, but rather is proportionate to the stake you have, we're back at the problem highlighted in the post.
Nakamoto coefficient is the minimum number of compromised entities that is needed to break consensus. That is two in Nano, not eleven. If your argument falls back to that it is hard to split the internet or DDoS in just the right way, then you are grossly missing the point. Other coins have this same difficulty that it is hard to split the internet, but their Nakamoto coefficient is higher because their distribution isn't as centralized as Nano.

If you're arguing Nano as the savior of decentralization then why is it so centralized? Why is your lauded Nakamoto coefficient 2?
Most of that is not accurate 🙃

I’ll follow up in the morning.
Again, no. That's not how it works.

No fees does not mean no cost. You can say validating Bitcoin transactions is feeless, but that doesn't mean mining doesn't have a cost, correct?

> Uh how it impacts users is a result of the issue of spam…. It also affects the entire network and the security of it…

So let's say I send in 10 million transactions to the Bitcoin mempool. That's spam. Would you say that matters much?

>Because the ""rewards"" people are getting now are basically airdrops to early adopters, and are set to disappear over time. There will be no rewards on the basis of participating in consensus. Eventually all the 10 Billion ALGOs that were minted at launch will be out and circulating. Then the only rewards will be those taken from transaction fees and voted on by the community on what to do with - but it certainly won't be on the basis of rewarding whales.

Honestly i am not a fan of this, rewarding early adopters always shifts towards centralization. 
   

>Look up Nakaomoto consensus and how it works with the constant forkings.

I was unaware people are calling that forking, it is possible you end up on a 'ghost' chain, if that happens youll get a crazy amount of stakes since youre on your own chain. Only nodes can have this issue but you cant ghost a transaction. Its a 1 minute fix if your node ghosts the chain. 

Its possible that you send a transaction and you wont get added to the first block, making it longer than the 30 seconds block time before you are 100% sure the transaction went through. When its confirmed there is no way to roll it back. 


>So the 8% reward is split evenly among the different accounts engaging in consensus, and not by how much stake those accounts have?

Exactly, that 8% can and does change tho at the beginning of this year rewards where around 10%. If more people stake the rewards per user lower because of the fixed block rewards. +- 2.1 million nav are staked per year total.

It doesnt matter if you stake 10 nav 1k or 100k, everyone gets the same % per year.
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> No fees does not mean no cost. You can say validating Bitcoin transactions is feeless, but that doesn't mean mining doesn't have a cost, correct?

For Nano it doesn’t. They don’t give out mining fees…

> So let's say I send in 10 million transactions to the Bitcoin mempool. That's spam. Would you say that matters much?

If the mempool gets clogged then yes. It historically does. Then transactions take forever to go through and the network is in shit. 

Why compare bitcoin? Bitcoin is shit
>Think also about what the capacities would be if you would increase the number of consensus participants to, like 1k-10k

It depends on the distribution of voting weight. As I stated above, ""there is an inverse relationship between the distribution of voting weight and throughput""

Your understanding on that part is clear, it's more your other statements that I have a different view. 

>I wouldn't say the cost of running a voting node is very low, given that the network only process <1 TPS and has processed 60M transactions (\~10% of what Bitcoin has done ignoring batched transactions).

The cost of a node idling vs saturated does not change. If the network were saturated right now, the monthly cost would be the same.

The network has previously handled \~5M blocks in one day. A $40/month VPS would be above the network's saturation point, which means that you wouldn't have to increase your costs for the network's saturation point to go up (the other limiting nodes would have to match you). 

I doubt any other network is as affordable at $20-40/month and 5M blocks/day (that's more than the theoretical limits of btc & eth combined). Algorand is the closest I am aware of.

>If you want scalability on the first layer, then you really want higher TPS, and this you can't achieve when all PRs vote on all transactions and without batching to reduce the number of consensus decisions.

PRs having to vote on every operation does not preclude the network from being scalable while sufficiently decentralized. The network already is decentralized and scalable, though I hope it further distributes by about 2-4x since that would have no impact on throughput. 

The network's throughput would be unchanged if consensus was evenly weighted among 60-100 nodes (i.e. entities), maybe more with further improvements. For reference, 10 mining pools control over 90% of Bitcoin hashrate, which more or less has been sufficiently decentralized (for now).

I would note that these ""reps"" are just vessels for delegators, they can easily be changed/replaced. It is the holders/delegators who are actually in control and there is no limit to how distributed that can get.

>There is an inherit tradeoff between latency and throughput. Nano focuses on reducing the latency, which reduces the throughput.

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not aware of any tradeoffs in the design between latency and throughput. Throughput is not sacrificed to improve latency or vice versa. 

All in all, of all the issues and challenges that exist for Nano, being sufficiently decentralized while still being scalable is not at the top of my list (especially relative to other systems).

If throughput becomes an issue then Nano has lived past most of the major hurdles I perceive and has gotten some serious adoption.
> For Nano it doesn’t. They don’t give out mining fees…

You're missing the point. Just because something is feeless does not automatically make it costless. Spamming Nano isn't **free**, which is what matters.

> If the mempool gets clogged then yes. It historically does. Then transactions take forever to go through and the network is in shit. 

What do you mean by the mempool getting clogged exactly?
[deleted]
> You're missing the point. Just because something is feeless does not automatically make it costless. Spamming Nano isn't free, which is what matters.

No shit. Bloating the blockchain is not good for the network and makes it on a path to making it… not affordable to run nodes. 

Tell me, how does one spam attack Nano? The cost of doing that attack is… stupid low. And result and consequences of the attack? Costs a lot.

> What do you mean by the mempool getting clogged exactly?

Do you know what the BTC mempool is? How long have you been around? Do you ever recall when btc transaction couldn’t be completed?
>The cost of running a full node is relatively low, but the ledger is small and the network doesn't have much traffic, so that is the case for all (?) networks of that size. But the cost of running a full node is high relative the TPS and the ledger size. As I wrote, a total of 60M transactions isn't much. Running a full Bitcoin node is much cheaper in terms of resources.  
>  
>Currently, it takes one month to bootstrap the Nano ledger from the network, which is really terrible given how small it is. It took me 5 hours recently to bootstrap a full Bitcoin node on my gaming computer and it can be pruned down to around 5 GB. Even if Nano has done only 10% of Bitcoin in terms of transactions, a Nano full node (verifying all transactions from the genesis) with pruning enabled uses more space, which is fascinating.

That discrepancy is mostly a development/maturity gap. In terms of potential, the nano ledger is more compact/lightweight (only balances) and prunable than the bitcoin ledger. I don't see how Nano won't be an improvement over the bitcoin ledger in size and speed when it comes to various trustless node types

>Well, I don't consider 100 TPS as scalable. If you want high-throughout L1, then you want to handle much more than that. If not, then you offload transactions to second layers, which you cannot build on top of Nano because it's too simple. Nano does neither scale on-chain or has the ability to offload transactions trustlessly. And if you increase the number of PRs to let's say 400 instead (4x), then you more or less divide the TPS by 4 to 25 due to the message complexity (quadratic in terms of PRs).  
>  
>One obvious comparison is Solana that normally makes around 1k TPS (it can do 50k TPS) with 600-700 validators. It takes 15 validators to censor transactions. For Nano, these numbers are 100 TPS and around 100 PRs and it takes 2 entities to censor transactions. This is really border-line decentralization.  
>  
>You increase throughput by batching transactions. That's why almost all networks do that, to reduce the number of consensus decisions. Nano even goes the opposite direction and requires 2 consensus decisions for each transaction (meaning it takes 1 second for a transaction to confirm since 2\*0.5=1).

I'm mostly in agreement here.

One superficial correction, a 4x in PRs would be from \~17 to 68 (the other PRs account for <30% of the weight). Going from 17 to 68 would have no impact on throughput as that many PRs already get their votes in before confirmation.

The main reason I am interested in Nano has to do with the ability for it to have a [lightweight embeddable node](https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/n9dgfh/lightweight_nano_node_with_a_ledger_under_2_mb/) that can operate without intermediaries. Such a node can be embedded in applications that operate in a completely distributed manner with no intermediaries or clutches (i.e. gateways, federation, etc).
> No shit. Bloating the blockchain is not good for the network and makes it on a path to making it… not affordable to run nodes. 

That's a different point, though. We can stop ledger bloat through limiting Nano to BTC throughput, for example. 

> Tell me, how does one spam attack Nano? The cost of doing that attack is… stupid low. And result and consequences of the attack? Costs a lot.

Again that depends on your definition of spam attack. If you want to do a spam attack that impacts people using the network, at this point you would need to be buying a whole lot of Nano and/or be very patient.

> Do you know what the BTC mempool is? How long have you been around? Do you ever recall when btc transaction couldn’t be completed?

I'm well aware of what the Bitcoin mempool is, lol. Which is exactly why I ask what you mean by it getting clogged.
[deleted]
You can't have embeddable bitcoin nodes since it must first download the entire blockchain to verify it is the canonical chain before it can do any pruning. With Nano, the voting weight decides what the canonical state of an account is. Thus you can bootstrap a lightweight embeddable node from the frontiers.

Edit; well I suppose you can use hardcoded checkpoints for the embedded nodes as starting points that can be updated with each release
[deleted]
>By not validating the history, PRs can deceive your node with transactions not originating from the genesis and basically print new money.

Even if you bootstrap from genesis, you rely on PRs to establish what the canonical chain is for each account. If voting weight is compromised you can poison bootstrapping regardless of the direction you start (genesis or frontier). 

>It's possible to run Bitcoin on embedded devices, but the initial block download takes some time (a few days on Raspberry pi 4 with SSD). But just running the node doesn't require much resources (some data from my Raspberry pi node: 0-0.1 load, \~60 kbit/s in bandwidth (which you probably can trim down if you don't care about unconfirmed transactions), 5-6 GB storage in pruned mode). If you really want to run Bitcoin on lightweight devices, then you could use the Electrum protocol (which uses inclusion proofs with SPV), connecting to your own Electrum server (on a Raspberry pi) that is connected to your Bitcoin node which uses Tor to improve privacy.

I appreciate this information.

I should have been more clear about what I meant by embedded. I meant embedded into applications, meaning the application ships with everything it needs to operate and its operation is completely distributed (peer-to-peer).

In short, I'm interested in distributed ledger protocols that can be used directly in a fully distributed application — without needing a gateway or connecting to a remote full node. This is the main driver of my interest in Nano."
From a technical standpoint: Why does every blockchain projects need their own coins?,176,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7owm4l/from_a_technical_standpoint_why_does_every/,"[deleted]
I think there are currently mostly economic reasons at play (raising capital), allowing global trade without currency conversions, keeping accounting processes lean and the technology is the mean to achieve that, not the purpose itself.
Huge point. Tokenisation has merits, but not for investment value. Most in the crypto seem to think that if the company is successful, the token will increase in value. They are not really correlated as most tokens offer no ownership interests in the project, no rights to profits. Buying tokens of promising projects is like buying an iPhone from Apple and expecting it to go up in value.

At the moment, tokenisation is basically a way for start-ups to raise capital without selling equity stakes. I.e. they get capital for free. The market hasn't quite woken up to this fact yet.
I often feel the same and in alot of projects.. they don't have reason other than getting on the hype chain.

However, the idea of private/public, infallible and permanent record, crowd sourced computing, decentralization.. lots of buzzwords but for some applications it makes sense.
I find myself wondering this at times as well. Even if they are only meant as crowdfunding, that still makes no real sense because then the traded value is as speculative as it can get; Absoutely no underlying value because the final product does not require the token at all.

I remember an article about SIA coin on Arstechnica that lays out this problem from a more outside point of view in relation to cloud storage systems: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/investors-poured-millions-into-a-storage-network-that-doesnt-exist/

The commentors are very much divided about the concept of crypto's in general and cloud file storage sollution. One interesting comment is however of someone seeing it as a nice project, but questioning why it would need a specific Sia token, and why not simply pay using direct fiat.

In this case the use and value can be clearly argued that storage contract settlement between unknown parties in different parts of the world (subject to different laws) would be nearly impossible by relying on traditional banking settlements.

This is however not always clear for many tokens, most that simply want to be 'another currency token'.


Could cryptocurrencies challenge stocks as an alternative to investing in companies? 
[deleted]
Read up a bit on game theory as that is one of the fundamentals of decentralization. 

As others have stated, most tokens are useless for 90% of the projects out there, and most are purely a method of raising capital, and price rises on speculation and not actual utility and increase in value (read: value, not price). 

Generally speaking, there are however projects where there are quite a number of variables at play which a token derives value from. Here’s a few I can think of:

1.	Incentive for participants in a network - Generally, most projects benefits from more participation, and therefore increased decentralization, leading to more usage and adoption of token, more secure network
2.	Nodes - Some projects have node incentives where you must own a set number of tokens to be a node, in exchange for rewards or additional incentives in the network, thereby locking up tokens. Less in circulation = higher price if demand is constant or increasing
3.	Token as transaction fee, thereby an incentive paid out to participants in the network from users to node operators and stakers 
4.	Burning of tokens - This usually occurs when tokens are used for transactions, often the entirety is burned or a portion of it and the rest gets divided upon participants 

Those are just some factors that contribute to the price of tokens, and there are plenty others. Bottom line is, a vital part of decentralization is having an incentive model to garner enough interest for participation, to foster decentralization. Having a token that has utility in the network that has a fair and balanced incentive model to all participants in the network is a good way to ensure that. 

I don't think you're missing anything. Many projects don't need their own coins. Some are scams, some view coin issuance as a funding strategy. There's a lot of money entering this space and people are trying to get their piece before it dries up.
Few points here:

1) people started believing that raising money in an ICO is EASY MONEY (and you might agree looking at 2017 - with more than 180 token sales concluded which have raised $4-5 bln (various reports show different numbers))

2) for that reason it became fashionable and as during the dot com era - adding blockchain to the name would increase the value of the company almost instantly. Also - adding the blockchain technology to the project would possibly enable you to raise money. Not a lot, becuase blockchain natives wouldnt buy into that, but still some money that otherwise would have been difficult to get.

3) Becuase in some cases the community was expecting that

4) becuase it might seem to the founders that only by releasing their own coin they could make their business work 

5) becuase it might seem to VCs that blockchain projects need to produce their own token

*) Because in some cases it actually makes sense to have your own token.
While most are saying that you don't need tokens for must stuff which I'll agree with, I think it hasn't been said that tokens provide a way to stabilize the price for that particular product/platform. For example, if your project used ether, and some bad news came out for ethereum tanking the price, this would introduce a lot of volatility in your internal workings, even though it had nothing to do with you.  Tokens provide a way to partially isolate your project from any bad news of other cryptos keeping your project and its underlying mechanisms more stable.
This may be one of the problems sidechaining with Ethereum helps ease, and maybe even solve completely with Nuls – a single cryptocurrency and many sub-chains with different feature sets.
Funding would be my first guess. 
This is my first question before I invest. Is the token actually used? Is it needed? If yes I continue the research, otherwise I see it as a pump and dump tbh. I am still splitt on if XRB really needs a token. Have my doubts it will ever be used.
Surely it's just to raise capital? And holding a coin is like holding a share?
This thread is old so hopefully I still get a response. 

Perhaps I also don't understand. I always thought the coin was the reward for processing and confirming additions to the blockchain. Without them, how would, say, a company providing medical records on a block chain confirm a large number of transactions?

I always assumed it was through anyone being able to mine, regardless of their affiliation with the medical industry and to do that they would require a reward. 
[removed]
Would you mind listening those projects? I’d like to get better at identifying useful tokens.
I think bringing up VC's is important here.  I firmly believe that model has been broken for a long time.  Selling tokens seems like a good way to sidestep the forced growth that you currently see in that space while allowing owners to retain full control and profit for their project.  I look at tokens for projects like these (where tokens aren't necessarily) more as a new asset class somewhere between a traditional stock and a currency.
This is like a wake-up call. There are only few projects that actually need coins and any project that don't need one is clearly way overvalued. 

Time to re-think my investments. 
I think that makes sense, and it's in line with what I've noticed too. But there's a problem, to me, in raising capital in a way very similar to selling shares (as in an IPO), without providing much of what a share provides. In exchange we're supposed to generate value from using the coin but if we admit that the coin is useless, then it's effectively a share with  no authority.

I guess DpoS consensus models are trying to fix that? 
Will companies start to offer equity stakes? Do any right now? I think the only thing I can think of is VEN, as it will use the THOR created to run the network and sort of pay dividends 
The entire capitalist system is pretty much built on the idea that management has to look after the interests of the shareholders first and foremost. Tokens basically do away with the company's obligation, while the tokenholder still takes the risk. The whole idea really is preposterous.

On a conversation of Quantstamp's token the other day, people were pointing out how one of the benefits of the token was that you got tokens for other companies... So you basically get into a self-perpetuating loop of tokens - great!

People will only realize this once there are massive losses on a massive scale; then people will complain that the owners and managers are not in prison, and the market will likely be regulated.
Projects need to think about whether they need an ICO

https://medium.com/@katarzynakamiska/to-all-the-honeys-makin-money-when-doing-an-ico-makes-sense-a46b79946e39
[deleted]
It could. Crypto exchanges are places where you can exchange FIAT into some kind of an asset - which is cryptocurrencies/ tokens. Their great advantage is that they are available globally. 
In today's world if I am a European citizen and want to invest in a company at NASDAQ - I need to register at a broker and either check whether this company is listed on the exchange where I live (rarely the case) or whether the broker enables me to invest in this and that company (with a broker's fee but also with a higher fee for international stocks) OR I need to ask them to enable it for me (so they need to contact another broker in the country I want to invest it). This can take quite some time - 24 hours if you're lucky and your broker is fast. In the cryptocurrency world - you can do it straight away. 
However, that means that you need to check this project more carefully - and learn how to do it (which of course you need to do with a stock-exchange listed company as well but in the case where the hurdle to throw your money is much lower (like in crypto) - this is even more important to stress.

Because is fast, has withdraw fees in many exchanges at 0.03 USD level, is timetested, and is listed on many exchanges. Has a lot of crypto pairing.

When you think dodgecoin, you think speculative coin indicator. If there is much speculation, you want to own some.
you are in the wrong subreddit dude. also, you shouldn't publish your gains...
Jeebus. Simply wait to see how weak those hands are when btc starts its tear. And seriously, posting your gains? In the crypto community? Wild west son, you don't want to be culled from the herd
Moron.
The point is that a lot of people just want to make money and now the market is incredibly bullish so it's alright. 

The question you need to ask yourself is to why do you buy cryptos in the first place, you gotta be honest with yourself, if it is for the ""mad gainz"" then you have to admit it and shouldn't veil it with all that ""investing in the future"" stuff. Because you'll only lie to yourself when some coins inevitably go to shit.

If you know you're riding a wave, no emotions in there then good luck and invest safely. Otherwise, beware it's the wild west out there.
The idea for most coins is to add value by the fact that you can redeem them against the issuer‘s company services.
The problem is that if a coin does act like a security and give you a dividend payment, voting rights, or a share of ownership, then it falls under SEC regulation in the US. Only accredited investors will be able to invest in it unless they register with the SEC and provide quarterly and yearly financial reports, etc.

The fact that most companies that use an ICO to raise funds aren't willing to do this and just shoe-horn a new token into their platform as a way to raise money is a huge red flag. I would never ""invest"" in an ICO that did that. If I have a hard time understanding why a token is even necessary in the first place then I won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Dunno why you are being downvoted when it's actually true.

It's why I'm really bullish on cryptos like VEN/VET and NEO that generate dividends or offer voting rights. 
There are some projects that are building platforms to do so, one being https://neufund.org/
MyBit is doing a similar staking mechanism. 
Explain why?
also doge has a very big community
Oh sorry guys. I won't do that again :)
This is it, they are often tokenising a service and you are investing with the expectation that demand for this service will outpace supply and the price will rise. 

I think prior to 'blockchain' the cost of tokenising a service was higher than the perceived benefit. However where a company hand the clout e.g. Microsoft, they implemented their own ecosystem currency (Microsoft Points was used for XBox ecosystem purchases)

Now it is easy for any service to create tokens as a way of raising capital and our job is to discern which ones could have legitimate demand.

If Microsoft did an ICO for Microsoft Points, that would be a no brainier even though they could technically let people use fiat, which they currently do. 
> It's why I'm really bullish on cryptos like VEN/VET and NEO that generate dividends or offer voting rights.

Also ARK (staking) or MOD (dividends). But it should be mentioned that in Germany if you were to sell them, you'd need to wait 10 years instead of 1 for them to be tax-free.
Oh yeah I came across them the other day. Wish I had been able to buy in at the ICO 
[deleted]
A laid-back, good-natured community with tongue firmly in cheek.  No drama, no toxicity, no carpet-bombing proselytizing, lately it feels like they've had a nice, quiet confidence in the Doge.  
Then it piggybacks on the LTC blockchain, that's turned out to be a lovely little bonus for the miners.  Much wow indeed.
Oh? Can you elaborate on the 10 years vs 1 year aspect?
I've read through your comments here and you seem to know a fair bit about the intricacies of stocks vs cryptos. You say here that  
""A stock gives you a claim on the corporation in a way or another, cryptocurrencies or tokens do no such thing and it's a fundamental difference between the two.
>
>Tokens *could* be used to vote but they do not give you a voting power in the company, note that not all stocks do grant that power either.""

From what I understand about Neo, it's token acts as a share of the company or network, and dividens are provided in the form of GAS to its holders, in much the same way that holders of shares of a stock earn annual dividens. Neo tokens also give holders voting power in the network. Would you say neo is a rare example of a crypto with real-use tokens and stock-like behaviour? 

lol imagine if Doge had split and it was Doge and Dogecash.

Gains from long coins under German law become tax-free.
Coins become long once you held them for 1 year without trading them (with FIFO, first in first out unless you can prove it's a specific coin which only works if it's not on exchanges). But that changes if the coin pays dividends, in that case, it only becomes long after 10 years without trading.

What this essentially means is that in many cases it's better not to stake your coins if you have the option as those rewards might be lower than the extra tax you'll have to pay should you trade it.
I'm not a programmer or a coder so I can't talk about their code, you'll need someone with expertise for that.

The whitepaper (in english at least) is not very well documented in my opinion, lots of talking not much is explained. What I've got from it is that a massive amount of NEO tokens is staying with the NEO council, so is the voting power then. NEO Gas is used to vote on the network, it's not used to vote for what the company does, which is important because it's not the same thing at all.

Your question is very broad and that's why ICO's and public blockchains need audit, by cryptographers, programmers and specialist in the relevant fields the tokens are supposed to be used in. **I simply do not have the knowledge to answer your question.**


I do not speak Chinese so I'm not aware of the possible subtleties in the paper either. Maybe someone who is proficient might help you better.
Still no. If the company making neo decides to back out there is no legal precedent for you to seek compensation.  

While you can vote on neo, they're a literal development team. They could at any time create a new coin and abandon neo after selling of their neo. And as long as they hold most or even almost half of the neo they'll win any votes with regards to their governance.  "
Bitcoin Gold hit by Double Spend Attack (51% attack). The Attacker reversed 22 blocks.,178,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/8lnce8/bitcoin_gold_hit_by_double_spend_attack_51_attack/,"[deleted]
This is the highest profile 51% attack I've seen.  The next closest were Electroneum and Verge, however the verge attacker exploited the software to effectively capture 95%+ but did not perform a doublespend attack.

>And since BTG runs EquiHash, this would mean any coin running Equihash are also in danger.

This is a large concern with PoW that many don't consider.  They have significant hashpower that can now attack any PoW chain running Equihash
Successfully executing a 51% attack on Bitcoin would involve an enormous commitment of resources in comparison to Bitcoin Gold.

Isn't that the whole.point.....that people have been trying to attack it all along?  

And in the case of bitcoin....it would cost far more than the value of BTC they could get (especially if the very act crashed orices).

This is how I understand this.  Hopefully some if not all of this is true. 
This is not the first 51% attack. Luke-Jr. attacked and killed Coiledcoin using the Eligius mining pool in 2012.
A coin that is founded in the principle of rejecting economies of scales becomes vulnerable to a 51% attack. Shocker, who could of ever guessed? 
Is it possible that something like that happens with Bitcoin or any of the other major coins?
Didn’t Craig Wright just have an argument with the bitcoin good founder? Now we know who’s behind it. 
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

- [/r/u_dangkilla] [\[Blockchain\]\[Security\] Bitcoin Gold hit by Double Spend Attack (51% attack). The Attacker reversed 22 blocks.](https://www.reddit.com/r/u_DangKilla/comments/8lp3x3/blockchainsecurity_bitcoin_gold_hit_by_double/)

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Faketoshi got mad after his confrontation with BTG founder and asked his sheep to do the attack 
I didnt think that this things will happened.....
Decred is 20x more expensive to attack than Bitcoin! https://medium.com/@zubairzia/apples-to-apples-decred-is-20x-more-expensive-to-attack-than-bitcoin-68bafeb4546f
Or happens to be the company that produces them.
You mean Bitmain?
What about some bad actor who has the goal of damaging BTC's reputation?  They might not care about the cost, or making a profit.
[deleted]
Possible? Sure. But the cost of a 51% is in proportion to the hashing power of the network. The main coins are much more safe.

Bitcoin gold: (26*10^6 Hash/s) * ($3.74 / 10^3 (Hash/s) * Day)  * .51= ~$50,000 a day to attack

Bitcoin: (30*10^18 Hash/s) * ($0.50 / 10^12 (Hash/s) * Day) *.51 = ~$7,650,000 a day to attack

That's a *very* rough estimate, but I'd say Bitcoin is about 150 times harder to attack.


Bitcoin is the hardest blockchain to do this with because of the amount of mining power processing the blockchain is huge. So even though Bitcoin gets a lot of bad press for being wasteful of energy, if you wanted to use an open blockchain for your business, you would probably want to find a way of anchoring the bitcoin blockchain because it guarantees the most security. Factom do this very well for auditing documents. 
Yes. Any PoW or PoS consensus process could allow this to happen.

This is why these cryptos need 'confirmations' before a transaction is truly considered final. They don't have finality built into the consensus mechanism.

The best options for avoiding it currently are either true finality using dBFT, high probability finality with dPoS, or economic finality with Casper PoS. 
Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Just think about the huge Bitcoin farms all over the world. To perform a 51&#37; attack on Bitcoin, you would essentially have to have more mining power than all of these farm combined. That would probably cost you somewhere in the $100 million \- $1 billion range.
bitcoin shouldn't be in any danger. bitcoin gold was on the order of 30 megahashs, where as bitcoin is on the order of 34 exahashes.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-btc-btg.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

mega versus exa isnt even close to each other, so the amount of resources to execute this for bitcoin would have been absolutely huge. but as you go down the list of coins by hashrate it becomes easier and easier.
https://youtu.be/ncPyMUfNyVM
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Bitmains as well as many ASIC company does have a reputation of ""testing"" their hardware for quite a while before releasing it right?

However, I couldn't see any big spikes in hashrate any BTG-explorer, though I do not know what metrics goes into that and whether you can mine in stealth if you don't report. 
Even then....there are some protections in bitcoin.  Say a large state actor wanted to throw ridiculous resources at Bitcoin for the reason you say.

My understanding is that every day bitcoin grows stronger and more resistant to sustained attack.  

So in this case:  let's say this bad a tor gets 51% together and can sustain it for ""x"" period of time (1 hour for instance).  

The good actors continue mining the recognized chain and when the attack can no longer be sustained anything they have done dies off (as only transactions on the longest chain will be on ledger).

So if I understand correctly....they need not just the 51% indefinitely ....but more hashpower to go backwards on the blockchain.  

Then there are the logistics of it.  Would they be taking electricity away from the public?  Using funds from social programs to sustain?  How does public react?  Etc?

Honestly I am looking to better understand this myself......


> “high powered hashing,” the term coined to refer to the process of plugging an input into a hash function and seeing what it spit out

So just normal hashing? Unless there is something special about ""plugging"" the input and seeing it ""spit out"".
Laszlo is such a legend. It is a shame most people only remember him for those two pizzas he bought yesterday 8 years ago.


how do you factor electricity costs into this? if you were to do an attack you would want all your asics to go at once to make it more cost efficient. you could put them in a warehouse but that requires infrastructure to provide that power on the go. or you could spread the asics around at different locations, but thats logistics. any scenario will also add cost to your equations. i only say this because pow coins with simmilar or lower hash rates could yield the same result. i think the cost to take down btc would be much higher.
The part I find concerning about Bitcoin Gold is low the hash rate is given its market cap.

2.6 million Hashes per second is just 260 Z9 miners (10 thousand hashes per second). Basically a single mining farm can out hash the rest of the network.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/bitmain/antminer-z9-mini/
follow up question, how many days do you need to run this? i was under the assumption that if you had 51% hash power you could create blocks and steal the coins. so i imagine to steal a few million you would only need a day or two. or am i misunderstanding this?
It may be the most secure PoW coin, but it's debatable if it's the most secure chain on the market.  You wouldn't do a raw hashrate attack like this against it of course because you've already got 3 pools that control 51% of the power.  You would hijack their hashpower through any number of techniques and ddos competing pools to further boots your share of the hashrate.  
I have not heard of the latter two. What are they?
Good thing dags dont suffer from this:)
Easily reachable by most any nation state though..
They're two different algorithms so you cant  compare their hashrate. A more fair estimate of determining the attack vector of coins with different algorithms would be to calculate how much energy is being used to support the mining of a given network.

Obviously Bitcoin is more secure. People actually mine it. Bitcoin Gold is a pump and dump cash grab shitcoin that's taking too long to die. 
To be dicks. Retribution for algo changes after each batch of new miners announced. Also btc profitability is falling and by controlling the bcash rewards they can’t really dump every night.
The real concern in a 51% attack on Bitcoin is that the current cartels gang up and execute it continuously. Not so much a new qctor just showing up with that much hashing power,but existing people getting together to do it forever.
Yes, it is just normal hashing. However, the article is written with the thought that people who don't know anything about bitcoin or hashing may read it.
plugging the input, you can attack a weak hash function, but sha256 which btc uses is solid. i suspect thats what hes referring to, for attacks you could find given inputs that produce the same hash creating a collision, thats one example. but i dont know how you could attack a hash function to gain mining superiority. he could also allude to asics too i.e. sha256 mining machines
> It is a shame most people only remember him for those two pizzas he bought yesterday 8 years ago.

Well the bitcoin wikis don't mention much more [https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Laszlo\_Hanyecz](https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Laszlo_Hanyecz) [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Laszlo\_Hanyecz](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Laszlo_Hanyecz)
Yep, until I read this, I only knew him as ""the pizza guy"", TIL, thank you for this.
Well, electricity is factored in the number for $/HashDays. The main problem with the numbers I just gave is that I've assumed

* (current hashpower of network) * (current marginal cost per hash ) * 51% = total cost to run an attack

This is obviously not true - it's much cheaper to set up 1 mining machine and let it run a year, rather than set up 365 machines and let them run for a single day. I suspect these numbers are off by a few orders of magnitude- It's a first order calculation to try to get some rough numbers rather than just basing it completely on my personal opinion.


And now you understand the real difference between bitcoin and a shitcoin. 
Well, you need enough time for three things:

* The double spend to have enough blocks for confirmation. Apparently most exchanges wait 6 blocks [for confirmation](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation) on Bitcoin transactions, or about an hour. After confirmation, the exchange will treat you as the ""owner"" of the counterfeit currency.

* Exchange your phony money for legit crypto. This means depositing the counterfeit money on exchange, and executing the trade.

* Withdraw the legitimate assets. The exchange has every incentive and right to reverse the trade if they find a double spend, so you need to get the assets out before that can happen.

The timing- I'm not sure. Seems the slowest part would be convincing the exchange your coins are legit. In other words, how quickly one could move millions of dollars of currency in and out of exchanges without getting your assets frozen. I've never done anything like that, so idk.
Other type of blockchains are promising, but until they have secured a market cap like bitcoins for as long as bitcoin it is very hard to say there is a more secure chain. The ultimate test is when the prize for cheating the system become as large as it would be on bitcoin. I like the sound of the new DAG systems, and am very interested to see how ethereum move to POS system, but until they have become very large market caps and secured for long enough I will not be convinced there is a better blockchain system. The biggest DAG system, IOTA still relies on central control, although Nano seems to be working well. My bet is on Maidsafe's Safe network, as they have built a whole new autonomous network from scratch, and will incorporate a DAG system with the some of the other amazing methods they have invested to help with the consensus and keep it very decentralised. 
Delegated proof of stake and ethereum's version of PoS is called Casper 
DAGs are asynchronous, so I don't see how they could possibly have true finality.

dBFT is the only existing consensus mechanism that I know of with true finality. dPoS/PoS allow for sufficiently emulated finality (still not ideal but better than ignoring it completely). 
Which DAG has finality built in? 
I wouldn't say any. Bitcoin usses as much electricity as Danmark. So Danmark can't do this without a nation wide black out. First tier nation states such as US Russia China certainly can do it at off peak hours.
alot of moeny for a double spend tho
Not unless they purpose build gigantic farms. Possible, but ineffective in the long run
thats fair, but the difference between the algorithms isnt big enough to negate the difference in hash rate, I guess its more of an estimate though. as you said, no one mines btg which is why this attack was possible
But aren't those cartels comprised of many miners (so a large % pools)?

If I was in a pool that started supporting the wrong chain I would cut my hassgpower.

Just from.the outside it would seem that more people (with relevant hashpower) would be economically incentivised to support the original chain.
No prob, since you like TILs, Laszlo wrote the first GPU code for mining Bitcoin. This is back in the early days of GPGPU. Writing GPU code back then was hard as nails because you have to understand the hardware quirks just be able to do anything. it is kinda like assembly code on custom hardware. The fact that he wrote the code efficiently enough to out perform the rest of the network is a major achievement.
Thanks very informative do u have good resources on the double spend attack, techier the better
Ethereum is on PoS now?! I thought Vitalik was just thinking about it. It's already happened?
How does Casper pos differ from regular pos?
I didnt say they had finality anywhere in my comment. . .
I thought Byteball did, but I might be wrong.
Nano has plans for it in their whitepaper
>  Bitcoin usses as much electricity as Danmark. So Danmark can't do this without a nation wide black out. 

To be pedantic: while your conclusion is almost certainly true, it does not by necessity follow.
Hey, Gerosoreg, just a quick heads-up:  
**alot** is actually spelled **a lot**. You can remember it by **it is one lot, 'a lot'**.  
Have a nice day!

^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
By definition any chain you support becomes the ""right"" chain, though. And if you have 51% of the hashing power then you can also guarantee that you find the next block, meaning that only you get the proceeds of mining. So if anything the incentive is to join the 51%.
Maybe check the [bitcoin wiki](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Irreversible_Transactions)? Aantonop explains [some of this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHz7LM4ncLw&t=7m40s) as well.
It isn't implemented yet. Casper is the PoS protocol they are developing for ethereum. Not sure when it will launch.
> Good thing dags dont suffer from this:)

This whole post is about finality whether it has been explicitly worded that way or not, and DAGs absolutely *do* suffer from this (sub-tangles etc).
Yes but say the attack starts at block 1000.  They are able to go back 20 blocks (while new confirms go 10 forward - to block 1010).  So they effectively controlled block 980 to 1010 (30 blocks). 

It costs too much to continue and they have to stop the attack.  Wouldn't the valid chain revert to the one that is 1000 blocks (erasing the malicious transactions).  If the bad actors made off with millions it doesn't help as much but if that was prevented......
Wow. Cool! So how is dPos different from Casper?
Not even close to as serious for dags. Blocks are being rewritten here. . .
Why would these have to stop the attack? These people are already footing the cost because they are already mining continuously. I'm not talking about a new player with new machines taking over the grid, I'm talking about existing people just working together with already existent machinery. All they have to do is team up. 
DPoS is delegated proof of stake. Basically you vote for members of the community to secure the nodes of the blockchain. In return for voting for the delegates you receive a dividend as a form of profit sharing from the person you vote for. ARK has a pretty cool DPoS system.
You aren't wrong there!

This is why I like dBFT though. No muss, no fuss. One version of the truth at all times.
But that will tank the price and they would all lose $$.

What would cause that many to ""sacrifice"" just to hurt Bitcoin?

Isn't this the whole ""game theory"" that went into this?
Oh. Hunh. That's kind of weird. Do any cryptographic currencies use that?
DBft? Elaborate please, crypto keeps adding lingo that i dont know nowadays.
Nano. But delegates work for free because it's no extra work since they're voting anyway, for their vote to be granted extra stake weight. 
Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance, it's a consensus mechanism. 

You have a limited number of consensus nodes run by professional entities (individuals or businesses) that are voted in or out of the network by token holders (so you can remain decentralized without a highly distributed network). Those nodes are randomly selected to build blocks from transactions, then the other nodes validate the blocks to specific criteria (avoiding double spends, etc). Then they sign their agreement or disagreement with the block. Then a 2/3 majority agrees on the block, it is added to the chain, and a new speaker node is elected to form the next block. If there is no 2/3 majority (for example, if a dishonest node tried to push an invalid block), a new speaker is elected instead and a new round of validation begins.

It sacrifices the ability to have thousands of distributed nodes which isn't ideal, but the trade-off is huge scalability, efficiency and true finality (no blocks are ever added without the 2/3 consensus, so there's no need for confirmations and no forks/orphan blocks).


But regular dags can have infinite scalability with multiple node options. Which coins are dBFT though?
sounds like dPoS, i thought dBFT the delegates were not elected by token holders. they were delegated to trusted entities or as you say professional entities and they remain so, NEO for example dbft, people whine that the company controls the nodes...

if dBFT is anything like dPoS its a serious concern vitalik has his 2 cents on dpos add the /r so it doesnt get removed from the post.

/ethereum/comments/6qm0y2/is_the_ethereum_team_defending_their_ground/
NEO uses dBFT. There are some other cryptos using other BFT variants also.

The main advantage is the finality. That will be very important for enterprise level adoption.
The big difference between dPoS and dBFT is that in dPoS, one node produces and verifies the block, which gives them a huge amount of control and also allows for the possibility of forks/orphan blocks.

With dBFT, you need a 2/3 majority consensus across all nodes, so only one block is produced/validated/added at a time. This is what gives dBFT true finality, something other cryptos don't offer. Instead of having multiple chains competing to be the longest or the 'real truth,' there is only ever one truth.

Token holders both elect and remove nodes, but to register for the opportunitity to be voted in you need to pay 1000 GAS (currently at least). So unlike something like EOS, there's economic incentive to not try run a dodgy node, plus NEO is aiming for compliance and digital identity so there would likely be legal ramifications too.

In my opinion, enterprise-level blockchain use cases require finality and thus should be using dBFT for consensus. For ~~all~~ most other use cases, I like the Casper implementation of PoS with the addition of a good scaling solution. 

EDIT: IoT may be better handled through the DAG approach, but it's hard to say for sure until we see the actual scalability of other consensus mechanisms.
True. Only problem for me is that neo sacrifices is decentralization. Literally more centralized than ripple according to an article i just read. I recommend ark though. Their dpos system seems to work pretty damn good compared to pos. 
thanks that was informative, i think its kinda ironic that satoshi when talking about pow was referencing byzantine generals' problem, but dbft gets it closer to the solution. the investment in digital identity and what ontology is doing makes me thing their decentralisation of dbft wil work well.

definitely agree on businesses wanting finality, there is 51% attack in pow, nothing at stake in pos, there is a good article on black swan type scenarios specific to pos, dpos is just broken. still tho with sufficient computing power pow is resilient as, it just doesnt scale or so they say. ive talked to one of the founding etherum devs and he disagrees with that belief, didnt elaborate tho. so who knows

as for dags, they seem ideal, iota send 1 validate 2, cordinator to handle the issues until the tangle is big enough, but what are the downsides? im not really aware of them
Thanks for your informative posts on dBFT. As I understand it, another benefit of using dBFT is the relatively low consumption of computational resources.
Nah that's not really true, but since people don't understand how BFT networks are initialized, they don't understand what decentralized means for these networks.

Since consensus is sorted by 2/3 vote, you need your initial nodes to be confirmed good actors that aren't going to validate or propose false blocks (for example, if you had 7 nodes and 3 were bad actors, you'd never be able to reach consensus so the blockchain would just freeze). Hence, NEO has a few core nodes and then others run by strategic partners (CoZ, KPN etc). At this point it is absolutely centralized when compared to PoW/PoS, but the network hasn't expanded at this point either. It's just a first step into getting consensus moving so the network can be expanded without risking early fault due to malicious node runners. By having that stable core of nodes, you make the network immediately tolerant to bad actors should they ever manage to run a node. 

Once NEO starts allowing new consensus nodes to join the network and gives control over those nodes over to the voting system, it will be decentralized (initial nodes can no longer reach consensus by themselves, and the token holders will decide which nodes to vote in or out). Supposedly this is all in the process of happening this year, there were some overhauls to the voting code recently in preparation for it.

It's not the same approach to decentralization as a PoW network (aka allow anyone to 'become a node' by mining), but it is absolutely not centralized.

I've found it to be quite comparable to IOTA's coordinator. When scaled, IOTA is completely decentralized, but it has a central coordinator currently to ensure smooth consensus until the network has grown to a sufficient mass. It's the same principle for the initial consensus nodes of NEO run by OnChain, though poorly researched articles and FUD specialists will choose to interpret these things as some kind of permanent centralization despite the vast inaccuracies of that sentiment.
Yeah I'm really interested in Ontology's VBFT. I must spend some time learning more about that, it sounds promising.

I've always felt like the biggest issue with Bitcoin was that blockchain technology is supposed to be this immutable ledger, but almost every single consensus mechanism allows that to break (forking etc). 

This is why I'm invested in NEO/dBFT, I think any team that realizes the importance of finality at this stage is going to be a real safe bet for the future. DAGs are great too, I don't know if they will prove to be ideal for a lot of specific use cases, but for small fast payments (IoT etc) they will be hard to beat. I suppose the biggest downside would be lack of interoperability, but that could be solved.
Yeah, nodes only need to validate blocks which is highly efficient from a computational perspective.
Im not trying to tear down neo. But tell me what you think of this article when you have the chance. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2018/03/04/neo-could-be-a-dominant-blockchain-it-could-also-be-a-time-bomb/amp/

Everytime i findout by a crypto, i i always try to tear it apart before looking for the good. 

""But blockchain is first and foremost about decentralization, and NEO’s technical architecture seems to come up short on that front. You can read a world-class takedown of the platform from the Store of Value blog. It does a pretty solid, factually-based job of proving that NEO is “more centralized than Ripple,” that the validator nodes are controlled by NEO, and that nodes are legally liable to stay up, which increases risk by taking anonymity out of the system. Contrast that with ARK, for example, where delegates go to great lengths to stay anonymous. In short, it seems clear NEO is not a truly open, permissionless platform.""
i thought that was dBFT. how does BFT differ?
I do the same, I wouldn't be invested in NEO otherwise! I'm really careful with the projects that I'm invested in. 

Seems this article is referencing a blog post from storeofvalue who is a well known NEO FUD spreader that is heavily invested in QTUM, one of NEO's competitors. He's had his poorly researched posts (or intentionally dishonest posts, you be the judge) rebutted directly by the NEO team multiple times. 

[Here's one post](https://medium.com/@MalcolmLerider/response-to-baseless-fud-9b7e5e2eeeea) from NEO's Senior R&D Manager Malcom LeRider on the topic of addressing common FUD including centralization claims, and [here's another](https://medium.com/@MalcolmLerider/please-ignore-fake-information-from-storeofvalue-4068b52c520b) addressing Store of Value's baseless claims directly.

Pretty much any FUD into NEO can be resolved with a read of the Whitepaper, but for some reason people seem averse to doing it.
All BFT networks work this way (2/3 consensus) as I understand it. The delegated aspect refers to how control of those nodes is delegated to the voters. Other BFT networks have slightly different ways of handling this process. 
Every white paper seems hopeful, thats the real bitch about it haha. Alot of cryptos just have that.. whitepaper like cardano was or is. I dont pay attention anymore. Im just investing quietly and safely. Thanks for the good replies man. Very helpful.
Hey, Chickachic-aaaaahhh, just a quick heads-up:  
**alot** is actually spelled **a lot**. You can remember it by **it is one lot, 'a lot'**.  
Have a nice day!

^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
Indeed. Let me know if you have any more questions about NEO, it's the crypto I'm most familiar with :)"
"As a software engineer invested in crypto for several years, I don't get the recent NFT / metaverse hype?",177,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/s56i2k/as_a_software_engineer_invested_in_crypto_for/,"Everyone here seems to be talking about NFT art. I think the fact that Uniswap V3 essentially runs on NFTs is a testament to their value outside of art projects. Anyone whose been in crypto long enough or investing know that wherever money can be made a bunch of fraudsters will appear. Do you remember how much vapourware there was in ‘17?

Wish I had time to write more, but current NFTs are not useless.
I think NFTs make more sense of you think of them as a social phenomenon more than a technological one.

NFTs with prestige and social proof allow people to do what people have been doing since the dawn of time. Flexing and showing off how much money they have and how much exclusive stuff they have access to. Also some NFTs may be genuine collectors items like baseball cards/Pokémon cards.

The difference between two “seemingly” identical NFTs is everyone can see **who** minted the original NFT and can verify genuineness from that.

People get sucked into NFTs because they don’t understand this and think it’s a quick easy way to make money.
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IMO, the recent NFT hype is more about participating in a fun trend than anything else. 

> From a technological standpoint, do the current NFTs have any value, aside from selling to a greater fool?

Just like with any art—or, really, any item for which you pay more than the production cost—you pay for the story. A painting that was stolen and then found is worth more after the fact, because it now has a story attached to it. Someone can copy a painting, but it wasn't the same canvas that actually sank to the bottom of the sea.

Arguably, the current NFT trend may create some historically significant NFTs, the ownership of which proving your early participation. I don't know, I don't really care for it.

Someone else can mint an NFT with the same art, but what's valuable is the story and not the art itself. 

Anyway, just like you, I am far more interested in a lot of other applications of NFTs, although even art could have interesting use cases for, say, royalty tracking.
NFT is a proof of ownership. It starts and ends there. For example, for a patent, you can use NFT to transfer ownership and grant the rights to that ownership. Think of NFTs as digital paperwork of ownership. Of course, someone can use your patent without authorization and NFT (or paperwork) is not designed to protect you from that possibility.
1. NFT is literally just a method to verify ownership / authenticity of arbitrary data, 

2. This has nothing to do with “NFTs” , because an NFT is literally just a standard , also , yes IP laws do apply if you take the correct steps, 

3. Metaverse is stupid 1/3 👍
Mate, rich people need to be able to spend their money, NFTs and Metaverse are useless things that have no purpose for normal people, but they allow rich people to spend their money. they are indeed useless
So the best explaination I have heard is to think about it like this. With any technological innovation, there are two sides, an actual use case and the technology itself.

If you think about 3d/VR headsets, when they first came out they were at the very best novelties, and were widely derided as stupid. But, the technology was there and over the intervening years, you have more games being made for VR, more applications, and the space is slowly growing from odd curiosity to something a bit more.

The argument for NFTs is that this minting of pixelated apes is just the stupid fad technology proof-of-concept. It is a way to iron out wrinkles, test things, and show the world how the technology works all so that in the future, web3 can come along and really give it a use case.

Now, while I don't inherently disagree with that, I also do think that a lot of people are into NFTs for the sense of community and FOMO. In addition, you have people who become overnight millionaires with crypto and have a tone of money that can't always be easily transfered to cash, so they throw it at the next thing.
Speaking to the art use case. Provenance in the art world is very important. Sure you can buy a “faked” nft just as you could buy a fake of an artwork. The value is having a open auditable ownership history.
The way NFTs are implemented and used today have limited utility outside of money laundering and get rich quick schemes taking advantage of greater fools. As with all things, exceptions exist. Your video game example is something I've thought about as well, but I still don't see what the point of going through all that extra effort would be when you could just use a database. Riding the hype train seems to be the only real advantage I can see so far. Right now, NFTs are a solution in search of a problem.

Moxie (the Signal founder) published a pretty great writeup on the current state of things: [https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html](https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html)
nfts have value

u can create an NFT of a non divisible asset like art e.g. monalisa or realestate. from that u can mint erc20 tokens to have partial ownership. requires real life legal stuff to make it bonafide tho

see:

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/981

there are also value in nfts like a concert ticket. owned by you

the digital assets jpgs which are glorified hyperlinks have no value other than what the market prices it at now.
I agree on most of your post.  Just a few points :

\- You can check SoRare, a trading card / fantasy league game for soccer where each card is an NFT. Huge valuation.  Quite a lot of users. Very good game.  

\- I think as long as big players don't embrace this decentralized approach, it will be useless; but imagine Twitter provides a verification system for your profile pic  ?

\- Regarding the Metaverse : it is very possible that Google, Apple, Microsoft might be disrupted if they are not open and interoperable.
IIT Bombay, which is one of the world's most important colleges, recently gave out degrees as NFTs.

I could sell tickets to a sporting events as nfts with smart contracts enforced which say that you cannot resell the nfts.
NFTs for art, from an artists perspective, can be interesting. Opening up new revenue streams via resale commission. But the offering for buyers/collectors hasn’t been particularly great. I personally am not interested in the whole “buy to get access to our private discord” - and it looks like being part of an exclusive online club doesn’t seem to be enough now. The issues with theft and rip offs are a real bummer but this happens today in the art world. It’s just that with the blockchain everyone can see how much was stolen and what was used to rip people off. 

The more interesting applications do intrigue me though, as NFTs are proof of ownership having utility in the real world could add real value. Redeemable events, conferences and concerts, access to restaurants and physical goods all exist in the NFT world today. I’m curious how this will pan out. 

In video games the idea of NFTs gets met with a huge amount of hate - not just dismissal. Sure companies need to buy in and invest time to use the blockchain data in their products. But let’s not use the argument of “buy x here use it there”.  Today if you purchase a digital good today it’s account bound. You can sell your account but that’s against TOS in most cases and it’s an all or nothing affair. The company owns your account and can revoke access at any time. Some companies allow you to resell digital goods, but only through their storefront and limited to other users who don’t already have the item. Blockchain would allow you to send, sell or burn on any store that uses that blockchain (or send off chain). If your account gets banned or stolen, your purchases are in your wallet and you can take them with you. Again, it’s the ownership that’s important not the uniqueness in this scenario. 

Then there’s interesting applications in the digital publisher world. If you purchased game licenses as NFTs and could use them at any digital store, and buy or resell through them. The store takes a cut to make some money, the publishers get commission and you actually own the game license. But that’s all pipe dream stuff and not likely. An interesting thought experiment. 

Something to remember when people call NFTs worthless is that they are literally tokens similar to any other crypto based token. The main different with ERC-20 and ERC-721 is that ERC-721 has a unique id and metadata. It’s just that 1 ETH = 1 ETH but 1NFT ≠ 1 NFT. If you agree that ERC-20 tokens have value, given that NFTs are a type of token, then they must have value in both scenarios. It’s just that the demand is a lot lower on one side of the fence, right? And rightly so - most owners want to flip and make money and nothing else. 

It’s worth noting that the metadata can be changed (that’s how NFTs reveal) and that they normally link to IPFS, a web api or URL to pull back the digital item. So the image, sound clip, video, digital selling point of an NFT can go offline in some cases. Then what value does it hold? It’s quite a compelling argument against them if the thing you bought for can disappear, but to each their own.
Re: IP laws, theres a lot of advantage here. Greatly improves value share of licensed/IPs, improving ownership and marketplaces. That they don't have a legal framework yet is going to change over time. Look into the concept of derivatives fo rmore details.

Re: Ownership of metaverses... true, its how they will try to play ball. But I believe ""wedge"" ideas from indie studios and challenger startups will uproot this model, because for now they own the ability to do better... Over time, if you have a small studio that offers just as good, but adds better ownership/value conditions, people will slowly adopt to it.

I'm personally working also in a company that among other things, we're looking to allow cross-operability of NFTs between metaverses/systems/web2-web3. Doing that with a ""wrapper"" that allows an NFT to be rendered in its own way in every space. So you can have an object in Fortnite, and its also available in Minecraft (simple example).
Just look at the recent news of how Logan Paul spent $3 mil on a fake box of first edition Pokemon cards because it was verified by “professional” authenticators. When he opened the box, it had freakin GI Joe cards. NFTs would resolve so many fraudulent activities. I think the recent NFT hype is filled with a bunch of scammers trying to make money off shitty digital art, but the ability for NFT tech to prove authenticity without a middleman has infinite potential in terms of applications imo.
You are correct. There is always a greater fool.
> do the current NFTs have any value, aside from selling to a greater fool?

Same as any cryptocurrency

> There's no uniqueness enforced: 2 people can mint the same image as NFTs

I can copy paste any blockchain such as ETH or SOL and create a identical copy but it won't have the same price. The value is given by the exchanges that list it, the users, the people that pump it,... Blockchain technology on their own is almost useless. If exchanges decide to delist Bitcoin and list Bitcoin cash instead Bitcoin becomes almost worthless. So it's the same with NFT. The value is given by celebrities and media that endorse and pump it.
NFTs are solutions for problems that doesn't exist or already have been solved. All these comments saying ""There are some scammers but NFTs have potential for x or y"" but the x and y already has efficient solutions. Metaverse isn't as hyped as NFTs though. The crypto community has to stop propping up every bullshit just because it uses blockchain.
""1. There's no uniqueness enforced: 2 people can mint the same image as NFTs""

This is not true if NFT dApp uses IPFS for artworks storage, as IPFS is an example of a content-addressable storage technology (the address of a file is only its hash).

The hash of the file on IPFS works differently than checksum. For example, it is not enough to make a very small change to the image, such as changing a single pixel.

The intention of IPFS designers was to protect data against deliberate (editing of a photo, changing a word in the text) altering the data, and not changing it as a result of accident.

If you would like an NFT where only the owner could view content, this solution is being developed in the Elastos (network OS) project.
NFTs in games are pretty pointless at the moment. steam already has a market place that lets you sell unique items and they don't need a blockchain for it at all. it works great.

I have yet to see gaming NFTs which are actually making a good use of blockchain technology. Every one I have seen so far can be also done without the blockchain.
You gotta understand when you buy NFTs you’re buying a TOKEN. NON FUNGIBLE TOKEN that comes with benefits. For example: I spent 3 figures on a Bored Ape Yacht Club and I’ve gotten free Merch, Attend free yacht parties in Miami with Celebrities and rap stars. Can you get that by right click saving jpegs? No. A token comes with Real Life utilities.

Stop believing what Reddit smart asses that tell you about Right Click Save or you own a receipt bullshit. Redditors know Jack shit about NFTs
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Because our current day society is full of degen millennials. Did you think this would turn out any different? This is what happens when you let a generation of lazies make millions of dollars with such little effort. They go ape shit and blow it all on million dollar monkey cartoons.
You are right. 

However, as greater fool goes on, some projects will establish brand value and convert to utility, with the nft as a symbol of support.

Most won’t. I too am interested to see how gaming culture x nfts merge, but it hasnt been smooth so far.

With that said, if crypto goes mainstream, nfts will play a part. Think we are way ahead of ourselves right now. Bubble could still run hot though.
I think a company call [Nexus](https://nexusasa.com/) is building out your game idea currently. Seems interesting.
As far as my limited knowledge goes NFT’s in the art sense is like owing an original Michelangelo. Sure I can copy that painting, but is it the original? Each NFT has a clear creator that’s easily provable through time stamping. In fact art NFT’s are better in the sense that you don’t need some expert to prove it’s the original. It’s on the Blockchain and it’s immutable.
The scarcity comes from the minting and tracking of that specific token. Even if the minted image is the same, it's still not the same token, so it is unique.

As far as ownership rights are concerned, that's a completely different conversation... That everyone seems to be ignoring.
To me, we're in the very early internet days of NFTs. There wasn't much to do then and the meme sites were ones that had stupid little videos or animations. 

NFT are is the low hanging fruit, early experimentation of web3. In 5-10 years we'll have some really awesome stuff, but for now it's mostly just dumb images.

And for your video game nft thoughts, that is more or less what GameStop is heavily rumored to be building right now.
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The current hype around NFT's is for ""art NFT's"" or ""digital land on a few games"" and stupid shit like that. Those are completely stupid and will just die off.  


The ""metaverse"" is essentially just the hype created by Facebook for trying to introduce essentially their own [VRChat.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJp_3-VZZjI) It's also completely stupid and will just die off too. A ""metaverse"" will get nowhere without a good game to keep people engaged. Nobody will give a shit about ""wOrK plACe ReUniOnS on ThE MetAveRsE"" like Facebook and a few companies try to hype it out.  


Granted, if the VR tech *does advance considerably*, like a jump from regular keystroke phones to iPhones, it *could* start to get interesting. But I don't see that happening any time soon (15-20 years).
Don't use your brain, its called FUD. Please stop.
With NFT art, I don't understand the hype but NFT as in-game assets or property owners in a metaverse it has more sense to me. Still, what doesn't make sense is paying thousands or hundreds for a limited NFT to have access to a game, good luck playing the game with other 99 people.
Hobbyist who has been on this roller coaster since 2011 here. 

I think NFTs can serve a legit purpose but right now they seem to being used as a pacifier for all those investors who think they missed out on Crypto and this is the next big thing. 

Essentially people who don't understand crypto and Bitcoin are having FOMO and now they think they are on the next hot thing and influencers and promoters see a market and are taking advantage of it and them.
The fact is that most people dont even know what an nft is. Everyone presumes the only use case is jpegs. Do your research.
Currently, it is a money laundering and ""ponzi"" like tool (due to royalties). 

They market an NFT collection. Keep wash trading it up until some sucker buys it. 

That's how its being mainly used. However, NFT's itself are a phenomenal tool for creators and the WEB3. Anything with finance will have collusion or scams. Scams have the best marketing tools.
> As far as I know, nothing like this exists yet, so the current NFTs are pretty useless.

The technology for something like that doesn't exist yet, unless you want to pay three transaction fees for every turn.
Neblio has real use cases for nft. Concert / plane / all kind of tickets can be NFT's with qr code. It is bigger than the stupid art stuff
Right now, its high end fashion digitised. Its a flex. Zoomers aren't going to spend big bucks on cars/watches/jewellery/diamonds when they spend most of their time online, they're going to flex with digital items instead.   


They're often keys into gated communities too, which are often full of very smart people.
NFTs are a tool, just like ICOs, just like blockchain itself. They have a use case which is almost unexplored, like enforcing digital ownership of physical things, etc.

Now, some fool convinced others that NFTs are the next big thing, sold some to others that obviously shared shilling NFTs because they don't care about the art (some of it has 0 intrinsical value) but about the promise of selling them later for a greater price, some other clever people saw there was money to be made so they created a bunch more NFTs, etc.

Eventually it will all be over and we'll be left with the real use cases of NFTs. So it's not a scam, it's just a bunch of dumb people with money misusing a specific tool
It's hustlers looking for suckers
TL:DR **sex sells**

from a fundamental perspective

* content creators / media companies / news outlets
   * are businesses and as a business, their goal is to earn money
* bored ape NFTs / virtual land in the metaverse / etc...
   * are easy to understand and create a story / narrative / opinion around.
* the mechanism behind Proof of Work / Hashing functions / etc...
   * are technical and required an in-depth study to understand.  this doesn't make for a very interesting content.
* therefore naturally stories about bored apes out perform hashing functions.
We can't say NFTs are pretty useless as they still got use in games and not just common jpegs. We can see how games are springing forth just like cometh where you have to use your ship (NFT) to explore the space.
>I think this would be especially useful for trading card games (e.g. MTG, Yugioh, Pokemon), where people can buy cards through a smart contract and load their cards into any client to play with other people.

There is one. Check out Gods Unchained. You can trade cards on their Ethereum L2 solution without gas. It is a really high quality game, not like all the other stuff.
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I think you are underestimating. how valuable the market of buying status is 

I see in other replies you're looking at changing perspective to recognise NFT's as collectors items, I just want to emphasise how big that can be for people beyond just mega rich buying celebrity owned items - the best example here is in game skins, if you go on fortnite without a skin you get mocked as 'default', have a NFT and in that collection discord you will get hyped

People will pay a lot in the pursuit of buying status within a community
https://www.reddit.com/r/zam___io/

This is great and gorgeous project and this is bright in future and all should be participating in this project.
most end up on ipfs / arweave which are decentralised services 

there are also nfts that have their images exist entirely onchain, see cryptopunks for example
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NFTs today are what ICOs were in 2017
Interesting, just read about Uniswap V3, the NFTs there are used as IOUs like in Layer 2 solutions right? That's a use-case for NFTs that seems useful, though it's useful because it exists solely on the blockchain. It's the NFTs that need to interface with the real world that are problematic: dealing with IP laws, VR systems, etc.
Think OP is focusing on nfts as products / investments. 

Consumers cant do anything with uni pool nfts. Its a golden use case, but cant really profit from it directly.
The fact that Uniswap V3 ""runs on NFTs"" is really just an implementation detail though.  They don't market it as ""running on NFTs"" because it's not that important.

A ""thing that has some properties and is like other similar things but aren't interchangeable"" is just a concept that arises in a lot of situation that people are giving a name to and then get all excited when they figure out how to buy and sell them.  OP is totally right to be cynical.
So NFTs have value as collector's items as long as many people are interested in NFTs. E.g. as long as Pokemon is popular, then rich collectors will pay 100k+ for old Charizards. I've been trying to understand NFTs as investments, but as collector's items they make more sense
Proof of ownership for real estate? What if the government doesnt ever recognise that proof of ownership? Even if you paid a million usd, who cares if your local court can just evict you. 

Sure if you pay all taxes and fees then your local gov would recognise you as the owner but then whats the point of blockchain if the gov is still a central entity you need to rely on. 

Proof of ownership can be very valuable
 (ex. How do you prove you are the real owner of the mona lisa? Thought thats slightly different since physical).
 99% of nfts are worthless right now.  The ones that do have value need something more than just a pic.  

I can only see proof of ownership being usefull for items outside government control. Real estate isn't one of them.
> real money will be in real estate IRL using blockchain to secure the title ownership

With the current laws in the US, you'd still need legal documents right? E.g. if person A transfers the token for a home to person B, but they didn't sign any papers, then by law person A still owns the home?

On the other hand, if there's a way to make the blockchain info override legal documents, then that should increase the risk of a 51% attack. E.g. apparently it only costs a few million dollars per day to 51% attack Bitcoin. It would be very easy for the value of a few homes to exceed that. After 51% attacking Bitcoin, they would have the legal right to evict the previous owners, etc. It's not illegal to do a 51% attack, so a lot of chaos would ensue.
>you can't make more land IRL but in VR it's infinite

I've been looking into investing in virtual land and in my understanding new land within a platform won't be created if it's governed by a DAO. Decentraland, for instance, is governed by a DAO so the only way new land can ever be created is if it's current owners vote it, however it wouldn't ever make sense to do so because the sudden increase in supply will drive all their land values down so it would be against their interests
> what's valuable is the story and not the art itself

This makes a lot of sense! So it doesn't matter what's in the NFT, but as long as it becomes famous enough, it could become a collector's item.
as someone with art buddies doing well in the space, and seeing non-art buddies participate for their own reasons (speculation, gambling, betting on the future, treating it like a game, and also wanting to see what it's like being a digital art collector for the novelty – could be a mix of all these and some more), and personally as someone who is just observing but staying out of it for my own reasons and values, I think this is a simple and realistic take.

there are those who wanna see cryptocurrency & NFT art shenanigans implode, and I don't necessarily disagree with them entirely, as there's obviously a lotta turd being churned out left and right.

but if there's this much money already poured into certain NFT's, there may be enough of a crowd who bought into the culture of it to keep it alive whether or not there is mass adoption.

might not be an accurate parallel, but I can't see myself ever being interested in buying/ selling fancy watches. It just doesn't appeal to me whatsoever. But there's a large enough cohort that buys into expensive watch collecting, and there are enough buyers and sellers.

I can see NFT art (not speaking about its other uses per se, as I have zero experience with the tech's underpinnings even if I think it's highly likely it'll be used in other ways in the future from smart people who find practical uses for it) having enough players who have dumped big money into it, who understand who's who in the scene, and are able to agree upon worth – even if others can't see it – to keep it afloat.

Who knows, though. But the NFT art doesn't seem at all about practicality or functionality, but about cultural cache. A ""Veblen good,"" in that it's about flexing to those who also flex in the same way to the in-group you wanna flex to.

>Just like with any art—or, really, any item for which you pay more than the production cost—you pay for the story. 

That's a very expensive story then.
We already have proof of ownership in a digital form that's much easier to use than an NFT.

NFTs don't NEED to have anything to do with ownership, although they can, and that's perhaps the most obvious use for them.

The mechanical significance of an NFT is that it is stored on a blockchain, and it is a way of linking data to a unique token on that blockchain.

I bet there are some really clever uses for them coming down the pipe that have nothing to do with individuals and ownership.  You just need to find an engineering problem that requires the above parameters, and use NFTs as a tool to solve it.  It could be almost anything.  They're a versatile tool.
Also it makes them feel like they're hip to technology and in the know. Celebrities have been dying to jump on the tech hype train since forever. NFTs are a (very) low barrier entry so they can flex that they know about ""blockchain"" and ""metaverse"" and are hip with it, while really not understanding anything. As the saying goes, a fool and their money are easily parted.
They're a luxury good and a status symbol for influencers and other self-centered rich people who live on the internet.  A fashion statement

They're also an investment for people looking to trade for profit

Not too different from bottles of wine you never drink, furniture in houses you never live in, and art you'll never truly understand because you have no soul
Thanks for the article, I agree with everything he wrote, have to mull it over.

> I still don't see what the point of going through all that extra effort would be when you could just use a database

I think the main benefit is permanence. If the company shuts down, in theory it's possible for a client to read game data directly from a blockchain instead of the company's servers. Also, if players are unhappy with the game's changes, they can make their own client.
>Right now, NFTs are a solution in search of a problem.

Do you see the Monalisa Painting or Vincent van Gogh's painting solving a problem?
I don't see the point in using NFTs for concert tickets.  A centralized database does just as well as a blockchain, if not far better.

Same deal with real estate.
I understand where people come from with social media platform's being able to verify NFTs as profile pictures, however, I feel like it defeats the raw purpose of what blockchain is supposed to be about. It would definitely create more hype and an increase in the money being invested but the whole idea of having a centralized company verify an NFT feels counter intuitive to the original idea. I could be misunderstanding what you mean with that particular part but that's always been the way that I view it
If you can’t transfer it, is it really a token?  

Also, is your thought that the person checking the tickets would like, check that the person can sign a challenge message using the address that owns the ticket?  

That could work, I suppose, but there is a workaround for ticket re-sellers:  
Create a new address for each ticket they want to re-sell, and just buy it with that address, and sell the private keys for the address. Sure, the ticket re-seller can’t prove that they won’t use that ticket themselves, or sell it to someone else,  but I don’t think this is necessarily too much of an obstacle.
That sounds like a novelty use frankly but I guess it's kinda cool because NFTs are all the rage.
Do you have a public website or way to contact your group? My team is building out an NFT sales pipeline for assets and we want to keep up to date with an emerging standards for digital assets in metaverses.
> Logan Paul spent $3 mil on a fake box of first edition Pokemon

Without knowing anything about this, I'd say this is a publicity stunt.
The only fool here is criticising something that he/she doesn’t understands :)
Im not too interested in your debate here, but wanted to let you in on a secret.  


Every major exchange could delist bitcoin right this moment, and it will NOT be worthless.  


TBH, I'd guess that after initial shock, It would be worth multiple times its current price.
I believe you are mistaken regarding IPFS addresses! Changing a single pixel *will* completely change the IPFS address.  
If it did not change it, then it would be ambiguous how to resolve the address.  
It should be computationally infeasible to find two different images which have the same IPFS address.  

I mean, heck, I think you can even just, use different settings for how to chunk the image, and it will change the IPFS address (don’t quote me on that though).

It isn’t like, locality sensitive hashing, where small changes to images will produce similar hashes.
Not everyone is a degenerate looking to spend six figures so that they could pretend they have famous friends. Thats not really appealing to most.
Using words like ""speculative asset"", ""ethos"", ""price volatility"", ""intelligent economic systems"", ""disruptive"" actually made you sound like an idiot
So, you say he is wrong and go on walloftexting random offtopic opinion. 
Can you at least try to elaborate on the most important part: why should NFTs not be considered in a greater fools theory context. - i am in the same boat as op, having a really hard time grasping the nft hype. - sorry for my wording, i dont want to be condescending, i know too little about nfts and their potential obviosly, so... yeah. 😗😇😅
said the guy who has 0 knowledge about NFTs
Idea for setup, which should usually reduce things to only having transactions at the start and end of a match, provided that both players don’t deliberately try to make the other player need to make transactions (which is still probably not super useful, but still) :   
1) (optional) have the contract which tracks who owns how many of each type of card, allow a feature where you can freeze your ability to transfer the cards for a fixed amount of time  
2) at the start of the match, player’s decks are registered (possibly using some stuff to commit to them without revealing the content of one’s deck to the other player, but still granting them an assurance that one has the tokens for all the cards in one’s deck)  
3) pass back and forth signed messages describing moves and gamestate (and timestamps), in ways that are verifiably valid given the previous state. In order to handle the hidden information of “what cards are in your hand”, use the same techniques which have been used for preventing cheating in [online poker without a central server] .  
4) If any player makes an invalid move, the other player can prove this fact and win (presenting the proof to the smart contract), tell them to make a valid move, or, if they choose, allow the invalid move (if more than 2 players, or if someone other than these two players has an interest in the game, then all players, or a representative for all interested parties, must sign the same message agreeing to accept the invalid move as valid. Alternatively, committing to this not being a possibility can probably be done by using some kind of proof aggregation thing in order to be able to succinctly prove to the contract at the end that all the moves made were valid.)  
5) If a player doesn’t make a move within  a given time limit, then the next player can submit a dispute claim to the smart contract, either where this would count as the other player forfeiting, or skipping their turn, and where the player skipped has a given amount of time during which they can contest this.  
If the player making the claim had previously signed a move which came after the move they claimed wasn’t being made, they are cheating and they lose.  

There is a substantial issue here, where by refusing to make a move, (or, by refusing to send one’s opponent the message describing one’s move), one could force the other player to make their moves on-chain, as you say, which would be problematic.

(Of course, wouldn’t need the entire game state or move description, just a commitment, but still)  

6) finally, final move is verified as valid by the contract (or, if this would be computationally expensive, committed on the smart contract with a claimed result, and only verified by the contract if the claimed result is contested.)

__________

However, a much simpler solution, would be to not even have a smart contract have any transactions during a match at all, where except when cards are being traded/sold/issued/banned/unbanned , the clients simply, check the state of the smart contract, without any transaction happening.  

(Why do you want to be able to cryptographically validate all the moves of a game with a changing card list? That is very complicated with not much benefit.)  

If you want to have betting on the results of the match, just use a 3rd party judge (or panel of judges, depending on the importance of the match).

I don’t think there’s much tendency for judges to cheat or be bribed in big card game tournaments.

And, if there is a standard simulator which encodes the rules of the game, it becomes fairly unambiguous whether a ruling is legitimate. A rules judge who was bribed would lose all reputation as a rules judge.
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NFTs aren't meant to deal with IP laws though
>there are used as IOUs like in Layer 2 solutions right

Kinda yeah but the mechanism is totally different.  But [that's not really saying much](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/s56i2k/as_a_software_engineer_invested_in_crypto_for/hsxtmqe/)
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This is a great way to look at it, theres no simpler way to explain it.
I agree with you that they make sense as collector’s items. one of the use cases I picture, for example, is with comics: it would allow to give scarcity and value also to digital copies (which could then be in limited editions in some cases, for example with some covers). The investment part could follow the collection part (as it happens in “real life”). 
The fact is that currently there is a huge hype, so many “normally valueless” items become collectors material and, thus, valuable as investment. I believe that after this hype ends, only some of those will hold their value, because (for example) they were the first NFTs minted
Of course it's only useful if the state recognizes it. I don't think it's impossible. We're definitely not there yet, though
Out of curiosity, I decided to run some rough cost estimates for a 51% attack on Bitcoin.

The current BTC hashrate is ~200 EH/s, so a 51% attack would need ~100 EH/s (100x10^18 H/s).

The Antminer S19 does about 100 TH/s (100x10^12 H/s), so you'd need around a million of them.

In practice that's way more than actually exist, but it's just a thought experiment.

It's a 3kW unit, so each one consumes 24x3 = 72kWh per day.

The cheapest electricity in the US is around 7c per kWh, so at that rate, you'd spend 72x0.07x10^6 = $5.02M / day to maintain a 51% attack.

Of course, that ignores the hardware costs. The retail cost per unit is $11,500, so the hardware alone would be north of $11.5B.

Edit: I just realized that technically it wouldn't be enough to have half the *existing* hashrate, you'd need to *match* the existing hashrate for a 51% attack, so you can double all those figures, and it would be more like $23B upfront + $10M/day.
No one is gonna be doing this on the ancient tech of Bitcoin. 51% attacks are old news.
I invested in Decentraland around the same time I bought Enjin in 2017. The fact remains that you CAN make more land so the supply isn't intrinsically bounded the way IRL real estate is.
I see a lot of misconceptions around avatar NFTs.

They are not art, they are an asset. If you invest in an NFT collection you get more than just an image displayed in your wallet. You gain access to the community and depending on the project, passive income, brand awareness, irl events, 3d models, early access to upcoming projects etc.

And possibly emotions of community and identity. Many people still can’t grasp it because they didn’t experience it yet.

I think NFTs are the evolution and combination of meme coins and DeFi. Less abstract, more approachable and more appealing than traditional crypto. I got a free LOOKS drop based on my NFT trading, that is currently staked at 800% APR. The crazy part, this could be (more or less) sustainable because their NFT platform gives 100% of the trading fees to stakers. The high volume is currently mainly based on wash trades but they will take over plenty of volume from Opensea in the long run. Looksrare is a billion dollar venture in the hands of the NFT community. It's just easier and safer for investors compared to providing liquidity on i.e. Uniswap.

The numbers show this as well. We just crossed 1million users on Opensea, which is nothing yet. But take a look how steep that graph is.

[https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea](https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea)

My advice, just buy an NFT and look for yourself. Buying my first was my best investment decision so far, and I say that as a Doge investor who bought in 2020. The projects needs to be solid of course. Or at least hop into some Discord communities and look around.

Three suggestions to look at on Ethereum:Deez Nuts NFT, House of Legends, The Doge Pound
To play Devil's Advocate:

Why would a company bother with that? If a game is networked, it still probably needs servers running to control things, since you can't just trust clients. A more decentralized setup that allows self-hosted or private server managed games with smaller groups is feasible, but then you've still got hosts with control. A p2p setup is possible, but then we're getting into a really limited set of games and a lot more complexity for the net code of a game. If you have your own servers to power the networked aspects of a game, then why not have them vend such data as well?

The reality is that reading data from the blockchain directly is pretty difficult today without running a node on the network.

A potentially better way to achieve similar results to what you described would be for a company to have a fully public dataset available at all times. A simple readonly API for it works just fine. If the company servers ever shut off, the community can fork the last state from it and let that be the source of truth. Different clients can all individually fork off on their own as well.  


This kind of calls back to the original idea of what *used* to be called web3: https://ansiwave.net/blog/semantic-web.html
In the sense of serving a purpose?  
Yes.
Centralized database does that better for now, but the service owning that database usually takes a fee (eg ticketmaster). If we can get crypto transaction fees down to less than a cent (which is already true for some crypto), then it becomes cheaper to use a model that doesn't rely on third-parties. Same with real estate. Right now to transfer ownership you need a notary, who charges a fee. A decentralized solution may be cheaper. Not to mention signature forgery on paperwork is much easier than trying to forge transactions on the blockchain
i dont disagree with that

im a dev, i think the nft fad is just that. most people dont realise you dont even own the jpg just the link on the IPFS which itself ironically doesnt need a token. runs on a bittorrent like protocol. so the jpg itself could be not exist forever.

but divisional assets has value. that you cant put in a database, well you can but you cant trust a single custodian.
Sure, this is us [https://smarttokenlabs.com/](https://smarttokenlabs.com/) feel free to DM
> Every major exchange could delist bitcoin right this moment, and it will NOT be worthless.

It will not be worth 0 but very close to 0. Where will the miners sell 900 BTC per day if it is traded only at street corners?
Indeed, everything I can read about it shows that you are right. The address in IPFS will change with every change to the file itself.

It is my fault that I repeated someone else's opinion without checking to what extent it is factually correct. I will be more careful in the future for sure...
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I think maybe not trying to implement games on top of financial vehicles would be easier.
Without it I can just make an NFT of your NFT.   
Like China copying tech without IP protection.
Nothing is stopping you from building a reusable rocket. I mean Space-X did it. It's almost like theory means shit when the problem is actual real life cost...

It's so expensive no one does it outside of some dumb pixel art yet people think we will have games on Blockchain. Yeah not going to happen. 99% of NFTs are just links to a file hosted on good 'ol centralized server controlled by someone who actually own the file in practice.
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Nice one!

And never forget: people will just fork as soon as they realize what you've done and then it was all for nothing lol
All you need is to rewrite 6 blocks, you don’t need 24h. At that point, any BTC transfer bigger than those costs means it would make more sense to attack the network than complete the transaction. Best part is that it’s repeatable. Anyway, you’d send the BTC to an exchange, trade it for a bunch of other crypto, get the other crypto’s sent to your wallets, and then bam, get your costs reimbursed.
But is it true that land can only be created if voted upon by the current owners, deincentivizing them to do so?
so does bored ape yacht club :)
Ever heard of a DEX? or better yet, the scary dark web? Where do you think BTC was traded before it was mainstreamed?
Lol. Enjoy your monkey money. While it lasts.
most end up on ipfs / arweave which are decentralised services  


there are also nfts that have their images exist entirely onchain, see cryptopunks for example
I used to think like you!! But it's wrong I think because crypto has many advantages here besides decentralization of control. First, there's transparency in the processes. Also there's decentralization of knowledge.

Picture this: gov passes law that makes nfts valid ownership. From that point on, I can always publicly dispute any decision the gov makes, right? I have proof on my side. If they don't want to ""legitimize"" my purchase of s house, they can, but i can dispute that easily by showing Blockchain proof.
Also, you would have to ensure that you solve the nonce for several blocks in a row. If you have say 55% of the total network hashrate, the odds of you getting 10 nonces in a row isn't worth the resources. For it to be a reliable attack, you would realistically need something like 75-85% of the hashrate. I just can't see a scenario where doing this would be something worth doing.
Very true, but they'd need also to be 6 *consecutive* blocks.

With 51% of the hash rate, the probability of mining any *individual* block is 0.51.

The probability of mining any 6 *consecutive* blocks is 0.51^6 or 1.76%, so you'd still need to maintain such an attack for many hours.
Sure but there is no hard limit that will drive prices up indefinitely because at a certain point there will be pressure to add more land when current owners want to expand their holdings.
I suppose. Not one which I value though.
There's nothing about Bored Ape Yacht Club that couldn't be implemented better/easier on a centralized web 2.0 stack using OAuth as the mechanism to offer gating of any exclusive content/events/features that it desired. Of course, it probably wouldn't have taken off it had because there would be no crypto hype train behind it. The only reason for the hype is that there's hype that can be capitalized and preyed upon.  


NFTs as a mechanism for associating state with wallets that can be used in smart contracts are still useful as a primitive upon which other building blocks can be built. The example brought up in another thread about how Uniswap uses them to represent positions is one such legitimate example of this being done. To date, no real decentralized solution to use NFTs for art ownership exists today.
There is no DEX except Bisq which no one uses.
You can *already* do that for titles with the current solution.
What solution? The current one the gov has? Depends on the gov lol
You move all that inefficient and wasteful record keeping out as a burden for gov orgs. They can just issue title NFTs and let the private market build whatever apps they need on top of these records. We probably can’t predict the new behaviors or efficiency improvements when the data in these legacy systems are opened up and available via api.
Sure, but that's exactly the same as NFTs to solve this problem. Government isn't going to opensource that power. Some governments won't adopt, or be slow, or adopt poorly. Like the current system.
I understand, but nfts are just a tech to achieve that. Your ""current solution"", when digitalized for the modern world, might be nft. Even if inside a private chain"
What's the point of these blockchain metaverse games?,180,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/qjuu3p/whats_the_point_of_these_blockchain_metaverse/,"So far you summarized exactly what I think too. Most people I see in the crypto and NFT communities are simply hyping up certain coins that they have invested in themselves. The Metaverse community I doubt is any different. There is little practical use for crypto, NFTs, and Metaverse games presently. However, that doesn't mean they aren't revolutionary. All I'm saying is that people are not able to grasp at the practicality of these new techs but are investing based on their ""gut-feeling"" that it'll be ""big"" someday... I believe a digital economy within games could be a new way of building real wealth as well, but only time will tell how it ends up doing in reality.
I used to play MMORPs like 15-20 years ago. Even then there were people paying others real money for in-game items or even entire accounts. The companies were always trying to clamp down on it, but it's clear they could only do so much.

This is just an extension of that.
I personally don't see the value in property-focused metaverse games. But I'm very excited about play-to-earn games.

>why play a blockchain version of a game over a traditional one?

It's the same reason most people find it more fun to play poker with real money than fake money. Both you and your opponents play more seriously and winning feels like a bigger accomplishment. Plus, if you get good at it, you have a hobby that makes you money instead of costing you money.
I want to separate the idea of the metaverse and blockchain.  I don't see these as the same thing.  Blockchain is simply one possible solution to the payment problem inherent here.          

The current incarnation is dumb.  It's just a scam.       

The problem with the current incarnation is they are failing to consider what ""reality"" implies in a virtual world and how value is created in these worlds.  Which is to say that having people own fixed addresses within a virtual or monetizing the infrastructure of that world is beyond dumb.  In a digital world any door can lead to any instance and any city can be packed with NPCs to give the feeling of a thriving virtual world.  For reference FF14 has digital neighborhoods, but they are each instanced out.  So 60 players can own a home in each instance.  There are many copies of each neighborhood.  And it's a very popular part of the game.                   

Now I think there are applications further into the future but predicting the shape of technological development is historically difficult.        

We know that people are willing to buy digital goods and services within popular games with real money.  People also have a tremendous desire for unique cosmetic items within these games as well as having their own server accessible spaces.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the demand here will grow as technology improves.         

Now is blockchain the best way to connect the supply and demand in these markets?  I don't know, but I'm reasonably confident that the amount of digital transactions will only grow with time.
I agree that they are shit right now but the fundamental two properties imo are:

with blockchains you can:

1. achieve digital scarcity in a decentralized way
2. make the items in the games interoperable with the items in other games

For number 1, if you don't have scarcity then most things in the game will be worthless, but if it is centralized then the scarcity won't matter because someone can kick you out at any moment. For number 2, you need interoperability because otherwise I think the whole concept of metaverse won't work. If you don't have it and every tech company creates their own metaverse and for example the microsoft one have no interoperability with the apple one, then would it really be a ""metaverse""?

With this being said, the ""metaverse"" games that are on the market right now are mostly shit and a cash-grab, as you said. But, I think blockchain technology (or whatever you need to fulfil atleast these 2 properties) will be necessary for creating a metaverse.
sadly, we do not live in a rational world; that is to say it does not make any sense, but it will make money so the games will be made
You are not failing to understand anything. They are just convoluted pyramid schemes.
giving you more control over items you acquire in the game, monetizing the game for the players, the beginning of the meta verse, ready player 1 style.

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There is speculation that by 2050 most of us will ""live"" in the digital world as most jobs get automated away, we need another way to generate value, the metaverse will be huge with so many people on it generating value through various means.
It's like an updated version of second life and the timing with the pandemic is perfect. 

It's not just gaming, it's shopping, concerts, exhibitions, meeting friends etc.

We can't even comprehend all the use cases that will come from this.
I largely agree with your point, but here’s a perhaps decent case for, some variation on the idea:  
Suppose some game has some purely cosmetic items which are unlocked normally over the course of playing the game. It isn’t too unusual for it to be possible to trade these items with other players for in-game currency or other items. It doesn’t seem to break things to allow them to be exchanged for arbitrary other stuff in a programmatic way, though by itself this doesn’t seem to produce much benefit either.

So here’s the idea behind the benefit: the organization behind the game releases the art assets for the item under a license which allows other games (or alternatively specific other games that they’ve made a deal with) to use those art assets *exclusively for the purpose of allowing users who own the item to wear it in-game*. 

Why would this be desirable?  

1) cross promotion between games, people playing the second game see the item from the first game, and learn about the first game.  
2) the developers of the second game get an art asset that they can use (in exchange for the deal, they could also get the right to distribute some number of copies of the item)  
3) players get to maybe dress up their character like a character from the other game, or just generally get more cosmetics they can use for their characters.   

Now, does this really require blockchain stuff to accomplish?

Uh, not really?   

It could allow for a kind of common ground between games? And a built-in way to allow player trading.

One difficulty of this idea is that different art assets are designed for different scales of player character body shapes and art styles, so not everything could be re-used so easily. A partial way to address this would be to include in the license the permission to adopt the size/shape/art style as appropriate, but if the people including it in their game have to put in that work, there is less of the “free art asset” benefit.

Edit: I think a semi-centralized pseudo-blockchain , or like, one for each game, but in an inter-compatible way, still having the append-only structure, and with each game having a strong incentive not to “roll back history”, would probably provide most of the same benefits for it, especially if they had contract languages strong enough to build inter-chain trade things (with the whole “make transfer x if preimage of this hash is given before time t, otherwise transfer it back to y” scheme)
Same old business concept repackaged into a new digital technology and sold to people who wants to get rich quick. Just take note and move on.
Take a look at Roblox outage right now. Centralized servers and millions of players are locked out. Is Roblox good? Not in my opinion, but over 50 million teenagers do think so. I don't know how old you are, but I think metaverse is for future generations, and it os a dystopian future. But maybe we can make some money out of it along the way. Agreed that right now it's not as good, early adopters thing.
I see this in the same eyes as you. There will be a lot of money filtered through these ""metaverses"" but I just don't see the point. At the end of the day it real human interaction that many of us require. These types of games have existed for 2 decades... Look at second life.
Here’s the way I understand it. Many app games these days allow you to buy customizations that don’t give you any advantage in the game but look “cool” (cool is in the eye of the beholder). Look at COD2 on iOS for example. Now imagine, these people that like these customizations could buy original skins, clothing, cars etc(nfts) that only they own. Then the could possibly use them in more than one game. So let’s say you purchase a custom car that you can use in COD and then also use in some other game and also show them off in your meta verse room (or whatever it’s called) to your friends that play that game. I have never spent any money on these customizations myself but it’s a high revenue industry. If it wasn’t, the games wouldn’t be free. I feel like it’s no different than physical items like baseball/Pokémon cards, shoes, superhero figurines etc. Just because we don’t think it’s cool or “makes sense” doesn’t mean somebody else won’t.
I don't know much about these metaverse games but they should offer an engine or tools to create games within the Blockchain, they should also make an app to play such games. I imagine, for example, an MMORPG where all items have a token and the blockchain has the info of who owns what, i'm talking gear, ingame currency, raw materials, etc. all of those things associated to tokens that can be exchanged in an auction house and are also connected with the main token via supply and demand. People engagin with such game (ideally speaking) could easily trade accounts or items through the blockchain. Rare drops could be traded, etc. Obviously all this value would depend on how good the game really is, how popular it becomes and how the internal economy behaves arround gameplay mechanics, in other words, we wouldn't be especulating arround the token associated with wood but instead there would be supply and demand coming from real people playing the game and needing wood to progress in it, with the option of trading it with ingame obtainable currency or paying with real money. 

The devs of such game can choose different moentization approaches as we see in normal games, some items could be sold for real money (hopefully avoiding turning the game into p2w) such as cosmetics, or they could charge a monthly fee for playing like in wow.
I like the example of Axie vs Pokemon. Axie gives owners of NFTs control over the outcome of the future types of battling dudes in the game (via breeding) whereas Pokemon will always have control over what type of Pokémon can use what specific moves + they will never allow a pickachu to breed with a charizard. Axie gives control back to owners of their NFTs, which is pretty cool. 

Now why do average players play the game? This is one that people from developed nations will not understand intuitively, but I pay Scholars to use my NFTs and they get paid more in a day from me than they do working their IRL jobs. For example, my top player is a manager at a call center, you know those outsourcing Q&A help phone numbers. He lives in the Philippines but works for a call center that services American companies. Therefore he works grueling hours (9 pm-9 am his time, 9 am- 9pm est). So he works 10-12 hour days and gets paid around $20 USD a day to do something he hates and that is incredibly unhealthy for both his physical, mental and social health. Or he can play Axie with my NFTs and make $15-25 USD in 4 hours at his own leisure.

My second best player (who recently is beating my top guy in daily earnings) is a student who uses his funds to pay for groceries, textbooks, and rent.

It is an easy and obvious good deal for these players, until the minimum wage globally increases, these games can provide better jobs with better hours and more autonomy (all things we take for granted in developed countries).
Online players are already spending real money on digital goods like in gta, call of duty, pubg....
With the advent of smartphones and easily accessible internet facilities, there has been a dramatic increase in the adoption of web-based games. Crypto being the hottest trend, crypto games are disrupting the conventional mobile and PC games. The unique proposition between the mass adoption of crypto games is that the users can earn real crypto assets as rewards while they play in exchange for their effort and time. Worldwide Asset Exchange published a stat that over 75% of online gamers love exchanging their virtual assets for currencies that can be used across various platforms. Crypto gaming does the same, allowing gamers to collect, store and exchange virtual gaming assets that are tradeable on the blockchain through various NFT marketplaces. Crypto games allow gamers to earn while they enjoy unlimited gaming built by the leading game developers.
I want to create a character in a video game then use that as my avatar to virtually visit Comic-Con.
With real money involved the pace of technological innovation by developers and adoption by users, retail and enterprise alike, will increase rapidly. The quality and quantity of virtual and augmented reality software will soon make today's offerings look crude, slow, and useless.

It isn't hard to imagine use cases for government and corporations. Assessing the skills of potential employees via immersive environments that mimic those they'll encounter and improving or developing new skills in current employees. Just one example of a real use case that can make hiring and training people much more efficient and effective and therefore saving billions in costs.

But why does cryptocurrency and blockchain technology need to be involved when virtual and augmented reality works fine without them? The companies that develop the technology won't be making detailed programs that are unique to each requirement. They'd more likely provide highly advanced ""stencils"" or basic layouts with simplified SDKs that will be utilized by what we now call IT departments, to be leased out as needed and paid for with the developer's cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology will be needed to accurately record everything that occurs within these virtual and augmented environments, for payment purposes to employees or subcontractors or accounts receivable. Keeping an immutable record of events and inventory and payments makes enterprises far less susceptible to hacking and keeps everyone honest.

Just a simple example. The possibilities of all these technologies being used together, including our ever expanding fiber optic network and increasingly sophisticated radio mobile cellular networks, are truly mind boggling.
I think the appeal is that it pretty much works like real life, except you get to choose who you want to be, and nothing hurts.
if people think a metaverse is likely, they will look for something that can become a prominent metaverse and get in early. this is the premise behind investing in any non profitable startup.

they will eventually need to generate positive-sum interactions to be sustainable. but they don't yet.
So I skimmed through this thread and  don't think anybody has said this yet.

The idea is that we will one day live in vr. It  will likely be similar to the numbers we have that show usage rate, or screen on time, since cell phones were initially released up until now.

At first vr adds some functionality, then it adds good games/experiences. Then we start using it every day for an hour to play games or have an experience. Until it gets better and better and we stay spending more and more time inside of it.

People that own the metaverse will be able to control our realitys.

Imagine going the minecraft metaverse with your friends for a few hours, and then jumping into the halo metaverse in a squad of 4.

We may be NOWHERE close to this type of world, however, when we do arrive there whether it takes 5 years or 500 years, these companies are trying to pioneer that space.
Nfts have a good place as ownership for real items, in my opinion, but not these silly games

Enjin for instance is a crypto to have nonfungable ownership of items in a regular computer game, I think CS go skins is a big one.

Nft makes sense for ownership of music and art too.

But yeah the collection based crypto punks , kitties, whatever, is just beanie babies or Pokemon cards, what have you
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I think metaverse have a real utility in times to come. You cannot deny the fact that its been pumping all over, This is same in FUN whose dplay casino is now live. Things are about to go virtual in times to come.
The future is the matrix.  
Kids these days far prefer meeting up with all their online friends and spending time in the current crop of online games. Sporty kids or gang members not as much. 
When this stuff gets to a reasonable level of reality not even full immersion, then you will see the next generation will take the view that this is their preferred reality.  VR porn is thriving.... so I heard 
Bang models, drive fast car, take crazy risks and do mad stuff with no chance of physical death ( unlike the matrix).  

You will start to see that virtual merchandise will become worth far more than you would believe. 
We are not as far from this as you may think. 

I was at this girls the other day and all her kids wanted with their  money was more robux top ups. They dont care about bikes, radio controlled cars or anything I would want as a kid. They want new cool clothes and hair styles online you have to earn or buy. These were not super young kids either.

That's kids you say. Wait and see. 
Physical items will become less and less valued and only things that sustain their abilities to hook back in and live the virtual life to the max will be valued 

Big house ...nope
Flash car ... nope
Flash watches ...nope

No IRL

Seems like sci fi nonsense but I see it happening with kids and adults.  Some other girl told me that her EX had an online family in some game or another and was shocked that she didnt understand they depended on him and he had to spend countless hours with them and providing for them??

I started laughing until she didnt come with the punch line and she was super serious. 

Facebook clearly has access to huge data and sees this is exactly where we are heading. 

Some of these early metaverse attempts are simply that and many are way too centralized by early adopters. But eventually they will improve and all this laughing at nfts and virtual items will leave people with egg on their face. 

I have no nft or any virtual assets or land. But I'm watching closely and will not hesitate to try and improve my real world situation by trading or investing in these metaverse projects. 

Like you say though many are super centralized and would be like joining a game of monopoly late stage with no money and no property and having to pay real money to throw the dice.

I mean maybe it could just be done as a totally centralized and owned project ...I just see the items and ownership of assets and land is nice on a blockchain or dlt.  The aim is to be super successful in the metaverse so that spending time IRL sustaining yourself is cut to a minimum. The more people care less about real life items and luxuries and travel then better for the environment I guess :)

I'll stick with real life until I'm 85 with my nappy on... then I'm going to dive in.
Whilst I think I agree with you that monetising in-game items is somewhat predatory we can't deny games that have done it successfully have been incredibly popular & there are many people out there who spend more time in digital worlds than they do the real world, these people will happily spend money on digital items, be that for social status or in-game utility.

I think in the future digital items could actually have far more value than todays centralised versions if we are to develop a way for NFTs to have longevity (i.e transcending the shutdown of a games servers).

I used to play Habbo Hotel as a kid and would happily spend my pocket money on in-game furniture instead of buying toys at a toy shop. I remember I would dream of owning some the rare in-game furniture and would look at others with envy if they had that furniture in their in-game room. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who understand this and are looking to make a profit off that desire, in essence they are speculating that the future has more people spending time in digital worlds.

This video on Habbo Hotel does a great dive into virtual economies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6jxjKPNZQ
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The original gamers from the 80's who grew up on Atari and Nintendo are in their 40s now. We still like games but lets put money in it. Lots of money! I'm with it.

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Additionally, it's about community building. If you're heavily invested in one of these games, you're going to have a say in future development. You wont just be a consumer of the product, but part owner and investor along with your other investor/player friends. Sounds cool.
I like to look at crypto as being in the early smart phone phase. What were the initial apps that showed off the iPhone would revolutionize cellphones? An app where your till your phone and pretend to drink beer, a lighter that you can flick on and other somewhat silly things. I can't say one whether the metaverse will take off or not, but we aren't even scratching the surface of what NFTs will be in the future.
I find the tech behind NFT and blockchain metaverse to be very exciting. I have the same feeing that this could be huge someday but the applications so far have been scammy and disappointing. Hopefully a group will step up and make something that creates real value to people, not just monetarily but in terms of entertainment and real connection to other people. We’ll see.
>The companies were always trying to clamp down on it, but it’s clear they could only do so much.

They could have added their own in-game trading system that supported real money transactions decades ago, but they never wanted to do so. 

Those games are designed with two things in mind: 1) people should play the game as long as possible 2) people’s threshold to return should be as low as possible. If people buy items, they don’t have to play as much. If people sell their items, they return more unlikely.

On top of that, the MMO-crowd is very anti-pay-to-win and having to weigh your progress in-game progress against your next rent is bound to eat away the fun.

Tossing NFTs into MMOs as-is would be a mess. They’ll need to be designed well and implemented into the core gameplay without interfering with anything mentioned above.
Some people were interested in doing that, but most weren’t. And the games weren’t built like a stock market so people can just trade things to make money. 

The reason people were willing to pay was because they liked the game. The main feature was the gameplay. So they bought items because that would facilitate their entertainment. It’s totally different than creating a virtual economy for the sake of trading virtual goods to make money IRL. I don’t think see these blockchain metaverse games as just an extension of paying for an item or an account in an MMO AT ALL. My whole point is that these games aren’t built around fun with an NFT twist to raise the stakes. They are built solely around moving crypto between players with no actual gameplay to entertain an average joe that is in it to have fun and not to be rich, and for anyone to be rich in these environments you need these average joes.
if there's a way to make a living playing a game, people will

a good metaverse will go beyond a mmo and offer non-grindy, creative goods that people can own

thats the innovation
What needs to be done is a metaverse game where there are so many parcels available to buy in the metaverse and you build your faction on your parcel. You can battle other factions and once all the parcels are bought you can either make offers on parcels or buy a share in a faction. Factions would be rewarded with in- game tokens or nft items etc...
Yes, but that's gambling. And in a poker game, everyone is in equal footing. No one owns certain cards of the deck and are willing to sell it to you to increase your chances of winning the round. 

I understand having unique items, like in a game such as Magic The Gathering. Maybe there are unique cards that have a limited supply, people can trade those for money and that's fine. But the point of MTG for example, isn't trading cards around, it's the game itself. People play the game because it's fun. It's not an investment, it's not about owning things. People do own and pay a high price for certain cards, but that would be because they want to play with those cards. Maybe they are collectors, but even then, actual collectors are rare. Most people are just trying to have fun. 

What I'm trying to say is that these games need to be built around fun first and foremost. The NFT should just be there to elevate the game and give it real stakes. As of now, all of these blockchain metaverse games offer NOTHING, like absolute nothing in terms of fun or satisfaction. They are purely about creating digital assets and pumping their values in case the game gets mass adoption one day and other people are willing to pay a price for those assets. Except nobody ever will, because mass adoption will never happen, because these games offer nothing in terms of entertainment for an average player who isn't trying to get rich but is just trying to participate in the game as an average player.
Skill-based gaming for money has been tried over and over again, and it's just never taken off.

The closest we ever got was the online poker boom. But even at it's peak it was like 1% the size of sports betting, the lottery, or slot machines.

The only way to make money playing a game is if other people are losing money. And if other people are losing money, they'll stop playing.
This is a thoughtful write-up and I agree. I will be closely watching how this evolves and grows over time. As of now through, pretty much everything I've seen out there in this realm is scammy.
Right, decentralization is key. Just look at Roblox right now.
You can do this without blockchain but do people do it? What would be the point? It’s a solution looking for a problem.
Unfortunately, that is what it looks like.
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You mean, like the internet? Where you can offer services and get paid? Why do you need a Snow Crash style metaverse for it? Why do you think Second Life is dead?
By 2050, the few survivors of the incoming climate bitch slap are not going to even remember computers.
That's impossible if all these ""metaverses"" have barely enough space for 100k people. They can easily give everyone a huge mansion in these games, but they don't.
Why do you need blockchain to do all that? This can all be done without blockchain. Is it that you want to remove the middleman, like we remove banks? Are they (the concert middlemen) currently a problem (sincerely don't know, I don't go to concerts)?
Can you explain what you mean by ""your players?"" What is the relationship between all of you in Axie?
You are totally missing the point. Read some of my replies in this post if you are interested in having a discussion about this.
But why would that have to happen on a blockchain metaverse? What would the benefit be as opposed to just having comic con happen in a VRChat type environment?
 The difference between a startup and these early metaverses is massive. Startups have plans as to how they will provide value to the consumer, even if they don’t have the funds to produce their product yet. Most of these blockchain metaverses have no such plan and instead are just creating NFT assets and making promises that “a whole virtual world is coming” without taking about why people would want to play in their particular worlds in the first place.
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I remember StarWalk being a very good early app. And it still is.
Exactly! If you look at predictions that people had 100 years back of what our current day society would look like, they did have the right ideas that we would end up having personal vehicles with which we would commute to places (cars) but if you look at their designs and prototypes, they are hilarious compared to what we have right now. So I'm thinking whatever ideas we come up with in terms of Metaverse, Blockchain, NFTs etc are currently primitive. We gonna do so much more.
Tl;dr the games are boring as all fuck and/or broken.
>If there’s a way to make a living playing a game, people will.

An average player won’t. These games will always draw more money in than they give out. 


If it’s chance, anyone might make money but few do. If it’s hard work, bots and people from poor countries will make money.


>a good metaverse will go beyond a mmo and offer non-grindy, creative goods that people can own

An easy thing to say, but it reads like a series of buzzwords and means nothing until someone can. There are no real examples or ideas yet.
Actually agree with you and glad someone said this. Like WTF. Buying land in Decentraland is crazy expensive and the gameplay isn't any fund. (No mobile app?? Built in a browser FIRST?!!!). The only reason to go in there is to attend a comedy show or Paris Hilton concert and even then what's the point of doing that in a ""metaverse""? Where's the value add? No disrespect but like these decentralized ""metaverses"" just seem like another way to play NFTs and aren't the actually metaverses that we all think would be cool like the one in Ready Player One. Not even on the same roadmap if you ask me.
95% of current blockchain games are gamified ponzi schemes. Maybe 5% have genuinely fun gameplay, and half of those have a borderline predatory/ponzi economy (someone less charitable than me could call out Splinterlands and Gala Games). But there are a few games that prioritize the gameplay and use the economy as a supporting element rather than the goal - and I think it's this model that will produce the next round of Axie Infinities and be adopted in the long term. 

Skyweaver is my favorite example of a gameplay-first-economy-second game, but also take a look at Gods Unchained (Hearthstone with play-to-earn), Blankos Block Party, Dark Forest. There are also high budget games in production, like Illuvium and Embersword, that have made a huge effort to avoid the kind of pay-to-win bubble economy you are describing.

tl;dr: you are absolutely right about Upland and Cryptoblades and their many clones, but there are games that do play-to-earn right that you don't seem to have considered.
You’re just explaining why you don’t like this, not why nobody would like this.
absolutely not saying that every game should be decentralized
Yeah. I know a bit about software solutioning, never understood what's the need of blockchain her.
Yeah there's no maintaining value lol. This guy can't remove the capitalist glasses.
all good questions, i don't have all the answers but I basic idea of the premise.

By turning in game items into NFTs or something else you can create a marketplace for players to buy and sell these things.

&#x200B;

by 2050 most physical jobs will be automated and most people will have very large emerrisive digital lives. You can build it so these systems, generate you money as you play.  


There is a really cool upcoming blockchain game called Illuvium that I think will be play and pay. I have been meaning to look into it.  


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzT88eN4gts
cyrpto is web 3.0, look it up. Meta verse is just where we are heading as a society. time will tell
not gonna lie, it's too depressing to follow, i'm not sure how big this bitch slaps, but now i'm scared.
Wether it's blockchain or any other DLT technology is not that important I guess. Decentralization is important if we don't want to end up in another dystopian nightmare that we already know from SciFi movies. 

Imagine a company like Facebook controlling the metaverse that could become a deeply rooted part of our lives...
Yes, so in Axie it is called a Scholarship program. I am the manager/owner who pays for the principle investment. I find scholars (players) to use my excess Axies. We split the rewards that they earn. Therefore they don’t need to make a large investment into the game. They can just earn by doing the work. If you give the scholars good enough Axies, they can earn more than they earn working 10 hours at their day job. For example, my top player is a manager at a call center. He has to work overnight because it is an outsource job for American companies. He works about 9-10 hours a day and gets paid about $2/hour. With me he can earn anywhere from $15-25 (depending on the token price and his luck in the game that day). He only has to play for 4 hours to achieve this. It is a no brainer trade off for my scholar (player) as he is doubling his income without doubling his effort.
You missed the whole point. People will spend money on games. The ideia is to redirect some of that money to players that are helping improve the game.

Look at how CS GO skins are made by the community, filtered by the community, and sold by Valve, with a lot of fees on the marketplace by Valve.

Businesses are understanding the power of communities, and Web3.0 devs are more and more inclined to give more power to them and share more of the profit, in a way that promotes a win-win strategy.

At the end of the day this is just creating jobs with flexibility that humans have never tried. It might go well, it might have its limitations, or it might be a disaster.
maybe you're missing the point. people like to spend money on games that they think are fun. this is just an extension of that.
It’s not the same thing. That’s like taking off new shoes you just bought to put on a used pair. The unique token attached to the first costume is exactly mine and no one else’s. I made it on the blockchain and since it’s connected to everything else, it can be transferred.
yes, and most of them will fail

but if you throw them all out investigating, you will miss the few that make it, that are thinking about how to make the world compelling
I'm not familiar with this app I'll check it out
Have been using it almost every night for years.
Honestly I believe the Metaverse isn't too far away. And I believe that the video games we play now are the designs and prototypes to the meta verse. All of the biggest companies are racing to be the top dog. If that isn't a clear sign of being bullish on something I don't know what is.
people can create culture within a mmo and monetize it. see: minecraft, roblox

making the ownership transferrable between metaverses is the next step
Then explain to me why someone would like this as a player and not as an investor trying to make money.
That’s just buzzwords. I get crypto, I understand blockchain, but this makes no sense to me.
What is it with everyone talking about the metaverse as if it was a novel concept? It’s not, as a concept it’s very old. Just because Zuck is using the term now doesn’t mean it’s a new trend.

Dystopian nightmares from sci-fi? Really?
I think the ""can be transferred"" is a big assumption. A lot of crypto startups don't seem big on working with eachother. Everybody seems keen on building their tech from the ground up, creating tons of fragmentation, instead of making compromises for the sake of keeping the community together. If this keeps up, I think it's totally likely that the assets you buy and own in one game/metaverse will not transfer to others, because those other worlds will just refuse to acknowledge your world.
Have you heard about EVE online? It's old game, not sure if it's still popular, but years ago it's economy was worth millions of dollars. People love to play games and if you can make money while playing, it's a dream for many people.
People just did and you don’t seem to care.
Copy cats will be copy cats. Best thing you can do is follow the actual devs that BUILD things. They move fast.
EVE Online was designed with fun gameplay first, and the economics side came later.

This is the opposite of current NFT games which are economics first, then gameplay.

As the other guy already said:

> What I'm trying to say is that these games need to be built around fun first and foremost. The NFT should just be there to elevate the game and give it real stakes.

We need something like what Genshin Impact did for F2P gacha games, but for NFT games. Focus on the gameplay first, and then figure out how to make money later.
Mmm no they didn’t. People made arguments for NFTs in games and metaverses but not the specific application of those two  I mentioned in my post.
In star atlas, I will be able to fly a big spaceship and explore the universe, mining, or pirating or data running, and there are factions and quests and I can't wait. Also everything in-game is an nft, and $atlas is the in-game currency."
Why white papers in crypto world are so unprofessional?,173,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7p1yyb/why_white_papers_in_crypto_world_are_so/,"It's because most ""white papers"" are just marketing materials. It's closer to a company or mutual fund prospectus than a research paper. They're trying to sell you on an ICO, not explain the technical details of their project. The target audience are the idiots who post on /r/cryptocurrency with comments like ""great team, amazing roadmap, solid community!"".

If you want academic research papers on cryptocurrencies, search arxiv. 

Does anyone have a resource for reviewed whitepapers?  I read the whitepapers of the projects I invest in but it would be great to have a resource to gain further perspective on potential candidates as well as current holdings (especially when the tech moves outside of my competency).
It’d be cool if someone from academia like yourself would review These [crap]papers for a living. You’d definitely get some of my Patreon dollars. Think about it, most of us hate the shameless Twitter and Youtube shilling and would welcome independent reviews. Some youtubers mind you start out with noble aims and then become pathetic shills. Must be the tokens!
I think many of them are taking the piss or don't know what they're doing. A lot of these projects need outstanding CS talent to pull off but the ""visionary"" in charge can't even write 25 pages worth of a decent technical essay. 

Some of these projects might end up with good tech despite their poor whitepapers, but to answer your question succintly: many projects have poor whitepapers because the people in charge have no fucking clue of what they're doing, and there will be tears.
I would like to see duel whitepapers become the norm.

One in laymen's terms and one in technical terms. I will admit I don't have much understanding on the tech side for this stuff, but it would be nice to have an understanding I could have as well as have a tech form that informed people could use to say ""nah this is bs"" or ""huh, this could work""
[deleted]
Software engineer here and generally disappointed with most white papers (with some exceptions).  I guess if we want it done right, we have to do it ourselves.
We should start calling them what they are: pamphlets.
[removed]
100% agree about bounty0x the unprofessional whitepaper makes it seem a little sketch
vechain doesn't even have a whitepaper and yet /r/cryptocurrency is full of people hyped up for it
English is a second language for a lot of crypto nerds, Math is their first.
What do you think of the XRB whitepaper? 
I would chalk it up to the lack of technical writing being taught in schools (at least in the US). I know when I was in college I had to do all the writing in every group project because no one else in my group had any idea of how to not sound idiotic and uninformative. Writing is difficult if you don't practice and actually try to examine what you're reading to pick up tips for your own use.

So, while I wouldn't be pleased, I certainly wouldn't completely right off a coin just because their grammar or syntax needs work. However, if they just use buzz words and literally can't even use spell check I stay away. That just screams ""I made this in an hour to publish ASAP because time is money hehexd""
Exactly what I thought when I read through, say, Ark’s Whitepaper. 
Has anyone seen Tron's whitepapers?
Have you read the IOTA whitepaper? It was written by a mathematician and it really shows. 
> the projects are asking for millions of dollars.

This is how you know it's crap. 

People with good ideas for crypto don't go begging for money. 
The target audience isn't computer scientists or engineers - it's investors.   As others have said, mostly marketing.
I think with Tron you have to understand the language barrier.  While the CEO is able to speak some English, translating an academic paper like a whitepaper is much different.  I believe he stated that he had volunteers do the translations.  I hope when they rerelease the whitepaper that it is much more professional. 
What's your point of view and opinion regarding iota Whitepaper? 
[deleted]
""I come from the academia""

"" I like a lot the BTC paper,""

""each project seem to have""

""I still was expecting""

That was on my first read-through, I can probably find more if I tried to actually look for mistakes but these just stood out to me.

Not that I disagree with the point you make but your academic background seems somewhat dubious with the basic grammar mistakes you make in your post. Irony at its finest. If you claim to be such an intellectual at least don't make such obvious mistakes. I expect a person who reads peer-reviewed papers on a daily basis to know basic english. 

EDIT: Also, the title is just a grammatical nightmare.
Hmmm - out of curiosity - would you mind sharing your first impression and maybe even deeper thoughts on the safenetwork Whitepapers? (If they happen to be of interest for you?) https://safenetwork.wiki/en/Whitepapers
I heard Cardano whitepaper had academic peer-reviewed...
I don't work on crypto, so I don't want to read technical papers for the sake of reading them.

I agree with you about their intention, but I just find it shocking. I have written (parts of) reports asking for money (in academia we need funding too) and generally, the level of writing is required to be high (though arguably not as high as in peer reviewed papers). I think that it is possible to sell your vision by actually being a bit technical and having a good paper. Additionally, they can pay someone to translate it to English, it costs much less than what they lose when the price drops for 1 sat.

Anyway, the model seem to be working and who am I to argue? On the other hand, the lack of professionalism makes me believe that sooner rather than later, the market will crash hard when those products actually won't be delivered. A team who cannot write 10 coherent pages will probably struggle to make the world-changing product they are promising.

Example of what I am saying: Google's original paper was very technical (both founders were Stanford PhD students) promising a world changing technology. They published the paper and actually got a lot of money to deliver the product, and the rest is history. Why crypto-people cannot do the same?
Thanks for the arxiv mention, what a treasure trove of info!
There needs to be a whitepaper review site where  whitepapers receive feedback in regards to certain sets of criteria beyond that of ‘tradition’ (tech, team, problem/solution, vision, roadmap, etc.) I want to see an in depth analysis by a team of academically-inclined individuals with a variety of educational/professional backgrounds and cultures. While they are at it, why not also release their own whitepaper, along with their own coin, *papercoin*. Papercoin doesn’t do anything, like most coins. I mean, why go to *all* of the effort to make such a great site for people to utilize when you would be missing out on the opportunity of simultaneously offering a new shitcoin? Multi-million dollar idea here, fellas. Up for grabs.

p.s. - please remember me
Have you heard of WhitePaperCoin?  It's a decentralized network of smart contracts that utilize tokens as rewards for reviewing white papers.

It will be a top 10 coin in 2018.
This is exactly my worry and it screams like the stories I heard about dot net when everyone with a cheap idea got millions trying to make the next giant company. It is difficult for me to invest in a product, if the entire team cannot make a paper that looks like a decent assignment, let alone like a published paper.

Also, CS talent depends a lot. A lot of programmers who can make great websites, won't have a clue on how to make something work in crypto world. People need to have strong technical background, knowledge of algorithms, data structures, cryptography, before they might even think to do something in crypto.

It looks to me that a lot of these projects are actually just scams with the team promising 10 times more than they can deliver, and they fully knowing that. I guess that the hope in those cases is to either get as much money possible and then cash out before everything burns, or hire people with that money and then hope that all goes well. Both of these things are wrong, with the first being borderline criminal.

I also don't even think that it needs to be 25 pages long. BTC paper is 9 pages long and everything about the project is clear. 
With Ethereum, there was white paper vs yellow paper.

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/25453/why-is-the-ethereum-paper-called-the-yellow-paper

* White is the initial pitch.
* Yellow is the technical specification.


FunFair does that. Even in multiple languages:

https://funfair.io/explore/whitepapers/
That's because that white paper has been reworked some time last month. The gen 1 Rai white paper is close to unreadable. I tried and got stuck on page 2.
[deleted]
The formatting looks excellent, no doubt. I haven't looked much into Cardano because it has a very large market cap to invest for me, but having papers accepted into crypto conferences is always a good sign, and at the very least it shows that the team is serious and professional, instead of just showing 'vision' and buzzwords.
The word ""fenomena"" under section 1 of the Vision... Couldn't get past that...
Not to mention the paid shills advertising the ""research report"" that was done on it.
If that was the case, those papers would have looked much better. Any semi-decent mathematical conference/journal is on English, and a lot of reviewers have rules like 2-3 errors in the abstract and they reject the paper without reading it.

My fear is that the level of papers somehow reflects the level of team's professionalism (on other words: those that write bad papers don't have a clue). I might be wrong though.
Surely their solid team of marketers help, lol

Mathematics people read P.R.'d research all the time, they know exactly what a professional paper looks like.
I'm in an non-top-100 engineering program and technical writing skills are pushed *heavily*.
I mentioned in my original post. It is by far the worst one I've seen.

Of course, I am talking about the English version, I have no idea about the Chinese version.
Way better than most. 
I think you're in the wrong sub
It’s the trade off OP has for speaking more than one language. 

Edit: I guess OP’s first language is something Slavic because of the missing and/or unnecessary [articles. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar))
Hey grammar Nazi, he's not writing a fucking white paper for a multi million dollar project, he's writing a Reddit post. Relax.
English is not my first language, but that is hardly an excuse. However, the excuse is that this is a forum post, so I am neither writing something publishable, nor am I asking for millions of dollars. When I write technical papers, I triple check each word I write, and then in the end ask some colleague of mine to do some proof reading. 

The level of writing depends on the venue you're posting. Forums are casual. World-changing technologies asking for millions of dollars on the other hand...I think that the standard of writing needs to be very high.
Just looked at it superficially. It has absolutely all the green checks that you might see within 2 minutes. Number of pages, way how it was written, references (why most of papers in crypto forget that you need to cite other people' work if you use their ideas?!) and so on. However, it is a project that I am not familiar with, so I cannot give you deep opinions without reading papers carefully.

Additionally, while I work in computer science, my field of study is not cryptography and I know only about basics of crypto (stuff that you can learn in a couple of courses).
This is actually a good idea. I would actually donate some of my cryptos to have this made. Imagine a coinmarketcap, but just for reviewing white papers. I think the most challenging part would be keeping up with the amount of new coins that come out. Also finding people who would dedicate their time to review all the white papers without being influenced by outsiders
John McAfee.


He read all the whitepapers*



*allegedly*
I think this is a great idea too! similar to how academic journals work in science. However, i think cardano is trying an approach with conferences that research cryptography (international association for cryptographic research): https://www.iacr.org/conferences/crypto2017/acceptedpapers.html

they are number 71
Great team, amazing roadmap, solid community. Top 10 coin by Q2 *easily*
What makes bitcoin one of the better submissions is the inclusion of source code along with the whitepaper.  Both are needed for appropriate review.  My money is on those who openly share their code and seek contributions from the open source community.
Very cool! I'll have to look into them
Oh wow they released a new version! i must have been reading v1 because it was so confusing to me before i finally understood it after discussing it with people and realising it was the best coin on market right now for peer to peer payments
RAI (soon Nano) and IOTA to name a couple.
Enigma catalyst, to name a low market cap example.
But cardano uses these buzzwords. No product and this market cap? No working product for the next 8 month as stated by themselves? Over valued. 
I totally agree with you on the white papers. I studied mechanical engineering and after working a bit started to study computer science, reading tron made me sure we are in a bubble. When people invest billions into such a project, we are going to see some blood on the streets. 
ADA has no working product. Buyers beware.
Yes and that's fine, his point was made but why was there a need to showcase his intellect by saying he reads peer-reviewed papers every day? His point still stands without that fact and it makes him look stupid when the super intellectual fails at basic english. 

Tell me why he has to say that he comes from an academic background, why is that relevant? Why does that make his opinion more valid than all the others who have already made this point? 
Doesn't matter, you claiming to be from an academic background here is completely irrelevant as your point still stands without that fact. It makes you look stupid if you brag about how smart you are only to fail in your post moments later. Why is that something you even need to say? It's just regurgitating what everyone else has already said but your opinion is more somehow more 'valid' because you come from an academic background? 
If you would be interested in a better to read explanation of what they want to do for starters I would recommend to have a look at https://safe-network-explained.github.io/safe-for-bitcoiners before diving too deep into the Whitepapers - it makes it easier to get the ideas for people who are already familiar with cryptocurrency 
Maybe it would function similar to Wikipedia where it is user and donation based for content and funding. There would also need to exist some sort of quality control to oversee the operation and fund allocation, which is where the academic undertakers come in.
lol
[deleted]
It was just as a motivation for why I made that post, more like from a personal experience, that the papers here seem to have a very low standard compared to academia.

Additionally, white paper standard has been started from Satoshi when he published his idea, and current white papers are to some degree a continuation of that practice. And BTC paper, undoubtedly, could have been published in top crypto conferences if Satoshi decided to send it there. So, people who are continuing that practice, should strive to actually write good papers, not just superficial ones and be done with that.
Cheers, will give it a look when the time permits it.
And no I am not investing in pure ideas, that's why I got no stack in iota nor cardano nor tron. 
Problem is, scientifically rigorous approaches don't always win out. The whole web is running on JavaScript, for example. This space is as much about culture as it is technology, and I think the platforms that gets the most devs to build stuff on them will see the most growth. In this respect, Ethereum is going to be hard to beat.
Check what devs are doing on neo for example. Check the progress on GitHub, what they already achieved and what languages they support with their vm. Hint its nearly all major ones. 
Cardano with haskell only? Not a fan. 
I agree with everything you say, I just find that your comment about your academic background is completely irrelevant.
=) if you have any questions feel free to ask them in /r/safenetwork - the marketing of the project is pretty much not existing yet (they've focused on development since the ico in 2014) but someone from the forum will recognize the question at reddit fast and come back to you =) 
I'd like to revisit your definition of ""pure ideas"", because I don't think IOTA fits the bill. The IOTA network, the Tangle, is one of its main products, unlike most altcoins. For example, it's all Ethereum *is*. It supports smart contracts, it's a dApp platform, it acts as an ERC20 and ERC223 token  'index', if you will, but its value lies *solely* in the utility of its decentralised blockchain layer, which is used by third parties to build upon it. At the moment, it also has scaling problems on its network, but it's still widely considered a solid bet in crypto because of a) growing business interest (see: Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) and b) it *works*. It doesn't work perfectly, but it works.

Back to IOTA. It's first value proposition (but not its only one, just like how Facebook is half a social network and half a user data collection machine) is to become a token at the backbone of the Internet of Things, which many people have great difficulties understanding. The main problems in an M2M economy are: lack of security (every single transaction should be cryptographically secure and, ideally, publicly recorded on a DL, to prevent hacks, bugs and easily identify and solve mismatches), legal issues (if there's a malfunction, who's to blame?) and efficiency problems (this includes both the need to include packets of data along with transaction, transfer speed and fees, which normally make microtransactions complicated or simply economically impossible). IOTA theoretically solves every one of these issues. 

Let's take the case of an electric driverless car arriving at a fully automated charging station (because why not? DLT is here to shape the future, not just make the present a tiny bit better). Both the charging station and the car have IOTA addresses and balances. How does this interaction happen? Will the station plug itself to the car, then charge it completely and finally request a payment? Possible, but there's risks associated with that: what if a software malfunction happens near the end? What if, physically, the plug detaches itself and the charging isn't completed? There's a pretty simple way to mitigate all of that with IOTA. All you need is an accurate counter on the car and its sibling on the charging station. Here's what could happen:

* As soon as both machines are connected, the car sends a signal requesting the station's electricity price per joule for, say, 1 IOTA (not 1 MIOTA) and receives an IOTA in response, along with the requested data.
* If the price is under a certain threshold, the car indicates how much it would like to receive. In our case, it's a full charge, which it calculates to be worth 0.561 MIOTA, or about $1.845.
* The station instantly receives this data and starts the sending process. It sends only 100 joules at a time and waits for the payment before sending the next 100 joules. If there's a malfunction, either party would only lose a trivial amount of either energy or IOTA, making an investigation irrelevant.
* Once the car's battery is full, the station unplugs it and it leaves.

You couldn't use existing tech for this interaction, like Bluetooth or (god forbid) infrared because of how easy they would be to exploit by someone who would want to hack the transaction. IOTA makes it as simple and as quick as using old tech, but without the security concerns and with automatic logging on everything, including the data sent and received, on the Tangle.

IOTA is still at the embryonic stage, but considering that the Tangle and the IOTA token itself are the core of its offering, not some application platform (for example), and that both of these currently work, it's certainly not just a 'pure idea'. IOTA is just like Ethereum: it's complex, it's in early developments, but if you try to use the network following every instruction out there, you'll realize that *it works*.
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I already looked into it, I know how it works. That the token can be send does not imply the network works. Having scaling problems on a system that is used to fix scaling problems is the definition of an idea. Smart contracts are not implemented as I recall (planned), send me a working smart contract on the main net and I gladly check it out. Not an idea that might possibly do that in the future. Ok comparing tron to iota is a bit heavy, but the way the founders act on Twitter and announce the big ""Q"" is very unprofessional and hype based no matter if the technology actually has future. I will also not invest in a currency that can be exchanged when I don't get a share in the company, yes most coins don't have that, but that's why I am not invested in most. If you talk about higher sums you need some kind of safety and influence. 
Haskell is only logic based, if you want to go towards bigger smart contracts with more functions you gonna have a hard time with haskell. 
Edit: functional (sorry)
I understand. It seems we simply have diverging definitions of the word 'idea' and that we're completely different types of investors, but I respect your opinion and your thoroughness if you went so far as to try the network for yourself.
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I did even recommend to keep a small percentage in iota to the investors I am advising at the moment. But I see a big problem in investing into a currency that the company could make obsolete if needed for partnerships. With buying iota you do not imply any way of voting against such a decision. 

I saw them working on trying to make the system less reliant on the coordinators which would be the first great step towards further scaling as you do not have a bottle neck integrated then. 

Smart contracts within the system are what makes such a product really valuable as many companies could integrate more functions and it would be more of a competitor towards other branches. But as my knowledge (correct me if I am wrong) there is no vm right now implying this and allowing to write sc in any language. 

Most new people here are there for the fast money, but this area can (if understood correctly) be kind of a safe investment for bigger sums which I am focused on for my clients at the moment. 

So I keep away from tron, verge,bitconnect even ripple and many more. I would love to invest in the company ripple but as long as they offer only xrp I do not see the security needed. 

Ah yeah right. Sorry. 
But honestly, I coded mostly objective based (java,python) had to learn prolog in university for example as a counter. But objective is just so much more convenient. I am not saying it works perfectly right now on neo (we still pretty much use mostly c#), but the basics are excepted by the vm. 
For a platform you need developers and the more languages you support the easier you get them to try out your system. 
In the end, it seems that we think very much alike, despite me being slightly less risk-averse (I'm young and have already pulled my principal away from my profits, I'm playing the high-risk, high-reward game, but long-term). Yes, you're right, there's no virtual machine as of yet. Nevertheless, no matter what anyone's position in crypto is, it's one of the projects you just *have* to follow. I wish you the best of luck with your holdings! Are you a fan of XLM, by any chance? :)
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Actually I did not look into the coding of xlm yet even though I should have. I was focused recently on holding some speeches around dbft  vs mostly used Pos and tried out neo as a smart contract platform with more options in languages (even though the main vm will run over c#). 
I will have a look at xlm soon though and may share a short opinion. 
What is your information status around it? Are you familiar with the GitHub of them? What language do you use on their platform? 

Edit: Mixed xem with xlm... Yes i looked into stellar. Need to sleep now though, there are some videos of people coding on xlm, which seemed to be pretty fluent. 
I do like the 3 sec block time especially for faster invoking, but we need to keep in mind we are dealing with a centralized coin without governor protocol here. 
Forced to in the next semester of my master anyway...:D 
I actually have never tried deploying a smart contract, nor do I have any coding experience. I like to look at projects from a consumer & business standpoint and usually 'delegate' the evaluation of code to friends who actually understand it. I'd love to learn, but it doesn't fit my current schedule at all.
In my honest opinion one has to understand the code to be able to predict what it can possibly be used for without depending on other people's opinion. Edit, I fixed my last message, mixed xlm with xem. 

I do still study computer science after I did study mechanical engineering and working as a dev for major companies(tyssenkrupp), but since the crypto market gave me more than I could have earned any where else, I used my contacts from work and my knowledge of the actual tech and financial system to advice bigger investors (above 8 digits). It's way more lucrative honestly as long as you can explain why the market acts like it does. For now I predicted the drops correctly and was able to get more confidence from the clients. 
That's certainly true. Just out of curiosity: do you compliment your research with TA and evaluate business models? If you're willing to share, I'd love hearing your thoughts about the currencies you've researched, like NEO. Despite my limited knowledge, I find the tech fascinating.
I do look at the TA but less on something like Fibonacci since I do not believe in their impact. 

I do invest mostly in businesses that I can value and compare with known track record. You might say the track record in crypto is low, but there is. You can compare Neo+neo gas to eth, you can calculate the possible volume and income of kcs to other exchanges. You can value a company like tenx (keeping in mind you only get a utility token). 
TA in my case is more used to identify market manipulation and keeping out of coins where those are clearly the main drive of the stock. 

I will not share my thoughts on new icos as that would be unfair to my paying clients. But what I can openly say is I am highly invested in neo. (To a point where the portfolio gets scary unbalanced, which I do not advice though as anything in life can fail)
Right, that's what I've been using TA for: confirmation of long-term trends, identifying weird movements and, sometimes, insider purchases. I'm actually rarely interested in ICOs, so many of them are garbage it actually boggles my mind. NEO is one of only two contenders I'm considering to add to my long-term portfolio. In case you haven't, I suggest you check out Aragon and Achain as well. Thanks for the chat!
I did not check aragon nor achain yet. I will consider it. 
Yes most icos are not only garbage but completely unpredictable, as they try to make their own problems for the future. 
I may have more information from some developers working on products that are going to be announced in months.
I do see around 3 icos I am looking forward to this year, as I know the work of the devs and their vision from talks. 
That's not a lot for a whole year one might think, but not trying to run with fomo on all new projects is the way to actually hold on to your money in the long  run. 
 I did recommend iota for example at around 30 cents when it dropped after the ""Mit"" article. But I did recommend to sell 90% as it rushed to 1.30, we saw it going higher, but the track record did not show any reason for that neither did the tech. We saw hype build up, which I do not recommend to participate in. 

I did not highly invest in neo before their product was finished and only features were added. Seeing the progress during China fud on the developer side, was a clear sign of an undervalued product. I do prefer to recommend projects that suffer from conditions that limited time and effort can fix without getting too far on the optimistic side. 
That's all very interesting! 3 ICOs sounds about right, in my mind that's about the amount of actually valuable projects that emerge in a year... I only participated in two in 2017."
"vitalik's take on blockchain technology in voting systems - ""Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people""",166,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/o8hwal/vitaliks_take_on_blockchain_technology_in_voting/,"Being able to verify that your vote is for who you wanted is equally important. I get the coercion concern, but there are concerns about transparency as well.
Coercion resistance, vote selling resistance, and privacy can actually be obtained using an interactive protocol between the voting administrator and the voter:   the voting administrator privately communicates a secret ""counted"" random number to the user.  This random number is included with the signature of the vote.

When the voter signs their vote, it actually contains an affirmative vote for ALL candidates, and each vote has the associated random integer, but only the candidate the user wishes to vote for incorporates the provided integer.  The other candidates random numbers are randomly selected by the voter.

A coercer can search the blockchain for the signature, and force the voter to give up their private key.  But they can't force the voter to give up the random ID from the vote authority, because the voter could give up any of the other associated IDs to the coercer, thus ""proving"" their vote to the coercer.
""we can improve XXX, but not too much"" basically his take on ethereum
don't those two points only matter if you can map someone's blockchain address to their identity?  would you be blocking some vital piece of knowledge by separating those two concerns?
Thanks Op. I appreciate the post and the info. I had an interest in the Horizon State Token but things went very poorly. It would seem the set of issues between testing and executing this kind of tech seems tremendous and daunting yet has some of the greatest transformative potential to global society in my belief.
Oh yes this is it! Governance in Defi changing democracy is the next big thing for mass adoption
Doesnt lithuania already use this? You avoid coercian by also allowing people to go to the voting booth to change an online vote.
https://youtu.be/yIzaQaRaUmM
You could have privacy by just not including identifying details on chain. As for coercion; would this be worse than postal voting?
Few things:

1)We all know how our representatives voted. The privacy is only required in the delegation of votes not the delegates that volunteers to vote. A voting system requires we know how things where voted on by who.

2) A delegate system takes care of the informed voter problem by design.Like it or not Vvoting is about representation not expertise.

3) Delegates are kept in line by 2 things. Compensation and withdrawals.

4) Coercion is only a problem if a vote cannot be undone. It is also impossible to legally take action for paying someone to do something illegal. If the vote is distributed enough it becomes too expansive to coerce.
What's important is you vote for the right candidate.
Ow hey look. Its what neo has soon. Basically everything.
Coercion risk is exaggerated.   Coercion is entirely possible today as well.
Perhaps a means to provide coercion resistance as well as verifiably is this: when voting, user selects one of two or more random words to accompany their vote; so user sees “cat” and “dog” and selects “cat” to accompany their vote for candidate X. Then, when verifying their vote, they would see both candidates in the voting transaction, one of which has the word “dog” and one is which has the word “cat”. The user is the only one who knows which word they picked, and so because of personal knowledge, the user knows which vote was recorded, but an outside party does not
yes, this is what came to my mind while i was reading the article. sometimes it is necessary to do a recount of votes - how do you do that? in some electorial systems, namely in the proportional system used in some european countries, the location of the voter (e.g. city or county) is also a factor in the overall outcome - that would also need a solution.
What if the coercer lives with them and got the letter with the secret integer?

This has always been where I get hung up. I can only think of addressing it by allowing a vote, in person with the voting authority, to supercede it.
lol just thought of the exact same thing but with captcha type words instead
Politicians will do everything they can to prevent it.
yeah and you can even solve another issue by letting ppl confirm their vote by letting them go to a voting booth to check to make sure their vote went to the right person. this can be after an election for example during this last us election when the votes were being called into question people could go and check their vote to make sure it went in properly
an admirer, lucky me.
You can be coerced to go out to vote, but no one knows (at least thats the expectation) who you vote for in the voting booth. You could make your vote void, or even vote against the coercing party
I agree. It's possible today, and the ability to commit fraud (fake ballots, false counting) is way worse. If there is an entity that is capable of running a blockchain vote yet also willing to  physically coerce a large group of people, that country has bigger problems.
Makes sense, but I imagine people would forget and freak out, claiming they selected the other.
Counts would be seemingly instant, with the data transparently available to all. No personal information need to captured, the voter need only the address to their vote to verify who it was registered to.
An in person vote can still be made superior by a blockchain based cryptographic voting protocol.

Alternatively the registration can be required to be in person in private (at which point the real nonce is given by the authority).
Yes but technology wins every time no matter how long it is fought.
Not really, because these days you can easily take a picture of the ballot in the booth.  It might not be technically legal, but there's no way to prevent it. 

The reason it doesn't happen is that it's logistically impossible to execute that without making everyone aware of what you're doing.
Easy UI fix. Screen: select your chosen secret word. Next>> You voted for (insert candidate).

Forgot your word? Next>> Here’s a list of candidate votes and secret words recorded on your ballot."
Why does the more practical side of crypto get less attention than the financial side of crypto ?,167,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/oobfbn/why_does_the_more_practical_side_of_crypto_get/,"The practical side of crypto will get more attention when people don't even notice that it is crypto underneath.
> It plans on creating a dApp that connects to our houses and takes care of every small detail from ordering food to setting lighting depending on my mood (kind of like an Alexa dApp).


Question: Why would this need DLT? I'd imagine someone could just create an application that does the same thing?
I'm guessing because the average person doesn't care or know about those things, but they do care about money.
Because that's a lot further away from the defi products. Defi is basically usable at this point whereas the type of project you're talking about is several years away at best. It takes a long time to fully develop things like that and create prototypes of the physical product and then create actual usable products that appeal to a wide group of consumers and are not too expensive. Iota is a project that could have insane upside/practical usage but is likely many years away hence the lack of interest.
I wish it did too. But so many people are trying to get rich quick off of investing, that’s where the broad appeal is. That’s why I’m glad I found this sub, it’s the side of crypto that I care more about. Really exciting stuff out there right now
We talk about it in the CryptoTechnogy sub, but so far there hasn't been a single breakthrough product outside of DeFi/CeFi that wouldn't work better without a blockchain.

Lots of ideas but nothing substantial and practical that has moved beyond testing.

The moment one comes out, we'll all be talking about it.
if you want to prove legitimacy, you need to put your money where your mouth is, and that means proving DeFi works so that other future ecosystems feel safe.  money is greatest incentive for hackers and thieves to find vulnerabilities, if you can protect against that while providing the benefits of DeFi, you can certainly expect other projects to jump on board once DeFi proves its mettle.
Lmao this is literally just a shill post, it's so painfully obvious and on the nose. And it follows the same structure as every other post this OP has made recently, it's always along the lines of

""Isn't it sad that crypto space is doing XY? I'm so glad there's still projects like **PROJECT Z**""
I’d prefer it read about that than all of the yield farming crap. That’s really cool.
Greyscale launching their DEFI fund is pretty huge.
Greed. Greed runs the world right now.
Because it's such an untalked about industry to begin with.  The big corporations controlling the media don't want people rushing out buying this new form of technology to get rich. The rich want to become even more rich and they want to keep the poor as poor as possible.
Because most of the people are in it to make money at this point in time. I agree that the potential is enormous but for the time being crypto and blockchain projects are only deemed newsworthy when there are people making and losing money. Sadly we need to dig a little deeper for exciting projects that dont immediately appeal to the speculators. Downside of an infant market i guess.
Because the VAST MAJORITY of ""practical"" companies developing blockchain solutions have absolutely no reason to use blockchain except for hype/marketing gimmicks.
Shallow minded people just see crypto as another currency and don't car how it's created or how the Blockchain works.
Here's a hot take; 

You post a company that you found about just 1 day ago in a sub that used to be about discussing tech and dispite pointing out your distaste for other projects do the same with this one except changing the narrative from financial to practical. 

*What can you possibly know* about this project in 1 day that can make you knowledgeable about it to the point you discredit the others? From an ignorant person about this project, this post is no different than the financially interested shills you see usually. What if a post claiming ""BabyDogeMoonSafeNotAScam"" or some random shitcoin post did the same?

Do not post WHAT, but post HOW or at least enquire that to start a discussion (ignorance isn't bad! Admitting not knowing but trying to is where discussion starts). From this post ""They don't deserve a spotlight"" since neither us or u know jack shit about it.
I feel like parachain auctions are phony scarcity and just bad mews for the industry

Imagine if when AWS became available it was only offered in auctions.  Its a silly adoption roadblock for no reason
>It plans on creating a dApp that connects to our houses and takes care of every small detail from ordering food to setting lighting depending on my mood (kind of like an Alexa dApp)<

This sounds too much like WALL-E to me.
Dude there are most of the rich type people who put their ' crypto ' money in investment company and looks for people to join with their refferal ,who doesn't know what a smart contract is or what defi is or the company can run away with their money or anything ... 🤦‍♂️ Damn
I love making money but sometimes you be so busy with everything, luck i found CryptoHelp that has an experts trader for better investments.
A lot of people might be skeptical about Blockchain projects.
Robonomics is a project that will make waves in the IoT and Robotics industry soon
Tough question bro... but I believe Robonomics will soon be seen as a top project by everyone else!
Robonomics is a pretty cool project. I’ve been following the KSM auctions and they’re pretty close to get in now.
It's like anything else in technology it's considered geeky or people not in technology just can't relate

Facebook and Instagram became popular but geeks were doing that stuff 30 years before that
Money brings people in-  once you're interested there's plenty of resources to go down the rabbet hole.  Those things just don't make headlines.
Because the financial side makes people money
early days, what people can see and feel gets more attention hence the Defi led equity thus far. 5 years down the might be a different story, hoping for it.
Because decentralized projects rely on economics to provide the expected outcomes without an administrator. This is most applicable in financial systems. Other types of systems have economic characteristics, but they may not be simple enough or engineered well enough to function well.

Also, because a lot of projects are tenuous at best and scams at worst.
Been following them over 1 year now, definitely project for the future when it comes to blockchain adoption.
Been following them over 1 year now, definitely project for the future when it comes to blockchain adoption.
Been following them over 1 year now, definitely project for the future when it comes to blockchain adoption.
Been following them over 1 year now, definitely project for the future when it comes to blockchain adoption.
Been following them over 1 year now, definitely project for the future when it comes to blockchain adoption.
Cuz..money talks.
because nobody here really cares about the tech. they just act like it to convince others to buy and hold.
Because almost noone actually uses a combination of Blockchain+Crypto for non-financial reasons

Most projects you find are just technological previews, betas and alphas going on for years and so on

In that regard, Crypto is still a bet. Possibly Blockchain finds some usage without any Crypto on top of it, as well. The question is, how long are you willing to hold on your bet of Crypto disrupting non-financial usecases?

Even with just Blockchain, there are very few large-scale applications where you could confidently say that these projects wouldn't be economically viable even without blockchain but rather some kind of legacy database + cryptology on top. I believe the logistics blockchain of Maersk is the largest and most famous one.

Don't forget, the competition are globally used database systems of all kinds, decade-old hardened legacy tech (might suck to use, but stability>everything else in some usecases) and the fucking global financial system. Blockchain is some tiny potentially disruptive future tech in comparison, it's only in the news because of the crypto financial market
People talk about DeFi because DeFi is an unregulated shitshow of pump and dumps and scams and a giant casino where people go to gamble. They don’t give a shit about the practical applications, they just want to put $100 into a shitcoin and get lucky and ride a 50,000% gain and  somehow get out before the rug pull
the ""currency"" in crypto currency has just stuck, most casual observers and newbies see crypto as Bitcoin and then just a bunch of other coins that have deviated slightly from it (I suspect that this is also why shitcoins keep getting traction, people don't know that blockchain has more potential growth than just BTC clones, people think the key to getting rich is finding the next BTC but before it blows up). So it makes sense that DeFi would be an easier to understand deviation than VeChain for example, which takes a bit more digging to understand and parse the difference from traditional financial coins.  


This Bull market was all about DeFi and Shitcoins. I feel the next bull market will be more about functional coins and Dapps as more people realise the vast potential of blockchain tech outside of pure currencies.
I agree, DeFi is the future of crypto, i also prefer anything this gives me back than my bank's 1%. We need to invest more in alts paving the way to a new infrastructure like zenon does and is meant for wide adoption since it develops time contracts and a dual coin desinflatory system, you do the math yourself anon
I agree the tokenomics of crypto has slowed development in the blockchain tech development. I think use to earn is a concept not yet used when it comes to crypto as well
You will probably like this project: **NotorosDLT**: [https://www.notoros.io/use-cases-1](https://www.notoros.io/use-cases-1)

They have **thoughts about a lot of non-pure DeFi use cases**:  
\> Cutting paperwork  
\> Proof of ethical sourcing (ethical products can prove that their products did not involve unethical sourcing methods: child labour, environmentally high impactful resources, ...)  
\> Reducing the cost of recalls  
\> ...

The **coolest use case I heard from them** was that they were working to **tokenizing energy**.  
For example: You generate electricity at home via your solar panels  
That energy is then tokenized and can be used for example to pay for your diner at a restaurant. (Mixing finance and energy logistics)

This was a great podcast episode exploring their technology and vision of the future enabled by decentralized ledgers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nR46jN59xw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nR46jN59xw)
Cause money makes the world go round? Or so I've heard..
Curious, because I would say the crypto side is usually overhyped....

What is one project that you think couldnt be done except with crypto?
This is so huge.. Im a somewhat technically savvy person and crypto is complicated for me.

Also normal folks barely even know about it. Just today I had to explain to my ex-wife (45) what it actually was. She had no real idea what it was. 

So the first team that builds something that ""breaks the accessibility wall"" (credit to my current wife), and does it well, will carry whatever blockchain it rides on to the top of the crypto kingdom.
exactly. imo it's the same thing that happened to the internet - it got huge but does anyone really know how it works, besides the techies?
Infact I dare say it is the prime example of a blockchain solution looking for a problem.

*Edit* actually after looking over the white paper it's more interesting then it sounded. OP's list of things it is for undersells it a little.
It doesn't lol. What part of the applications rely on a trusted third party? None.
It's ironic that if they even cared a little bit about the technical stuff, they would be way more likely to make money.
You should take a look at CargoX, already mandatory in port logistics in Egypt, and no one bats an eye
There are plenty of potential use cases, but there will be difficulty implementing. Classic example is replacement of titles and related background searches in real estate. Difficulty in implementation is regulatory and willingness of industry adoption. 
I wouldn't expect smart home automation as something that can benefit from crypto / blockchain tech.
Agreed these parachain bs, it's going to become a roadblock for so many projects
>  I would say the crypto side is usually overhyped

i think that's what they're saying. once the shit isn't hyped as a ""crypto"" project anymore, people will use whatever works best for them without paying ANY attention to the underlying infrastructure.

i mean, my grandma doesn't know what a DNS is, doesn't stop her forwarding me a dozen scam emails everyday though.
What do you mean? All crypto projects can't be done without crypto

But just to start a list Alchemix, Compound, Uniswap, Basic Attention Token, Audius, Theta, Ethereum, Thorchain RUNE, API3, all NFT projects
A real VPN , without crypto, you still need to give the VPN company access, with DVPN , it's completely private.
This is what it was like at the beginning of the internet age. People couldn't understand it, they didn't know what it would be used for. 

Eventually people got around to making things much more user-friendly and here we are today. You still need at least a little bit of computer knowledge to buy crypto and store it properly.

Once we iron out all of those things and make it easy for the people who aren't aren't early adopters like us, crypto will become much more widely used.
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""Sells"" being the key idea here. This seems more like marketing copy (especially in the context of OP's other posts, most of which follow this exact formula) than it does a serious technical discussion — or even an authentic invitation to have one.
I used to lean in that direction too, but with Shib and Doge making so many people so much money, that conviction has started to wane. 
Still investing in solid projects, though. My time horizon is >4 years.
That is quite interesting. I don't understand B/L, but I'd like learn about how blockchain is suitable for this, and whether it's affected by the garbage-in, garbage-out issue.
So, I agree that a crypto is by definition a crypto, but I disagree that the blockchain is actually needed for many projects.

For instance I just took a look at alchemix. It looks like a platform to lend and borrow money. Lending and borrowing has been done for hundreds of years without the blockchain, and there are huge benefits to a centralized, non-anonymous entity which facilitates that. Now, I do not mean to say that blockchain perhaps doesnt have benefits, but rather that blockchain is not integral to completing the underlying goal of the crypto (ie lending and borrowing).
a normal VPN can be end to end encrypted such that the third party may be facilitating it, but doesnt actually have access to the data

You may say that is a bit pedantic, but it is somewhat similiar to publically available blockchains. We can all looknat every transaction, we just cannot make (much) sense of who is actually using it and how
I swear the internet age didn’t really begin until the mid to late 2000s.

In the 90s I was using basic old ass search engines but the information was hit or miss.  Middle school in the late 90s it was dismissed and only used as broad research and by high school 03-07 they allow “1 credible internet source.”  Even in 2007 they were skeptical and forcing us to still cite books or other media.

Online ordering and eBay were things but many were skeptical.  My mother refused to put her credit card out there for an online purchase until the late 2000s.  Mainstream purchasing really didn’t hit until Amazon about 10 years ago.

Porn wasn’t streamed until about 10-12 years ago.  I was download the shit until 2009-2011 maybe.  The first tube sites were wild.

YouTube wasn’t nearly as monetized in 07-09.  It was Numa Numa and other early internet hits.  Mainstream YouTube didn’t take off big time until late 2000s.  Same story with social media, Facebook was around in 07-08 but really wasn’t the gold standard for a few more years.

I guess my point is the rise of the internet started in the mid 90s.  Many of us love it.  But it wasn’t a serious staple and part of mainstream life until 15+ years later.  Smartphones, wifi and nationwide high speed also really tied it all together.
Finematics has some great teaching videos. Also coin bureau and dapp university
Having a look at their post history should have probably been my first stop.
Shame, it could have been interesting.
In a nutshell BoL are sort of title documents mostly used in the transportation industry by carriers. A BoL represents all the shipped goods in a container, agreements, and conditions. You def don't want to garbage-in, garbage-out your way in this business unless you want to go bankrupt. What is mind blowing is that this process is still done by paper to this day in order to reduce fraud and document tampering, it is a convoluted process that requires courier services, tons of signatures, third parties and if you don't bring your BoL to your carrier your goods won't be released.

Here's where CXO comes by digitizing the entire process, highly recommend you to check them out. From smart contract execution on ETH to tokenization of the BoL document hash using ERC721 NFT tokens through Matic, the tech is a beauty but no one gives a single damn about them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ehh borrowing and lending has been done for thousands of years, but decentralized lending has never been done. It can't be done without crypto. What you're really saying is that decentralized lending is not useful, not that it can be done without crypto (because it really can't). A common mistake people make is that they conflate ""not valuable"" with ""doesn't need blockchain"", and usually they have no idea why the decentralized use case actually IS valuable. 

The underlying goal of crypto isn't lending and borrowing, its automating trust. Look at Web3, it's going to be based around crypto yet it has nothing to do with lending and borrowing. It has to do with individual ownership of data and digital goods, it has to do with cutting out middlemen and helping value accrue to the individuals that actually create the value (labels earning the majority of money from artists, digital art and comics are impossible to monetize right now, people have their data sold by platforms and have no say in it). 

It's going to be very foreign moving forward, the future always develops in ways that don't make sense. Crypto is extremely primitive right now, and most people don't understand what it actually has the potential to do or how they should be valued. For instance, these protocols are going to process trillions in transactions but their tokens will likely trend towards a shockingly low p/e ratio. It's not going to make sense to people until much later, just like the internet.
It is a platform for lending and borrowing, yes. But it's also a platform for your loan paying itself off by placing the principal in yield farming smart contracts.
that is strange.

I first thougt ok, its a crypto technology but there definitely is no tradable token involved, else it woudl blow up totaly with such a usecase..

But it has a token and it  even is on Kucoin? Whats the hook?

&#x200B;

edit.: ok dived into it.

It in theory sounds awesome and it apears to have a real world usecase.

BUT It seems to be highly centraliced. Centraliced to a degree that i wonder again about the benefits.

Its takign away the paper part and makes it easier. And it uses the blockchain to be  sort of Transparent. But it is extremely far from beign a decentraliced solution. ANd the usecase of the token is quite questionable to me.

&#x200B;

SO yes interresting thing that deserves atention from a technical standpoint. But no wonder it is not more popular.
That second part of your second paragraph is what made me realize you're one of the few people out there that really gets it. I keep reading a lot of things where people keep saying that crypto is just capitalism at its worst. But to me it seems to be the antitheses to capitalism - at least if capitalism is about profiting on other people's labor. These systems being created and networked together, where the systems themselves don't profit, seem to me more like some sort of free market libertarian communism (as paradoxical as that might sound). But they're really free, not just free for those who are privileged enough to have access - free and open for everyone to access.
> It has to do with individual ownership of data and digital goods, it has to do with cutting out middlemen and helping value accrue to the individuals that actually create the value (labels earning the majority of money from artists, digital art and comics are impossible to monetize right now, people have their data sold by platforms and have no say in it).

My argument is that crypto is ONE way to do this, not the only way. Blockchain technology is not valuable by itself, rather it is valuable for the problems that it solves. In a lot of cases, the problems that it solves can be solved other ways, or haven't actually been problems in the past.  


Take your example, the reason big music labels exists today is not because they just somehow got a monopoly and can extract rents from artists, it is because producing and distributing music was historically very expensive, and those labels were the solution to huge upfront investments in risky investments. The fact is those fees taken out by the middleman funded a whole slew of other artists and musicians who ultimately failed (not to say executives didn't also get rich).

&#x200B;

Now, you see many artists forgoing the big labels and self-releasing music (without any blockchain involved) as those costs have decreased. 

&#x200B;

On top of that, blockchain can also be separated from cryptoassets, which I think is ultimately where the space will trend for useful innovations. Besides initial speculation and to reward insiders, there is not always a clear benefit to having a coin market for many applications.
Yes it is centralized for now, don't quote me on this as I'm not quite sure I remember the details, but it's my understanding that this project wanted nothing to do with speculators and the token (CXO) was going to be used internally with customers buying through fiat and the company doing the conversion on their behalf. However, the community pushed back on this so a lot of revisions were made to the original wp, they eventually decided to launch on KuCoin and as of now it is unclear if they'll expand to other exchanges.

There is an upcoming ""blue paper"" due to release somewhere around late Q4 which will bring more clarity to the tokenomics, but the team keeps pushing it back as they're extremely busy onboarding customers in Egypt and discussing partnerships across China and India, truly insane moves that I believe won't go unnoticed after the revised blue paper launches.

Regarding the token need, there is some fud about it, but in a nutshell it is needed otherwise how else would you mint the ERC721 tokens? The flexibility to customize more products is something that you simply cannot add by relying on ETH's bare bone contracts 

I'd say take a look at it, consider it from its current mcap, who knows really, it might be a potential LINK or QNT, those projects had very similar shortcomings when they launched and look where they're today. At the end of the day, crypto is a big ass experiment, I just wanted to point out to OP that there are better projects out there outside DeFi/CeFi that make better use of blockchain technology I'd also suggest TRAC and even RVP (which still hasn't launched yet they do envision a pretty neat use case for this tech)
Dude exactly, it's going to help humanity in so many ways. It's just another way technology is deflating away the cost of production and improving quality of life. It's really exciting stuff.
Agree with some good points made here. Of course devil is in the details of application of technologies, and there are different possible solutions, and there are also ways of making things worse :). 

It's true that that centralized organizations did historically exist because - and emerge from - the tendency and need to realize cost economies of scale, take that initial risk, and to coordinate and allocate human and financial capital to do big things well and reach increasingly large markets. 

But, the tradeoff of such centralization inherent to capitalism is that it did disproportionately take the upside of the ""true talent"" and hard labor that went into creative, innovative, important production. Those on top exacted the highest benefit and value did not flow optimally in the direction of value creation. So in a sense, this current/historical version is actually arguably a subpar version of capitalism!

Back to the music industry. It's worth pointing out that we've trended toward trading one set of middlemen—big labels— with another — big streaming platforms. The power now lies with streaming platforms and apps, increasing big tech, that control content distribution, ads and promotions and discovery, in ""exchange"" for seamless UX, intelligent features and integrations and cross plat access, and covering the cloud COGS. Important to remember they're monetizing both sides of the content/media distribution market - the creators via selling the work and keeping significant %s (or bundling via subscription sales to end consumers), and they monetize the consumers too! Via data mining and then selling ads to marketers. Triple sided market that's ostensibly for everyone's benefit. But the power dynamic is all totally lopsided again. 

It's not obvious how to solve all of these problems, and of course crypto isn't necessarily a magic wand. But crypto and blockchain have the potential to more accurately and precisely and trustlessly align economic incentives, to help restore control and ownership to creators and value providers. E.g. Imagine a decentralized version of eg Spotify that aligns compute resource outlays, and song listens, back to original artist creators and automatically and seamlessly transfers value across listeners, the compute operator nodes, and artists/creators accordingly. Decentralizing production, ownership, and consumption is within reach. 

The fact there is is even possibly a line of sight on this is absolutely incredible and wonderful, and arguably never before possible.
I absolutely don't mean to say that there are not potential advantages to decentralization and the use of blockchain. Rather, I think most current marketing does not take real advantage of those benefits and uses crypto simply as a buzzword to het investment.

It is also super important to know that many crypto projects are also wealth distorting and have rents built in. A ton of projects get funded by selling huge amounts of early coins to investors, who hope to reap the rewards of the platform just by investing early. 

There are also a whole bunch of other problems that are not really a big deal now (because crypto is relatively small), but may be larger in the future. For instance, we have seen issues with smart contracts being written with loopholes or with poor language, and with the loss of private keys. Can you imagine being an artist and ""losing"" the rights to all the profit from your music on a platform simply because you spilled water on your computer or your house burned down?
Great points. We need enforcement and guardrails and standards and those are probably going to need to come from the crypto community itself. This is the blessing and the curse of being out of most government regulators' reach.
And we need proper vetting, support, infrastructure, and UX innovation to mitigate the risks you mentioned. Appreciate your realism here. I think this will still take time, and hopefully the scam and shitcoins and shoddy projects don't significantly erode public trust and confidence re all things crypto before we get there."
The risks of staking for the long-term crypto environment,163,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/pnzv9o/the_risks_of_staking_for_the_longterm_crypto/,"But still...... not staking at all will leave you behind with 0% for sure
[deleted]
>Either everyone stakes, no redistribution happens, and nothing is gained for anyone through staking.

I think this misses an important point: that staking is a voting mechanism to help secure the network. It doesn't lead to centralisation if your piece of the pie remains the same compared to those who stake and only becomes larger compared to those who don't stake.

Having a reward for stake pool operators and rewarding quality staking pools is desirable in my opinion.

I like Nano's solution with ORV but there's still a few things I would like to see improved. Since the only incentive to vote is to secure the network it requires these elaborate social campaigns to get people to vote to upgrade the network and stuff like paying transaction fees for people to take their Nano off Binance.

As a node operator your incentive also isn't to provide a quality node but to have it just good enough and as cheap as possible to reduce cost which comes with both good and bad.

There's more to this than what I present here. Maybe I'll dive further into it later.
So OP would prefer proof of work to mine?
I can say I never thought of it this way, but it makes sense. Great write up.
The problems accociated with delegated pos (the type of staking described here) and not knowing anything about that node operator you are delegating to is one of the things that Algos Silvio Micali talks about as well. And must be one of his motivations for creating pure pos, instead of choosing delegated pos.
What are your thoughts on something like Algo or even Cardano that  don't require you to lock up your stake? So you can earn your rewards on your balance but still transact as normal without issues. Seems similar to an interest earning checking account to me.
Thanks for this post. I never thought about staking this way.
Interesting points. But isn't this based on the assumption that everyone will hodl for a similar long-term period? The two scenarios you describe could happen if everyone were holding for as long as possible - which I don't think would be the case because people still need fiat. And even if you think fiat will be one day obsolete, people might still cash out to transfer to other, better investments.

Edit: Basically, your end scenarios seem to assume an eventual market equilibrium of some sort, which i don't see as a strong possibility, with so many people actively trading and seeking alpha.
This is why IOTA. Nano is cool, too.
Not everything is pointless. You should research more such as aave or compound platforms (lending). And for staking check waves exchange platform. Neutrino USDN can be sent to ethereum wallets as well. Check how interesting USDN works.
Oh no. Another Nano shill post.

On ETH for example you are missing out that huge part of the fees are burned, meaning the staking reward (dependant on usage) can actually be deflationary.

And worst case predict a 5%+  staking reward (if on a pool) vs an inflaction of 3%. That's the rough numbers worst case scenario. That's an (worst case scenario) 2% gain. Please someone correct me if I am wrong, but let's give people the full picture shall we?

And stop hiddendly shilling Nano k?
Tks
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I agree that staking rewards are a downside long-term. It's a cheap solution and mostly serves to attract investors. Nano shows that dPoS works without rewards and iota is working on a solution that doesn't require (or allow) users to manually stake.

Most projects that have big staking rewards are purely focused on an early market strategy. They use proven tech, tons of ico money and disingenuous marketing (staking, partnerships, tps limits...) to attract investors and start gaining market share after a short dev cycle. 

They don't want to try to do research, countless iterations and try experimental improvements. They want to be out there and spend that ico cash on marketing their mediocre tech.
I have come to most of the points you make by myself. But I haven't found other incentives or methods for the advantages of PoS
> Pointless staking yield

It isn't pointless. The theoretical supply doesn't matter. In PoW for example, there is no incentive to not throw new coins onto the market. While in PoS coins are tied up in the staking process and are **effectively** taken out of supply. The more nodes join (which can be taken from new supply), the stronger the network, the less coins on the market.

Your premise is based on a sort of supply fundamentalism that hardly matters in the real world.

> While you as a staker would be happy with the yield you are getting, users would clearly be happier if they could pay lower fees, and might look to cheaper and more efficient solutions.

Yes, hence solutions like sharding and rollups, where using the network will still be cheap enough to incentivize economic activity. It's like saying millionaires don't partake in economic activity, because they are already rich. If a project promises higher yields (and there will always be projects that promise higher yields --> already we have staking *and* DeFi), you would do well to fund it instead of a staking node. But your point is correct in principle I think: a staking blockchain needs to balance these to aspects.

> As a small holder, you might be okay locking up some of your tokens (longer-term savings), but you also need some tokens for usage.

So does the network disincentivize use now or not? Why do I need tokens for usage? I am certainly not obliged to pay fees if I don't want to. If that is so, then the rich do not necessarily get richer or the effect may at least be negligible. You throw out number 5% and 6.9%, but these are just numbers plucked from thin air. 

> At the same time, staking decreases decentralization & security

If my last criticism holds value, then this point is also moot.

> If you don’t have 32 ETH, which many of us do not, you have to join a pool to stake. Pools charge fees for this, either a fixed fee per month or a percentage (10–25%). This fee once again accrues to larger holders.

Not necessarily. You can have decentralized solutions that are supported by their own tokens and do not necessarily charge stakers effectively for partaking.

TL;DR: I think your points are without exception based on highly theoretical assumptions that - although interesting on an intellectual level - are by and large divorced from reality.

I think the sharp decline of capitalization of nano clearly shows that its incentive model is inferior.
I would agree with your assessment if the crypto is stable in price, but adoption is increasing and hence gaining value. Like a booming economy when asset vehicles return value (interest).

Personally, I weighed the option to run a POS validator to stake and instead opted for Celsius interest yield at 1% less, but I have the ability to move my crypto as the market settles on the leader over time.
In cryptos where staking is locked, you often get to choose how long to lock it for, which means those locking it longer also get more rewards. Yes, you're not able to use the supply you locked in a stake, but many stakers also have unstaked crypto and are able to use that balance.

I think delegated staking is a great way to encourage people to actually get invested in the system, learn how to use it, and prevent mass sell-offs that lower the price. In other words, by encourage people to stake, the value of the crypto is also likely to increase (I really like how Fantom does this)

ETH2 staking is a bit different, as only validators can stake (there's no delegation), so by staking you're actually securing the network, and it's not really different than miners getting rewards in PoW, other than the impact on the actual global environment.
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These are very fair criticisms of POS.  But,

Most staking chains also have or hope to have defi applications that promise higher yield than staking.

your main point that POW requires investment to continue getting a share of supply inflation does create a better/real incentive to acquire that power.  I believe Curve and Sushi (to be copied/combined by astroport on terra) have developed investment incentives for voting power.  

POS is suited for democratic/shareholder governance.
Great article, I was super wary of staking when I first learned about it but since then the hype around it might've made me complacent. I agree that PoW is by far the most secure and decentralized system. I'm near-certain Satoshi considered a PoS-type model for BTC at some point, considering it is so similar to preexisting financial structures, but he ultimately settled on PoW. I think there's potential for chains that use PoW indirectly, through Proof-of-Burn or Proof-of-Transfer models that secure the network using a different PoW blockchain.
There is no lock up on the platforms I mentioned.
\> You might receive a 6% yield on your tokens, which seems fantastic until you realise that the supply is also expanding at 6% per year.

This presumes that the entire supply has been staked, and the yield is 6% at 100% stake. I am not familiar with every PoS system under the sun, but I know Ethereum PoS. There, this is very much not how it works. 6.0% APR was at 6,700,000 ETH staked, and APR keeps declining as more ETH is staked.

As always with percentages, consider ""percentage of what"". 6% yield on staked tokens, but issuance percentage is for the total supply, not just staked tokens. Only when the entire supply has been staked, is the yield equal to the issuance.

Some figures for issuance can be found here: [https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/monetary-policy/](https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/monetary-policy/)

The historical and expected future issuance chart is a good TL;DR under that link.

ETH issuance under PoS is considerably lower than under PoW. The current 2 ETH block reward in PoW is around 0.05 under PoS. That number is dynamic, and will both get increased a little in October, and decrease over time in line with APR decrease.

\> It might be that you gain 7%, while supply only increases by 6%. This is only possible if not everyone gains 7%. How is this possible?

In actuality, at a yield of 5.72%, ETH supply increases at 0.54%. This is possible because not every single coin is staked. My crystal ball expects ETH staking to find an equilibrium at about 30,000,000 ETH staked, with an APR around 3% and issuance around 0.9%. Actual market behavior might fluctuate either way of course - higher APR and less issuance, or all the way to 1.8% APR with 1.7% issuance.

Re discouraging the use of crypto: You are overthinking this. Usability encourages the use of crypto. Fees in Ethereum are not fixed, there is a fee market. PoS unlocks technologies to scale throughput (data shards for more L2 rollups, eventually statelessness/state expiry for some L1 TPS increase), which in turn impacts the fee market. If the roadmap has the desired effects - that is, lots of activity in rollups, and far lower fees there - then this encourages the use of crypto. This is hard to implement technically, and will take years.
I'd like to point out that staking isn't really the correct term for most of those networks. The original intent was that you'd lose your stake if you act maliciously and that you get rewarded for being honest. 

Otherwise I agree with staking rewards being pure marketing and a downside long-term.
https://youtu.be/qRRRIMmgwbs

What do you think about Harmony $ONE?
Well, you're missing the point that PoW has the exact same problems. If consensus power come from hasrate, it tends to concentrate over time, as the barrier of entry and the costs of doing business is rising to the small and new entrants. That's exactly why Bitcoin can't be considered decentralized anymore since you and me can't mine it anymore.

Network emissions and fees (either distributed or burnt) are necessary as way to keep the network self-incentivized, because miners/validators have to earn money to keep the network running. Show me a perfect way of doing that... There is none.
You expressed it beautifully, I want to learn more about crypto which don't offer staking.
In summary given two options to stake or not to stake, I would go with the option to stake. Besides, there are now liquid staking platforms available like StaFi Protocol where one can stake crypto assets and still get liquidity for those assets during the staking period, creating opportunities for more gains.
Which is why it's called redistribution, by not staking you're missing out and those who do stake are gaining at your expense.

IMO staking adds unnecessary steps and I'm skeptical of any coin that uses it just because it feels better. Simply burning fees should have the same effect, supply decreases and price increases therefore increasing the value of your wallet. With staking, your wallet gains tokens which increases the value but there is no deflation to increase to value of the individual token and that may decrease because of inflation. Ultimately I believe that whichever process is in play is already taken into account and doesn't affect future changes in value, but *all else being equal* I will choose a coin that I simply buy and hold over one that I have to buy, hold, and then stake.
Some people actually want to use the applications of those networks instead of just sitting and hoping for massive gains.
True Buddy, rather than not stake at all with zero earning, I'd say you stake and earn passively 
It's that Important that most projects now have a staking pool, including muse finance which is a new Dex that's yet to go live, but have Partnered with moonstake and has its staking protocol under auditing.
> In that case staking is equivalent to a risk-free rate, similar to government bonds that currently pay negative but used to pay 7% (unless the country default which is super rare).

Equivalent to a risk-free rate, but with supply increasing by a similar amount, right?

I think my broader take on it is that I don't see the advantage of this whole staking/redistribution/extra supply creation. It seems like it's just a psychological thing that complicates the protocol and leads to centralization. A solution without fees and without inflation/staking seems cleaner, no?

> On mature PoS protocols, there are a lot of ways to get more than the PoS yield hence stakers need to carefully consider the opportunity loss represented by staking at say 6% when they could yield farm at 15%.

Again though, that yield does need to come from somewhere, right? Would you say that this further plays into the centralization of supply?

> This really depends on the protocol, on Ethereum 2 those costs are negligible for small holders so small holders are treated the same as big ones w.r.t. to wealth creation.

Do you mean the costs for joining a stake pool are low? Would you say someone with 0.01 ETH, for example, has the exact same return as someone who is able to stake 100 ETH?

Either way, thanks for the input!
>cols, t

wow you just blew my mind, I cant believe there used to be a 7-8% return on us treasury bonds even though you just had to literally assume that the US would not go bankrupt. Wow our generation truly got fucked.
Exactly, staking is not a ""feature"", it's a means to an end (consensus & security).
> I think this misses an important point: that staking is a voting mechanism to help secure the network. It doesn't lead to centralisation if your piece of the pie remains the same compared to those who stake and only becomes larger compared to those who don't stake.

That's fair. I should take that bit out, to be totally honest, because no chain works like this anyway. There are no forms of staking without redistribution, in practice. There are still always fees paid, there are those that don't stake, and (unless you can name an example to the contrary) there is almost always delegation of some sort with the pool owner taking a larger cut and growing bigger faster. Right?

> I like Nano's solution with ORV but there's still a few things I would like to see improved. Since the only incentive to vote is to secure the network it requires these elaborate social campaigns to get people to vote to upgrade the network and stuff like paying transaction fees for people to take their Nano off Binance.

I think that with more actual usage and knowledge, this should get better. But you're right, that's one of the biggest weak points of ORV. It depends on people caring. 

> As a node operator your incentive also isn't to provide a quality node but to have it just good enough and as cheap as possible to reduce cost which comes with both good and bad.

I'd say that's fine by me, though. If you're a node operator, you are likely invested in Nano in some sense. You want transactions to happen quickly, if you hold Nano, or if your business relies on accepting Nano. Running a node that is not too beefy but can handle network usage so that there's always throughput available works well enough for me. But I might be missing something here.

Good points in all though, would love for you to dive further into it.
No. Proof of Work also has many problems. It centralises.

https://senatus.substack.com/p/why-99-of-cryptocurrencies-centralize
OP would prefer Nano. Doesn't matter that you can't do more with it than sending it from A to B.

Totally neglects the existence and importance of dapps and DeFi.
Does it?

Depending on the network, transaction fees can be very low. Doesn't really make a difference if our 1XYZ holder pays 0.0001 fee or our 1000XYZ holder.

The same principle applies to POW networks. Compare the fees for someone having 1000 BTC and someone having 0.001 BTC. Or even a bus ticket. OP makes it appear like this has only something to do with POS.

*Proof of Stake has two possible results.*

That's a classical black and white fallacy. There are more possible scenarios than just the two OP is providing.

&#x200B;

The entire post seems to have the motivation to promote Nano. Just because Nano is feeless doesn't mean all other approaches are inferior. Would be a sad crypto space with Nano only and no applications or DeFi.
Where does the interest come from, just crypto added to circulation? Transaction fees? What happens to the low transaction fees or interest if you have a supply limit? What happens to the price as you add more of the currency into circulation?    
You earned 10% on your Algo this year, but so did every other Algo owner. This dilution lowers the price and your Algo is worth the exact same as it was before you earned your rewards. Then they can't put any more Algo into circulation but people want their staking rewards. What do you do? Increase transaction fees?
I agree. This is the first time I've heard anything against staking rather than for it. It's usually one of the safest forms of passive income in crypto. I've heard of AAVE but not familiar with how it works, if you could enlighten me that would be great. I'm currently only staking DVDX on Unifarm cohort 25. Initially got into it for their hybrid tokens but had nothing to lose when they announced their staking so here I am.
> On ETH for example you are missing out that huge part of the fees are burned, meaning the staking reward (dependant on usage) can actually be deflationary.

I wouldn't say I missed that?

> Yield is paid from block rewards increasing supply, but supply is at the same time decreased through burning transaction fees.

> The second option is an option that tries to hide the centralization over time by not having fees accrue to stakers but rather having them burnt. This means that the fees are sent to a burn account, that cannot be accessed. As an example, stakers might get a 7% staking reward, which consists of 5% block rewards, and a 2% decrease in supply due to fees being burnt. While good for you as a staker, there is an obvious downside to both options.

So yes, the total supply can even decrease. That doesn't mean it's positive?

> And stop hiddendly shilling Nano k? Tks

You'd prefer that I only point out issues, and not provide potential solutions?
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Do you mean alternative consensus mechanisms? If so, look into Nano's Open representative voting. I link to it in the post, would love to hear your thoughts as I believe it fixes this issue.
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Thanks! If you're interested in reading some criticism on PoW as well, because I think that also centralizes heavily over time, I'd suggest the [article I wrote about centralization over time](https://senatus.substack.com/p/why-99-of-cryptocurrencies-centralize). Would love your take on it if you have the time.
I'm not missing that point, haha. [See another article I wrote.](https://senatus.substack.com/p/why-99-of-cryptocurrencies-centralize)

I don't claim that PoW is better. I claim that Nano's ORV is a better solution, also in that article I wrote, as the incentives are towards decentralization rather than centralization. Would love your thoughts on it if you have the time.
Also, if you are forced to stake to “keep up” then you face higher taxes from your government because the government views staking rewards as income. So it’s better to have an asset that you can just buy and hold without this built in “wealth tax” of sorts
I'd also say that even with burnt fees, there is some amount of centralization. It's an odd way to structure a chain, since it discourages you from actually *using* the crypto. Those using the crypto, even between each other, will end up with less and less.
""All else being equal"" is the key phrase here. Doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. If you're holding the coin anyways, staking only increases your share to more then what it would have been without.
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*...and there is almost always delegation of some sort with the pool owner taking a larger cut and growing bigger faster. Right?*

What do you mean by pool owner?
I think that is just as true of Proof of Stake though. PoW centralizes around areas that can mine more profitably and PoS centralizes around those that can afford large amounts of tokens. One is geographically centered and the other is wealth centered, to the average person it doesn't matter because we can't compete on either playing field.
This thread is about the PoS consensus and related rewards. Nothing about that limits dapps or defi.
I do prefer Nano, and I personally don't see much value in dapps and DeFi. That being said - I'm not saying there is no value in it, and am happy that people find value in it. I'm not diving into that distinction with this post though, it's only about the consensus scheme.
>That's a classical black and white fallacy. There are more possible scenarios than just the two OP is providing.

Either everyone stakes, or just some people stake. ""Nobody stakes"" isn't a realistic possibility.
> Depending on the network, transaction fees can be very low. Doesn't really make a difference if our 1XYZ holder pays 0.0001 fee or our 1000XYZ holder.

Sure, they can be. The effect might be small, or large. Regardless, would you disagree the effect is there?

Additionally, there are many networks where fees are currently low, but would go up with more usage. Even in networks where individual fees remain low, the sheer volume of transactions would still need to additional centralization over time, right?

> The same principle applies to POW networks. Compare the fees for someone having 1000 BTC and someone having 0.001 BTC. Or even a bus ticket. OP makes it appear like this has only something to do with POS.

Apologies if I made it appear like PoW doesn't suffer from this. It does. I have a different article going deeper into PoW already, so I figured I'd focus more on PoS for this one as PoW doesn't have staking.

> That's a classical black and white fallacy. There are more possible scenarios than just the two OP is providing.

Like what? I'd genuinely love to hear.
If it’s free you’re the product. 

I don’t see any project beating XMR for money long term
I use aave for lending %, borrowing too — and usdn neutrino for staking. I think these are safest options for now. I’m very conservative :)
Hmm, I can admit ,i see Nano and I get triggered, after the shit show launch it was when they were still called Raiblocks.

So, to summarize, you understand that the inflation concern doesn't really exist on networks like Eth with a burning mechanic. Your really concern is that this way, the rich will be richer and this will lead to centralization of the staking pools.

On that , I'd agree - you have valid concerns, but data shows this will not be a concern at least for a  very very long time with the leading staking pools being far from being able to corner consensus.

https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-eth-2-0-could-resolve-the-long-running-centralization-debate-c416b394e54c

So while I understand the concern I don't think it's real right now.

I still can't wrap my head how Nano ensures security, and I guess that's on me. 
And on top Nano is on a very bare state regarding functionality.. I will give it , it's cheap and fast. But so is Algorand to name just one blockchain that on top offers smartcontracts... Also see other L2 networks.

On the eco-friendly topic... Won't go there more than this. What we need to really drive renewables are business cases where energy is the number one production cost. So mid and long term I believe mining drives sustainability.
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As I mentioned in my other comment, I don't think Nano could scale for a smart contract platform; the costs of running the nodes which secure the graph would be too high.

I do love Nano for what it is though.
Personally I'm a big fan of Nano's consensus mechanism - I was super excited when I first heard about it. My issue with Nano is that its use cases are somewhat limited. It's a purely transactional currency, but I see the future of finance-only cryptos to be treated as ""cryptoassets"" rather than real means of transactions, and in that regard BTC has an insurmountable lead. IMO Nano's consensus mechanism could have huge applications in high-frequency, low-cost decentralized computing, aka smart contracts. Many tokens could be built on top of Nano if there was support for that.
I still don't see how Nano cannot be vulnerable to spam attacks being feeless. Seems to me that it's just a matter that not enough people are trying to attack it on a regular basis...
What was the average mortgage rate?
By pool owner in ETH 2.0 I mean whoever put up 32 ETH to set up the stake pool. In Cardano, it's whoever runs the stake pool and rakes in the fees (https://cardanode.com.au/fixed-variable-cardano-ada-staking-fees/).

Does that help?
For invesment purposes, PoW still seems to be better if one intends to hold coins. If you go proof of stake and hold and stake your coins, you will have a built in “wealth tax” for staking (at least in the US and most large countries) since every stake reward is taxed as income. And you must receive stake rewards to “keep up” your wealth with everybody else.
Nano is sort of proof of stake, just unrewarded proof of stake (so they don't really use that term). But the lack of incentive to stake is also what makes it unlikely that such a system could support smart contracts (validators need to take on the cost of running more expensive hardware and validating much more complex transactions).

So yes, Nano is great for what it is, but you do need some incentive mechanism to run a smart contract platform.
>I personally don't see much value in dapps and DeFi.

Why do you care about centralization in the consensus scheme but don't care about it elsewhere?
You are right. But OP attached his own assumptions to option B.

I can turn the same two statements into a new fallacy.

Either everyone stakes, or just some people stake and the network works as intended keeping it decentralized and used.

What is it, A or B?
*...would you disagree the effect is there?*

Yes I agree, the effect is there. For a meaningful discussion it's also important to evaluate the scope of the effect. Paying a fraction of a cent for using the network is no big deal and not unfair.

*Even in networks where individual fees remain low, the sheer volume of transactions would still need to additional centralization over time, right?*

Why would network usage lead to centralization? If your network can scale the fees will be kept low.

*Like what? I'd genuinely love to hear.*

C. not everybody stakes but it doesn't matter because some people just hold the coins to be able to use the applications of the network and others use the native coin for trading or speculation.

In this scenario small holders gain equally as large holders if they decided to stake. Gains are in percentage so it doesn't matter wether you stake 100 or 1 million.
I think DOGE will be the digital money. It brings everything to the table a successful crypto project needs. 

High brand awareness, 2nd largest community, increasing real world adoption, sound fundamentals, memes :)
> So, to summarize, you understand that the inflation concern doesn't really exist on networks like Eth with a burning mechanic. Your really concern is that this way, the rich will be richer and this will lead to centralization of the staking pools.

I didn't mention inflation as a real issue anywhere, I think. My concern is  centralization. Especially in the long run, as I think we're in this space for the long run and that issues that will become a problem in 20 years should be tackled now, or people will divest before that time comes.

> I still can't wrap my head how Nano ensures security, and I guess that's on me. And on top Nano is on a very bare state regarding functionality.. I will give it , it's cheap and fast. But so is Algorand to name just one blockchain that on top offers smartcontracts... Also see other L2 networks.

If you're genuinely interested, I'd suggest my [basics of Nano article](https://senatus.substack.com/p/the-basics-of-nano-why-its-such-an). Nano really isn't that complicated, it's just sometimes hard to find info on it.

Indeed, it doesn't have smart contracts and such. It focuses on being decentralized digital cash and store of value, and optimizes *everything* for that.
The most level headed anti-nano comment I’ve seen, respect. The majority of people hating on it just say one sentence about how OP is a shill and nothing else.

As for the functionality comment, I would argue that adding more features will always increase congestion on the network. Any system that allows users to offload compute to others (eg smart contracts) will necessarily require fees as no one wants to waste energy and the opportunity cost of their processors for free. Thus why nano has no intention of offering smart contracts as they want the network to be as lightweight as possible.
If anyone doesn't realize, this exchange is 100% spam and has been repeated across umpteen subs. Recommend a ban.
Agreed, Nano is pure cash. As a smart contract platform I'm not sure it'd work.

VITE uses roughly the same architecture (feeless) and has smart contracts, but I'm not entirely up to date on the tradeoffs.
What makes you think BTC has an insurmountable lead? I'd say that the centralization over time means that it loses its value in the long run, as there is a prerequisite to be at least slightly decentralized and at the very least secure for it to be a store of value, right?

I personally see very little value in smart contracts, in all honesty. I think the digital cash and store of value angle is far more useful to the world. But yeah, no smart contracts for Nano, so I agree with you that it's very unsuited to that.
Well, using this ([see article](https://senatus.substack.com/p/nanos-latest-innovation-feeless-spam)) for one. Second, because it's not about fees so much, it's about cost. If it costs much to attack a chain, despite it being feeless, that works as spam resistance. Say you had to run a marathon to make a single transaction. Impractical obviously, but it'd definitely work. That's what Nano is trying to do.
U.S. Census Bureau: ""the median sales price of a housein the U.S. in 1980 was $64,600. Given that the mortgage loan rate atthat time was 13.74%, a 30-year loan for $64,600 required a monthly payment of $752.15.""

This is mind blowing to me. Our generation got fucked, indeed.
It helps with answering your question.

No, not all POS networks have these pool owners.

Yes, there are networks where staking rewards get evenly distributed among all stakers, including node runners and nobody gets a larger cut.
Yet another reason PoS isn't so great
\> since every stake reward is taxed as income  


Yes, true when solo staking and receiving issuance.

There is an alternative: Stake with a pool, which offers a token that appreciates in value. Of course now you are paying pool fees, let's say those are 10%. In this case though, tax would be capital gains, possibly long-term if holding long enough before swapping back to native coin.
I don't think that's true, especially long-term. You can see other (permissioned) projects that require insane node hardware and will never make profit from it. They're either (partly) paid for by the crypto devs or the entity running the node has a clear incentive to do so. 

Those incentives will grow with the network, as every decently sized company/dev will want a direct access point to the network. You'll start with small businesses and weaker nodes like now, but if the network keeps growing, bigger companies, researches, whales and more can run really beefy nodes. The trustless network access will be far more valuable to them than a 200$ node + maintenance.

Apart from that, nano doesn't want any other features like dapps, because they'll just clog the network. Once the network is fully occupied, simple payments will have to compete against smart contracts for pow/time/fees and reduce the UX.

As you can guess, I'm not a fan of complex L1 smart contracts for a production environment. It's a great dev/poc sandbox, though. XLM, XRP, Nano, IOTA etc intentionally don't want those smart contracts on their L1 for this reason.
I personally think decentralized currency is important, and that this truly adds value to the world. A non-debaseable, self-sovereign form of currency is a great good in my opinion. I see that value less for decentralized apps, decentralized finance and such, simply because I see little use for it myself at this point in time. Happy to learn though.
It doesn’t have sound fundamentals. 

It lacks fungibility
I'd say that any DLT with L1 smart contracts will always be bad for small payments. There will almost always be a smart contract be more valuable than your coffee transaction. Tokens will almost only be used for on-chain services.

Unless they can somehow manage not to be bandwidth capped, but defi bots and similar will make sure of that.
That's true, I suppose even the biggest lead could crumble overnight if centralization makes a 51% attack possible. As an entrepreneur I really like smart contracts - I even turned to Nano as the starting point before being disappointed that it didn't carry them. I realize now though, since we all see value in different areas, it's possible there's a market for all of it. A dominant SC platform, a dominant user-friendly transaction system, and an anti-inflation reserve asset.
Well, anyway I don't think 100 tps is by far enough for real world mass adoption. Sorry, but Nano may be cool and inclusive, but not good enough for it to take over VISA or Paypal (which imo is the ultimate goal of crypto, at least the payments only ones). Let alone the lack of smart contracts capabilities (to take over Nasdaq and TradFi...). Or am I missing something?
Houses were also half as big and obviously u should adjust these numbers by inflation, or barring that, by wage inflation. Honestly it’s not as bad as it seems
Could you give me an example? Would love to look into it.
Mmm if you are an investor, probably not…

*long term investor
If the pool’s coin has value, then you still pay income tax on it. I haven’t heard of this method before though, so thank you for the insight. Additionally, even though the pool issues their coin, they themselves will still need to pay taxes on profits. So you will likely be double taxed like the current system of corporations and dividends.
Have you read /r/Superstonks/ at all?  Seems all the fuckery of Citadel and other hedge funds could be prevented (or at least caught) if trading occurred on a decentralized platform.
What is fungibility and what does DOGE need it for?
Agreed. Each use case has an optimal system architecture. I think any system promising to be able to do both at once is making serious sacrifices elsewhere.
Yep! I think the latter two might be able to be combined. If you're looking for a feeless smart contract chain, maybe VITE is interesting to you!
True, but this doesn't consider the fact wages have stayed the same, and the average person can no longer afford a house. The fact properties sq footage has risen with inflation, while wages have not, only shows that the people who are buying can simply afford to buy bigger and bigger houses. This is opposed to every decade up until the 80's, where the average wage could afford the average home.

If you think being young and trying to buy property today, is the same as it was in  the decades leading up to the 80's, you're not considering wages and the disappearing middle class. It has affected home buyers as well as renters. This is clearly documented, this article has a great breakdown: [https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-historical-study/](https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-historical-study/)

You're right, it isn't as bad as it seems. It's worse when you consider the direction of wages. Literally a major reason we need DeFi.
Radix. I'm sure there are more, this is just one I certainly know of.
Could Algorand be an example? They call there version Pure Proof of Stake and you have at least 1 Algo in a wallet you get staking rewards evenly distributed, as in percentage wise based on number of Algo. This is changing in 2022 but has been running like this.

You don't delegate to a validator or node you just get them in your wallet. It probably is a bit different because there are also participation nodes for consensus that anyone can run but you don't get rewards for running then there are relay nodes that are for communication that get rewards from a different allocation to the wallet staking rewards.

I'm definitely not an expert but would love to hear feedback or thoughts on if this is an example or not you were looking for
>If the pool’s coin has value, then you still pay income tax on it.

I am not a tax accountant, so take this with plenty grains of salt.

Afaik the way it works is:

I have 1 ETH and swap it for N rETH (to use the example of RocketPool). This is a capital gains event.  
rETH appreciates in value relative to ETH as the pool earns rewards. This is not a taxable event.  


I take my N rETH and swap them back to 1.x ETH. This is a capital gains event.  


And yes, you are right, the pool will need to pay taxes on issuance - that comes out of the pool fee taken.
Fungibility means one isn’t distinguishable from the other. It’s one of the requirements for a sound money.

Doge doesn’t need it if it’s goal is to distract the masses with a useless joke
Oh I get that housing for most of the world is out of reach. USA housing is actually one of the most affordable for our citizens. 

https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp

Doesn’t mean we can’t do better. That being said I’m not sure how DeFi fits into this. I’m in the space as well, and I’m bullish, but I don’t see DeFi fighting the NIMBYism / zoning / globalization / automation and all the other reasons why our housing is becoming out of reach.
https://www.radixdlt.com/post/radix-staking-and-incentive-rewards-guide

> TLDR: For most people, staking XRD tokens is all you need to do to help the network and receive incentive rewards. To do that, starting on the 28th July, download the Radix Desktop Wallet, load up the wallet with XRD, select the validator nodes you want to delegate your stake to, and delegate at least 100 XRD to start earning staking “emissions” rewards on the Radix mainnet.

https://docs.radixdlt.com/main/node/validators-and-incentives.html

> In short, the primary way in which a validator node-runner receives emissions XRD tokens (other than choosing to stake their own XRD) is by specifying a ""validator fee"". This is a percentage that is taken by the validator node-runner from the total emissions otherwise due to all the validator node’s stakers at the end of each epoch.

Just had a cursory look, but that does seem like some take a larger cut, right? 

> In addition to emissions XRD, Radix Tokens Jersey Limited (RTJL) will provide an additional “subsidy” incentive specifically for validator node-runners. The subsidy will be drawn from a reserve of 600m XRD tokens, created at the genesis of the network and held by RTJL for purposes such as this. These subsidy rewards are not a feature of the network protocol and are provided directly from RTJL to the validator node-runner. To meet RTJL’s regulatory obligations, only node-runners that successfully complete KYC may be eligible for subsidy rewards.

> Subsidy rewards are provided to cover the costs of running a validator node to ensure that anyone who has the technical skill and commitment to run a good reliable validator node can do so. The quantity of XRD provided will be continuously adjusted by RTJL in order to provide a USD-equivalent value to comfortably cover the costs of good node hosting and operation. To begin with, we expect this to be approximately $500 per month for full participation in consensus, but may be adjusted as we learn more about real costs.
Looking into it real quick.. I'd say that a first ""redistribution"" factor here is that of course many hold their Algo on exchanges, who likely take a cut, right? Not saying this is an issue unique to Algo by the way, Nano has its own problems with people storing too much on exchanges, lol. There's also the fact that some people don't stake, right? I don't know the specifics, just ran across a comment somewhere that mentioned 5.5bn Algo in circulation and just 2.5bn being staked.

From what I'm reading though, Algo will start requiring locking up tokens soon to be eligble for staking rewards, right? It also seems that you'll be required to vote on proposals to be eligible, which I'd imagine makes this proposition less interesting to small holders than to large holders, I think?

Algo also seems to have fees, meaning that that aspect in the post I made holds true either way, I think, right?

I'm no expert on Algo, as you can see!
Yes I believe your above example was correct. I was merely stating that, effectively, this just shifts the taxes you pay from you paying them directly, to you paying higher fees, and the miner paying the taxes directly. Net net, you still pay taxes. So imo, the best strategy for a long term hodler would be one in which you don’t need to stake and lose money every month, every year. But we are still early, so overall as long as the network you are invested in is solid, you will likely make $.
*Just had a cursory look, but that does seem like some take a larger cut, right?*

It means the node runner can set a fee for his node to compensate for the costs. Some nodes have zero fees others don't. Staking rewards are evenly distributed. 

Everyone is free to run their own node since the specs are low and you don't need any minimum amount of XRD. The temporary DPOS makes it necessary to attract enough stake to get in the top 100 though. 

Once mainnet is fully operation this won't be the case anymore.
Every wallet holding Algorand is staked automatically. Yes exchanges take a cut as there reward % is lower than in the official wallets but exchange wallets are just the front end UI showing your account balance not individual wallets for every person. The 2.5bn staked you mentioned is just the stake of participation nodes not all Algo in circulation which gets staking rewards - https://algoexplorer.io/

Rewards are changing to governance rewards were you have to lock for 3 months and vote to get them, so this probably wasn't a great example for right now as it is changing the game theory on this and as the % is higher than current staking rewards will benefit bigger holders not in % terms as that's the same for everyone but in total absolute number of tokens received.

Your last point about fees, are you saying that any blockchain that has fees will become centralised because there are fees? Doesn't this depend on where the fees go? If the fee go into the reward pot that is part of the staking reward payout then it's still evenly distributed in % terms compared to miner fees in PoW chains going to biggest miners

I get that nano doesn't have fees but surely some kind of fee is needed as economic incentive for any ecosystem, you won't get enough people running nodes, validator or whatever any particular blockchain calls them without some reward? Fees are needed IMO
> Some nodes have zero fees others don't. Staking rewards are evenly distributed. 

If nodes don't have zero fees, staking rewards aren't evenly distributed though, right? Or what am I missing here?

> Everyone is free to run their own node since the specs are low and you don't need any minimum amount of XRD. The temporary DPOS makes it necessary to attract enough stake to get in the top 100 though. 

Yeah, that's fair. Specs are low, but there's still *some* cost. Not everyone is going to do this, so many are going to delegate to nodes. I think that makes sense, not saying it doesn't. There also seems to be minimum amount of 100 XRD to stake, which is $10. Not a huge sum by any means, does the minimum go down with increasing price? If not, that might be another obstacle.
Thanks again! 

> Every wallet holding Algorand is staked automatically. Yes exchanges take a cut as there reward % is lower than in the official wallets but exchange wallets are just the front end UI showing your account balance not individual wallets for every person. The 2.5bn staked you mentioned is just the stake of participation nodes not all Algo in circulation which gets staking rewards - https://algoexplorer.io/

Good to know.

> Rewards are changing to governance rewards were you have to lock for 3 months and vote to get them, so this probably wasn't a great example for right now as it is changing the game theory on this and as the % is higher than current staking rewards will benefit bigger holders not in % terms as that's the same for everyone but in total absolute number of tokens received.

Yeah, and also in terms (I would expect) of the larger you are, the larger the part of your Algo that you'd be okay locking up, right? Since smaller holders will need a large percentage of their holdings to actually use as money and such. Sort of the same as in the real world, in the sense that those with a lot of assets have a far lower % in cash than those with lower net worth, right?

> Your last point about fees, are you saying that any blockchain that has fees will become centralised because there are fees? Doesn't this depend on where the fees go? If the fee go into the reward pot that is part of the staking reward payout then it's still evenly distributed in % terms compared to miner fees in PoW chains going to biggest miners

Sort of, but it differs per blockchain how fast this centralization happens I'd say. My point with the fees is that.. I'm not a big holder. Let's say I get Algo, and I want to actually use it, I use it to send back and forth with friends and such. I pay fees to do so, right? Whereas if really large holders use it in that way, the fee they pay is (roughly) equal to the fee I pay in absolute terms, but in relative terms it's far far lower.

So they lose relatively less Algo to fees, while also being able to lock up/stake a larger percentage of their Algo. They pay relatively less, and gain relatively more. To me that does seem like it centralises over time, right?

> I get that nano doesn't have fees but surely some kind of fee is needed as economic incentive for any ecosystem, you won't get enough people running nodes, validator or whatever any particular blockchain calls them without some reward? Fees are needed IMO

I'm not sure I agree. There are tons and tons of Bitcoin full nodes being run without any reward. There are plenty of Nano validator nodes being run. I wrote [an article on it here](https://senatus.substack.com/p/how-nanos-lack-of-fees-provides-all-the-right-incentives-ee7be4d2b5e8), would love your take on it as most of the times when people read my articles they're already Nano supporters, haha. So you might have a more neutral/objective view.
In your section on Nano incentives all the examples you give of businesses running nodes are exchanges or wallets or 3rd parties that can take their own fee on nano transactions so they have a vested interest in it because they are making money from it. This will only get you do far.

To have big scale geographically spread decentralisation from individuals that aren't exchanging value and therefore not making money there needs to be something in return to cover costs. 

Funnily enough Algorand has this same issue where there is currently no incentive for individuals to run participation nodes even when the costs are small using a raspberry pi. Some people will do it for fun, to get involved, because they are invested themselves in the specific crypto, but ultimately to gets tens of thousands or millions of nodes needed for global scale costs need to be covered
> In your section on Nano incentives all the examples you give of businesses running nodes are exchanges or wallets or 3rd parties that can take their own fee on nano transactions so they have a vested interest in it because they are making money from it. This will only get you do far.

I would say that for exchanges that's a fair point, they profit from trading in Nano. Wallets are free generally though, as are many others on the list. Either way, that is indeed the idea. They have a vested interest in it because it makes them money or saves them money in other ways, so there is no need for a fee on the base layer. 

> To have big scale geographically spread decentralisation from individuals that aren't exchanging value and therefore not making money there needs to be something in return to cover costs. 

But why? I already mentioned Bitcoin full nodes. Nano full nodes are comparable to that, and there are plenty of Bitcoin nodes being run, right?

I also wonder what makes you say millions of nodes are needed. Why do you think so?
Blockchain and crypto is tiny right now so it's not such an issue but if it is truly to go global like mobile phone or internet usage that 4-5+ billion people are involved there needs to be lots. Think about how many cell phone towers or masts there are, all of the cables and general physical infrastructure needed for the internet, if often gets overlooked but it's huge. I could be wrong but think the same is needed for global blockchain
Ah like that. Well, in Nano's case for those levels of access, you don't actually need millions of nodes. Not every user *needs* to run a full node, they can also just use the wallet's node, or run a pruned (light) node, or even ultralight nodes that are roughly 2 MB or so in Nano's case.
Light clients and wallets will become more of a thing where inevitably a wallet on a mobile will act as a node."
My brief observation of most common Consensus Algorithms,161,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7znnq8/my_brief_observation_of_most_common_consensus/,"Great write-up. Thank you
Can you do Nano?
KMD's delayed Proof of Work would be a good one to compare/contrast, too.

Great work!
[Decred](https://www.decred.org/) utilizes a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake system.

Mining reward is distributed to PoW miners, PoS stakers and the project treasury in a 6:3:1 ratio. Blocks are created by PoW miners and their validity is voted on by PoS stakers. Using PoW to produce blocks prevents the nothing-at-stake problem in a pure PoS system. PoW miners get twice the block reward than PoS stakers therefore PoS stakers cannot maintain their influence forever just by getting into the project earlier.

Blocks must contain at least 3 votes casted by stakers to be added to the blockchain so secret extension of a fork and block withholding attack are mitigated. To prevent manipulation, funds are locked when staked and then pseudorandomly called to vote on block validity and consensus changes.

Since launch 3 consensus upgrades had been voted in via on-chain [consensus voting](https://docs.decred.org/getting-started/user-guides/agenda-voting/) including:

* an improved staking difficulty algorithm
* OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (a primitive of the Lightning Network)
* OP_SHA256 (required to extend [atomic swap](https://blog.decred.org/2017/09/20/On-Chain-Atomic-Swaps/) support to more cryptocurrencies)

Check out the [docs](https://docs.decred.org/) if you'd like to know more!
I'd like to see Tezos if you have a chance.
PBFT is not PoS! There is a difference!

PBFT is a permissioned Blockchain and PoS is permissionless.

Permissioned means it's restricted to a few handpicked writers, that are allowed to write on the Blockchain. This concept is completely different to PoW and PoS.
There is a likely scam coin called Xtrabytes that claims to use ""Proof of Signature"" (plenty of reasons the coin is either a scam, or the anonymous devs got in over there heads and can't deliver their goal, or are either really far out).

Their public ""whitepaper"" is pretty high-level and doesn't have any technical details. However, do you know what they are trying to say with ""Proof of Signature""?

Thanks!
A couple of interesting protocols are Proof of Stake Time (PoST) for VeriCoin and Proof of Work Time (PoWT) for Verium. Here is the PoST whitepaper, the PoWT whitepaper is currently being written:


http://www.vericoin.info/downloads/VeriCoinPoSTWhitePaper10May2015.pdf
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I would suggest doing Holochain. It's quite different from all of these.
Good stuff this is the kind of content I've been coming here for. Do u have any more resources on pos variants and trade offs? 
I like this article about consensus https://bitcointechtalk.com/the-anatomy-of-proof-of-work-98c85b6f6667
I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

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Could you do skycoin; opinion based dynamics?
Are there any algorothims that don't require mining and don't require a large sum of funds to be a node or voter? Trying to see about crypro that doesn't use a lot of electricity but also allows the little guys to get compensated more progressively.
could you take a look on Enigma? 
I think it's important to explain PoW, even though you think it's well known. Herds of newcomers are coming everyday who do not know how important PoW is, and how PoS is not as fundamentally secure.  

Energy is the most fundamental unit of value that exists, and consuming vast amounts of it to validate the integrity of the blockchain through hash based PoW is what makes it so secure and difficult to hack. It is the most secure network to ever have existed by several orders of magnitude and that's *because* of the energy required to maintain it through a hash based proof of work.

[Khan Academy Explanation of PoW ](https://youtu.be/9V1bipPkCTU) 

Basically, PoW trusts in fundamental mathematics to validate transactions, whereas PoS trusts the largest stakeholders or delegated nodes to validate transactions.  
I didn't even read yet. Gold the man. I can't.
Ok, will look it through. Also I have added 2 more: Yobicash and Byteball, both use DAG instead of Blockchain  
Nano is added
> KMD

Komodo is added - [26]
> Decred

Decred is added - [2]
Tezos is added - [9]
ok, will add little bit later.
> PBFT

PBFT - Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance - practical algorithm to state machine replication according to Barbara Liskov :) in my post only Yobicash has pbft, but yobicash is not attributed to PoS. 
[deleted]
I just read the first sentence and can already say it is bullshit. There is something like the CAP theorem for distributed systems and it would be really nice if people would read it and understand that all these nice whitepapers will not make it at the end. I totally see that there are different forms of consensus algorithms but they all come at a cost and based on current technological advances it is just impossible to have instant and free and trustless consensus in distributed systems and vericoin will just not change this. 
> Nebulas

Nebulas is added - [18]
> Holo

Holochain is added - [25]. If you have something to add, you are welcome
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Both use fundamental mathematics. PoW trusts miners, who may not have any stake in the coin (because they can mine a different one), and who may not act in the best interests of users. PoS trusts the stake-holders. They will act in the best interests of users because they are the users. They won't damage the coin because they hold it in large quantities. So from this point of view, PoS is more secure than PoW.
I think Filecoin uses proof of space-time as well....not sure what that means though.
Thanks
Thanks--that's awesome!

Neo has it too. Just because they name it differently, doesn't mean it isn't PBFT. The naming isn't important

BFT is synchronous and has limited writers. 
Agreed. And I think just borz is working on the mainnet code, maybe one other. Pretty shady all around (minus the community devs, which are doing work and I think outside the loop of the borz/ccrev circle for the most part). Thank you for the feedback!
I see general statements and not a specific argument. Can you articulate your point in a more detailed way please? The VeriCoin team have been developing the PoST protocol since 2015. Their pedigree in the academic and crypto communities is above reproach. VeriCoin transactions are not free, just very low cost, which you would have learned had you read past the first sentence before criticizing. Again, I'd love to hear a more detailed argument that lead developer /u/effectstocause could address in detail. 
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nice! glad you actually added it instead of just poo-pooing it like lots of people do
PoW doesn't have to ""trust"" miners, anyone can verify the proof string of the hashes in a block themselves and know that the transactions are legitimate. 

Trusting someone won't falsify tx in a coin because they are largely invested in it is **trusting** in people, not mathematics. 

Regardless of your ""point of view"", PoW is verifiably more secure. There are many academic articles to back this up.
Filecoin uses proof-of-spacetime to prove that storage provider is storing outsourcing data at a particular moment.  
I suppose you mean that in classical PoS - the more balance -> more chance to create block. But in NEO (Delegated BFT, not Practical BFT)case you should be elected (by NEO holders) to be eligible to create block. Am I right? From my point of view balance is main condition to be eligible for block creation, and only NEO holders can vote for Block Leader. According to this I suppose it can be attributed as kinda PoS (not 100% of course). Anyway any such classifications are nominal.
If you think PoS allows someone to falsify transactions, then you don't understand how PoS actually works in a coin like Nxt or Ardor. The outgoing transactions of an account have to be signed by the private key of that account. The person who produces the block cannot make fake transactions because they don't know the private keys. Anyone can verify the signatures because the corresponding public keys are, well, public.

The only trust involved with PoS is the same as with PoW: that the person who produced the block made an honest choice of which transactions to include. That's all. (And that's what I thought you meant when you mentioned trust.)
Read up on this topic, pretty please! Neo is PBFT and that's different to PoS. BFT in general is different to PoS!. This is good: Do you need a Blockchain?
PDF https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiAod2F5rzZAhXF0aQKHb2EBLAQFjAAegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw0h8OCwV-Qwi2vDQCBEMB-R


There is more info out about BFT if you need some. BFT is quicker, but it's less decentralized than PoS, that's it in a nutshell.

Such classifications are not nominal, it's a fundamental difference! It's a different type of block chain.


As TL;DR Neo is BFT and not PoS! Dont be fooled by their marketing. 
NEO has never claimed to be PoS and neither did OP. NEO is dBFT (not pBFT as you mention?) and I think OP explained it clearly enough from the start. 
He put it in the PoS category, that's his fuck up. 

BFT is a different algorithm, a different concept compared to PoS!
I see, I did not realize that it was under the POS category. Your comment makes more sense now."
"Proof-of-Approval: Stake Based, 1 Block Finality & History Attack Defense",145,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/8qvntf/proofofapproval_stake_based_1_block_finality/,"Your Medium article misspells ""Merkle"" as ""Merkel"". The [cryptographer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle) is not related to the [German chancellor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel). 
I haven't finished reading the whitepaper but I like every idea that is not PoW.
Paper updated to include additional description of fork selection and defense against attacks.
Thanks for pointing it out! Corrected."
Bitcoin electricity consumption research shows interesting results,149,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nerev9/bitcoin_electricity_consumption_research_shows/,"We should absolutely be concerned about the energy use. IMO PoW is not the future of cryptocurrency. If it's at all possible to have an equally secure and decentralized system using f.ex. PoS (and modern PoS implementations does seem to accomplish this), then it would be incredibly wasteful not to do that instead.

Futhermore, comparing the energy consumption with gold mining and banking is both 1) irrelevant whataboutism, and 2) not even a favorable comparison because these industries are currently much, much more valuable and productive than bitcoin is, and yet bitcoin uses power in the same order of magnitude as them. That suggests that they are much more efficient than bitcoin when scaled to comparable proportions.
These numbers are really concerning considering that the banking industry handles the transactions of virtually everything. Bitcoin is just being shifted around, without being able to buy anything (almost). And it takes half of the energy of the banking sector. That is just objectively bad.
[deleted]
Should we concerned about something that could contribute to the destruction of the natural environment we all rely on ultimately and cause global social and economic breakdown?

Hmmmmmm......
Absolutely shouldn’t be concerned. Mining operations naturally gravitate to clean energy in much (I think most?) of the world as it’s the cheapest. Is there room for improvement? Always. It will get better over time as mining rigs become more efficient and solar / wind etc keep getting orders of magnitude cheaper. 

Also, tesla new 100% the energy consumption before they bought. Don’t believe their explanation for stopping accepting it. Look where their money is: still in btc
No. The use of that electricity is a fantastic investment in the Bitcoin network. Of course over time we should be doing our best to transition to cleaner sources. I'm confident this will happen. Too many reasons not to. In the meantime, don't fall for the lame FUD guys!
I feel like one aspect is missing, we must face the fact that the number of transactions of the traditional banking sector is way greater than BTC transactions. A ratio should be more honest to the energetic efficiency of the two systems. It would be nice to see a research that is able to project the amount of energy spent if BTC is more widely adopted, and how much more sustainable energy would need to be produced to keep it “green”.
Yes we should be concerned about all energy consumption.
So comparisons are helpful, that is true, but we should also be aware of WHAT is being compared. The Gold industry is integral to the entire technology economy as it is a key instrumental player in almost all forms of electronics.

The banking industry is the most comparable to Bitcoin given that bitcoin seeks to supplant the banking industry. In the US alone, over 120 million people have bank accounts. If you consider the banking system worldwide, you are talking about billions of people.

Bitcoin has less than 1M active wallets daily, even if you assume that people only transact on a single day, and each person only has a single wallet (both completely false assumptions), you would get an estimate of \~365 million people using bitcoin. Not even getting close to the reaching even the 1 billion mark.

So. definately on a per capita basis, Bitcoin is WAY more energy intensive than a lot of industries.

But we should also look at the value bitcoin provides. Banks, as much as some people may hate them, allow modern society to function. Very few people use cash anymore, and so the majority of transactions are run through banks. Bitcoin has extremely limited usage. Bitpay, the primary source for people to actually use bitcoin as a currency (ie buy things with it), has less than 70,000 monthly transactions, and the number has been decreasing. So if you think in terms of the energy required to process 1 transaction, Bitcoin is insanely inefficient compared to other areas.

The reason you can look and say bitcoin uses less energy is simply because it is small compared to other areas.
Isn't Bitcoins carbon footprint determined by where it is mostly mined? Or does fossil fuels only provide sufficient continuous power for a mining operation?
Well yeah but crypto is still realy small compared with those 2 sectors. If crypto replaces banking for all the people in the world then we would be screwed at this point. Since the energy consumption of the world would skyrocket.


Just ask youreself this: how many people do use crypto? And how many people use banks?
These comparisons really annoyed me when other crypto subs and Crypto news sites came up with them. Banks do provide more services than crypto and do that in a larger variety of ways providing utility

Can crypto replace local Bank branches for old people? No

Does ""crypto"" Providence an extensive network of terminals to access it, comparable to ATM no

Can you actually pay with crypto, store crypto, take loans in crypto, use it in any meaningful way by itself? No, you need at least a wallet. Banks in comparison can Providence everything - your account, your card to access it, the PoS terminal enabling stores to take your Fiat, loans, everything

Crypto by itself is only comparable to the (interbank) transaction system. However, even if interbank transactions would need more electricity than crypto (it doesn't), it would still be more efficient since banks handle trillions of transaction volume daily

If you want to compare the sectors you need to count everything...all Exchanges, all Computer running wallets, all Hardware wallets, all the startups operating in the crypto space...and set all that in relation to the transaction volume. There is no possible result other than banks being insanely more energy-efficient per USD transacted 

Why not be honest? If you dream of Crypto as a banking system/Fiat replacement, PoW like BTC,China,others is simply inacceptable from an ecological standpoint. Don't we have more and more alternatives available? Let's embrace progress in tech rather than stick to obsolete tech just cuz we are invested in it

What annoyed me the most was this one ""study"" circulating which supposedly proves that banks are worse - no, printing the argumentation of coindesk-level articles into a fancy PDF does not make it a scientific study. Not that crypto news sites would care...
Just look at the comparison of consumption costs of 1 Bitcoin to 1 IOTA.  Bitcoin uses 600,000,000+ times more than IOTA does.  And Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin because they were just trying to manipulate the market.  EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOM have known about how much electricity Bitcoin uses for YEARS.
Isn't a big part of the electrical consumption due to mining? I mean, btc will not be mined forever, so people isn't mixing too many components in their reasonings?  


This is a question from a non-expert of course
So basically, Tesla is crashing BTC over false claims. Or am I reading these numbers wrong?
I think a problem like this shouldn't be compared relatively with other industries. If crypto has to go mainstream, it must overcome these challenges.

Another thing if you guys haven't noticed is, crypto isn't used by most people, when does go mainstream, the electricity usage will increase exponentially.
I have a newbie question.


  

Is there a reason why ETH is more successful than ADA TRX or IOTA, for example, despite its relatively high energy consumption and high transaction costs? Is it only because ETH is better known?
I really don't think this gonna matter in the future. Everyone wants the world to go electric and get off fossil fuels. That being the case, we are gonna need a whole lot of f\*ckin electricity. SO... the world needs to find a way to produce more of it with less emissions. My vote is nuclear, but it's not like the world is gonna use less energy in the future. The population is still growing. We shouldn't be looking for ways to consume less. We should be looking for ways to produce more clean energy. If we are concerned about the unbanked and the oppressed, we should want to give them access to as much energy as possible
We should be concerned about all energy consumption. People don't care about banks and the gold industry because they're considered a part of the ""old world"" everyone knows that old world tech consumes electricity but new tech is supposed to be green so BTC has a higher expectation. 

Also why not push for greener energy consumption? So many cryptos are finding workarounds and greener tech to get around the energy consumption attack on crypto that it ultimately leads to a better product and a better future.
I don't mean to be rude, but do you have any sources on that? I would like to know more about it.
Imo pow is wonderful in that it takes a something physical to overpower the network. But we need to focus on making the energy per transaction more efficient while maintaining high security. It's nice that it naturally incentivizes the hardware to become more cost effective.

But the fact that coal is cheap energy isn't bitcoins fault. Everyone wants cheap renewable energy. If we can make it cheaper of course bitcoin will shift to it. I think the problem we see is that alternative energy only pays off on large time scales. So first we need a huge investment in R&D to improve it then we need huge investments to actually build the structures for people willing to play the extremely long game.

Perhaps the most interesting idea is that several alternative energy technologies provide fluctuating peak power such as solar during the day and mining isn't something that requires being on all day like electricity for a city.

Mining right now is being propelled by adoption driving the price of new coins up. I think it's good to point out this is a temporary situation. My question is once we reach adoption and the price growth slows, do transactions get more expensive?
We should be more concerned about energy generation.  Once you start down the path of determining a worthy use of energy, you open pandora's box of morality, and politics, and who gets to decide what's an ok use of energy. Wars are fought over that. I mean who are you to decide what use of energy is valuable or virtuous? Should we shut down Youporn because it uses a ton of energy?

If the energy is generated cleanly, however, who cares how much it uses?
Energy use is just one part of the inefficiency of PoW. The 2nd part is storage.

Ethereum archive nodes are > 5 TB in storage and take weeks/months to download. Bitcoin full nodes are > 300 GB and take a week to download.

How is anyone supposed to run a full node 20 years from now, or if the number of transactions grows by 1000x? This is not scalable without completely evolving the design. Only large institutions will be able to run full nodes later on. Either the PoW coins become very centralized, or they become bloated.
[deleted]
NANO or IOTA basically is the solution to Bitcoin’s energy problem. I’d say more on the NANO side.
You cannot claim PoS achieves the same level of security and decentralization as PoW, because that isn't yet proven.
I agree. Spending 0.1% of the world's energy on doing hashes hoping to guess the right one is not the best approach.

\- An ETH2 Validator ;)
With respect, there are a lot of people in this thread who do not understand Bitcoin's value to the world. If you believe in bitcoin's vision - which is to provide sound money to the 2 billion unbanked, 80% of the world living under regimes with materially inflationary or hyperinflationary currencies, and financial freedom for ordinary people...then that fairly significant value proposition has to be considered against the costs. (Note - if all you want is massive #s of transactions sent quickly and verified by a trusted third party, you can do that now with Paypal. no need for any of this). 

Second the figures you cite don't take into account the source of the electricity. The fact that nearly 3/4 of bitcoin mining is renewable seems important here.
>Futhermore, comparing the energy consumption with gold mining and banking is both 1) irrelevant whataboutism, and 2) not even a favorable comparison because these industries are currently much, much more valuable and productive than bitcoin is, and yet bitcoin uses power in the same order of magnitude as them. That suggests that they are much more efficient than bitcoin when scaled to comparable proportions.

By that logic, it would be impossible to compare and contrast anything.

This refrain about ""whataboutism"" when applied mindlessly is getting a bit out of hand now.
While it may be in the same order of magnitude by definition, gold and banking are still twice as much. Also, who cares if the energy is renewable? There is plentiful renewable energy - what’s with the push to curb its use? I don’t get it. Please explain.
Btc utilization is still low, we don’t know how many transactions will be used in 2030. Btc and pow will definitely be a problem
Yes, it is actually about the mechanism of coin distribution

To win the right to write a block is actually a lottery, the more resource you have, the more likely you win the lottery

In original bitcoin design, people have no way to prove to the world that they have such resource, so they have to do the hash work to prove that they have xxx amount of resource

However, once blockchain exists, people have private key to prove to the world that they own certain amount of coins, that solved the proof of resource problem, then they don't need to burn them

So, in staking, you do not burn energy to win the lottery, you just need to show that you have certain amount of coins
Higher tps doesn't mean higher electricity use though, those two aren't correlated.
It’s difficult to compare because you will not know how many lightning transactions are effectively batched before it settles to the base layer. Bitcoin’s base layer does not scale beyond 7tps at this time. Hence the need for a layer 2 solution such as lightning.
Yes and the early narrative was for it to be a new world currency. PoW is not the way for this ideal
>I guess the banking industry does a lot more...

Yes it does. A phenomenal amount more.

>The whole energy argument misses the point, the bitcoin POW is very secure.

That is simply wrong. The concept that pollution doesn't matter is wrong. The concept that consumption doesn't matter is wrong. The concept that the critics missed the point is wrong. Even your underlying concept that you got the point is wrong. 

That concept is so wrong that there are nearly many things wrong with it as words in the sentence.

> if there could be a push for miners to run on excess renewable power then all would be green with the world

So your solution is to run Bitcoin purely on mythical concepts. 

The concept that there is extra energy produced is wrong. The idea that miners can be pushed to be anything except self-serving is wrong. I could continue but you have once again managed to have nearly as many things wrong with your concept as there are words in the sentence.

In other words, in three sentence you managed to show that you have no idea what banking does, no idea how Bitcoin actually functions, and no concept about energy.
You mean like EV’s? Once we shift over from fossil fuels they will run on the same energy sources.
[deleted]
> their reasonings?
> 
> This is a question from a non-expert of course

non expert + 1 asks the same question. If mining is the problem, since there is a limited amount of BTC, when it is all mined what will  the problem be?
Thanks
newbie here. I found this, you might want to have a look
https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/m5jdf6/comparison_of_energy_usage_amongst_biggest/
I agree with the support for Monero's approach, but it does worry me how large some of the top mining pools have been..
That's what I thought but IOTA need about 100x less energy per transaction than Nano and they are working towards getting rid of the PoW for spam protection and replacing it with a reputation system making it way less energy intensive as before. Nano is amazing but on that topic IOTA is way more advanced imho
What do you think of the Tezos blockchain?
Cool. Maybe we can copy them to be a bitcoin sidechain.
What proof exactly do you mean? My understanding is the (formal) specification proves the safety
Here's your proof:

https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf

> We present “Ouroboros,” the first blockchain protocol based on proof of stake with rigorous security guarantees. We establish security properties for the protocol comparable to those achieved by the bitcoin blockchain protocol.
How does PoW provide so much security vs PoS?  What are true benefits to PoW where PoS falls short?  I m a newbie looking to understand
Serving the 2 billion unbanked isn't possible with Bitcoin. It simply does not scale. For many of these people, transaction fees over 0.1€ are a problem. There are feeless/low-fee alternatives like nano and algo that make much more sense in developing countries. Cardano is borderline too expensive at 0.17 ada fee, but at least they can change the parameter later.

As an inflation hedge and store of value bitcoin is undeniably great. But in my opinion not significantly more secure from user perspective than low-fee alts. Ok I would not store 1 billion in nano at the moment, but for the unbanked it's great.
> The fact that nearly 3/4 of bitcoin mining is renewable seems important here.

Just a point of information: that's not accurate. 76% of _miners_ use renewable energy, _to some degree_. Among those miners, that doesn't mean that 100% of all their _mining activity_ is completely supported by renewable energy. 

The total share of energy consumed by crypto mining which is renewable is much lower -- 39% (of which, more than 62% is hydro-electric, not wind/solar)

Consider also there's a lot of e-waste concerns (And the energy used to produce mining equipment) associated with PoW.

Here is a [comprehensive cryptoasset report with energy stats](https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study/).
Defending PoW, hence cryptocurrencies mining, claiming that a certain part of it is powered by renewable energy is only slightly acceptable if that energy would have gone to waste otherwise.
With respect, you are making a fallacy here. You have argued why blockchain is the future, not shown why we should stick to Bitcoin over PoS-based boockchains that consume a fraction of a fraction of the energy that Bitcoin does and will do.
If it used 100x as much electricity it would be the best usage of energy on the earth still
It is nevertheless a problem. Looking for alternatives is justified. 

PoW is an elegantly simple and straightforward principle compared to PoS.
That renewable energy could replace fossil fuels for other uses if not Bitcoin. 

Will Bitcoin energy go up 10x if transactions go up 10x? Or will it stay relatively stable?  Do we get more efficiency from scale or just use more and more electricity as the price goes up and more people mine.
>While it may be in the same order of magnitude by definition, gold and banking are still twice as much.

Yes, and that is basically the same, because due to how much more they are used, their energy use *should* be orders of magnitude higher, not just double, if bitcoin were supposed to be efficient.

>Also, who cares if the energy is renewable? Energy is infinite - what’s with the push to curb its use? I don’t get it. Please explain.

Energy is clean and plentiful in theory, but not in practice. Maybe this argument can make sense in a century when we hopefully finally have a 100% clean electricity grid, but for now we don't. And climate change and waste is a problem *right now*, we cannot afford to wait a century.
However price is directly correlated to electricity consumption and we all hope that Bitcoin will reach 100k, 500k or whatever one day. So this issue will only get more pressing
Well, there's a relation. The higher the network wealth, the more attractive it may be to attack. As adoption increases, You would expect hash rate to follow. This is a fundamental issue in PoW. You essentially burn cash for security.

In PoS, wealth itself provides the security. It's an extremely stable state. There's an incentive for people to collaborate and monitor large shares to avoid a 51% stake attack. Consider the enormous quantity of wealth needed to get 51% stake of a large network. PoS gets security almost for free (of course, participants have to be active, vigilant and rational, but it's all in their best interest, that's what's so cool about it!)
[deleted]
I agree, plastic is a terrible problem. I don't fly, I never buy bottles of water/juice, buy all my clothes in charity shops, so I'm going to let myself off for my teensy bit of bitcoin!
[deleted]
They are shilling their own product man, how is that proof?
Truth is, we haven't seen enough long-term use of Proof of stake to tell if it provides the same amount of security. IMHO, theres' no reason to believe it doesn't.
I like the idea of using different crypto for different use cases.  Clearly in developing countries they won't use BTC as a daily banking network, but they could as you say use another lightweight crypto for day to day transactions.

Maybe wealthy people/business owners in developing countries would use BTC as a store of value, but they'd have to change to something else to transact locally.

I'm not sure that this completely removes Bitcoin's impact on banking the 2B unbanked, but it does marginalize it.
Thank you for that post! I am researching this topic. I would assume that hydroelectricity, while renewable, is a case of taking away power available to other industries and driving up costs in the system. Would you agree?
This energy could have been used for folding proteins for medical research instead and a millionth of that energy could have been used to fully power dPoS with no fees cryptocurrencies that are way more decentralized in addition to desincentivizing big voters to disrupt the network
Unfortunately many people will disagree with you lol
More than half of the electricity globally is fossil fuel based. Bitcoin should be the least of your concerns. PlayStations use more. Maybe we should start by banning consoles as they provide absolutely no value to any part of society.
It isn't actually, bitcoin hash rate has been consistently going up since its inception whereas it's price has had many ups and downs that are not reflected in hash rate
But big entities like Binance will have a big influence on the whole network and it will never be decentralized. Just look at the amount of ADA staking pools that are owned by Binance. 

But you are right, everything would change when people are more active and be aware of what they are doing but in my opinion that will never be the case and that‘s why POS will never work.
Your exact claim was that there is excess renewable energy. There is in reality a significant shortage.
I thought their test nets have been running coordinator-less for a few months now.
[deleted]
Pretty much. The thing about hydroelectric is that it has to be sourced near hydroelectric dams. Energy near these dams is cheap, which attracts mining operations to setup shop there.

They’re also a very limited geographically, tied to fixed natural resources that only exist in few places where it can be harvested.

It’s not like crypto miners are building these dams either or driving new dams to be built. They just decided to setup shop near the Hoover dam because energy prices are lower there.

Solar and wind, by comparison, are not nearly as limited geographically speaking. Virtually anyone can harvest solar, for example.

Hypothetically, if there were a grid which has a surplus of hydroelectric energy, say, in off-peak hours, they may be helping by using energy that would otherwise go to waste. But I don’t know if anything like that exists. I suspect in most cases traditional power plants are needed to supplement the hydroelectric power to meet demand 24/7 — but that’s just a feeling, I haven’t done any research on that.
>More than half of the electricity globally is fossil fuel based. Bitcoin should be the least of your concerns. 

More whataboutism. Anything other than bitcoins power consumption is completely irrelevant to a discussion about bitcoin's power consumption. We should strive to improve it if we can, regardless of how much or little it uses in comparison to something else. And actually, its use is quite high compared to other things, anyway, as said.

>PlayStations use more. Maybe we should start by banning consoles as they provide absolutely no value to any part of society.

First of all, wrong. All the Playstations in the world use much less energy than bitcoin mining does. Maybe they'd come close if they were all turned on and gaming at the same time, 24/7, but they aren't.

Secondly and more importantly: If there was a product with all the benefits of Playstations, but with none of the waste, then indeed, why the hell should we not switch to it? Likewise, if there exists blockchains with all the benefits of bitcoin but with none of the waste, why should we not switch to it?

The difference is that such an alternative for playstations doesn't exist. But for bitcoin, it DOES. It's not about banning anything, it's about upgrading to something better.
I do not believe it will be worse than current PoW centralization in a few large miners. There is much more incentive for decentralization. Third parties will charge for staking and there will be competition.

But the main point is that this all misses the point. What provides most of security is simply the transparency inherent in the PoS and PoW protocols. If someone performs a double spend, everyone will know. It will be in the news. You can verify yourself. At that point, there will probably be a fork. Even after spending immense wealth (and assuming people let him get 51%), the attacker can't simply get away unnoticed. Mostly nothing would happen.  There is an overwhelming communitarian security (that first crypto designers did not anticipate).
[deleted]
Then read the peer revieuwed papers of those claims ;)
The power would still be taken by power lines to the industrial centres, I would imagine. Yep I believe non-hydro power sources are used to supplement hydro power which isn't sufficient for our entire needs in most places.
Okay I get what you’re saying. Bitcoin isn’t a significant concern, but it is a concern nonetheless. I guess I’m wondering why it’s being singled out in the media and elsewhere. I suppose it’s an easy industry to vilify to take away from the real problem. A red herring of sorts.
>> Your exact claim was that there is excess renewable energy. 

>No I didn't, I suggested miners should run on excess renewable energy. 

So now you're just going to directly contradict yourself in a single sentence. Well at least you're consistent in your nonsense.

> Do you know how power purchase agreements work, load supply, grid syncing?

Actually yes I do. 

> What about when grid demand is low at night but a mega wind farm is able to pump out a few hundred MW or GW of power? 

Then other systems are turned off. The grid always runs on what costs the least at that time. Any time renewables can meet demand they are cheapest. So your claim is just as false as ever, you're not getting any better here.

> The grid cannot just take more and more power, there is load balancing and if that means a supplier is taken offline, 

Exactly the problem you're not understanding. If the supplier is offline it is because they are not the cheapest. 

> that power could be used for mining.

What you are advocating here (and directly lying about) is using nonrenewable energy.

> Anyway, you are clearly up your own arse

Actually I'm the one that is making sense. You however have been caught in several lies.
Bitcoin consumes as much energy as the Netherlands, and probably its consumption is growing much faster than that of the Netherlands. As much as i'd like to, I can't dismiss bitcoin's energy consumption as insignificant."
Privacy and anonymity enabled in crypto through Zero-Knowledge Proof technology.,145,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/y756r2/privacy_and_anonymity_enabled_in_crypto_through/,"How does railgun obfuscate on a transparent ledger like Ethereum?
With so many speculations around regulations, it isn’t hard to imagine that one day, crypto trading platforms will be required to have a privacy shield that can produce financial reports in order to be legally permitted to operate in certain economic areas and host consumer trading funds. The optional view-key will be quite important if it comes to that
ethereum should build privacy protocol into layer 1,so users don't have to buy privacy
Very interesting post! [We're actually publishing a multi-part series](https://scrt.network/blog/beyond-zk-guide-to-web3-privacy-part-1) on how ""zk"" doesn't go far enough to ensuring our decentralized systems are also private enough. Also, building on a public-by-default foundation like Ethereum is very challenging and undermines the security and sustainability of any privacy solution being built on top. The future is likely private-by-default computation blockchains like Secret Network.
I think privacy by default is the best way to go. 

There is some interesting value in things like railgun and ZK tech because of bringing some privacy to the 0 privacy chains. 

But overall, the future needs private by default because in the end, security is only as good as its foundation.
ring signatures > snarks/starks 

**MONERO**
Don't MISS what's happening here!💥  
INCREDIBLE feat we will implement soon!   
u/MilkyWayDefi will launch the most awaited lottery!  
Start trading now!!
I'm of the mindset that at some point in the near future, privacy functions via ZKP will be the standard that Web3 dApps will be expected to provide to their users. Imagine having the ability to scroll through a list of pseudonymous Chase Bank accounts and view not just their balance but all their transactions. 

Institutional adoption and regulatory compliance, in my opinion, will require that Web3 financial services offer privacy. Biases aside, I think auditability will also be a supplemental requirement alongside privacy, requiring that:

1. Users are provided with privacy so their assets and transactions are not fully visible to the general public and...
2. Allow for all transactions to be audited by token issuers for the purpose of complying with legal investigations.
Absolutely agree that on-chain privacy is very important nowadays and we have to talk about it. Find this discussion very interesting: [https://twitter.com/MantaNetwork/status/1582752903064092673?s=20&t=fje4wDvxNwFbBw2kyH2Uiw](https://twitter.com/MantaNetwork/status/1582752903064092673?s=20&t=fje4wDvxNwFbBw2kyH2Uiw)
Privacy and energy efficiency will be everything in the next cycle. We can all see both aspects mentioned regulary in the field of debates in this space. In the privacy i am with XMR since it played a big role to expose the crypto ecosystem to privacy solutions,still going strong. But ofc. RAIL could also fit in very nicely in the area with its ZK tech. Privacy is coming for the enterprises, not tomorrow ofc. but its getting there. Institutions will also be active in the carbon neutral area, all topics rolling around energy in the recent years. Some are allready getting hit with huge funds.. GEM got in VLX with $135M. That is literary higher value than the mcap of the project + partner of Ferrari,fastest EVM chain, no brainer. Adding ALGO for a good ROI pick,with some big whales hiding over there from the WEF circle, FIFA partner..
I think the privacy narrative is really the key to any type of true adoption outside of a dystopian future.  

We really need to support all of the innovators working on this issue.  Those with working products and those recreating the possible.  

I do think ZK has a big part of the future. But i don't think it is the whole picture.  We need more.
If you want to  easy mining ⚒ ETH no equipment just using the  cloud use this link http://bytebus.com/r/BzO0WBE0MX1X
I didn't know about Railgun before, so thanks for the mention, cool to see more dApps on Ethereum deploying zkps.

Some folks might also be interested in the asset-agnostic protocol that we're working on, which deploys a custom ZK circuit so that all assets, fungible and non-fungible share one shielded set. It's a layer 1, but it connects to Ethereum via a custom bridge we designed, that minimises trust. There's an article on the Ethereum bridge in the pipeline, but here are the [specs](https://specs.namada.net/interoperability/ethereum-bridge.html) \- (any feedback welcome). If you want to checkout Namada, I can recommend [this intro](https://blog.namada.net/what-is-namada/) article.
As far as I know, it is a deployed smart contract protocol that uses zk-snarks, which is a little technical and relayers to achieve absolute shielding of balance on the blockchain. You might want to look a little deeper to understand how it fully works. However, it was demonstrated at the last DeFiCon and it works impressively- balance and history totally unreadable on etherscan after a transaction was initiated through it.
I want to believe the transaction details are overlaid or covered with series of incoherent characters to cover up the exact details.
Your last sentence says it all, the view key is the audit feature of the platform it like a bridge between privacy,Transparency and regulations.
Ethereum's development of a layer 1 privacy protocol is a commendable initiative; however, with Railgun, you do not need to buy privacy; instead, you simply connect to the platform to enjoy privacy.
>I think privacy by default is the best way to go.

Well, privacy isn't default in blockchain. Users need to take intentional steps to shield their wallets through the tools that are designed for it. A better option is the smart contract of privacy protocols being integrated with dApps so that privacy is enabled, even while interacting with them.
[deleted]
This is do able but my reservations will be the process of audit, so far most privacy protocols like Railgun, secret and others offer a view key feature where the transaction initiator releases the key to allow the view/audit of the transaction, if done the opposite way where the token issues have this power to view at will then the need for privacy is defeated.
Indeed it is. I am convinced that the relevance will become more prominent the more people begin to realize the risks (censorship, targeted attacks etc.) that are associated with their entire transaction history totally visible on the blockchain ledger.
> balance and history totally unreadable on etherscan after a transaction was initiated through it.

with totally unreadable you mean that the numbers in etherscan were gibberisch?

so the numbers where not matching?
Funds are held in a private pool with a network of Relayers (essentially wallets that submit transactions on chain for confirmation on users' behalf). Transactions then appear to originate from the Relayer address.

In addition, transactions that take place entirely within the Railgun system like sending tokens to someone else have all details hidden such as token type, asset, and amount.
Its a non-token gated platform, that's majorly one of the reasons its fast becoming a favorite.
There are private by default blockchains. Secret Network for example. And Monero.

What you say is true for public ledgers like Ethereum.
I edited it to make myself clearer. My bad.
""Unreadable"" there is actually contextual. Basically, nobody will be able to see the shielded transaction history or balance.
so besides etherscan no on chain analytics wont work either? 

shut up and take my money. 

but thx for the explanation will have to look it up."
Do you genuinely want to use the metaverse?,144,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/s37n6p/do_you_genuinely_want_to_use_the_metaverse/,"IMO, the metaverse is not for our generation, it’s for the folks who are kids now who grew up their entire life as part of the digital world. The metaverse won’t be fully fleshed out for another decade. We’re not the target audience, so it doesn’t matter if it’s something we’ll use.
No, I don't want to use the metaverse.  I don't really like video games that much anymore, and I certainly don't like ones that involve financial systems that remind me of real life and are tied to my real life wallet.

For me, as an 00s kid, video games are all about ESCAPING the real world and its financial limitations, not simulating them.
Second Life.  


This is not a new concept, but until it's like a holodeck/walking hologram ala Star Trek, I don't think the masses will be into it as much as some are speculating.
There's only one reason why people might use into the metaverse.. and it's one of the most common reasons why people love the internet
[removed]
metaverse != VR  


to me, the metaverse is much more subtle.  it's a universal wallet + identity package that you use as your internet facade that you can plug into apps to verify ownership and identity.  it allows for cross-functional collaboration between apps and users while maintaining all control over one's data and property.  

whether that evolves to VR?  current tech is not ready for everyday use so hard to predict.  but I believe a world where there are more computers in everyday objects that can hook up to your digital wallet/identity is more likely imo.
100% with you my dude. Even the people who are busy building all this stuff don't actually seem that interested in spending a lot of time there. I'm genuinely confused why ""Virtual Reality: Now a lot less shitty than it has been for the last 25 years"" is a winning play, but... who knows.

Now if, \*if\*, I could enter a room and feel really emotionally, physically present with someone who's far away, or if I were spending convincing time in an environment where the rules of reality were significantly different, like a Star Trek holodeck or something... we could talk. But what I've seen so far is ways to fake-walk around and shoot stuff or whack stuff, or look at wooden cartoony representations of another person.  

Whether it's for you or not, I think there will always be people who are interested in being absorbed in something outside of their immediate physical environs; not everyone was excited about novels in 1700, but plenty of people disappeared into them happily. What's curious about this present moment is that Mark Z. is promising a new and different way to disappear into somewhere else, and I find almost no one (who isn't taking VC money) who finds that promise convincing.
As a disabled man, I want this badly. I want to participate in life, without the function and ability to. When you're stuck and confined to a chair or other apparatus that limits your physical ability; all of what you named..doesn't exist. That isolation really damages you over time, if you let it, 

As a corporate overlord, I want the ability to meet my team anywhere in the world on a more humanistic level, and create productive working relationships that way.

On a business level I see the opportunity of a new medium, where news and culture integrate as one environment. The beginning of the matrix in real life.
No
I’m no expert, and everyone’s vision of a metaverse is different, but I’ll share what I think the metaverse might look like if it actually becomes a thing. 

I see it as AR more than VR. 

Imagine adding ambiance/decorations to a restaurant through AR glasses. 

Imagine Pokemon Go but even more immersive. You can have subsets of people walking around interacting with the Pokemon Go universe, where they see Pokemon around them to catch, while another subset of people are tuned into the Avengers, Harry Potter, or LotR metaverse, with whatever that entails. It’d be like LARPing but to the extreme.

Imagine coming home and your entire house is decorated with NFTs: if you want to rearrange things for decor, instead of having to physically move things, you can just move them virtually. You could have a pet dragon, fountains of lava, unicorns, mermaids, and whatever else you want in your home.

In all these interactions, the physical world would still be present, but you are augmenting what’s already there with things that are only possibly virtually. You can even tie NFTs to physical objects. So, for example, you could have a wand that’s just some stick object in the real world, but because you own the NFT for that wand, you can use that stick in the real world to cast spells in the metaverse.

I don’t know if this vision will ever come to pass, but that’s how I can see the metaverse having the most tangible success, rather than some VR game everyone’s playing.
Nope. But I really hope there is massive buy in.  It will be so great to go surfing with no people.
>Do you genuinely want to use the metaverse?

Yes !!

I'm a long time gamer, started with Pokemon Yellow and up to today's games. I've always been a fan not only of playing but of the whole video game culture and the progression of game play along the years.

I was able to try out a VR game about a year ago, and while I thought it would be boring and not so revolutionary, I was hooked up as soon as I entered the tutorial.

So far I didn't dive deep into it because it's not really my cup of tea, but I was really amazed by the possibilities with a technology and games that are still young in my opinion. The immersion was great and to me it's one of the most important part for many games that are supposed to put you in a character shoes or that let you dive in a specific universe.

 So I want to try it out and I want to follow how things will evolve around that, and I think that great things will be possible, despite the fact that it'll probably won't be used the way it's supposed to be (like how social networks are bringing up so many opportunities but are used in a way that's useless and annoying for most).

And don't get me wrong, I will still want and love to go outside camping or whatever, but if the metaverse is gonna be here and if it end up being popular, I want to check how it is at the very least.
I didnt get it at first. I mean I can't picture someone saying ""lakes and rivers, that shit sucks"" but I can imagine someone wanting to spend time in a world that looks like it's made of candy or something.
THis whole metaverse and NFT BS are being pushed onto us by hypemakers but offer little to none fundamental value as investments or to society at large. They're just another vehicle for speculative bubbles and tax evasion.
It’s probably going to be more AR than VR for the next few years simply because VR headset technology isn’t advanced enough yet, and people need years to transition to a purely digital world. Telepresence is a great use case, but think Hololens more than Zuckerverse Horizons/Workplace.

Another compelling use case is digital twins - a persistent online presence. 

You’ll find that kids are naturally more comfortable with it (just like a generation of people is more comfortable with smartphones vs PCs), so adoption is likely to accelerate exponentially over time.

Meanwhile, the gimmicks will continue to draw users and sadly, also investments.
I think VR is cool. I'm not in it to socialize. I have zero interest in Metaverse. Fortunately, one has options to participate or not.
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the metaverse is being pushed on folks to that they can stay complacent in the made up world while the folks in power keep and expand control over the real world. the matrix is real. you think jamie dimon or charles schwab or ghislane maxwell will be in the metaverse with the regular folks?
Imagine shopping in a Walmart without being in a Walmart. That's some of the potential in addition to gaming.
Right now? Metaverse .. no

But imagine in the future you want to see northern lights... At home. Just put those device and ur ready to go.  Want to see what's at the top of Mt. Everest? Yeah VR stuff. 

Going to work today but you suffer an hour or two because of traffic? Put that VR thing and have a virtual workspace.

Shopping? Oh boy FB likes this. Imagine you can try clothes and shop at home. Yeah they could put it in VR.

I don't know why so much hate on Metaverse and NFT stuff. Maybe boomers and old dude hate this because they will die before this tech matures.
Interestingly, you could replace the words in your post with any next generation technology, such as crypto and it'd be the same.
I occasionally use an occulus and really enjoy the first person shooter but youll catch me dead before i implant a meta verse chip in my head or playing everyday all day. Shit hurts your eyes after an hour.
imo it's going two directions: first, better digital work experiences. two, gamers. this holistic vision of a singular, interoperable metaverse probably won't happen for a generation
Sometimes a gaming session feels so magical, and as VR/AR tech improves the VR lige will become substantially better. I saw a dude from MIT building the most incredible VR glove. He has implemented restistamce to fingers which created the illusion of things actually existing. This is just the beginning of the actual hardware tech.
I don't even really think the metaverse has been fully defined or is in it's final state so it's not really a question we can answer. There was another explanation I saw recently that I liked where it explained the metaverse isn't actually a location or space, but a time at which the majority of daily life activities are done in a virtual world.
I get enough ads thrown in my face in the normalverse . Nope. 

If vinyl, Walkman, CRT love is any indication, younger generations won’t want shit to do with that garbage alternative reality either. Some will, but I think the idea is driven by older dudes thinking what they might have wanted when they were young more than what the younguns want..especially after many have been forced to NOT socialize in human form recently
[I've already experienced all the metaverse will offer in VRChat.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJp_3-VZZjI)
I think the word metaverse is hot right now because some people have a vision of how the world may be in the future. That isn't realistic right now but I imagine it will evolve like this: Porn and gaming will become viable/good in VR and people will get more and more into VR. After that starts to happen friends will want to 'hang out' in VR. A lot of my friends are spread out across a couple of states and we don't get to hang out in person. With VR we could have a more interactive experience than the current discord chat rooms. Eventually, people will pay for skins in the ""metaverse"" chat rooms/worlds that are created just like people pay for skins in video games.
Zero interest in it. I could not care less and I scoff every time it comes up.

20 years from now this is probably gonna be thrown back at me for how wrong I am…

I often think of The Street from Snow Crash and how digital real estate and virtual reality are bringing us closer to that world
Like technology after technology before it, the metaverse will rise and fall on one sector...PORN.
The metaverse don’t necessarily means VR. It could be a virtual world where you can hang out with celebrities or your favourite musician. It could happen in a pc or a phone. VR metaverse is still a relatively new and I don’t think it’s gonna be widely adopted if we don’t have a good VR hardware that is ready for the masses
I make a living and employ 50+ people in the “metaverse”.
by definition a metaverse is a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users. VR/AR is as stated fairly new but the actual concept of a metaverse is not. GTA, Assassin's Creed, C.O.D and many gen games all need a metaverse where players can interact. where crypto and finances go is more towards RP/MMO style games. there was this one game that was very popular called imvu. it actually had its own metaverse and interactions to buy real clothes or furniture brands but to style your in game avi and rooms. 

i believe that as we go forward with communication and social experiences more apps and sites withove towards the RP style interfaces. i can definitely see Instagram doing this. there are many light weight apps and games that can implement a full metaverse/market system that works for the masses. 

you could go on and on with different use cases and reasons/ideas for metaverses but it all boils down to the original meaning and social interaction. there is this ome show called ""westworld"" thats based on a metaverse type. it's probably actually somewhere in the works as we speak. but that would be large scale.

EDIT: to answer the actual question, i would not use ""the metaverse"" in a daily routine unless fully adopted. although from time to time i do like to check out different platforms and projects to see what's happening and stay updated. (as well as have a little fun) but it will. definitely be a thing if not a world trend sometime.
I have dabbled in vr gaming. It's pretty amazing, and yet I still have pretty much no interest in the vision of the metaverse as put forward by either Facebook or the crypto scene. Maybe some later iteration will interest me, but not anything yet
practical application for example when buying a new house or car you could do a ""live"" tour from your home, or a new kinda home schooling system.
I just have this sense that kids will see it as uncool and will sooner ditch phones and make plans verbally with strong social stigma for ditching of not showing up to planned events. I’m probably wrong and they’ll be more addicted than any of us but kids tend to reject whatever their parents do a lot of and that could be phones/electronics one day.
I am definitely interested in the metaverse.
Yes interested in this future we are moving toooo 🛩
I would have expected a greater push in AR technology tbh.

I'm heavily into gaming and that includes VR (have the original vive and an oculus quest 2). I'm also a system developer so whether it's during work or in my personal time, I live and breath tech. But outside of gaming/experiences and maybe as a virtual desktop, there isn't much I'd want to use VR for. Especially for socialising, even with avatars, VR still feels from a feeling of isolation imo. And if someone like me is feeling that I can only imagine its worse for a casual user. I would only be interested in the metaverse via VR as a curiosity because I like all thing tech, but it definitely wouldn't become part of my everyday life. 

Whereas I could easily see the general public adopt AR (this is, bringing digital elements into the real world). I would happily wear a pair of glasses and see avatars seeing around on my couch or have a wall turn into shelves of items etc... Not to mention a myriad of other applications for both general use and productivity. It's basically reality enhanced.

I could imagine a future, where you have a device capable of AR and VR that's no more cumbersome than a pair of glasses. At that point I could see the general population adopt the tech.
It's not like I really want using it I just don't mind. That's some new investing prospect and as anything new it's not perfect but it's worth paying attention to. It doesn't cost much usdt to buy one of the metacrypto. But who knows... maybe it'll explode in a year or two... No one can be 100% sure
Facebook's Meta is an extension of project MKUlta's mind control program in my opinion. (Please go ahead and call me a conspiracy theorist.)

&#x200B;

Look how the World Economic Forum is keen to promote Meta. The same people who want you to ""Own Nothing and Be Happy"":

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=2a7e08331735](https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=2a7e08331735)

&#x200B;

They technically already control your mind. Just take note of how much time each person or most people spend already on:

* Instagram
* Facebook
* whatsapp

So we are already conditioned to now also wanna try Meta since facebook which has been rebranded to Meta makes so many other great distractions and tools for connecting with people.
The metaverse is going to be INSANE. It will be a major part of the future. Of course, it’s just in it’s beginning stages now but soon enough, the metaverse is going to be *chef’s kiss* magic.

It’s hard to say in exactly what timeframe it will be considered the new normal but we are slowly underway to making it apart of all our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of nature, the outdoors, and doing physical stuff. But the metaverse will unlock the door to doing so many fun and exciting things from the comfort of your home.

Like, travel the world, see the inside of volcanos, skydive, walk on the ledge of sky-high buildings, talk to people all over the world, and just experience things that aren’t easily accessible in life.

We all don’t even have an idea of everything VR is capable of but to say the least, history classes will be able to virtually show their students exactly what the books are talking about, gloves and probably full body suits will be developed to feel things in VR -perhaps even taste things.

Of course, it’s going to be big for gamers but eventually, a lot of us will be going to work in the metaverse. So many people are already working from home. The transition is slowly happening.

I know it’s a grand concept to wrap your head around but the metaverse has so much potential.
Depending on what part of the world you live, and the area. VR gaming is a big industry where I come from. I and all my friends have VR gadgets for gaming and movies. There's this soothing effect about VR.

Did you see the story of the couples who got wedded in the metaverse? Google it. It's all for the fun. And then, in addition with the fun, you make money. This is where blockchain clearly differentiates from traditional alternatives.

I will have my first feel of blockchain gaming when Mecha Morphing gets released. The test net would be released in few hours. 

It's all for the fun. Don't be too rigid. Have fun and make money.
It depends. Why not? I like what some NFT projects like Rario or Funko are building. If they go into metaverse, it would be cool!
No, I just want to use to to make money lol.
I feel like you might jus be too old to get it, Camping ?hiking ? The techs getting to a point where in max 20 years you won’t even be able to tell you’re not actually hiking outside 

Why go hiking in ur shitty local Forrest when you could climb Mount Everest with no risk involved ?
I like the AR applications. AR glasses that let us enter the Metaverse at any moment would make it a considerably more fulfilling technological leap than just depending on VR alone.
i love the metaverse! i’m already using it and have been for nearly a year. you also don’t have to use the metaverse with a VR set - you can use it from a laptop and not have the intensity of VR. either way i think it ads more dynamic to say a zoom meeting - absolutely not required but it does provide a different end user experience
Metaverse is just a fancy way of saying an MMO that links all the MMOs and multiplayer games together, lol.
guess what you just made post on the metaverse congrats. You're not a boomer after all
Not at all, but there will be massive demand
I don't know anyone who likes it.
I'm one of those who actually want to use Metaverse. I want to be able to play my favourite games in the metaverse. Hopefully the upcoming Rario Premier League game will be available in the Metaverse.
We will be inside metaverse real soon, man. Crypto technology is developing towards this. We may even experience a metaverse real estate boom this year, so the triad Web3-Metaverse-NFTs is real. A lot of projects will support metaverse's growth lika SAND, MANA. AR or future Polkadot's parachains like Unique Network (NFT), built on Substrate. Unique is actually the only NFT project with a case study on Substrate, but I'm sure others will follow.

VR gaming still crawling, but this will be the next stage for an immersive gaming experience.
So the future conversations will be. You visited the real Grand Canyon. WHY. The co2 involved is not funny.
Metaverse. A virtual reason to not exercise.
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Yes I genuinely want to use it. RarioCricket entered metaverse through their partnership with OVR team. It will be great for me to play cricket in the metaverse
You don't necessarily HAVE to USE the metaverse but then the world is constantly evolving and going digital and at the end of the day, the majority would not want to be left out of the loop.

The metaverse hype is still very early to be honest but we already see companies like Samsung and Disney joining the space, celebrities building and accumulating lands in the metaverse and projects like DREEM Metaverse that's allowing literally anyone to build, design and monetize their own metaverse(s).

The point is, even if there are some that don't want to use the metaverse, a large majority will because.. and to be honest, it's kinda cool.  Just my opinion.
If a platform were built where you could have a real-time experience of a virtual supermarket. You would navigate the isles with your game character. Picking up the virtual equivalents of your shopping and dropping them in a virtual cart. I think that would make for a super experience. Imagine hanging out with friends with the likeness of their faces. I think nothing beats that. That's why I'm in full support of platforms like Plugnet positioning themselves to capture the future market.
Personal opinion:

# Social interaction

Online gaming is fun for the social interactions, not the P2E hype nor game genres. Social media & media conferencing is good (if anonymousity mantained) & bad (if IRL identity locked on). Why? Me personally more readily open up myself in anonymous & make friends in like, than being around bunches of elderly that always raise issue of respect & so called ""more wise & experiences"" in life (Hence the death of FB). We trancended the era of respect based on age, race, geographical boundaries, social rank; into respect based on open wisdom & ideologies.

# Administration

Regulations is important in any interaction platforms. However, I trust consistent regulation by artificial intelligence more than by human gut feeling. Guess this blockchain not entirely trustless. AI is emotionless (sin-less), almost to the level of gods. Yes, technology improve interconnectivity like shopping & services, but the administration rules (by single authority) the one that most people complain. Also, platform administration exposure to the users also allows more tolerance & understanding why certain platform actions are taken, instead of shear blame of greed or irresponsibility.

# Others factors

I don't understand the need for VR (some people have 3D sickness) & NFT (abstract artistic value that only the crazy rich can apprehend & accept) too. In game items trading might increase game interactivity, but I understand no further than that. For example, minecraft players can play anonymously (though certain regulation by AI is needed) for social & trading for some in game item might solve scam issue, but everything else is clueless to me.
I don't think building a ""metaverse"" is connected nor even a part of VR gaming. I would be glad if it is **limited only for gaming**. I am not ready for the social consequences that are brought upon the proliferation of metaverse-like social activities being the norm nor I would think that is the ""best"" for society overall.

I understand the appeal of tearing down the borders of length and self-representation in Metaverse. I think that is ""good"" for just occasional VR RP for fun. However, just with cryptocurrency and NFTs (allegedly), its function can be perverted into something much more sinister...

Pegging it as lifestyle? Apparently exchanging and advertising it to be ""better"" than the real, breathing universe? No... Just no... It's their world that they allow you to experience. I dread that kind of lifestyle and that kind of control by one corp. For discussion's sake, I will ignore the statement about how the real world is also controlled with (differing levels of) authority from the government.

As for metaverse, I think I have been around for long enough to witness the rise of Second Life. I basically think that it is cool... until you touch grass and meet other people. Sure, there are a few despicable individuals out there, but I am fortunate enough to live in a nation that I don't need to be (90% of the time) afraid to be stabbed and robbed out of nowhere.

TL;DR: I am less worried if it were only developed as a part to enhance or enrich your lives... but to make it an ""alternative"" to the real world? That's just downright disturbing.
Metaverse isn’t strictly restricted to VR virtual worlds. Nor are you strictly expected to spend all day in it.

Think of Metaverse as a way to describe portable identity and possibly assets across multiple digital realms.
I love nature but I live in a place where it’s -30 majority of the year, now wouldn’t it be nice if all the people who don’t have access to these places could use a technology that puts you in a virtual world that’s indistinguishable from reality? Including the feeling you get it’s very possible we’re able to give ur brain the right reaction
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Explains the switch frome Facebook to Meta.

I don't care to look up the statistics, I'll live dangerously and assume the average Facebook user age is between Boomer and dead.

Facebook is trying to set themselves up with the kids to become their next target audience (a terrifying thought).

It reminds me of Old Spice with their wacky commercials aimed at teenage males. Old Spice successfully got a new, younger demographic because they were forced to since their previous target audience was busy dying off.
Never thought about it like that, I need to revaluate some things for sure
I think the previous generation has their own metaverse. It's called online rpg 😂
I can agree up to some point. The thing is that I like VR and the idea behind it. I am an enthusiast. I don't think that you necessarily need to use metaverse, you still can make investment in projects that are metaverse oriented. It's obvious that some will make a lot of money in the future.

I am excited to see how Dreem and Unique Network will work. I think that Unique Network interoperability potential is going to be a game-changer when it comes to NFTs. Those should be more usable and sustainable and not limited to one chain. They are planing to mix the metaverse, NFT and gaming and put everything under one roof.

It's obvious that Polkadot ecosystem is growing bigger and bigger and projects like UNQ can only speed up the process.
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Not all metaverse projects wants to simulate the real world. A lot of them are just games that are nowhere near realistic.

I agree with you however. I would like to play better VR games, that would be awesome, but the shithole that is Decentraland, or that in the future ""going camping"" means strapping on a VR headset and going into a virtual forest, no thanks. For people eho doesn't live close to a forest that could of course be an alternative, but I wouldn't want that as the norm.
I also think this, with the current state of things.

But I also think that it just takes one compelling digital world/concept to pull people in. Just as social media glued most to their mobile devices.
MetaTitties? Sign me up!
Lemme guess, pr0n?! I know of an Adult metaverse being built as we speak...
But we have VR for that, no meta required
There's a reason SecondLife is still around
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Bet you're wrong. RemindMe! Ten Years
As a geriatric millennial I certainly understand the sentiment, but as someone else pointed out on here, it's not about what you or I want, it's about what businesses and the next generation of tech addled kids wants. They're the target demographic over the next decade - we're already has beens! lol :D

Personally, I reckon metaverse stuff will sit on top of what we already have online - games, sure, but also virtualised real world locations replete with useful online amenities, not to mention all the virtual conference spaces and interactive  galleries, movies, concerts, museum exhibitions etc

The metaverses won't be some newfangled, ready player one type nonsense, it'll just be a more advanced version of what we already have, I think :)
So it’s basically an Apple ID
Question why do you look at the technology as it is now instead of what it will be? We already have the unreal engine 5 in 2022 and that looks very similar to real life, who’s to say in 5-10 years we won’t have something that feels like the real world on a base level?

Also most of these meta verse teams are very low budget so I don’t expect them to be the leaders in using the best tech and I doubt Facebook is gonna go the realistic route more the social interaction with avatars route which I could care less about.
I honestly don't like the sound of that.  I don't need more content around me.  Some people might want that, but it's not for me.

I'm worried, like with most other new technologies that get big, that it will become a mandatory part of life somehow.

Fucking gonna have to wait through an ad before the world lets me die.
That's all fine but I don't see why decorating my home with virtual stuff should cost tons of money. Even images, software, PCB designs, 3d printer models are free nowadays.. thanks to open source communities. There'll be AR and VR worlds.. and people will create free stuff for them.
Yeah, you have a vast knowledge of the metaverse and how it is going to be. Realistically, Holoride RIDE is plan is to metaverse as the transport company. it will combine the data point of the car with extended reality XR to transform every journey into hyper-immersive experience.  The product is launching this year
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That's great, I'm glad you've found so much meaning in gaming! I think my sentiment was based on weird hype (mostly from the Zuck) about how ""everything we do is gonna be in the metaverse"" like shopping, work meetings, and socializing. For gaming, it's perfect and I'd love to try some VR games, but for the rest of life I don't see it.
> I can imagine someone wanting to spend time in a world that looks like it's made of candy

Me too. I love open virtual worlds. Last game I played for more than 2000 hours... and it cost me about 100 bucks. What I don't get is why I should waste tons of money for useless virtual stuff. What I want from a game is a great story, a beautiful environment to explore or just hang out in and hard challenges so I don't get bored. Buying virtual stuff.. why?!
No value? Lmao the potential alone of the tech is insane.
> It’s probably going to be more AR than VR for the next few years simply because VR headset technology isn’t advanced enough yet, and people need years to transition to a purely digital world. Telepresence is a great use case, but think Hololens more than Zuckerverse Horizons/Workplace.

It's the opposite. AR is much less advanced than VR.
Well certainly not ghislaine lol
Like...with a website?
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This just sounds like online shopping but worse lol
Yeah I already hate online shopping though honestly
VR / AR got loads of interesting applications. But that alone is not ""the metaverse""..

None of what you listed requires NFT stuff or crypto currencies. I could as well pay my virtual trip to Mt. Everest with my master card.. just as we buy games on Steam and movies on Netflix today. Millions of users are happy with the way it works.. I'll happily put on VR glasses to enjoy these movies / environments in a much more immersive way in a few years. But I'll probably still pay some big corporation using master card for watching / using them.

As for shopping.. sounds quite centralized.. customer enters virtual shop, selects items, pays with USD / master card, items get shipped and big corporation makes a little profit. NFTs? Decentralization? Why?
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I CAN see the northern lights at home on TV or a VR headset right now, and the quality won't be that different. Nothing will ever truly replicate seeing them in person. 

Why would I want to wear a headset for a virtual workspace? I already work efficiently from home, there's no reason to stick me in VR, I don't see how that would make work better at all. 

I can already shop online. Even trying clothes on virtually would not be like trying them on irl. They could still show up and not fit.
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>Old Spice successfully got a new, younger demographic because they were forced to since their previous target audience was busy dying off.

Meanwhile Harley Davidson is failing at this.

Most Harley owners are at the point where they own their last bike. And repeat customers who are no longer in the market to repeat buy are no longer customers.
I sure hope my little daughter will one day prefer camping, hiking, meeting real friends over wasting money for useless virtual stuff. Actually I love gaming.. and virtual stuff.. and open source. There'll be virtual worlds and if they're good, there'll be people who create free stuff for them. See 3d printer models, software,... I don't see the point in wasting tons of money for useless virtual stuff.

Walmart metaverse? Fine. I'll go there. And pay with USD(C) or XMR. That doesn't take MANA.
Exactly. I have a couple Metaverse related holdings myself.  I’ll have to look into Dream and Unique. Thanks!
Yeah, I never said it wasn’t for me. In fact, I am actually stoked to see how it turns out. I am 33. I am simply saying I think mass adoption comes from the generation after me.
Agreed. There are many experiences better had offline. I don’t think that VR worlds are a direct substitute. They offer a different kind of experience and I see them as complimentary experience.

There are virtual worlds where architects can create environments, scenery, and interactions without physical restrictions. Some have blown my mind as virtual experiences. I’ll never BASE jump but I’ll sure as hell try to experience something close in VR. My belief is that we’ve yet to see the full potential, but I’m excited for both VR and metaverse.
SpankChain is real. No joke.
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> computers in everyday objects that can hook up to your digital wallet/identity is more likely imo

Bullish on Monero.
Yea but decentralized.
As an engineer, I can definitely say the trends with increasing hardware capabilities has been to increase the draw most applications have on hardware. This leads to this paradigm shift where you need way higher specs to enjoy the same or similar quality of service from certain apps 5-8 years ago (I'm looking at you Solidworks 2021). It is not coincidence that COD games get larger and larger update file sizes. It is not because they are more technically advanced, it is because they are very poor at data management within their own game. Why spend engineering hours on the data management side to make the game more efficient when you can just send it as is and it does not affect the console hardware negatively? You see this too with most applications sucking away at 16 gb of ram, and the shortage of gpus does not really help. 

Hardware being the limitation is one part of the story, how every developer ends up using this hardware is another side of the coin. Unfortunately, the companies most interested in developing this have a pretty bad track record of data/memory allocation in their services.
That’s fine, no one would be forcing you to use it. Smartphones have been around for almost 2 decades now and some people still use flip phones. Some people prefer to be hermits and live in the woods. But that doesn’t mean other people don’t want it. And the world will move towards what the majority wants, whether you like it or not.

I definitely understand the concern and it will for sure become a big part of living in society if it happens, but I’m sure you’ll be fine regardless. Plenty of people stay away from social media even though it’s a huge part of society at the moment, and they do just fine. People can adapt to anything.
same here, more content inevitably = more advertising, and that means more manipulation and pressure. imagine if you literally couldn’t walk away from an immersive version of the ads and social pressure on Instagram because it was strapped to your face, on the device you needed to navigate daily life. sounds like shit. I’m 27 so maybe I’m just getting older and shifting my views based on that but personally I’m happier with less tech in my life, not more.
Never said it should. It should cost as much as people are willing to pay and sell them for. The costs of NFTs currently are outrageous and unrealistic. Current costs are not what a healthy metaverse would look like. Maybe for collector’s items. But who knows. They’ll cost whatever people are willing to buy and sell em for.

For example, if you have an NFT for a wand in the Harry Potter metaverse that allows you to perform certain very powerful spells, and there are only a few copies of that wand in existence, then it makes sense that it would cost a lot. Now, if that same wand existed in another metaverse and did the exact same things but was abundant, people could switch to that metaverse instead and capitalism would take over from there to determine the optimal price. It all depends on how well developed the metaverse is and how much people are willing to spend for a product in one metaverse environment as opposed to another. 

I’d be willing to bet people would spend a lot more for a powerful wand in the official Harry Potter metaverse than for that same wand in a random no-name metaverse. But if that random no-name metaverse has good developers that create a fun, desirable environment, then that wand could then increase in price.

I’m assuming here that there will be multiple metaverses because I find it hard to believe that there will be one metaverse with a monopoly on the entire space, though that’s entirely possible (could see an Apple vs Android metaverse type of thing happening). If there were to be one main metaverse though, you can bet your ass that any items that are scarce will be expensive as hell. 

I imagine there might be one main metaverse platform that will prevail over others, as it has the best design / SDK, and the majority of developers will choose to develop using their platform, similar to Apple with iPhones. Then other competitor metaverse platforms will try to compete and will be around but won’t be as prevalent as the main one for whatever reason (like Android / Windows phones).
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Actually I understand buying virtual stuff, an artist had to learn a 3d modeling software and a texture to bring that object into a metaverse. Boils down to why people buy art.
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I meant tech advancement in terms of overall usability. Yes we have things like human eye resolution with VR headsets but they’re still not practical for sustained use. IMHO AR is much closer to the next technological leap to gain mass adoption (stable images visible in all lighting conditions) than VR (an untethered headset that’s lightweight and doesn’t cause eye strain/nausea).
In the short term it is more likely that AR will gain broader adoption (esp. with Apple Glasses, Meta’s partnership with Ray Ban, Snap Spectacles, etc.) while VR continues to evolve in its own niche (gaming, entertainment, perhaps some engineering).
A related thought - things might have been different if it wasn’t for Covid. Before Covid everyone wanted to avoid the real world, now people want to find ways of embracing it :) So tech advancement alone may not dictate the future course of adoption.
Imagine being inside the Walmart but only virtually. Pushing a cart down aisles... Holding objects up and turning them virtually. 

Imagine you want a new garbage can. But you're having a hard time deciding on which garbage can would look better in the kitchen. You're able to virtually move the garbage can in your own kitchen. And put it in its space. Through vr. But that's assuming the VR can project the real world into the environment or move the object into your kitchen virtually.

But then take it one step further, and now we're on Etsy. I'm looking to see if a painting would look good on a wall. Virtually the painting can be placed on my wall since my VR headset can actively detect the dimensions of my wall and compare it to the virtual item. This is perhaps the future of shopping experience
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I would hope that a Walmart metaverse would still feature ""the people of Walmart"". That's the only reason why I still go.
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Makes sense. 

Young adults/teenagers/families can afford a bottle of Old Spice bodywash or a new Meta game/hardware, but a Harley is an expensive luxury that is impractical at best.
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You wouldn’t pay to have a world you could constantly redesign to your level of comfort ? 

Maybe you’re too stressed out from work? Hop in the meta verse and go relax on the beach or in nature all while sitting in your house 

I feel like you don’t truly understand the path this tech is following, and with the growth we’re having you really think “virtual” is gonna be any less real than the life we living rn ?
Sure, take your time, I think you will find them interesting. Although I have higher hopes for UNQ, Dreem shouldn't be underestimated as well.
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I get ya - I'm only a few years shy of fourty, but still feel like I'm in my Twenties most of the time :0

last year I was training up some young punk, and when at some stage I found out he was born shortly after I turned 18, I commented that I felt old, and he replied 
""well, you're middle aged, so yeah, you're old!"" and I was like ""what? 35 isn't middle aged, 50 is!"", and he replied 
""woah, you really believe you'll hit 100? I love your positive energy!"" 

I was dumbstruck, and a little annoyed, but tbh he's probably not wrong lol

 time is a cruel mistress, huh? :p
Yeah I definitely don’t want more objects trying to get me to buy shit.
It won't really be though. Most of what I see in crypto is quite obviously controlled by a central group
>Smartphones have been around for almost 2 decades now and some people still use flip phones. Some people prefer to be hermits and live in the woods

I don't want to be a goddamn hermit - I just don't want to live in a world where you HAVE to be a hermit to avoid being barraged by content and ads all the time because everyone else is plugged into VR all the time.
I really doubt that majority wants AR/VR at the moment. Sure it would be fun to try it, but I think it is very far from mainstream.   
After lockdown people actually wants more of real world social contacts, not more of digital.
> For example, if you have an NFT for a wand in the Harry Potter metaverse that allows you to perform certain very powerful spells, and there are only a few copies of that wand in existence, then it makes sense that it would cost a lot.

Who created that wand and decided on what spells it can do? If some central authority did, it's a centralized money grab. Probably each sell comes with 10% ""dev fees"". If anyone can create such a wand, it's decentralized but will be copied and stay worthless. I think virtual underwear shouldn't cost 300 bucks, but should be free to copy.

> It should cost, They’ll cost, it would cost a lot, capitalism would take over, optimal price, how much people are willing to spend, people would spend a lot, increase in price

That whole metaverse thing got too much focus on price. People want to spend time outside the real world to relax, enjoy the environment or a good story, have fun with friends / their ""clan""... as soon as price comes it, this turns into stressful ""investing"", farming, checking the charts.. exactly the thing I wouldn't want after a stressful day at work.
But game studios already create huge virtual worlds today and the game costs 50 bucks. Sometimes only 30 when it's on Steam sale. They even come with a great story.. and they are also created by huge teams of artists who had to learn 3d modeling software, programmers, musicians, writers,... for 50 bucks.
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> IMHO AR is much closer to the next technological leap to gain mass adoption (stable images visible in all lighting conditions) than VR (an untethered headset that’s lightweight and doesn’t cause eye strain/nausea).

Getting AR to work in all lighting conditions is an unsolved problem and will be one for years, probably for the rest of the decade even.

Eye strain/nausea is also an issue of AR too. You need to solve latency and VAC for both VR/AR. These aren't unique issues to VR.

VR will be mainstream before AR or at worse, around the same time. There is no scenario here where AR gets to the mass market first, because the tech is just so far behind.
Cool and makes sense, but it's just an application of VR / AR.. Walmart could create it tomorrow. Makes no sense to decentralize that, doesn't require its own currency like MANA that people speculate on and so on.. people can go to virtual Walmart, pay with USD(C) or some crypto currency, or just plain master card and leave.. Walmart ships the items and makes a small profit. Nice.. but is that a metaverse?
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With the proper mod tools, everywhere can become a Walmart.
It’s not about the price. It’s about how Harley no longer appeals to the younger generation. The younger generation are buying Teslas and not Harleys.
https://youtu.be/EOwxxsPaogY

Fortnine has a good explanation.
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>Or there’s an exclusive part of town you can only access with high end NFT passes

Don't we already have enough slums in real world?!

Remember, crypto is about inclusion, not exclusion of minorities. To bank the unbanked. To let everyone participate, while no one can be censored.

We could at least give nice stuff to everyone in virtual worlds. For free.
To be honest this segregation sounds pretty sad. I am not sure if it is positive thing for you?
>you really think “virtual” is gonna be any less real than the life we living rn ?

Yes  
I just can't imagine that you would prefere to go in nature through screen. You people don't appreciate nature enough.
Well sitting on the beach love it. Still in my house? That to me sounds like self manipulating. Ofc thats very powerful but cant rlly be a replacement of the real thing. At the end of the day it is a good solution for whenever you cant sit on the beach but i wouldnt compromise sitting on the actual beach bc i spend money to sit on the virtual beach. So if i break it down the metaverse w its beautiful beaches is a price question. Like everything in this economy powered world.
From a psychology perspective absolutely not. It’s thought by several psychiatrists that the reason the rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, and suffering in general is rising so much in developed nations is due to an increased level of dopamine from all the stimulation and “feel good” products we have. Your brain has to counteract this excess dopamine and it does so by creating periods of artificial suffering to reach homeostasis again. 

In my eyes this seems like creating a life that’s quite unfulfilling, but one that seems cool in theory. You can essentially make everything exactly the way you want with little to no struggle. Seems like a front to capture and hold attention, but ends up killing productivity and fulfillment as a result. 

I also find it hard to believe that the real world’s issues won’t just carry over to the meta verse. People created the world’s problems and I don’t see why we wouldn’t somehow create them in the meta verse. I think it’ll just be another source of quick relief but prolonged pain

I could be wildly wrong but that’s just the way it looks for me.
That is such a gen Z response lol
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cross chain assets will be king then.  the people creating this tech will reject a central authority and establish universal protocols that cannot be controlled by one party.  it will follow the path of the internet.
You don’t have to be a hermit.  I live in Portland and most people I know aren’t on any social media here.  No one cares here.  I used to live in Seattle and everyone I knew there was on social media.  Different scenes of people use this tech in varying amounts snd it doesn’t really matter.
For real, most people just want basic healthcare lol

All this amazing technology we're focusing on, and only a few decades at most to enjoy it
We live in a capitalist society man. If you want something that someone else spent work making, you have to pay for it. Simple as that. I’m sure there will be free items and ways to get things for free, but people spend tons of money on in-game cosmetics/items and in-app purchases on their phone. This would be no different than that.
Their target is a wide demographic. I can see a demand for unique. If you find your taste in something with wide demographic, I can understand why you don't need this.
@DarthBuzzard How about we save this thread and return to it in a year? ;)
I feel like metaverse is one step beyond that, I'm hoping it's something like ready player one.

My Walmart analogy was my imagination of what the FB ""Meta"" environment would be.
Don't scare me like that 😂😂
Exactly. Harley even tried to do electric. But it didn't appeal

https://youtu.be/EOwxxsPaogY

Fortnine has a good explanation.
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I love nature but I live in a place where it’s -30 majority of the year, now wouldn’t it be nice if all the people who don’t have access to these places could use a technology that puts you in a virtual world that’s indistinguishable from reality? Including the feeling you get it’s very possible we’re able to give ur brain the right reaction
I agree with you. 

But... I've also been stuck inside since the beginning of the pandemic, an hour away from the nearest hiking trail or beach, desperately trying to put in the time to keep my job, trying to prevent my unvaccinated two year old from getting sick. If there was ever a way to give him high-quality interactive VR of the wilderness, space, history, or playing with other kids, I'd absolutely spring for it. It's better than nothing.
Any technology can be used in a wrong way, social media is the perfect example, I’m sure we can both agree using it appropriately will only give you benefits tho.

The way I see it we shouldn’t protect the weak from themselves, if they wanna waste their life away in the meta verse let them, the rest of us will use it responsibly.
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Hey I also live in portland and that's half the reason why! XD
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You can do that with VR. Just buy the beach scene for 50 bucks on the Steam equivalent for VR.

It won't take crypto or NFTs or decentralization to create that though..
I completely agree with that. I also don’t think we should really protect them. I’m not saying don’t let the metaverse happen, I just don’t think it’s a very idea. People have every right to build the metaverse and if people that want to take part in it and see utility in it then by all means go for it. 

Social media can we quite toxic and highly addictive but it’s at least easy to detach from and use in a constructive way. It’s not a fully immersive experience. My thing with the metaverse is that it’s entirely immersive, and why would people want to detach from that when 1. it feels so real and 2. it’s so comfortable. I have a feeling it’ll create a much for vicious cycle that’ll trap more people. (Again I could be incredibly wrong but those are just my thoughts) 

Although I do think there are some potentially great benefits I just don’t understand the hype around it considering what it could easily become. The hype I understand is the ability to make a lot of money on it right now.
Well yea a personal meta verse wouldn’t, but when people start creating whole worlds like a rpg game or digital events then those will definitely need a form of crypto.
Well yea a personal meta verse wouldn’t, but when people start creating whole worlds like a rpg game or digital events then those will definitely need a form of crypto.
It won't take crypto, NFTs, or decentralization to make it happen. However, you must understand the significance of decentralization and why people are developing this in a crypto and decentralized manner. They provide opportunities for people to build and monetize modernization with no middleman, allowing them to reap the benefits.

  
Similarly, I'm excited about Dreem, which allows people to create a metaverse world for free and monetize it for anyone who wants to access it."
"""Do you need a Blockchain?"" - this paper is fantastic, everyone should read this before evaluating a coin and if requires a block chain to solve a solution the coin is promising to solve.",134,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7yptse/do_you_need_a_blockchain_this_paper_is_fantastic/,"I don’t know - MOD is about recording the supply chain process for transportation of medicine that’s temperature sensitive, right? It seems like having a trustless system to record that, that is immutable, something you can’t tamper with, that seems like something blockchain should be used for? Whether the token is needed, though...
Thanks for sharing this. Will read it when there's time for it. Following this paper, how many of the ERC20 tokens in top 50 should actually have a coin? 
Will read this when I get the chance. 
The answer is very few things actually require a full blockchain or wouldnt be better served with a simple database.
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Let’s be wary of one thing.

Better technology doesn’t necessarily = success.
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I think a traditional company leasing the hardware and selling it as a service is much more appropriate. They could sell it as a subscription, harvest the data from the sensors, store it in a database which can form as an immutable ledger, then provide alerts / ui interfaces for its customers. 

The paper takes a look at github and its repository service. when you commit code you are updating your repository which is immutable unless there are approved contributors. it provides an immutable ledger and does not require a token  / blockchain. and imo it would just complicate things and provide little value. i guess the case could be made with repositories you want to keep extremly private, something like oyster and their data hosting on the tangle could be a great solution as a service to provide.

As for MOD, sure someone could fuck with the senors, but will the block chain be able to discern that some kind of nefarious activity was performed? I think unusual behavior with a sensor could be picked up by the model i purposed e.g. an alert to the manager that one of the senors is not functioning correctly at a timestamp, which device and where it is located. the manager can then ask the employee what was going on.
About 0 unless proven they should need one. Especially real with ERC20 tokens.

Funnily if those tokens would be securities like traditional shares / stock things would be different.

Why should they go trought the trouble of selling a share of the company if they can get money for free instead without any liabilities? (or why do you think they all legally prohibit sales in the US).

If someone knows a crypto which tokens are indeed legally a security please tell me - I've yet to find one.


good question, i wonder if a blockchain can operate without a coin token? its the only way i know of to prevent a 50% or 30% attack using PoW or PoS, without a token, how is a blockchain protected? perhaps if it were a private blockchain, this would be different, i really dont know but id liek to know the answer.

but yeah, after the initial funding, what does the token serve in the protocol? in payment its obvious, the token / coin is for payment. with other protocols its not clear, why would people want to hold this unless for mear speculation unless it was used to utitlise the purpose of the product produced.
To answer you and /u/neophyte- : the sensors track a lot of things, amongst which light exposure and variables over time. To fool the sensor you cannot open the package unless in a pitch black room and you'd have to cool the sensor for the entire transport...at which point you may as well use a cooled transport and not require MOD sensors to begin with.  
The idea is to use the sensors as a way to comply with a new law that requires you to use cooled transports unless you can prove that your medicine hasn't been exposed to temperatures beyond a certain range.  
The sensors being on blockchain is part of the proof.
Good point, worth asking in regards to Modum. Yeah, I’m not particularly interested in modum. I haven’t done all the research. I do think it seems like something that blockchain can help though. Has anyone received a sufficient answer in regards to modum and potential hardware manipulation messing up the whole “tamperproof blockchain” system for their product?


see this comment, i address the issue of sensor manipulation and not requiring a block chain to resolve the problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7yptse/do_you_need_a_blockchain_this_paper_is_fantastic/duitin8/
see this comment, i address the issue of sensor manipulation and not requiring a block chain to resolve the problem.

it was removed because of linking but here it is:

> I think a traditional company leasing the hardware and selling it as a service is much more appropriate. They could sell it as a subscription, harvest the data from the sensors, store it in a database which can form as an immutable ledger, then provide alerts / ui interfaces for its customers.

> The paper takes a look at github and its repository service. when you commit code you are updating your repository which is immutable unless there are approved contributors. it provides an immutable ledger and does not require a token / blockchain. and imo it would just complicate things and provide little value. i guess the case could be made with repositories you want to keep extremly private, something like oyster and their data hosting on the tangle could be a great solution as a service to provide.

> As for MOD, sure someone could fuck with the senors, but will the block chain be able to discern that some kind of nefarious activity was performed? I think unusual behavior with a sensor could be picked up by the model i purposed e.g. an alert to the manager that one of the senors is not functioning correctly at a timestamp, which device and where it is located. the manager can then ask the employee what was going on.
that is exactly what andreas antonopoulos said about sensor-based supply-chain concepts and specifically MODUM. sensors can easily be tampered with.
I have not read the paper, so my apologies if I'm making a confusion here.

There is a significant difference between the GitHub level of immutability and the blockchain level of immutability. GitHub is coded to be immutable, but its centralized nature means it is only immutable as long as the company can enforce access restriction to its servers and code. Anybody get access to their servers can very well modify the data stored there maliciously (that is without being logged in or approved as a contributor) 

The blockchain level of immutability is quite different, as it provides a guarantee of immutability that can be considered absolute once the network reaches a certain scale. It is not tied to any central point of failure, and thus provides much better reliability. 

On top of that, since the immutability of the blockchain is an emergent property (it becomes immutable as usage grows), large scale usage is only improving its security, whereas GitHub is exposing itself to more threats and attacks the more popular it gets and it's only a matter of time (or motivation) before somebody manages to break through. Note there isn't billions of dollar worth of value to steal on GitHub, unlike bitcoin or Ethereum.

That is not to say that all blockchain use case are relevant, but when the immutability is business critical (such is the case in ledger technologies) it does make sense to use the blockchain rather than a centralized service.
I suspect a lot of these projects are using the blockchain to provide seed funding for their startup, i guess there is nothing wrong with that, however now they have a blockchain where it over complicates a model which would be better suited to a traditional system e.g. sensors using the internet to upload their data to APIs into a database that would act as an immutable ledger.
>If someone knows a crypto which tokens are indeed legally a security please tell me - I've yet to find one.

Isn't this what [$POLY](https://www.polymath.network) and [$JNT](https://jibrel.network/) want to do? So I guess nothing concrete yet, but the direction exists.
i didnt read your post properly the first time, what do you think about cardano, they are taking a very pragmatic approach to things and want to comply with governance. i think this this has good potential. what are your thoughts?
that's interesting to know the back story, but i still think this does not require a block chain to prove immutability, a regular database can provide the same thing without the hassle of the block chain and tokens. it thus relies on trust of the company providing these services. but why would they change the data. it would reduce credability as them as a service provider, so a competor would step in. once the hardware is developed, its an easier barrier to entry. plus its very niche, i work in software, niche companies are challenge all the time. the barriers to entry are low compared to other industries, e.g. if you wanted to start a car company or even better, an oil company.
I believe the sensors for these supply chain cryptos(mod, Trac, ven, wtc, etc..) are going to be monitoring more than just temperature. Humidity, uv exposure, pressure, etc. With multiple censors recording multiple variables, fudging the system won't be impossible, but it would just be easier to do the job right the first time, as opposed to trying to mess with the sensors in transit.
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your assessment holds true of any Software as a Service platform. which is a lot of software out there that people / businesses trust. banks also operate in this manner but not as a SoS. your full trust in them is holding a ledger that your account balance is correct, it doesnt need a block chain, but i suppose a block chain would add more security, however then you need to worry about protecting the network with PoW or PoS and then there is a token which fluctuates. what would a token mean for a bank? at least banks 
 are regulated and there are gurantees on bank deposits, at least in Australia.
Thanks I'll look into them, have read about them occasionally but haven't had the time to look yet. :)

Edit: Both seem pretty interesting (especially $JNT) - thanks for the tip.
I think I don't like their CEO and his background story (same reason I stay away from XRP and XLM), also for what it has its severally overvalued (source: my opinion) it should drop more in the medium term (again - source: my opinion). Otherwise I have to little knowledge about it to judge it properly (their GitHub seems pretty active tough). If anything I'm coming back later to it to reevaluate it properly.

If you like a scientific approach involving formal verification / proof that is launching way sooner, more practical focused and actually has an USP instead of just being the 2047th DApp Platform look at NAS (that said it also has some downsides/questions like MVP only release meaning NR, NF, PoD, DiP not in at launch and some scalability questions).
Well..no. Because it's on a blockchain it does not rely on the company providing these services. You can clearly see what's going on with it, thats the entire idea of a blockchain. If it ran through a database you'd have to trust the company.  
I'm sure there are other ways to go about immutability, but blockchain is a good choice that works. It serves a real function here rather than being a gimmick slapped on for marketing purposes, and that's more than a lot of projects can say.

yeah WTC is another coin i wont touch for the same reasons. i addressed what can be solved without using the blockchain if there is some nefarious activity going on with sensors.

my prior comment got removed as i linked it to a comment in the same sub

> I think a traditional company leasing the hardware and selling it as a service is much more appropriate. They could sell it as a subscription, harvest the data from the sensors, store it in a database which can form as an immutable ledger, then provide alerts / ui interfaces for its customers.

> The paper takes a look at github and its repository service. when you commit code you are updating your repository which is immutable unless there are approved contributors. it provides an immutable ledger and does not require a token / blockchain. and imo it would just complicate things and provide little value. i guess the case could be made with repositories you want to keep extremly private, something like oyster and their data hosting on the tangle could be a great solution as a service to provide.

> As for MOD, sure someone could fuck with the senors, but will the block chain be able to discern that some kind of nefarious activity was performed? I think unusual behavior with a sensor could be picked up by the model i purposed e.g. an alert to the manager that one of the senors is not functioning correctly at a timestamp, which device and where it is located. the manager can then ask the employee what was going on.
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I don't understand why people still trust SaaS businesses to retain and secure their data. Even the biggest players out there, namely equifax and Sony, aren't able to do so. Granted, these were cases of data stealing and not tampering with the data on the server, but it did not happen because the hackers had interests in stealing the data, not modifying it.

In this world I believe companies can factor in the saved costs of not retaining any user data at all, or making the data store fully immutable by decentralizing it thus eliminating a systemic risks that would have to be accounted for otherwise. I hope so, because I feel really bad these days everytime I'm inputting my credit card details or other personal information over the wire.

I just hope that this realization will happen to the general, non tech public as well, but I fear it's joy going to happen any time soon.

EDIT: My point is, the immutability is probably one of the most relevant reason for which a business would use a blockchain as a data store, but you're right in saying that it isn't relevant to all businesses, and it really depends how critical the problem of unauthorized modification of the data is to the business. 
yeah i think cardano is over valued as it has no working product yet, can you elaborate on the CEO of cardano, XLM and XRP?

did quite understand htis part, not sure what those acronyms mean

>  NR, NF, PoD, DiP not in at launch and some scalability questions).

can you recommend some good technical books that look at smart contracts. even if it just looks at ethereum, i think thatll give me a better understanding of other dApp providing tokens. i know btc well, but smart contracts and how the they work elude me. 

follow up, waht do you think the most promising smart contract platforms are? i have ethereum and NEO also 2% in my portfolio of LISK. was going to check out EOS. but i realise i dont have the fundamental knowledge to really understand these coins. all i see is that ethereum is smart contracts 1.0 neo / cardano 2.0 or some say cardano 3.0, but those are just meaningless labels. i presume they mean a richer smart contracts platform.
But it doesn't really solve the issue. The data encoded to the blockchain still has to be trusted and can be tempered with. What is the added value of encoding this data in a blockchain instead of just offering real time readout of those sensors to the client?
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its true that hacks can and do occur, but they are few and far between. often is the case that is that they have security vulnerabilities in their websites or potentially api end points (though this is a much less likely attack vector). attacking the website to get access to the database can be achieved with a simple cross site scripting attack XSS, i actually did this once to an easy target, a nigerian website, i was able to inject sql statements into the input fields and dump out whatever i wanted from the database. i didnt get anything useful out of the site, buti t was a fun exersize.

this however is really just poor dev implementation, firstly passwords are normally hashed and salted, not even people who have access to the db can login. but yes that does not resolve issues with a nefarious indiviudal gaining access to the db via XSS or some other attack vector, so immutability is compromised, as the database can be modified. 

However, you can mitigate this problem by removing the database entirely from the website for cirticial data, take a bank for example. i worked for one. all banking data was stored in a system called BANCS a cobol system, widely used. this is was only accessible via a service bus, think a service bus basically as a way to call operations that take in inputs, very similar to an API. The response from the service bus in this scenario is returned to the website, to say return your account balance. to find an attack vector here is very difficult. websites are vulnerable yes, so are servers to 0 day exploits. but all the servers holding the data, this case the bancs servers and databases it connects to are not connected to the internet. only the front end banking website is in the DMZ. so no problem with server exploits in the service bus layer and computers hosting it or the layer beneath it holding the important banking data, the ledger, which must maintain an immutable ledger, only updated when a new transaction occurs.

So given that scenario, data is very well protected, servers in the DMZ are hardened, always patched, unneeded services and ports disabled. its basically bare bones. so the attack vector of server exploits is limited, a 0 day exploit may cause a problem but they are very rare, and would not nec compromise the integrity of the system given the 3 tiered architecture i mentioned. the services offered in the second tier the service bus, only provide a facade with a limited number of calls, most requiring some authentication of the account in question via logging in before they can be executed. So that leaves website exploits which are numbers injection attacks like XSS, but are normally just called injection attacks since there are so many variants, are easily mitigated by good coding standards. its extremly trivial to stop an XSS attack from getting access to the database for example with paramaterised queries. which imo, if a dev is not doing this, is really fucking dumb.

hope that sheds some perspective on it, a private blockchain for the bank might add some additional security to the data, but perhaps woudl be overkill, and it would be private, no need for it to be public as that would reveal information about balances to the public unless the data was encrypted, which would incur cost to decrypt, key management (which is another security concern to consider) etc etc.

I think SaaS is pretty solid, most of hte software companies use from IT firms run on this model, as it provides an ongoing subscription model, so a steady revenue for the company providing SaaS. if there was a lack of trust in SaaS model due to data being mutated by either the company itself or an attacker. there would be little adoption. Finally the barriers to entry for companies providing a SaaS product are generally low, depending on the type of SaaS being offered. So a company hacked or were caught manipulating the data, often has competitors. people would migrate asap. the SaaS provider really has no interest in mutating the data without knowledge of the consumer company, there would be exceptions of course such as in the case where they could gain some kind of monetary advantage.
Thank you for great write-up. You really deserve my upvote and I hope more will follow the lead. If a business is looking into private blockchain for anything else than fault tolerance they most likely aren't gonna get much benefit because as you said, private blockchain doesn't offer much better mutability resistance than a traditional database due to its closed nature. 

Thank you for the insights on the architecture of the banking systems, I had no knowledge of the matter. I agree that outside of international payment settlements banks would not have great use of the blockchain, it really is an opportunity for the consumer to ditch banks for the purpose of storing value. 

However in startups and small or new businesses I know that ""dumb"" devs who don't think about sql injection or xss when setting up a web service are legion. Thus, it makes some  sense to setup a similar 2/3layer protection  system such as BANCS for the most sensitive data, where the blockchain acts as immutable database and the web service only communicate with it via transactions which act as the secure bus you were tailing about. A way to replicate the level of security banks have, but much cheaper than actually setting up the whole thing privately.

This obviously only work for data that can be seen and read by anyone without concern, but in practice it wouldn't be hard to add a layer of encryption on top of that.

The SaaS industry is indeed pretty solid, but no new business want to be part of the failed ones that customers departed from to reach the competition. Therfore it makes sense to factor into the business plan the costs associated with securing sensitive data properly, in a more reliable way than just hoping they didn't hire the wrong devs. 
thanks im glad you liked it, it should provide some insight into the software industry, ive got 10 years of experience in it."
How to Classify Stablecoins in 2021 :),132,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nualre/how_to_classify_stablecoins_in_2021/,"Great post! I always wondered how stablecoins worked. Can anyone list best use cases for these different models?
What’s your take on Tether? I’ve heard troubling things about it, like it’s not fully backed.
And here I thought that stable coins are as simple as 1:1 USD conversion.
Great work man. Keep posting stuff like this.
Thank you. This is very much helping in my own algorithmic stablecoin research. 

So far, it seems to me that the ""stable"" naming is quite misleading. Many of the algorithmic stablecoins are maximizing the capital efficiency, and taking leveraged long positions on the price of the collateral assets. This may be very profitable in a bull market, but in effect it adds to the instability of the market as a whole. 

Once the prices of collateral start to drop, these risky stablecoins are then losing peg or forcing liquidations. This may be acceptable for crypto traders who understand the risks. However, asking high level of knowledge is not acceptable for a true stablecoin, which could be used by regular shopkeepers for example. 

Of course, the chance of collateral losing value is always a possibility, but the protocol can be adjusted on how such scenario plays out. Placing trust in the market mechanism via arbitrage is always going to be an additional risk factor. It adds the layer of speculation on market sentiment on whether the system will survive the crash or not. This is not something a regular shopkeeper should have to learn. 

An alternative would be a simple and transparent protocol, where the collateral ratio is high and a crash scenario would be transparent and slow. Optimally, the realized risk would be completely carried by the collateral holders, and the stablecoin holders would have time to exit their positions if needed. 

The closest to such attempt that I have seen so far, is the sigmaUSD stablecoin from Ergo. It has high collateral (400% - 800%), the contract gets locked in a crash situation and the smoothing of oracle price gives time for the stablecoin holders to exit. Everything is simple, transparent and does not require speculation on whether the market mechanism will do arbitrage to uphold the system. 

We will most likely see multiple stablecoins serving different demands. Some might maximize the stability and transparency, while others are more geared to defi gambling purposes with high gains, less stability and more complexity. Unfortunately, the latter will most likely be more popular, because the financial markets tend to forget the catastrophic scenarios quickly. In a sense, the unstable stablecoins are making profits on promises that they then fail to fulfill, when they are supposed to keep up the stability. 

In any case, it would be good to develop different names for algorithmic stablecoins depending on their intended use and risk profiles.
I thought usdc was managed by circle?
So this might be a dumb question but which of these 4 mechanisms is ""the best"" theoretically and why?
I think the definition of a ""stable coin"" as being stable against a USD ""peg"" is not an ideal definition. 

In my mind, an algo stability mechanism with no external dependencies or manual controls, would actually be very difficult to measure until its actual adoption as a unit of exchange for some real-world material good.

I wonder if there are any algo stable coins that automatically manipulate the money supply through changing block rewards, bond-like interest bearing lock-ups, and dynamic mandatory transaction fees.   

Seems like that should be the way to go to achieve some stability while also persistently rewarding miners.

Perhaps a bond-like market can be setup on chain to get bidders to pledge coins of various maturities and interest rates - then these bids can be used for the chain to predict future interest rates and set money supply contraction/inflation rates?
Amazing to see how stable coins evolved over the years! One thing I can‘t quite wrap my head around is how algo stablecoins work tho

Could someone please explain what math is used to make an algo stable coin (or any stable coin really) stable without an underlying asset?
I'm so glad to see that Tether was NOT in this list!
Just wanted to add a new stablecoin AgeUSD, developed by EMURGO and Ergo. It is currently live on the Ergo blockchain under the token name SigUSD. It is a pretty simple decentralized stablecoin. There are two mintable coins, SigUSD and SigRSV (reserve coin). The stable coin ideally is backed by reserves of at least 400% of minted SigUSD in circulation. Reserve token holders benefit from transaction fees into and out of the stablecoins. The risk of market fluctuation lies almost entirely on the reserve token holders, with stability, heavy volumes, or price increase being ideal situations to profit. In the event of extreme price devaluation, the reserves backing could drop to 100%, leaving reserve holders with nothing. If it drops under 100%, the $1 peg breaks. That said, it is currently being used, has had some kinks, but functions really quite well otherwise. The exchange rates are made possible by native Ergo oracle pools.

Edit: I think this falls under algo coins
SigmaUSD, works on ERGO. Great algo stablecoin with just 2% fee.
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Just buy USDT. Why do you need to have any other?
Everything listed here might better be considered dollarcoins. RAI is the only true native stablecoin I’m aware of. RAI fulfills the original DAI vision of being a native crypto (algorithmic, non-pegged) stablecoin.
Sigma usd has in my mind the best solution for a stable coin.
Thanks for summarizing all the key details for each type of stable coins. Definitely saving this.
There is shrimpcoin and there is nothing else
I can't speak to all situations, but DAI and Liqwid stable coins should be considered as more like loancoins. These are great in bull markets because you can get a loan for your ETH or whatever, use that loan to make more money (ideally), and then get back your collateral. These are less great in bear markets because if your collateral value drops below a certain threshold you can be liquidated, and lose up to 33% (DAI) or 9% (Liqwid) of the value of your collateral. True stable coins, whether centralized or decentralized, should function just like a US dollar, and nothing else, so they are better for bear markets.
Let me hijack your comment for an important warning. Tether is a ticking time bomb with the potential to implode the crypto space. We need to take out money to decrease the market cap and lower the potential impact. 

https://coingeek.com/tether-reaches-new-lows-in-quest-to-avoid-being-audited/
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They have just <1% of their reserves in dollars which is supposed to be a 100% cash backed. There are so many shady stuff going on with them. Its better to be away from them.
You can read about their recent asset attestation here https://www.coindesk.com/tether-first-reserve-composition-report-usdt
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Tether is a scam bringing all crypto down. When it finally collapses we're going to see a market tank
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The design of ergos stable coin is beautiful ❤️
It’s managed by a consortium which includes Circle and Coinbase and others
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None are the best. Each has different semantics and different risks associated with them. For instance, on chain stable coins backed by collateral could enter a cascading liquidation. Off chain backed stablecoins could have bad reserves and can't actually back their coin. Each type of coin here has a different set of risks and as an investor it's important to be aware of them and to ensure if you're holding them to know what kinds of risks you're opening yourself up to.
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Cause there's an whole ecosystem built on it :D Also there are other use cases for different stablecoins :)
dai is copy/paste of bitCNY design from 2014 and similarly it's different depending on if you're buying them or creating them. you can't be liquidated if you're just buying them, worst case is peg is broken or they are shut down and automatically traded for underlying collateral.

the only difference between trust models from something like usdt is who you are trusting as you always have to trust someone with data from outside blockchain. in usdt you trust off-chain collateral holders for the peg, for feed/cdp based stablecoins like these you trust the feed providers who can liquidate the traders creating the coins.

it's not unreasonable to call feed/cdp coins just as centralized as usdt with extra steps and that there's no such thing as a decentralized stablecoin
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the reverse repos was interesting, do they have a line of credit to the fed to buy these? they arguably dont have a banking liscence. the commerical paper means jack shit as well. it could be junk bonds.

tether is the tickign time bomb, its a matter of when not if it blows up. imo tethers printing is the only thing keeping the market up, and its still bleeding.
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Yes, usecases are the differentiating factor.
>  a decentralized stablecoin

not until an algo can figure out by itself what the real market state is, without oracles or other inputs
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It's on us to educate the community and drain that market cap.

I don't understand how ""the printing"" keeps up the market. People pay real dollars for Tether.
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>  People pay real dollars for Tether

do you mean people as in buying from tether directly? any source on this? 

regular investors buying tether with dollars happens, but there are few fiat gateways for this, kraken was the only one, i think coinbase has introduced the pair.

tethers operations are opaque, just like their assertation 2 pie graphs they gave to the NYAG. 

my guess is, that they print tethers, exchanges complicit in the scam take those and issue an IOU to tether as a loan. that and tether is printing sending to exchanges to buy up crypto assets then use those as collateral. there was a paper that concluded that 70% of the boom in 2017 was due to tether printing which is nothing compared to now. it concluded also that the supply of tether is push based not demand based (pulled). 

i foudn the paper [IS BITCOIN REALLY UNTETHERED?](https://static.coindesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SSRN-id3480263.pdf)"
Solana experiencing Mainnet instability - How bad is it?,134,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/po98f0/solana_experiencing_mainnet_instability_how_bad/,"Well, they were able to shut mainnet down unilaterally. In my mind, that makes Solana worthless.
I think SOL from an infrastructure perspective is a dumpster fire. The cost to operate a machine capable of acting as a node is sky high and some of these machines ran out of memory today. On top of that, there's massive (and quickly growing) requirements for storage of the blockchain data. And on top of that you have two kinds of centralization issues: 1) it's centralized b/c hardly anyone can run a super expensive node and 2) centralized because they can unilaterally turn off the blockchain. 

I think SOL's days are numbered.
During the IDO of a token ($GRAPE), a bunch of bots tried to snipe the token generating 400k TPS on the network and the validators couldn't keep up. A fix has been published and we're waiting now for 80% of the stake to implement it on their validators (22% up currently).

More detailed technical info: https://twitter.com/buffalu__/status/1437792673784549383
https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437856638279487493
I’d say it’s as bad as it gets without being totally hacked.  The worst thing that could happen because their only a year old.  Filecoin got hacked though and doubled in price.  So anything is possible.

It shows their unstable at the rates they say they process stuff at.
The shutdown is not a big issue and can (but shouldn't) happen in early development. The network halted due to the lack of good spam protection, not because someone shut it down.

It shows the downside of a BFT consensus (like xlm, xrp, hbar) and the surprisingly missing protection of those few validators on a software level. Those beastly nodes shouldn't be that easily attackable by having bots spam a lot of messages.

It makes the tech look unsecure and underdeveloped, while pushing for early adoption and tps through centralization. 

Also, lol @ the devs first official faq answering what will happen to the token price.
a blockchain thats not working is bad
Not to bad. The problem seems to be with the node software. They should be able to patch it and restart the network. the main issue was that when the network did not prioritize network critical messaging. This means that the blockchain started forking when a huge strain was placed on it. This resulted in excessive memory consumption causing nodes to go offline. Then there was a domino effect.

I think they should be able to patch the bug that led to network forking at high tps and caused the error.

What is more concerning is the loss of trust. The blockchain went down with all off the solana apps offline. The network they restart will technically be a hard fork of the original solana network. The main issue is a loss of faith in the network. If you want to build a dAPp would you choose a network that has been known to shut down.
They'll fix it and in a few weeks we will see a new ATH. Solana was never meant to be the super decentralized censorship resistant crypto coin but rather a VC backed corporate blockchain solution. Up to you to decide if you want this. But from a pure trading perspective, I'd say it's a buy.
Great example of why TPS is overvalued.
Definitely don't like seeing an issue at this scale from a project that I like, but SOL is operating on ""Mainnet Beta"" right now. A beta phase starts when the software is feature complete but **likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs**. Beta software WILL have issues and I'm really not concerned here... making generalized predictions/future valuations based on the performance of beta software seems dismissive to me and I've seen some wild overreactions in various crypto communities.

&#x200B;

I think the future is a multi-chain ecosystem where some chains will be faster than others, some will be more centralized than others, etc... but, the tech diversification should lead us to a comprehensive solution down the road. This tech is new, we're early, and I expect issues like this to keep happening across a variety of projects. I like to watch how the devs & network participants handle the issue and move towards a better overall solution... this can give insight into what projects will stand the test of time and scrutiny.
I didn't also buy SOL, cause the price was extremely up in a short while. SOL looks promising, but the instability was sure to come, and it did, thank God I was wise to push my funds into Muse finance Lockdrop and was not having anymore funds to buy SOL with.
Given, that that Solana experienced a complete shut down of their mainnet, I think it raised questions among a lot of people regarding their long-term potential. That is why I have shifted from Solana to Velas which appears to be its enhanced and glorified long-term substitute.
Any network with these high TPS suffer hardcore spam attacks. That’s the trade off of securing and decentralization.

Anyone can make a high TPS centralized network with a copy paste. But what keeps it safe, and without the fees, how can a network be protected and stay decentralized? 

This is why Ethereum will dominate.
This is a disaster.
Do they claim to be decentralized? 

Nobody seems to piss and moan about XRP 

I love eth personally
https://www.reddit.com/r/solana/comments/podih4/explaining_the_outage_in_simple_terms_by_someone/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Saw this earlier, if the post is true then maybe it’ll help you with your question :)
Fix~ 400k TPS is amazing~ will pump up!!! Guys!!! ! They just tweeted is fixed~ HODL @Sol
Growing pains. Some maxis will tell you that Solana sucks and has no future.

But fuck me the spam attack made Solana reach a TPS of 400k and this makes me even more bullish.
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Enough to switch to MTV. No doubt.
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Solanas Oracle db license expired?
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I don't understand the technology side, but I find the whole issue troubling from an investment point of view.  I don't hold any SOL and was considering buying it a few days back, but ultimately decided at the current price it was too expensive and I took into consideration the replies on my other post about Sol I made a few days back. 

At this point I won't buy in.  I will wait and see what happens but I just don't feel good about it at the moment.
There was no choice but to shutdown, bc of 300k/tps ""mempool"".  It was shutdown for software update.

It is for sure a problem that SOL had a shutdown problem, but even if it were as decentralized as bitcoin, consensus would still have been to shut down.
If decentralized projects experienced a similar attack, how would they deal with it (Since they can't shut down mainnet unilaterally)
The real question is: is this something other L1’s could do as well? Cardano, Ethereum, Polkadot, etc…?
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Idk where all this shut down stuff came from.  
From the explanations that I read, the network crashed and all validators and nodes had to update their software and start em up again.  
Having the chain crash isn't the same as then shutting it down on purpose but it does show that Solana is still in beta and still needs to be battle tested
I guess Bitcoin Maxis are starting to make sense
I saw that the issue came from nodes that only had 128gb of RAM.

Crazy that even such a massive amount of RAM isn't enough to run a node at peak demand, maybe they'll bump requirements up to 256gb.
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Unbelievable that even this sub is this clueless of what actually happened here.
The last sentence was said about Bitcoin and Ethereum in the past. These hiccups are what kept me from putting skin in the game. I feel like you can cut the head off but the bitch just keeps re-growing it back. Who know if this will be a fatal blow to SOL but it’s heavily VC and founder influenced. We’ll just have to see.
I do not understand why people keep repeating this silly argument about a costly node. As it looks now the future of crypto is not  in vast networks of individuals, operating nodes on raspberry pis. I realize that this is how it all started but I repeat this is not the future.

 Crypto projects will be building decentralized but semi-proffesionalized networks of reliable validators. The cost of some 128GB RAM server is really not important at all, as the main investment the validator will have to do is a certain large amount of stake. Just look at Eth 2.0., look at chains built in Cosmos ecosystem etc. 

There is a finite number of validator buckets in most blockchain projects, and I assure you that policies will be created to pick validators that are serious about it.
I think you make several excellent points.  I don't know if SOL's days are numbered but I would be surprised if the price of SOL can continue being so high after this.  I'm surprised it hasn't plummeted.  

I don't understand the technology side of Crypto, but I always thought that it all was more a less decentralized.  I was pretty shocked to read that SOL was literally shutdown.  I didn't think it was possible unless it was something like a 51% attack (idk if I am understanding that correctly either!). 

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next day or so with SOL.
30% or more of Ethereum nodes are on AWS. 60% are hosted on some cloud-provider. 

How do you define decentralization?

At this point maybe you should just own bitcoin
And zero POS assets.

In reality every POS asset is sitting on google, msft, amazon. Lets face reality sweetheart
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Whats an IDO? Initial dao offer?
It sounds bad.  I am surprised the price of SOL didn't drop a lot further...which is what I would have expected but I guess it now depends on how quickly they fix it.  

I didn't know Filecoin had been hacked.  

Thanks.
SOL is really SUS right now. If SOL is really centralized, I expect a huge freaking dump.
People keep saying eth has also done a hard form before, is it less worrying that Sol’s shut down + hard fork?
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> Solana is a decentralized blockchain built to enable scalable, user-friendly apps for the world.

> Not only is Solana ultra-fast and low cost, it is censorship resistant. Meaning, the network will remain open for applications to run freely and transactions will never be stopped.

https://solana.com
How much does it cost to run a spam attack like that? Spam attacks have always been an issue since the very early days of bitcoin as no-one needs permission to send a transaction on a permission-less decentralized payment network. It's a balancing act to make it as easy as possible for regular users whilst making the cost not worth it for spammers.
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I don't know anything about an 'Oracle db license' (I did google what it is) but would that in itself cause this problem on the mainnet?
xD I'll come back to this comment once my free award has refreshed
When you mention spam...would this be the same issue that Nano had?  As I've read they have had a spam issue in the past.  

Thanks.
I read somewhere it was a complete shutdown. I wonder why they didnt stagger the shutdown to preserve uptime. For whatever fix they needed they could have slowly pushed it onto the chain and let it trickle down to the other nodes? Somethings seems off.
If anyone or any action that relates to a network shutting down, that’s a big NO for me
[deleted]
Agreed. Not trying to bash SOL but, if you don't need consensus to make big decisions like that, then I'm not interested.
Yeah but that is the key difference, right? Consensus.

The outcome in *this* case would have been the same, but it's the means to the end that devalue SOL here.

A timely consensus vote to pause the network, patch a bug, and restart would have increased my perceived value of the network. 

A single entity going ""whoopsie"" and taking the whole thing offline emergently demonstrated no consensus is needed for big decisions.
Bitcoin network forks and continues as miners switch their node software together.. sol network was taken down by the single entity that controls it.
Ethereum is way too distributed to be shut down that way, as evidenced by the fact that miners revolting was a very real threat to the PoS switch. I can't say for the others.
[deleted]
PoW networks like Bitcoin, ethereum, and ergo are not susceptible to this. 

Cardano, polkadot, maybe.
Transactions on a centralized exchange don't use native blockchain until you withdraw. Everything is tracked on internal ledgers.
It's either that or fix whatever issue cause the 128gb nodes to fail. 

Since they already requite an ultra high spec machine to run a node, I expect they're now just going to require an ultra-ultra high spec machine.
On the validator page it strong recommends 256 minimum, but 128 can work. Was looking into building a validator. Have the SOL and the hardware.
I think they could implement some kind of pruning function where they move old data to some kind of (centralized?) archive.
Yes exactly. It took my be surprise as well. I came here expecting some deep dive discussions only to see that people are actually surprisingly clueless. Just look at the top comment.
this, 1000%.

&#x200B;

Oh, you need 5000$ hardware (which gets cheaper and cheaper over the years) to secure a 1 trillion dollar network? How awful, lol.

&#x200B;

And people say this with a straight face while we have asic miners that easily cost 10k per unit.
>  I was pretty shocked to read that SOL was literally shutdown.  

That isn't even true though. Why the fuck are you repeating bullshit?
The difference is anyone can spin up an ETH node, whereas a SOL node is crazy expensive and technical
Solana's discord, #mb-validators channel (where the validators are organizing the restart)

https://discord.com/invite/pquxPsq

(48% now)
My questions exactly. I like data too, share
Initial DEX offering. They were up on Raydium.
i would until the network starts working again,before making any statement about the price. people with solana that's not on an exchange had no chance to sell yet
A centralized coin getting dumped?
This is the first time i've read about it being in the beta phase.
Yes it was known and a lot of people called out this being a big issue with SOL before it happened.
It's a joke. Oracle DB is a database software - and, notably, *centralized*. A cryptocurrency controlled by one entity defeats the entire purpose of the technology, and so it may as well just be a normal database.
It was a joke based on recent fud.  It implied that they use an oracle database not a distributed blockchain.
The difference is the Nano network remained fully operational, although at a lower bandwidth, throughout the weeks long spam attack. Some tx were also delayed due to being out of sync, but it essentially recovered without being shut down completely.
I believe the nodes flooded and halted themselves, nobody shutdown anything. Or maybe they did, who the fuxk knows now
Availability/uptime was already 0% due to the issue, so there'd be no reason to stagger the rollout to preserve uptime. Just have everyone shutdown, apply the patch, and resume operations as quickly as possible. (And try not to let it happen again).
> The first thing you need to do before investment is to NOT look at the price. You need to look at market cap

Market cap is synonymous with price
Disagree.

If the tokens price went up 100x in the last months it's probably not a good idea to buy it now.
That's not at all what is going on. Why don't you research this and stop spreading misinformation
Gavin Wood tweeted this: ""Events of today in crypto just go to show that genuine decentralisation and well-designed security make a far more valuable proposition than some big tps numbers coming from an exclusive and closed set of servers. If you can't run a full-node yourself then it's just another bank.""

So i wonder if he thinks Polkadot is different in that it currently couldn't be shut down, or that it will become so once the auctions are done and everything is live.
The whole reason gas fees exist is to prevent ddos
Hm…so you’re implying that only a PoS network is subject to this? Do you think all PoS are doomed then or do you think there are any redeeming qualities of PoS?
is that why people can't sell SOL since it's down?
Why would anyone want to run such a validator without being paid for it? Even if you already have the hardware, did you plan on voting (1.1 sol/pay)?

I don't see any reason to warrant the costs, unless you have either a huge amount invested or are developing a big(!) project on top of it.
wouldn't pruning also be possible if data simply gets split up? every node would have only 1/x parts of the data actually available and the rest of the nodes only save checksums of the data they don't have, then they could verify/query the data of other nodes.
of course x would heavily depend on the amount of nodes, so having high requirements certainly doesn't help
No need to get your knickers in a twist.  

The whole reason I came and asked in this sub, was to try and get more reliable facts/opinions as there are so many conflicting stories?   

Exactly, how am I supposed to know it's bs?
Sorry how does it became SOL problem that you spin up crazy expensive nodes, is like blaming BTC for the hash rate because you can't afford latest mining machine.
It costs $400 for a threadripper CPU . $600 for 128gb RAM $120 for gen4 SSD. + case, board, power supply.

1.0 SOL per day validator fee is probably the only real barrier for entry

I truly believe you dont look up any of this. Like its impossible or something.
Thx!
Solana also has a two day wait for unstaking, so anyone who were staking needs to wait two days before they can sell.
The VCs that control SOL won't dump their coins just yet, that's like saying Elon Musk is dumping his Tesla shares because Tesla had a bad day.
Lol and I was taking your reply very seriously...googling all about it.  I was thinking this doesn't make any sense to me!
Thanks.  I did wonder if it was the same thing.
I mean you are completely splitting hairs here.

Like, would you rather have a nano kind of downtime, where your transactions are pending for 2 weeks, or the solana kind of downtime where you have to wait a day for your transaction to go through?
[deleted]
More like 9x but your point is still valid imo.
Tell us what's going on then.

Why comment about spreading misinformation without including... Information?
There are redeeming qualities of pos. They are faster and more scalable. These are at the expense of security and decentralization
If its on an exchange you can sell. If SOL is down then you can't move SOL to an exchange to sell.
I mean I kinda didn’t expect it to be at $200 each because I didn’t buy anywhere near $200. I figured I could afford it for a year easily regardless of numbers. Hardware is easy to get. Only a few hundred sol validators due to the high entry. Less than 1,000 people doing it. That exclusivity could easily get me better access and opportunities.

Check this out it’ll learn you a lot more than my comment. 

https://youtu.be/vRzQK1YzAQI
Yep. I think the technical term for what you're describing is 'sharding.' Eth is working on that now and I think Zilliqa already has it in place.
Solana has their own Twitter feed.  There's even a Solana subreddit. You read one person on reddit and that was it for you, you just repeat it now. Come tf on
I can run a BTC fullnode on a $40 raspberry pi computer
A threadripper is like $2k, please let me know where they are $400 lol 

Note you also need sufficient GPU power as well. It refuses to run on my high spec machine

Threadripper 3970x + 128GB DDR4 RAM + 2x AMD 5700 XT + 24TB SSD
You are forgiven - especially since googling Oracles and Blockchains won't find you the answer to the joke, and likely lead you down the rabbit hole of Oracles and blockchains that have nothing to do with the Oracle database.
I don’t think it’s splitting hairs. Solana’s blockchain shutting down requires people to trust that it will be up again. Sort of like trusting that the bank that holds your money will open the next day. Isn’t being trustless a core tenet of crypto?
DDOSing networks isnt something new. Many modern networks have mechanisms to monitor on-the-net and prevent this. The fact that Solana went down when bots flooded the network hints that there are bigger concerns with the its network design, security and scalability all together.
 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437856638279487493

The network suffered essentially a denial of service attack. The developers didn't shut the network down. This was a bug found WEEKS ago.  That's why the software update is available.  There's an update being rolled out and the validators are coordinating that but at NO POINT was there some team of devs or anyone out there able to hit a button and shut the network down.
Ok, so with all that being said, what is your opinion of PoS for a long term solution?
Cardano's PoS implementation has the same security as Bitcoin under the same network conditions, at least, according to their research.
Since you're still on this topic are you even reading the replies to your incorrect messages about consensus? It wasn't shutdown by a single entity, the network got stuck bc bots spamming 400k TPS.Then they fixed it and had to wait for the around 1100 nodes to update to the patched version., which is why it took such a long time.
Bad day at work?

Now see you're assuming things when you state I read 'one person' on reddit.  Maybe you haven't been in r/cc today that idk...but there's lots of fud on Solana there today. 

You literally attack me for saying 'I was shocked to read that SOL was literally shutdown' which is a fact...I was shocked at that.  That was my reaction...is my reaction fud or is what I read fud?   Am I to blame for the fud that I read?

I don't like fud...but I literally posted in here to get facts to filter out fud and you get all angry at someone at least trying to do the right thing. 

As for twitter...yeah, everyone is super honest and transparent on there.  

Where am I repeating this fud?  

Idk...maybe you work for Solana or maybe you have a big bag and are worried the price may go down.  

Anyway, I hope tomorrow is a better day for you.
Yes, you can store tx history ONLY as storage machine, but NO mining (meaning no reward or income).

I crypto these days you must invest to earn.
I meant to say $600. I see them open box for 6-650

The hardware is easy. The only barrier is daily fee.
Yeah, and you are trusting all the Bitcoin nodes and miners to keep running too.
Agreed. Seems some posters here pin point the issue the msg priority flow and that they are in The process of updating the node/validators. Craziness. Make me think of EOS and their spam issue early days.
I mean yeah, it's brand new. It took years before nano got spam resistance so I would assume a brand new player would have spam vulnerabilities out of the gate.

But yeah I also wouldn't buy any yet either.

Hopefully they get it all solved
People get annoyed with fee markets, but an obvious advantage of the main/older cryptos is that they are resilient to spam.  Btc has a big advantage over ETH in that ETH can have cryptokitty spam that is only subjectively malicious or not malicious.
Yep, thank you. People act like the devs have full control of the validators. They do not, so they can't just ""shut them down"".

They advised the validators to apply a fix and coordinate together and they agreed. But if the validators really wanted to, they could have disobeyed and stayed running with the old software (though they wouldn't be very useful to the network without the fix).
A long term solution to PoW? I think that it doesn't actually do the things PoW does well, so rather than being a viable alternative, it's a different thing entirely. 

pos is fine for quick transactions and high throughput. You can kind of scale it however you like.. 

Pow is actually slow and scales poorly on purpose. Its a necessary evil to have fair decentralized network validation that has thus far not been hacked after more than 10 years to my knowledge. I think if you wanted to take advantage of crypto technology correctly, you'd do what ergo is doing. Take everything Bitcoin got right and improve upon it (extended UTXO), then build layer 2 solutions where necessary to take over when PoW is too slow or doesn't have enough space for transaction data. 

A pow blockchain is basically a single state machine. Think computer processor that does one thing at a time linearly. No multi-core, no async processes. Sharding is one way to improve upon that, which eth is doing.. but why bother if youre going to pos anyway? We can all just keep using our banks and have fast transactions that way. 

Ergo encountered an issue where the single start nature didn't allow the dex to work. Basically if you queued a transaction, it would just have to wait in line before all other queued transactions. It didn't work at scale. So they created an off-chain decentralized bot system. Validators can run bots that submit blocks of transactions and are paid in tokens to do the service, then the layer 1 network confirms all the work after its been passed around to various other validators and is all checked. Then all the transactions are entered into the network as part of a single block. 

Keep an eye on that project. All the buzz words you see on algo and dot and sol and eth2.0 and nano, they're all being created on ergo but not hyped up.
Ignore that dude, you're doing nothing wrong here and this thread has been really useful.
i can run an ETH beacon chain POS node on a $40 raspberry pi
Maybe the 2000 series but I think theyre insufficient. I believe zen3 (3000s) are what’s needed
I feel like a project with so much ico money should have better security audits. Not ordering messages by importance, especially on such hardware, or even allowing that spam messaging, should be noticed very early. It's obviously a very rushed protocol.

I personally wouldn't trust them with an expensive product for next few years, but it's probably not a big deal for speculative crypto investors or subsidized partnerships.
[deleted]
I really, really appreciate your insights! Also thank you so much for the tip on ERGO, I will certainly be looking into them. Super refreshing to see a PoW solution amongst a sea of hype for PoS. I personally do not like PoS for L1 chains. It just doesn’t make sense and feels like a centralized L1 is inevitable. I’m ok with more centralized L2 solutions but L1 needs to be decentralized or this was all for nothing. Curious what your thoughts are on ETH moving to PoS? Do you hold any PoS coins or are you a PoW-only person? I have ergo on my list now. I am looking into some other PoW L1s as well.

Also: I’ve come across these interesting arbitrary DAG protocols like IOTA in my research. They claim to be scalable, decentralized, and secure without the need for miners and this allows very low transaction fees. IOTA specifically uses what they call a “tangle.” Would love to hear your thoughts on this if you have any insights on L1s that aren’t even really blockchains at all.
Glad to see others liking Ergo. I discovered them when I was trying to get in early on a cardano DEX and was doing a comparison of ergodex and the other early competitors. Everything about them seems way better than the other dexs at this point.
Maybe you should check out Kadena and reiterate your thoughts on PoW scalability.
Doesn't sequencer make Ergo's dex solution centralised?
I think it's been an extremely useful and informative thread too.  It's great to get everyones opinions. 

Thanks!
ETH can run on $40 Raspberry Pi while single lowest transection cost is nearly $20.

Solana took a different direction on PoH, then push the cost to validators by demanding a highend machine to achieve speed and lower transaction cost not without issues as well.

This idea of every crypto network MUST lower it's node requirements to Raspberry Pi is troubling, I'm basically seeing Myspace vs Facebook situation here between ETH vs SOL.

Time will tell, if Raspberry Pi node standard will rule the day but at the end developers will decide, end users will follow and case closed.
Zen3 is mentioned specifically in the hardware specs.
I have yet to see any correlation at all between protocol/code quality and funding.

But yeah I'm not going to trust anyone in this space either way. I don't speculate on products that aren't fully functional by my definitions
That's exactly right. A lot of hard forks actually happened yesterday too until the validators decided to coordinate and sync up in accordance with the Solana's dev team's advice.

The main fork is just whatever 51+% of the validators choose to do. So when most of the validators decided to halt to apply the fix, then the main fork was halted (which is very different from ""dev team shut it down"").

Also, just because validators are deciding to ""coordinate"" doesn't make it centralized. BTC and ETH nodes must coordinate all the time to decide on software updates. Sometimes they disagree and a hard fork is a created (e.g. BCH, ETC).
Love seeing people actually taking the time to look into this stuff. I agree, if you do away with decentralization it's all for naught. 

I hold cardano, so I'm not completely opposed to PoS, but I'm more pro-ada because they do a ton of research and have a great community. The tech they build will be useful to other currencies as well. I had dot but I recently traded it for kDa. Its a PoW chain that works for Asics, and some Chinese miners are moving off BTC to kda. Not sure if there's anything special about it besides some hype but I didn't get much. 

I read a bit on iota and wasn't sure I believed the buzz. It sounds like a lot of talk with no substance but I didn't give it a fair chance because it sounded stupid to me. I looked into nano more and it seems really dumb, and I think iota is a bit similar? 

Doesn't mean they won't make you money though ;)
You should check out CKB. Has layer 1 and layer 2 built in. POW, with scalability tools. Built from the ground up to resolve choices between POW and POS.
Doesn't Kadena use a type of network sharding?
They found a way to let the off-chain bots be run by anyone, in a decentralized way, paid in erg.
yes the ethereum network is currently at capacity, thank you for pointing that out. the whole reason for the major upgrade is to address this problem, among others.

> This idea of every crypto network MUST lower it's node requirements to Raspberry Pi is troubling

this isn't an idea that's pushed among every project or community, its just to demonstrate just how decentralized a network of validators can be at the extreme end.

> I'm basically seeing Myspace vs Facebook situation here between ETH vs SOL.

this would make sense if ethereum were somehow opposed to upgrading technologies or capabilities, but would seem like a disingenuous way to frame it if were not opposed to innovation.
What sounds stupid about Iota and Nano? maybe I can help you out.
Appreciate your input. KDA is another one on my list. They are claiming to have scaled PoW with their “chain web” protocol. I need to look more into the security of this protocol but it looks so so promising. I think they could be a good one too in the future. It’s just getting so much more complicated now with having to think about not only different blockchains, but now they are coming out with structures that aren’t even blockchains! It’s crazy but so so awesome! Bitcoin will always win, but having another coin or coins to bet on would be good. 

I also agree with your sentiment on Nano and I believe it is also similar to IOTA but I haven’t looked very deeply into Nano yet. More food for research!
Awesome, I’ll look into them. Thanks a bunch!
They use graph theory to create a sharded network of chains that can be scaled unlimited. Currently they are running on 20 chains.
I see. That's interesting. Will look into it. Thanks.
No thank you. I'm staying away from those projects.
Nano, is great, but it is just a currency. Other than being DAGs iota and Nano are not all that similar. Iota has a number of features that nano doesn't have, one of the big ones is zero value transactions.  There is a huge amount of Iota info available online and they have projects with companies like Zebra (world's largest manufacturer of barcodes scanners), STMicroelecteonics (Europe's largest chip manufacturer), Dell, Intel, ARM, IBM, Linux Foundation on project Alvarium and a number of others.      

One important distinction between Nano and Iota vs other currencies. They don't just have low transaction fees. They have zero transaction fees.  
If Iota gets everything working without the coordinator (data transactions are already off it, testnet has been running without it for awhile now), it will have the best tech in the crypto space.
I had wrote a few long replies and forget to bring up sharding in this last one. Fingers crossed kda continues to prove it has a robust solution.
That's a shame. Love seeing people actually taking the time to look into this stuff.
Thank you, I appreciate your insight on this matter. I will admit to being not all that knowledgeable on IOTA or Nano. I was merely trying to compare the two based on their DAG qualities. My intentions are to find the best L1 solutions around that will last long into the future. The kind of L1 where I can buy the coin, comfortable knowing it will be around in decades time and not worthless. I believe most PoS coins will not stand the rest of time once people realize the end game for those coins. It’s all about the end game and then working backwards for me.
Yep, I hope so too but at the moment I think it is one of the most promising under the radar projects.
I looked into them enough that they came across as scams and I'm not interested in looking further.
How do they come across as scams? IOTA has over 90 employees, and Dell, IBM, Linux Foundation, Intel, Jaguar, Land Rover, Zebra, STMicroelectronics, German government, EU (ESBI Infrastructure, IOTA hasn't won the rights to the project yet but they are currently in first place for the contest) are working with them, among a number of others.       

None of them have figured out the scam, you should shed some light on it.     


 You don't have to take IOTA's word for it, all these organizations have their own press releases about their projects with IOTA.

Edit - Changed number of employees, can't remember where I read 150, website has information on 92 current employees so I'll go with that number instead.
This is exactly how they're scams. They launched as crypto currencies, how do they have deals with all these companies?

If I want to invest in corporations, Ill do it with stocks. If I want to hold a crypto asset, it better be decentralized. 

Every time I talk about them people list the companies they do business with as credibility signals. You shouldn't have to name drop to prove credibility, you should just be doing things that make you credible!
Because companies are working with them they're scams?     

IOTA data transactions are decentralized, IOTA value transactions have been decentralized on the test net for months, once they're finished testing it will be completely decentralized and I don't know of any crypto that it will be cheaper to run a node for. 

IOTA is not a corporation, it is a non profit organization, which in Germany has a huge list of rules they need to follow, including 0 funding for advertising. That is a credibility signal.  

These projects are part of what makes them credible, they aren't just ""partnerships"" that look good on paper. Project Alvarium (Dell, Intel, IBM, Linux Foundation and IOTA) are working together to secure edge data, if that doesn't give credibility to the project I don't know what does. I think this is one of the coolest projects in all of crypto, that's why I name drop it. https://www.cio.com/article/3617917/project-alvarium-and-the-rise-of-data-confidence.html      

PDF directly from Dell: https://education.dellemc.com/content/dam/dell-emc/documents/en-us/2020KS_Todd_Project_Alvarium-The_Future_of_Edge_Data.pdf

I can run a node for the cost of a raspberry pi. All the IOTA that they control was given to them by the community, they took 0 iota for themselves at the start of the project. If these things don't add credibility, what does?     

So tell me, what aren't they doing to add credibility?  You can use a large number of the features on the decentralized test net right now.  There is public access to the test net, no need to take anyone's word for it.   

I don't see anything that other ""credible"" projects are doing that IOTA isn't also doing.  What is the goalpost you want them to meet here?     

You can say ""it has no fees and that scares me"", or ""it isn't fully decentralized on the mainnet yet,"" or ""it doesn't have staking so I don't like it."" That is fine and reasonable. Saying it is a scam, particularly because they are working on projects with huge corporations and governments is just silly. I've never heard of something being called a scam before because they are working with companies on projects."
Technical comparison of LIGHTNING vs TANGLE vs HASHGRAPH vs NANO,128,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7yfpcs/technical_comparison_of_lightning_vs_tangle_vs/,"The problem with hashgraph is it is not permissionless. Anyone (eg. visa) can design a fast network on a permission based system; the real challenge is having a fast yet permissionless network where anyone can transact without the need for relying on centralised infrastructure. That is the Holy grail of DLT. IMO the only 2 that stand a good chance at success on this list are Nano and IOTA
ivan on tech posts some good videos, one point on IOTA coordinator, its an interim solution untill there are enough nodes in the tangle.
Is there an example of Hashgraph out there right now? I see Tangle - IOTA, Byteball: The DAG, Lighting - BT etc Anything for Hashgraph working now?
> Nano seems to be the only one working 100% as advertised, today

guess they never advertised being secure since representatives have nothing at stake and literally no reason to be honest or to even volunteer to do that job. and since it's not approval based, it's unlikely to represent best candidates.  and there's no sybil protection against tx or account spam since intermittent PoW might as well not exist.

there are significant security and ethical problems with a lot of those unfinished platforms being advertised as usable
rai/iota have proof of work that can cost more or be more inconvenient than a lightning fee.

Lightning has the advantage of letting people who don't care about trading partners not have to deal with the perpetual storage requirement of their transactions.
very true, dont sleep on these coins, however im not really into NANO as its payment focused, i can elaborate on why if youre interested. IOTA at least has data storage on the tangle, so it can be used in other protocols like oyster. so there is a case for adoption there. with nano, im not so sure. it would make the ultimate trading pair, but other than that, im not sold on adoption.
I heard that hashgraph has a pattent for its technology? If it’s true, then it’s a shame. What a small man.
Question: at one point in Novemember when IOTA became the top 5 coin, the network was congested and transactions took hours: why? 

Doesn’t more nodes = faster transaction? So why is it at its peak, the network slowed down instead of speeding up? 


But when though... ""one day""??? 
Would like to know this as well
According to their github.com, sybil attacks are practically no risk. https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Attacks

Disclaimer: I don't have a full grasp on the technicalities. 
are you talking about lighting network? yeah itll make things cheaper but at the end of the day, when the lighting network channel is closed, the transactions are groups togeather mining is done. so there is still a cost. and in btc, its quite large atm. LN should bring costs down and improve scalability. but imo they should do so much more for BTC to improve it, but too much infighting with devs, we havent seen btc change much at all despite all the issues its encoutered. 

I mean the PoW algo they use is a simple sha256, so that gave rose to ASIC machines which outperform your avg joe trying to mine. this resorts to companies aquiring lots of expensive ASIC machines to mine BTC in countries with cheap electricity, so mining becomes highly centralised, and transactions expensive. they could have at least changed the mining algo to not be so easy computationally. you see other coins doing PoW with more complex ""problems"" to validate the transaciton, take monero for example, its more cpu based. cpu is a general purpose computing device while gpus and esp ASICs are very niche in what they can do, they are great at solving mathetmatical operaitons but limited in waht they can do, great for gaming, great for executing a hash function
I have the same concern for nano, but I think nano has the greatest chance to achieve global adoption, with pre-cache pow it literally can send coins with 1 second from one cellphone to another. What I am betting is, since the team haven’t done any marketing yet, I think they plan to release all the wallets and then fully on marketing and deal with merchants. This could be huge in the next few months.30% my portfolio on it.
Yeah I'm currently not invested in nano, just stating that it shows promise in that it works very well for it's use case. I am invested in IOTA however as I believe that it will be the leading technology for it's use case in the near future, being the backbone for secure communication and payments in a trillion dollar industry (IOT space) with a lot of great partnerships already established, and many great minds collaborating on the project.
That was due to a coordinated DDoS attack on publicly listed nodes. A lot of people were struggling getting off exchanges as well due to the volume. Btw if you switched nodes to a private one transactions actually went through very quickly as usual...

The foundation let the attack continue so that they could gather data and design a solution to avoid this in the future. Since then Roman Semko has developed some great software to deploy and protect nodes from bad actors on the network
The primary issue as I understand it was that IOTA doesn't (or didn't at the time) have automatic peer discovery. IOTA wallet users had to select from a list of known peers to connect to and of course many users just picked the one at the top.

The result was that handful of nodes got slammed with everyone trying to connect to them, instead of everyone forming a nice balanced mesh network.
Because the number of nodes couldnt handle the traffic. The tangle scales with the number of nodes so if there is a huge flood of traffic, those using the public nodes listed in the wallet have a bad time.
The more transaction happen in the network the faster it can get, it’s true, yet it also has a limit. What it actually means is below this limit the more transaction the faster. The problem is they don’t lnow what the limit is, it could be the same limit as nano.
Oyster will use tangle t and Im confident they will deliver a working product in a few months
yes, I should start pointing out I did read that page. The sybil attacks I am talking about are what they call ""penny-spend attack"" & transaction flooding although it can be any amounts as clever as they want to be in their attack so I think the risk is between high and maximum and *rate limit* is exaggeration.
its likely LN channels are never closed.  http://www.naturalfinance.net/2018/02/lightning-network-economics-and.html
yeah thats all good and well, nano is fantastic technology and i agree marketing would really help, the rebrand is less geeky and gives it a name that suggests what it does.

my biggest issue with adoption and pretty much all payment only focused coins is that the coin flucuates relative to your fiat, you also have to have the hassle of buying nano which at this stage means moving money to an exchange where you have to verify yourself. then buy the nano move it to your wallet. you then also have to be your own bank i.e. secure your keys properly, nano ledger is a great step forward but u see my point. lastly there are no charge backs with cryptos.

for all those points combined there is no way i would buy anything normal with cryptos, the exception is, is if i got like 15-20% off a major purchase. but id have to trust the vendor, maybe they are on ebay. and id have to buy the coins asap so the value stays the same.

imo i was really hoping that rai could be incorporated into something like osmigo is doing, mobile phone insert fiat -> out comes other fiat or crytpo. i was excited about the project, but when i read the white paper. it was easily the worst ones ive read. if a protocol like that was developed where your fiat was instantly turned into nano via a decentralised exchange with easy to use software. sure. but so far i havent seen much promise with decentralised exchanges, lack of liquidity and issues with latency being primary ones. Stellar on the ohter hand is making an exchange, not sure if its centralised but the coin is extremly fast 2-3 sec confirmation time, 1500 txs, will incorporate LN, 0.00003$ to send a tran. on that note, raiblocks has competitors with better marketing e.g. stellar so there is that too.
very cool, i did not know the history of this congestion. do you know what iota did to solve the problem?
Ah I see. Was not aware that there was a coordinated attack against IOTA. 

Could you elaborate on how the software Roman Semko developed, worked? Like how did it successfully protect the nodes?
So how are they going to tackle this problem?

Because from what I think you’re saying- that was a huge influx in users who simply bought and “hodl”, thus resulting in an increase in traffic, but not much of a substantial increase in nodes. What if people who get into IOTA don’t care about the IoT aspect of it? And most of them just do what BTC’ers do and simply “hodl” hoping to get rich? 

Sorry for the FUD. This question has been on my mind for a while.
Has anyone tested Byteball: The DAG as a comparison? 
You can easily set a minimum amount to receive in your wallet, and ignore any transactions below that amount (ie set to 2 cents, any attacker needs to send >2 cents to generate load on your wallet). Would be interesting to see the math on how many tx's are necessary to really bring down the network, then translate that to attacker rate of spend.

Also, the 7000 tps rate limit is almost surely exaggerated, as it only considers network bandwidth/transaction file size (as far as I understand). However, this figure gives significant headroom compared to VISA's typical tps (average ~2k, probably peak around 4k on typical days. Though VISA's holiday tps is ~20k, blows Nano out of the water)

Edit: Now that I think about it, I don't know if the minimum-receive filter actually matters. Nodes would desync because they need to keep up with other transactions, so unless every wallet has their minimum-receive filter set at or above a given threshold, the attack could succeed by exploiting wallets with weaker filtering. Hopefully someone with more technical understanding can chime in
ill have a read thanks, i cant wrap my head around a channel never being closed because i thought the channel had to eventually be closed so it can go on the ledger, transactions verified by miners. very cool and promising if true. might actually save btc, but im so doubtful of that coin. other coins are also incorporating LN like stellar, its in their road map. they already outperform btc easily 0.0003$ to send a tran, 1500tx/ps, and 2-3 sec confirmation time. thats ""good enough"" for something like nano to lose out on adoption.
New node software seems to have solved this. The only things holding IOTA back as far as I can tell, is user adoption, more nodes on the network and easier accessibility (new exchanges / wallet). All of these things are happening, new wallet coming in a few weeks that solves all the common complaints, more exchanges are rolling out with their new 'hub' IXI, and adoption will likely improve very quickly after these two things. Should be a promising year for IOTA
Here you go: 
http://iotafeed.com/index.php/2017/12/11/roman-semko-carriota-nelson-in-a-nutshell/

Development has progressed a lot further since then but this post explains the basic concept. He has developed a lot of great node software, including for use with dynamic IP and single click deployment
once adoption occurs it will settle itself out, oyster is using the tangle, and they are releasing their first itteration of their product. so youll get more nodes there already.

but you raise a good point about HODLs, im one of them, im not using the tangle. but hopefully there are other projects out there using it which will scale the network. oyster promises big things, disrupting the advertising industry i.e. no ads, and cheaper encrypted data storage relative to cloud hosting providers. i do have questions around the project though so i hit up the devs on telegram. but if they pull it off, its huge. enough perhaps to add enough nodes to the tangle, each browser for intance will be a node.
There has been a substantial increase of nodes since then, because of project like bolero (1 click node setup). But even with people hodling, there will be significant transfer of data that will also strengthen the network.
There is only a small list of nodes listed in the light wallet currently, and those were getting hammered (or even ddos'ed at some point).
Developments in node software currently are things like Nelson.cli for automatic neighbouring of nodes, and Field.cli for automatic node balancing and incentivization which should help prevent nodes from becoming overloaded.
Minimum receive filter is to protect receive address wallet. So it isn't wasting CPU for pennies. Nodes do no care, they just check signature+pow+forks.

Resource requirement to generate transactions (PoW) are way higher than resources required to validate it.

The way you can force network out of sync - is to carry pre-computed fork choice attack. But the costs are growing exponentially with each branch.

This is the reason PoW is required for `receive`. Not to protect from spam (it is already protected by `send` PoW), but to protect from multiple `receive` sent in different order (N! options). Forcing network to vote on forks.
>  the channel had to eventually be closed so it can go on the ledger, transactions verified by miners. 

You can always spend funds on LN instead of closing.  Pretty assured that it will always be cheaper to do so.  Closing is done if counter party is unresponsive, or as an attempt to cheat.

LN is faster than XLM, and fees are free for direct routes, and may be cheaper than XLM indirectly (or at least be comparable).  LN is backed by more provable tech and decentralization than others.

rai/iota have the problem of limited single node spending tps, with iota having broken-by-design signature scheme."
why does a blockchain require a crypto currency? (my old man asks),132,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/o4qap5/why_does_a_blockchain_require_a_crypto_currency/,"They aren't necessary.

&#x200B;

A blockchain is just a list of items that each reference the previous one in the chain. Records can be added to the chain by referencing the previous item. This works perfectly fine if you control the entire blockchain, say you are a company, it's running on your personal computer, or if you are a government.

But what if we are running it on the public internet? How do we all agree which chain is the correct one when people can add items whenever? Well, whichever one is longest is the most correct, easy.

That gives us another problem, what stops people adding a whole ton of items to the chain to make it the longest? Ok, so we need to add rules that make it difficult or expensive to add items to the chain. That's what mining is, you do a hard computation and then when you get the solution you can add an item to the chain.

Ok, so why would I do these hard computations? It costs me a lot of electricity, plus I need a powerful computer which costs money too. A simple answer is, if you do this work, you get a token.

That is literally the only reason why blockchains require crypto tokens.

&#x200B;

But just to be clear, you can still run a blockchain without tokens. Maybe you have an alternate way to make it difficult to add items to the chain, maybe you don't care.

&#x200B;

I don't like thinking of tokens as ""currency"", because that's not how they work or function. Tokens are more like, well, tokens at an arcade. A bitcoin token can be redeemed to use bitcoin's features (transferring bitcoins). Other coins have other features that you can redeem them for.

For distributed services it makes sense to pay people via inflation by minting new tokens rather than paying them in cash.

Imagine a world where instead of paying cash for carpentry you have to pay in 'carpentry tokens', so if want a new chair you go buy 10 carpentry tokens, then take them to the carpenter and redeem them for a new chair. The carpenter can then sell those carpentry tokens for cash, so they can buy more wood, pay for their mortgage, buy food, etc.

In the case of bitcoin, the service being provided is ""transferring funds"" like a bank does. Instead of transferring cash directly, you buy tokens, then transfer them, and the person at the other end can sell them for cash. Usually a bank would pay their workers with cash, but instead we have agreed that if you do the work of transferring funds, you get a token. This inflates bitcoin, so it's functionally the same as paying a fee. Hope that helps!
You are circling close to an insight Satoshi was the first to have.  While you don't need a crypto to make a blockchain, you DO need a blockchain to make a trustless digital currency.  That's because blockchain technology solves the doublespend problem.  Without blockchain you need a trusted third party to record and verify all transactions.
Reward system for the users of the blockchain, payment of fees, governance, staking, lending, NFT minting. It also depends to the purpose of the blockchain - what is it used for.
Tokens are absolutely necessary to run a decentralized and secure blockchain. Value of the tokens in some form (block rewards, transactions, etc.) provide the incentive to keep the network running, and running securely. Only those who run the network according to rules get rewarded. Rewards are built in to the protocol, which makes decentralization possible.
It doesn't. A block chain is a data structure that can be used anywhere where you want an append-only log that's cryptographically infeasible to modify/counterfeit. Cryptocurrencies are a popular use but block chains show up in other areas like immutable logs in security applications, etc.

Block chains in cryptocurrency must also have a consensus mechanism, which is a mechanism of deciding which chain is valid if there is more than one alternative chain. The most popular are proof of work (Bitcoin), proof of stake (Ethereum 2, others), and federated trust (Ripple, Facebook Libra, etc.). Federated trust is where you have a group of known entities that all say (via a cryptographic signature or something) what they think the valid chain is and you take the chain where the majority of trusted stamping authorities agree.
Because you’re not paying for databases and servers, the people supplying this service need to be compensated somehow
I think he get's it wrong. A crypto currency *is a* digital currency. It *uses* cryptographic functions and the blockchain data structure to secure the digital currency. The blockchain is the first data structure that allowed to implement a successful digital currency. There are many different digital currencies today. Some are simple renamed copies of bitcoin, the first digital currency, and other use different cryptographic functions and data structures. 


Thus a crypto currency *is not needed* to make a blockchain. It's the opposite. A blockchain, or equivalent data structure, *is needed* to make a crypto currency.
It can serve multiple goals. Simplest explanation is that nothing is free, so any transaction put on the blockchain has to be paid for *somehow*. If you were to pay for it in fiat, then you end up effectively with a centralized system, relying on banks and old-fashioned contracts with only a distributed ledger, which would be quite a useless chimera and not different in practice from the old system.
Incentives! The cryptocurrency acts as an incentive for people to verify/secure the blockchain.
I was reading an article at blockgeek on crypto-economics. I hope this will help solve the doubt

Why was peer-to-peer file sharing a failure?
In a torrent system, anyone can share their file with a decentralized network. The idea was that people would download them and keep seeding aka sharing the file with the network for others to download. The problem was that this worked on an honor system. If you were downloading a file, then you were expected to seed as well. The problem is that humans are not really the most honorable of creatures and without any economic incentives it made no sense for people to keep seeding a file which took up unnecessary space in their computers.
A blockchain hashes transactions and previous blocks. If there is no coin, what would you like to hash? That A gives B 100 USD, but in reality A gives C 100 USD. 
The transaction fee argument is nonsense, coins like nano and iota have no transaction fees
The two concepts may be separate in our heads, for ease of thinking about how crypto works, but in reality the technicals are one thing and inseparable.

A blockchain necessarily is a ledger; granted, a ledger that can sometimes transfer ownership (or rather address location) of non-homogenous, non-fungible data (tokens, NFT's)...but this fungibility is not a binary, it is a spectrum, and to the extent that the unit being transfered is fungible (as well as other properties which tend to follow naturally from the nature of blockchains), is the extent to which economic agents will value it and use it as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value.

Bitcoin may have been originally conceived, designed, and intended as a currency...but even if that were not the original intent, we would still see roughly the same behavior surrounding its native token as we do now...because people are and will use economic goods to their most fit and apt use as enabled by the good's properties (assuming regulation or prohibition aren't preventing it), regardless of original intent.
A blockchain by itself doesn't have anything to do with a currency or a certain token, this is the oldest blockchain for example:

[https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first-blockchain](https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first-blockchain)

If you want to run a blockchain on a decentralized computer network, you need a way to motivate people who have nothing to do with you to run servers/network nodes for you. The mining and staking rewards do that, the server operators get a token as a reward, and they can exchange it to fiat to cover their costs.

Blockchain 101 video on YT: [https://youtu.be/\_160oMzblY8](https://youtu.be/_160oMzblY8)
IOTA is the only one i know that recognizes the need for both value and non value transactions. They have solved the sybil protection and congestion control differently.

https://blog.iota.org/explaining-mana-in-iota-6f636690b916/
The simple answer: the cryptocurrency is a ticket to use the system. Bitcoin doesn't work for dollars, euros, or yen. It only works for bitcoin same for the other cryptocurrencies.
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Crypto is the vehicle and blockchain is the gas driving the vehicle
You don't need a fungible token on a blockchain. Blockchain tech just means ""everyone has the same information"".

Heroes of the Storm used a blockchain to replay the game if you quit, making it much harder to glitch cheat as everyone was guaranteed to have the dame game state.

However, if everything's a non fungible token and you want to trade them, you end up with barter systems. Barter systems become currency systems very quickly. (look at minecraft, where diamonds became currency).

So if you are making any kind of game that involves trading, you need a currency.
Interesting fact. Dollars secure most of the centralized services. In theory you could pay service providers to secure a distributed ledger off chain.
They don't. Simply put. No reason as for why they are needed but for financial applications.
The currency provides the incentives to maintain the network.

Bitcoin is an innovation in economics, game theory and computer science. Every part is necessary or it falls down like a house of cards
Hmm, actually it's not necessary nor blockchain exists because solely for crypto. Blockchain is used in different mediums as well.
The blockchain is your bank account lol, mean while the cryptocurrency are your money or funds
Excellent comment. That point about tokens is so key for me. The currency nomenclature creates the wrong impression in people's minds. Having said that, I have seen people saying that tokens are strictly differentiated from cryptocurrencies, so I might be wrong here.
That's a great explanation!
This post with your answer made me wonder, could we create a blockchain based on immutable factors such as time or location? What kind of data would it make sense with?
But what about cryptos like VeChain? I just don’t see the purpose of it having a token
This is one of the best explanations of a blockchain I've read so far. Thank you!
Tokens at an arcade ARE currency. You just described currency lol
>  While you don't need a crypto to make a blockchain, you DO need a blockchain to make a trustless digital currency

i mean, its A method. bitcoin is cool and all, but the bitcoin white paper isn't some mystical ultimate truth handed down from on high, its just the currently most-feasible solution to a nerdy computer science problem that's been discussed for decades. the proof-of-work concept was pinched from [hashcash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash) which predates bitcoin by ten years.  

for all we know, there may be some completely different and far more elegant solution just round the corner. my personal suspicion is that the eventual adoption of more widespread quantum computing is likely to disrupt the hegemony of current ""classical"" blockchains quite substantially, not just from the POV of perhaps being able to directly attack SHA256, but also because the process of developing and testing provably quantum-proof  devices and encryption models may engender further discoveries in either [materials science or information science](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2401-y) that progress us past the need for a ""public"" ledger model specifically. 

idk, rn that's just speculative scifi, like smartphones were in the 80s. 

*edit:* maybe bitcoin will be the reserve currency in 300 years? personally i reckon the speed of light functionally reintroduces the double spend problem again so if we're still using bitcoin interplanetary commerce will have to be done on a barter basis unless you wanna wait say 4 hours round trip every time you send packets to the node, and fuck knows how long for the network to actually sync and confirm lol.
Does federated trust bear any relations to Proof-of Authority (i.e in VeChainThor)?
So if you are a collection of corporations, like in the financial industry, you don't need to issue a currency or create a currency as long as the members of your collective agree to pay for the computing resources needed to run the blockchain securely, correct?
> If there is no coin, what would you like to hash

blockchains are legers. They're basically decentralized databases.

I think what OP is asking is: ""Why does BTC (or whatever) have a currency and ...MySQL doesn't?""

The answer is: To incentivize participants in the network to act as validators.

A centralized database  just runs on one server and is owned by the server operator. But a blockchain basically runs on multiple servers. You need the community to own it! You achieve that by having as many validators (miners/stakers) as possible.

If blockchains didn't have a reward mechanism, there would be no incentive for most people to contribute their resources to the project.

I don't know much about NANO, but the reason why IOTA doesn't have fees is different. First of all, it's not a blockchain, it's a DAG. Secondly, every participant in the IOTA network is automatically also a miner. To be able to use IOTA (send a transaction), you're forced to validate other transactions. So unlike regular blockchain, you don't have a 2-class system of Blockchain-users and network-facilitators (miners/stakers), because everybody is forced to do both jobs.
They don't have transaction fees, but that doesn't mean transactions aren't paid for one way or another.
alrighty.... all in on Doge....
Don’t let the dual use of the word token throw you off. In the analogy, they are comparing crypto to a generic “token”. 

Within cryptocurrency, we consider a coin to be any crypto with its own blockchain, and a token to be built on another blockchain. Bitcoin and Ethereum are coins, but Tether, UNI and BAT are tokens built on other blockchains.
https://i.imgur.com/vnws45K.jpg
Without validations, you could make up time and location, so they're not trustworthy measures of security.

The simplest way to make a coinless and secure blockchain is by using a permissioned ledger, which mean centralization.
You want to make a blockchain secured by time or location huh. I think it's possible.

First you need to define rules, eg each block must be 1 hour apart, and must be summited at or after the timestamp on the block. That's about it. If one node accepts a block that doesn't follow the rules, hopefully other nodes will refuse to sync with it because it's invalid (they are incentivized to maintain a valid database).

For something like location, you need some way to verify that the location is valid. Perhaps you could make a smartphone mining client, and then other miners could validate the position by providing bluetooth/wifi/gps/whatever geolocation data. I think it's doable for sure.

As for what kind of data would make sense, I think for geolocation it would be cool to have things like weather or gravity data written to the db. Imagine a db that has the weather at every square mile every hour mined.

There's actually something \*kind of\* similar called coinapp. I doubt it's actually crypto, but the idea seems to be using people's phones to track packages via bluetooth or something.
>VeChain

I am not familiar with it, but I gave it a quick glance just to give an opinion. VTHO is needed to execute smart contracts, and VET is just a store of value. I'm not sure the point of VET considering there are already so many others, but I guess they just wanted control of it.
Within the context of an arcade you can look at it as currency, but in the context of society it definitely is not :P
A newer  version is always just around the corner. Were at horse n buggy or possibly model A level to where we will be in ten years. It really doesn't matter. The freedom this offers is a threat to the protectors of our freedom. They will determine someone needs to be in control of this, for our safety of course and we won't need to know how it all works.
Yep, you can definitely have a blockchain without having a token. In your example though it’s not exactly decentralised, it’s more of a private blockchain.
What do you mean? You really don't have to pay a node for signing your transaction.
Ah, brilliant, thank you for this clarification.
This is cool. What's the sauce? I want to dive in!
Great reference, thank you.
Ain't that arcade part of ""society""? Its a literal currency exchange. When you go to Canada and change money are you ""leaving society"". 

Pure and simple they are the same thing, the arcade owner is the central bank issuing their fiat.
I mean that the transaction costs money for the node to sign, even if the end user who initiated the transaction does not (directly) pay for it. Somebody had to build the node, pay the power bill and maintenance. That money needs to come from somewhere; if not from transaction fees then via mining/staking rewards or whatever.

Either way, the transaction needs to be paid and therefore you need a token.

(Ps. I did not downvote you, I think this is a legit question)
Eg in iota you have to verify 2 transactions before yours can be sent. That's how you pay.

Inflation is one way that the fee can be paid, but obviously there's many. You could even just pay people cash to run miners if you want.
For something to be currency it needs to be widely accepted. Arcade tokens are accepted, but only within the arcade. I am not sure exactly how accepted a token needs to be to constitute a currency, but I suspect that a single shop is not enough.

I do agree that the arcade owner is acting as if they are a central bank. Some other examples might be cruise ships or big festivals where you buy cruise bux or festival bux that you can use within the ship/venue.
Without proof of stake, the costs are trivial enough that no incentive is needed, other than the benefit that the blockchain brings to its users.

For example, the cost of running a Nano node is the same as the cost of running a non-mining Bitcoin node. There is no incentive to run non-mining Bitcoin nodes - they don't get any share of block rewards or transaction fees. They verify and relay blocks and transactions regardless. Currently there are around 10,000 Bitcoin nodes doing this work ""for free"".
Doubt: Who checks if you've really verified and didn't just lie and say they're legit?
No it does not need to be widely accepted lol. That's not the defining factor of what makes a currency. Anything used as a medium of exchange, and not acquired for it's own intrinsic value is a currency.

Theres no difference between exchanging your USD for arcade tokens as when you exchange USD for Euros. The arcade tokens are ""widely accepted"" within the arcade.
 was not aware that nano operated like that. I'm going to look into that a bit more because that is fascinating.
I have to disagree, every definition for currency I have seen has had this as a core part of the definition."
"Moons are fucked, a proposal.",126,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/p6g2my/moons_are_fucked_a_proposal/,"It's made the mods rich and turned the sub into moon farming trash.
I agree that moons are fucked

But I don't agree the moon system be implemented in this subreddit. You already see that the experiment has failed why start another experiment somewhere else?
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Please don't. 1 subreddit ruined by those things is more than enough. I enjoy the peace and discussions here without the moons.
There is nothing fun nor experimental about monetizing social interactions.  
Its just here to make some people rich.  
🐷
Alternatively, proposing that reddit burns their huge centralising stash would be a great place to start
I'm in favour of a moons fork, but I don't want them anywhere near this sub
That sub sucks anyway, don't forget it's extremly unfair because the mods that own 50% of the supply  also ban people from their sub so they dob't get a chance to collect moons. I got banned for life for posting a comedy post about the FUD that was going on over there. Without any warning. Think that sounds fair? 


Next to that 90% of posts and comments on that sub are all useless shit only written to collect moons.

I've seen multiple posts of people saying they write 10 hours a day just to get moons that have a worth of the minimum wage in their country. 
I mean like seriously, that's so pathetic, these fat ass internet nerds should just get a real job instead of spending their life writing comments and FUD posts just for the upvotes.

If I ever see one of those mods in a street without cameras, someone's catching hands
Has anyone actually sold their moons here since the Arbitrum migration? I got banned 2 days ago for saying they are un-sellable.
I would love to have a no moons CryptoCurrency sub. Moons encourage low-quality content.

No moons, period.
Can’t really fork them them properly, as it’d require all the Reddit-related features to work with them.
I thought mods weren't allowed to profit. Now they're just in full force siphoning the moons to themselves with downvote bots
The moon whales will hunt you down if they lose their power
I freekin hate Moons. Every time I see that word in the feed  I’d like to choke on my feet
I just sold all my moons. Felt like overcoming an addiction lol.
Yeah, the sub is currently a moon farm and I won't deny I also do that, but I think that as the karma/moon rewards become less advantageous, this farming frenzy will die off a bit.
Fork Nano, make Noons for the community. Profit.
Your idea sucks

A project that launches like you suggest won't get holders.

I own exactly such a project
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Not wrong
r/Cryptonomoons
No moons. NO MOONS
One advice to anyone. Just unsub from cryptomoonshots. It's an unmoderated lair of scammers including the one and only mod selling their premium telegram channel for a monthly subscription. It's not worth shit. Stop gambling on shitcoins and educate yourself on real crypto projects.
Moons are the only crypto currency that you can get banned from
> My biggest beef is 100% the “unfair” launch that they have where 50% of the tokens don’t go to the community

The fact is that rewarding people for engaging in a reddit community is a terrible idea- just look at what's happened to the community.
Moons just looks like doge. The utility is only good if Reddit stays relevant. What then?? Can someone tell me if there is more?
So I have to moon b4 commenting ,it absolutely not nice
Let's not forget how toxic has become too.
It’s also interesting how having more moons gives you more voting power on how moons will be distributed in the future. Thus, the mods with more power can further consolidate such power. Very interesting that nobody really brings this up…
Completely changed the vibe.
This has been happening to most of the subs. I've read this true statement in all of the subs I belong to.
As someone who comes from r/CryptoCurrency I do agree with your statement. Implementing a moon system in this sub would be a recipe for disaster.

I do believe the OP just wants to cashout on the potential rise in price moon will have when they hit mainet.
Seconded.

Moons fucked over that sub, lets keep this one as-is
Seriously. Nix moons now
Indeed.  It sets a precedent for places like Facebook and Twitter (and the rest of Reddit) to monetize popularity on their platforms, too.

We don't need a circlejerk economy that wastes everyone's time and incentivizes them to abuse the technology and incentivizes platforms to abuse their customers' brains' reward systems.  Talk about a vaporware market.

If there's one thing the 21st century has taught me about economics it's that the ecological process of markets will just HAPPEN whether or not the resources being traded are worth anything tangible.  People trade for the sake of trading, and nothing else, because dopamine hits.  Therefore that mechanic is not an end in itself - I think we should think long and hard about what is actually valuable and useful when we structure new marketplaces.
Daaaaaaaang….when you put it like *that*
no way. when they go public they need to prove that they can make money by the social token hype
It’s a centralized platform and a private for-profit organization to begin with, why is everyone expecting equality and fairness?
That sub is essentially the worst part of wallstreetbets amplified over a thousand times. Dangerous hodl mentality, financial illiteracy, not actually caring about the tech are just a few of my many gripes.

They will boost adoption, but at what cost? Only time will tell.
When was that? I sold mine on moonsswap for BUSD recently.
Banned????!?
A challenge yes, but not impossible. An oracle network could be setup to track the “truth” around what’s happening in a community.
Maybe…or the price per moon may go up, thus making it profitable enough to continue the shenanigans
Nano already has a fork ... Lol
But what if holders shouldn't be the end goal?
Just look at how much interaction a post under 5 mins since posting gets. After that dead.
People bring this up all the time but get silenced.
If they believe in it they can buy it! And it should make them money by driving up engagement, ad revenue, etc
I think a lot of people (not necessarily HodenHodler) look at Crypto as a way to smooth-out the fairness and apply things equally. When a new coin comes along and gives the most amount to the people that dictate the rules, it's pretty annoying. 


You're not wrong however, but just trying to provide some insight. There's a lot of naivety in the world of crypto
Because it's literally the first page people search when they're looking for a crypto subreddit, that's why it's got so many followers. It shouldnt be called CryptoCurrency in the first place if it's centralized and profit oriented. It's abusing it's name and should be banned tbh

Edit: plus they only shill their shit moons and only accept positive posts about BTC, ETH and (the worst part) FUD about other projects. They literally make a living off Fuding 99.99% of other crypto currencies. So why the fuck is it called like that. 

There are other Crypto subreds that are perfectly fine.
How did you send the moons with 0 fee?
Sure, you can track karma, but you can’t display the Moons next to users, tip them via the App, distribute them via the App or use membership or Reddit coins as burn mechanic and a safety net for the price etc.

Anyways, I didn’t realize which subreddit I was in. If Reddit allows all communities have their own tokens, there’s probably a plenty of freedom involved, although Reddit will want their portion.
I don't really think price can keep up with distribution, but we'll see. Apparently moon/karma is going to be around 0.17 this time around. It's gonna take a lot of shitposting to keep up.
Yeah duh getting completely loaded is the end goal.  Holders or not!
That would be the good sustainable way to do it. I think they will instead opt for the fast way and take large shares of the new social coins
Agree, but in this case the moderators still control everything. Moons have little technical merit and are barely a promise of a vote that moderators respect only to retain the value of Moons. They’re just a neat bonus for posting, and that’s it.

If we truly wanted to expand on the idea and have a fair and equal internet forum, it’d have to start from scratch with that as a goal.

Slightly off-topic, but besides naivety there’s also a lot of entitlement in the world of crypto. Give people scraps for posting and in a few months they already feel entitled to get paid for their worthless *contributions* that mostly consist of overused one-liners.
We’re on Reddit. Token’s just a promise of a vote in a poll the moderators respect to retain the value. It has very little technical merit and does jack shit as far as blockchain technology or decentralization goes. Moderators control everything, and that’s how the website is designed to work. Nobody at the top of Reddit wants to change that, they want to remain centralized and profit-oriented.

Bottom line, Reddit sucks. Thinking that it’s going to change because of a silly token experiment is borderline delusional. If we’ll ever have a decentralized and fair forum, it’ll have nothing to do with Reddit. Reddit’s the problem, not r/CryptoCurrency.
They took a small percentage, I don’t remember how much it was. .25% rings a bell.
Your last sentence!  This is the rub. 

Maybe it’s a shadow site that can be optionally overlaid with a browser extension. Given the problem, the solution could easily be abstracted and adopted by other communities — maybe there could even be a native community… 

Maybe I’m just being an idealist, but isn’t that what this technology is promising us?
Yeah but I'd love to see the proposal and see if reddit vetoed it by voting against with their massive wallet, which would prove the problem
I agree on all points. However I don't think we should start from scratch or expand on the idea, though I don't think you were implying we should, just that if we *did*, we *should* start from scratch.
I think we should not give any monetary value to this subreddit at all. Smart opinions and well thought-out responses should the most upvoted, not people that tell dumb stories or reply ""this is the way"" to every comment.


And yes you're right that there's plenty of entitlement to crypto. If you float the idea that you might earn some pittance for commenting once on a thread, eventually everyone is going to assume they deserve the same for commenting the same on another thread. Though I don't believe that's exclusive to crypto, just human nature.
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I really have to disagree with you. The mods and admins of that sub are definitly the problem. There are other cryptocurrency subreds that don't have this problem, and I'm glad I joined them. I find what I'm looking for over there. CryptoTechnology would be one of them. Reddit isn't the problem, even tho I do agree a decentralized Reddit, wich many cryptos are building atm, would be better.
Who did? The wallet you sent from?
You’re overthinking. Proper solution would be forgetting Reddit altogether and starting a social media site with fairness and decentralization in mind.
Yeah that would be horrible. We will likely never find out unfortunately
Unfortunately the technical work is just a start. People have to start using it too. Thankfully, while the average Redditor barely understands or cares about decentralization, rewards are an easy way to attract users (e.g. Brave).
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It’s a good system if people use it properly. Difficult to say anything by a graph, but if people misuse voting, it’ll easily turn upside down. 

For example, if I go to r/CryptoCurrency and voice a valid concern about Moons, I’ll be downvoted to hell while a *bullish* comment that didn’t read the thread will be upvoted.

People shouldn’t avoid voicing their opinion, but they should avoid posting unsuitable content."
Can’t wait for universities to start introducing cryptocurrency and blockchain technology classes as a standard,123,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/qavqxk/cant_wait_for_universities_to_start_introducing/,"I’m still waiting for basic personal finance class to become a normal thing…
Skin in the game is the best way to learn crypto.
they haven't even started to teach basic household accounting, or the bureaucracy of starting a company...
Unlikely to happen unless in very specific courses like Computer Science.  


It was briefly mentioned in a class in ""History of Economics"" I had in 2019. Professor said ""Bitcoin seems to be an attempt of capitalism to divorce currency from governments, as since the dawn of time currency have been tied to the figure of the State.""
What university has financial institution classes as standard. I majored in economics and we never had a class dedicated to financial institutions let alone standard for the student body
> While there are some high end universities introducing cryptocurrency classes

Which ones?
My bachelors course in software engineering already introduced this :)
Actually, there are lot of online universities provide it for free.

If you are interested, head to Coursera, there are few courses in the specialization. From University of Buffalo.
RMIT University (Australia) teaches blockchain as part of its software engineering course and they've recently expanded their coverage
I thought Berkeley's DeFi MOOC is pretty good as well. But yes I think it's a good sign when technical institutions start introducing cryptocurrency/blockchain as part of their coursework.
CFA has sort of started to introduce it. Although it’s only one chapter out of 200
They should also teach how to stake and where is the best to stake for higher yields.
Universities are outdated and soon enough will become obsolete.

You can learn anything on the internet and get a POAP to proof it.
All you learn in schools are theories, which are useless without application.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6vE97qIP4&t=165s&ab\_channel=MITOpenCourseWare](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH6vE97qIP4&t=165s&ab_channel=MITOpenCourseWare) here's a good playlist taught by our current SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
It will be a good innovation cause everything is going DeFi and the earlier the Government of the world embraces crypto the better. I came across a prediction platform which is DeFi, more like having a Casino in space where you can earn by speculating or participating in social events like Esport. WALLFAIR will be able to strike out bias and enable users to earn with ease.
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Imo universities are fundamentally incapable of keeping pace with the crypto industry. Sure, they should start teaching some cryptro/web3 stuff and many already have started offering courses on blockchain fundamentals (at least the big tech schools like MIT have - see the youtube vids of Gary Gensler teaching a blockchain course last fall - boy those aged well), but I dont think universities have nearly as much to offer to web3 as they have in other fields of study historically or that they can keep up with the pace of crypto and offer relevant coursework for students. I could be wrong, but I dont think I am.
My 'Future Networks' course in university had a week covering decentralisation and blockchain from a communication/media perspective. This course was focused on potential trajectories of network technology and where it will take us.

""We conclude the lecture series by examining the appearance of the blockchain family of protocols and their enormous significance for the future of the network paradigm. Starting with Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal 2008 white paper introducing the Bitcoin peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, we trace the rapid emergence of a radical decentralization movement involving decentralized finance \[DeFi\], decentralized exchanges \[DeX\], decentralized apps \[DApps\], non-fungible tokens \[NFTs\], and the promise of a new fully decentralized internet.""
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Crypto classes as a standard would be revolutionary.  But I'm kind of proud to admit that it was, in fact, a college lecturer that intrigued me with his crypto conversations that inevitably got me into BTC and DVDX. One because it was the most common one and two because of the staking on Unifarm. I'm also considering a bag of ETH.  Unfortunately, I am no longer in touch with the lecturer to ask for advise, LOL.
True but a formal education ainy bad too. Imagine crypto trading, lending and borrowing, leverage trading and concepts be thought in classes, in no time we will have certified crypto traders like brokers and accountants.
Yea. Learn by doing. Profs generally don't know much about new tech bc its not in the textbooks. Not dissing on profs at all, just not their bag, man.
Except, as the post mentions, the highest end universities. I'm currently watching an MIT Open Courseware Blockchain course on YouTube. Gary Gensler is the professor. He's currently head of the SEC so it's important what he thinks. Honestly the elite universities have the connects to make things like this possible. Unfair as it is, at least it's on YouTube. I appreciate MIT Open Courseware a lot for this reason.
They sont want the public to be financially literate. How else would people get their interest and late pay payments
You can learn everything yourself. Watch the video on the topic. Read the articles. Watch the rise and fall of Bitfinex. Proceed with caution. You'll gradually get up to speed
I might have missed something but how is it that bureaucratic to start a company? Maybe different rules apply where I live but literally all I had to do was to register at different departments, fill out some forms, open a bank account and deposit money. Like it wasn't anything that I couldn't find out easily online
For now I think if people actually study about projects the idea, tech and solutions that drives this Projects a lot can be learned and even taught, especially Blockchain that are keen on interoperability and connecting different platforms to do several things at onces.
Would more or less agree with that quote from 2019. And given the truth in that statement why would universities, public or private, participate in thought leadership or education of any kind if the end result is finding a creative way to eliminate the ties between currency and the state?
The financial institutions class in most economics programs is called money and banking. It’s a common course.
UBC has a 'Blockchain@UBC' microcertificate program that does end up leading students to internships in the industry. 

MIT Sloan had an entire course on Blockchain taught by current SEC head Gary Gensler. It's available on YouTube for free at MIT Open Courseware's channel.
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I watched a few of those lectures and I think Gensler has a very balanced view of the pros/cons of blockchain technology. Highly recommend it to everyone because it’s extremely hard to find something that isnt biased when it comes to crypto
I love MITs open courseware. I’ve used them quite a lot for self learning. Thanks for the recommendation.
Have you taken this course? Is it well received? And do they have projects to previous semesters?
Yeah, but importantly the use of trading tools which luckily now is available in some trading platform."
"Everytime I try to investigate the technology behind Cardano(Ada), I come across the words ""scientific"" and ""peer-reviewed"" over and over but almost no actual details. Can someone fill how this coin actually works and where they are in development?",125,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7pzckr/everytime_i_try_to_investigate_the_technology/,"ETH is soaring right now and this is like ETH V2 but this time it will be fine tuned before release. No rollbacks or bugs is the goal. The issue is that if ETH keeps soaring it will be hard for ADA to catch up. 

It's like you can't compete with Google if everyone is locked into the ecosystem and there is no compelling reason to jump ship. 
From what I know there is no product to speak of. It's all in heavy  development. Supposedly it is Ethereum, but better somehow. I have not dug deep into it so unfortunately cannot advice on it much. I do tend to be skeptical when terms like 'scientific' and 'peer reviewed' are thrown about with ease by random reddit commenters regarding their pet project.

Even with all that it may very well warrant the existence of a ERC20 coin/token or something, but to be valued as a top 5 coin... well... Let say I'm not convinced it is actually worth that.


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It’s listed on the international association for cryptological research website under “accepted papers”:

https://www.iacr.org/conferences/crypto2017/acceptedpapers.html

It’s number 71
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From my perspective nobody really knows why it's that popular (same with some others like XEM or Ripple)
I’ll tell you this, from what research I did, and the team behind it, I thought they could POTENTIALLY have something great so I threw $100 at it when it was .02. If you were to tell me it would shoot up 60x 2 months after that, I’d have told you that you were an idiot. 

It was an extremely long term hodl for me when I bought in, but if I told you that I didn’t cash out 75% at the ath, I would be lying. 
I did a deep dive and honestly couldn't figure it out and I spend way too much time reading on this kind of stuff.

The founder is from the original Ethereum project, but no longer associated with it. From what I understand this project uses the Ethereum classic framework ETC (not ETH).

It seems like a think-tank for crypto but I have yet to see an actual product. I do know that Zencash recently partnered with one of their subsidiaries to scale the technology up, but that is more of a research effort to locate the appropriate technology, not actually using their platform.

Someone with more knowledge feel free to correct me.
My take on ADA right now is that its a platform project that is going through the most critical forms of peer review(stress tests) they can find. That being said, I think its a bit overvalued right now because there is no product or real world use case at this point in time, the current valuation appears to be coming from potential the project has based on how much work is going into making sure they have it right before they launch. Basically they want to have a platform that can actually handle full mainstream adoption before its launch based on what they've learned through failures and successes other projects have endured. Out of all of the projects I've researched, I'm most impressed with cardano's attempt at making a scalable platform with a well planned governance model, so far. Highly suggest checking out any of the IOHK youtube account's videos with Charles Hoskinson, he does a great job explaining and is probably the reason for the current valuation, but once you watch a few it may help you understand.
Here’s Dan Larimer’s peer review:
https://steemit.com/cardamon/@dan/peer-review-of-cardano-s-ouroboros
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/u/ethereumcharles
Have you ever met those people who always say that their opinions are based on science? ....But you know damn well that they get all their information from Facebook and major news networks. 

That’s what this is. 
I'm interested in this as well. It has the same development team behind it as Ethereum, which you would hope would count for something, but it always seems kind of funny when people buy these ERC20 tokens which at some point at a later stage they hope will be converted to a native token.
It's arguably the most transparent team with the most detailed information on their technology pretty much everywhere on their three different websites ( IOHK, Emurgo, Cardano), with an insane Github activity for the technical details...IOHK are also very active on Youtube for the lazy readers. And yet some keep complaining.
 
I am shocked at the poor level of investigation shown by some redditors
Have you read the whitepaper?
Are you sure you are not being a bit disingenuous? It seems hard to miss their fleet of white papers and presentations at renowned universities.
A few things on this.
* Cardano smart contracts won't need to run on the entire network and will therefore be much more scalable.
* Cardano is engineering their smart contract platform to allow for development in any language.
* ETH smart contracts will run on the Cardano platform.

edit: apparently formatting doesn't work here?
Cardano, an ETH V2? ETH doesn't have nor plan to have any high-assurance code like Cardano, as far as I know of. High-assurance code is used in life-or-death situations, by aerospace manufacturers like the NASA or Being / Airbus. Ideal if you don't want the whole financial system to fail due to bugs if you ask me... I would strongly suggest that you listen to Duncan Coutts detailing it.

Also, Cardano will soon have quantum resistant signatures, and a treasury model amongst others brilliant features, in a code written in Haskell, which means, as you very well said, that there will be far less bugs as this functional language eliminates a whole class of errors.
Yep this. Considering devs have tons of upgrades planned for ETH network, I just can't take ""this will replace Ethereum"" hype seriously. 

Maybe if they have a working product that's proven to be better then ETH significantly and accumulated legit partners, then yeah. I'll consider it. But from what I'm seeing, the ship has already sailed for them considering many other big companies are already offering working blockchain products TODAY (MS Azure, IBM+Hyperledger) 


It certainly has the highest ratio of marketcap to nonexistence...

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have potential though. Any protocol that can actually scale with high assurance has the opportunity to be absolutely massive. 
I actually did read through those -- but both the white paper and the 'why cardano' section are all about their new version of proof of stake. I didn't find concrete details about the coin itself however. Perhaps I missed something but if you've seen somewhere a description of how they intend to deal with scaling problems for instance, I would love to hear it.
Plenty of details here, and all easily accessible. I struggle to see how people say 'they can't find much detail' about cardano. From my limited experience in crypto, it is one of the most well documented, open & transparent projects I have come across.
Thanks but I've actually gone through that paper and as far as I could tell it was *all* about their new version of Proof of Stake. Aside from the fact that it will use this type of PoS, I didn't see anywhere details of how the coin itself is meant to operate. If you know, I would really appreciate a summary of some kind, or if you could quote from where you saw it in the paper.
This is a shorter, also helpful video: https://youtu.be/Do8rHvr65ZA
NEM has a consensus algorithm called Proof of Importance, I thought it was interesting to read about but I don't see how they're bringing much novelty either.
Ripple? Really? It's pretty popular because they have actual partnership with renowned banks and companies. 
What? XEM and Ripple both have multiple business partnerships and a working platform. They are nothing like Cardano.
Here is your first real-world use-case for the Cardano blockchain. You should have done more research

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/cardano-blockchains-first-use-case-proof-university-diplomas-greece/
Here is the IOHK response on this article ( you should know that Dan Larimer hates Charles Hoskinson for context). 

As you can see, IOHK/ Cardano is in a league of its own.

https://iohk.io/blog/on-the-ouroboros-design-how-rigour-and-engineering-are-essential-for-critical-infrastructure/?utm_content=buffer14679&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
But that review, just like all the material I've found so far, only covers their Proof of Stake algorithm. I'm wondering about all the other details of the coin. PoS is only one component.

Do you know how it works?
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I did mention it actually. If you read my question again, I referred to their new take on proof of stake, which is what ouroboros is.

My problem is that aside from the details on PoS (Ouroboros) I see no other details on how the coin will actually work. Is it bitcoin with PoW switched out for Proof of Stake? Or is the design completely different?

If you know then I would really appreciate a quick summary.
>presentations at renowned universities.

why do you feel the need to talk like this? are you even aware of how much of a retarded shill you sound like?
Yes indeed. I'm not writing it off technically. I'm saying that the current price is unlikely a valuation worth its state of development (as much as correct pricing can be determined for any crypto project).

But theoretical scaling is proposed for all coins. The solutions vary, but since we only have two networks that are highly stressed in a real world setting (BTC and Eth), no coin can actually claim it has 'solved' the scaling issue.
Wait where did you see something about scaling? That's what I'd really like to read about. Everything that I've come across so far only deals with their Proof of Stake algorithm.
Because their version of proof of stake will allow to fix scaling problems, the more people will use Cardano the more it can scale. But it is still in early development. 

Anyway i think that I'm not the best person to explain things like this, in /r/CardanoCoin there are a lot of people who can answer properly to all your questions. Consider creating a post there. 
Would you say that you have a good understanding of it? Would you mind providing a quick summary?

I have been through both the whitepaper and the why cardano sections and found implementation details about the coin itself to be scarce. Instead I found a huge amount of documentation about their new version of Proof of Stake. But of course PoS is just one aspect of a cryptocurrency.
Because you weren't able to provide a summary to the OP. It seems pretty much no one is.
Yeah I know it’s only one of their papers, they have like 5 papers. Unfortunately I don’t know if they’ve submitted all their papers to conventions like this I’ve only found this one link. 
And you know people that use XEM or Ripple? 
Could've pretty much used any blockchain for that. Would like to see some special use cases that are not possible with ETH 
Did you bother to actually dive into their website? They explain in detail how their architecture in layers work, with a settlement layer (SL) for the unit of account and a control layer (CL) for the smart contracts platform. 
If you want even more details, they are insanely active on Github with a very high number of quality repositories.
Seriously what is it
SCALABILITY
Distributed systems are composed of a set of computers (nodes) agreeing to run a protocol or suite of protocols to accomplish a common goal. This goal could be sharing a file as defined by the BitTorrent protocol or folding a protein using Folding@Home.

The most effective protocols gain resources as nodes join the network. A file hosted by BitTorrent, for example, can be downloaded much faster on average if many peers are concurrently downloading it. The speed increases because the peers provide resources while also consuming them. This characteristic is what one typically means when stating a distributed system scales.

The challenge with the design of all current cryptocurrencies is that they actually are not designed to be scalable. Blockchains, for example, are usually an append-only linked list of blocks. The security and availability of a blockchain protocol relies upon many nodes possessing a full copy of the blockchain data. Thus, a single byte of data must be replicated among N nodes. Additional nodes do not provide additional resources.

This result is the same for transaction processing and the gossiping of messages throughout the system. Adding more nodes to the consensus system does not provide additional transaction processing power. It just means more resources have to be spent to do the same job. More network relaying meaning more nodes have to pass the same messages to keep the whole network in synchronization with the most current block.

Given this topology, cryptocurrencies cannot scale to a global network on par with legacy financial systems. In contrast, legacy infrastructure is scalable and has orders of magnitude for more processing and storage power. Adding a specific point, Bitcoin is a very small network relative to its payment peers, yet struggles to manage its current load.

Our scalability goals for Cardano are greatly aided by our consensus algorithm. Ouroboros permits a decentralized way to elect a quorum of consensus nodes, which in turn can run more traditional protocols developed over the last 20 years to accommodate the needs of large infrastructure providers such as Google and Facebook10.

For example, the election of a quorum for an epoch means we have a trusted set of nodes to maintain the ledger for a specific time period. It is trivial to elect multiple quorums concurrently and partition transactions to different quorums.

Similar techniques could be applied for network propagation and also sharding the blockchain itself into unique partitions. In our current roadmap, scaling methods will be applied to Ouroboros starting in 2018 and continue to be a focus in 2019 and 2020.

source: https://whycardano.com/
Not really, just something I remember the founder talking about. And the fact that it’s the single biggest technical challenge for any of these protocols.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/CardanoCoin using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/CardanoCoin/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time!

\#1: [Quick Update from Charles Cardano](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYCfikWgEzg&feature=youtu.be) | [36 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/CardanoCoin/comments/7pej8c/quick_update_from_charles_cardano/)  
\#2: [First Enterprise Application!](https://i.redd.it/kyjwt73fcq701.jpg) | [9 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/CardanoCoin/comments/7npy23/first_enterprise_application/)  
\#3: [Charles last presentation. ENJOY!](https://soundcloud.com/hhcib/charles-hoskinson-talks-third-gen-blockchain) | [20 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/CardanoCoin/comments/7p822f/charles_last_presentation_enjoy/)

----
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This was an excellent suggestion, thanks. I don't know why I didn't think to go through the Cardano subreddit but I didn't.

If anyone is curious, [here is the best technical discussion I found on there](https://np.reddit.com/r/CardanoCoin/comments/7ograi/help_convince_me_to_buy_ada_bounty_offered_for/).
I do. I've sent XRP to family members and they arrived in 3 seconds, and I regularly do. My bank is about to use XRP as well and they've been testing it for months.
I could say that for all my coins. They only time there are network issues Id when people trade on extremely high volume days trying to chase bull runs or run away from crashes. 
When ripple has a huge change these subs are littered with ‘where are my coins!’ And ‘can’t see trx nothing in wallet!’
 
or ""Why is it crashing?"" :)
It's a mystery :o /s"
Has Cardano done anything or is this hype on an idea.,118,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/n9a2ew/has_cardano_done_anything_or_is_this_hype_on_an/,"I feel like this thread puts cardano in a worse light than it deserves. Outside of ethereum, what blockchain has actually ""done"" anything except making a platform where value can be created. Even ethereum is mostly used for hosting other tokens and defi, which again is just more blockchain magic that achieves very little in the real world. The entire blockchain space is built on speculation that the potential will at some point be unlocked and then it will be used for more interesting things, but we're not there right now.

I agree that if you look specifically at the tech and how far they've come compared to other cryptos then Cardano stands out as a bit overhyped and overvalued. But IMO the value of Cardano can be justified with a circular argument, it is valuable because it has managed to keep people invested and interested in their project for the last 4 years without having ""produced"" anything. When ethereum fees are too high then people are talking about moving their project to cardano, and the reason is that they've been able to create this idea of a blockchain that is built on science and is scalable and future-proof. Tezos have all the same properties of cardano and is further along in development, but they have not made the same impact in the market or in discussions on reddit.

Of course tezos-fans then think their tech is undervalued, but I think a big part of the value of a blockchain is the ability to create hype around their project. How cool is their logo, how inspirational are their leaders, how big are their dreams? Charles Hoskinson is talking about leapfrogging the entire continent of Africa, making deals with governments, onboarding millions of people and making a real change in the world, that is what people are excited about, not the TPS being slightly higher than some other chain.
It’s honestly still all speculation; they still don’t even have smart contracts. The white papers and dev community look great, but I don’t own any ADA because it’s basically still just a ghost chain with no smart contracts and def no IRL adoption yet. “Partnerships” don’t mean anything until it’s literally being used for stuff, and no “partnering” with nations in Africa to make plans for things doesn’t count either as it’s not actually be used for anything yet just random plans of which most will likely never come to fruition. And with no smart contracts there’s nothing you can really do on ADA rn that’s worth messing with. Which again, I’m sure will change as the team seems professional and will likely ship an amazing network when they FINALLY finish. They have just been taking forever. Smart contracts have been “just around the corner” literally for years now with ADA, always getting pushed back.

EDIT: Projects that are being literally used right now to change the world are Ethereum and Chainlink. Others as well, but those two are being used by factors of ten more than everything else combined. They are doing crazy things as we speak in the real world being really used by real people for real things. Many more projects will come, I am hopeful ADA will as well, along with DOT, AVAX, XTZ, COSMOS etc. getting more robust and all the other ETH killers (the more projects in the space that succeed the better it is for everyone imo), and other oracle solutions besides LINK (only BAND has a working decentralized product right now but I am hopeful others like Tellor etc. will be ready to launch their mainnets before too long as well), but seeing what ETH and LINK are doing now is extremely exciting for the entire space and what is to come

The question you are posing is exactly the right sort of question to be asking. That’s how you not only survive but go up another 10x during a bear market not even speaking of how things go in bull markets
Speculation is a better way to describe it.
Ahahaha this post is priceless, you're asking the right questions my friend
They have a great staking system with no lock up periods, no slashing (risk of losing money) and no minimum stake. This brings high participation in the network, with more than 70% of users chosing pools and staking.

The other strong point is that their native assets allow metadata. If you use the Cardano Wall app, for example, you can make a transaction which will display text on the Internet forever. The ability to truslessly hold data in perpetuity is really what blockchain tech is all about. The Ethiopian government are going to use this feature to hold students' qualifications.
I swear there must be a competition to see who can ignore Tezos the longest. I am skeptical of all PoS coins in general but follow the progress of the Defi and NFT space. Basically Tezos is doing everything ADA wants to do right now in those spaces. And it has a functional PoS chain going, which is more than ETH can say. It is still likely going to zero but at least it delivers on its promises.
I thought this was a more mature version of r/cryptocurrency but it's just as full of shillers and speculators
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They signed probably the biggest blockchain deal ever with Ethiopia and Tanzania.  Not just hype fortunately 

https://africa.cardano.org/
Hype. Not even smart contracts. Vapor.
Cardano didn't even have a network until recently and its been around since 2017/2018 bullrun. Honestly its fueled by people who think they missed the train. I read into it a bit and then tried to figure out if I could actually use it somehow. Nada. Just another hype coin with a white paper that reads like a series of thriller novels.
Here’s a 2:30 minute live event from a week ago detailing some of the projects currently running in ADA in Africa. 

https://youtu.be/yRjj662kJsk
What Crypto is lacking is not leaky smart contacts that need patching now and then. It was lacking credibility if that means anything in the world of cryptocurrency. What Cardano has achieved is mainstream credibility with adoption by a sovereign government. It's an assert very few day traders and DOGE pumpers will understand. 

The robustness in Haskell and Plutus for handling the trust will speak for itself. Till that time world will keep using leaky buckets and keep pumping DOGE. It hardly affects anyone other than those who pump into leaky tubes.
This is why i bought ADA 

https://youtu.be/yRjj662kJsk
Didnt a african coun try build and entire id system on ada network?
I'd check out ATOM/COSMOS
Nope. Solana has done everything ADA promised and more in less than 3 years. Ecosystem is growing faster as well. GL to the ADA holders. Had its chance to have some of the sunlight, but was too slow to get fully implemented and now better alternatives have arrived!
Speculation. Ive been waiting on smart contracts since 2017. Just good marketing. I still hold my ada tokens, but I’ve moved onto EOS for a lot of my needs
The run on dead ETC demonstrates this quite well
Sounds similar to the more recent Casper Coin which goes live tomorrow morning, PoS, big hype but not making any money yet or being used for any enterprise. Anyone else have any DD on CSPR?
Just existing is doing something.  
Existing and being used, is doing something more.
Existing, being used, without major vulnerabilities is even more notable.
It certainly is still very speculative, but it's like investing in a company when they're very early on, but their product looks promising. Yes, it could still certainly go either way and I think a lot of people are more assured by the fact that ADA has such a high market cap than they probably should be. It's obviously up to the individual investor to evaluate the potential, the risk level and cost/benefit analysis of investing now. I basically just hold a lot of different coins/tokens in the smart contract space as hedges against each other, ADA being one of them, to see what sinks and what floats.
tbh it's just a waiting game now
I don’t think you give eth enough credit. Using defi you can actually get dollars deposited on your bank account (in the “real world”) by collateralising your crypto. (A loan)

So yeah it’s not really just blockchain magic that achieves nothing in the real world. It’s actually helping people become financially more stable.
I downvoted because your arguments are weak.

It is valuable because its kept people interested?

Thats what hype _does_ and OP is specifically asking if it is overhyped. Charles constantly making stuff up like the africa thing thing etc is _exactly_ the point. You repeat the empty hype proving cardano IS infact overhyped right now.

You say when eth fees are too high people talk about moving their project to cardano: cardano doesnt have smart contracts, this is made up. 

Hows the EVM and Plutus compatibility? There is no compatibility. People wont be able to move their projects in the future either.
Sounds EOS
That's downplaying Cardano a little bit, don't you think?

You are aware that Cardano signed what is arguably the biggest deal of the industry, by registering the [identity and tracking the performance of 5M students on chain, so that the 750k teachers in Ethiopia can assess them](https://www.coindesk.com/from-paper-to-cardano-blockchain-iohk-in-ethiopia), right?

Unless maybe Africans are not real people for you?

Do you know when Alonzo, the Smart Contracts launch will be shipped on Cardano? End of July. That's tomorrow.

There are already hundreds of dApps being created on top of Cardano, Liqwid Finance being an example and probably the most awaited of them all.

Your post is biased and screams that you are invested in ETH, and not exactly well placed to judge what's going on behind the curtains of the Cardano system, am I right?

Not one word about the tech, the code quality, the high-assurance code used only in life-or-death situation, the functional programming in Haskell for its protocol and how it differs from the rest of the projects, the formal verification process, Plutus, Marlowe, Glow, Blockly that enables you to create Smart Contracts like a puzzle for non-developers, if IOHK delivered the roadmap up until now, the Oracles, the vision, the ERC20 converter, nothing.

And I probably forgot a lot. Like writing Smart contracts in ANY of the mainstream programming languages. Yes, you read that right.

In other words, you can't see it, because you didn't look, and you didn't look because you are invested in another project. Am i right?

All this takes time, undeniably. Yes, on the surface it seems like little is being done, but it will probably be worth it, considering that everything on the roadmap has been delivered up until now. The highest number of commits for years out of all projects doesn't lie.

Cardano could have launched Smart contracts at launch in 2017, then fixing shit on the go like everybody else is doing. But instead, it chose to build on granite something that will still be here in 50 years.

Solidity is such a landmine that it is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every month or so. It screams poor language design. It's meant to create funny things such as Cryptokitties, not run a global financial system on it.

Why do you think Haskell is used by all the big banks and companies for their internal system?

I have some honest other questions for you, and am genuinely looking for answers, out of curiosity.

Where is ETH 2.0?

When will it be shipped?

Where are ETH 2.0 smart contracts?

Why is ETH unusable unless you are filthy rich?

Why only 1.4% of all ETH addresses have interacted with DeFi?

Ethereum is literally Cardano's testnet.
So it hasn't really done much?
How is there security if there's no risk of losing money with staking?
Agree. Not only is there not much posting on adoption, but the strong preference for ADA over XTZ shows adoption isn't really a priority here. Not always, though...VET is appreciated. But not sure why XTZ is ignored.
The lack of adoption with tezos had always made me wary of ADA since like you say they are similar but already live in prod , issue is no adoption, at least in the sense you would see some dapps move to eth
You're spot on. For once I would like to see someone thank or give credit to Cardano and IOHK for being slow. Any blockchain company that puts emphasis on research and tech development in the space should be lauded. Innovation is what crypto needs.
My question was genuinely about the tech and what they've produced and whether the market was factoring in the hype over the idea or not. I wasn't shilling. I don't hold ADA
I was skeptical of the usage utility at first, but after reading it, it's actually a decent use of a public ledger.
*""It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you*
*There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do*
*I bless the rains down in Africa*
*Gonna take some time to do the things we never had (ooh, ooh) ""*
IOHK signed that deal, this is NoT Cardano related
HBAR.... wont spoon feed you. But everyone will be using it in 10 years and they won't even know it.
Lets just assume you are right for the sake of it and ADA is all hype.  That is honestly not a problem for the ADA hodlers, just look at what is happening in the market right now.  On Gate io the top like 4 or 5 coins are all meme shit coins.  Some of which enforce a ""Hodler reward system"" which penalizes all transactions 10%.  That 10% penalty is a sure fire way to set your token up not to be adopted for anything other than hype and marketing BS.  So if I fail to see how this is a loose for hodlers as the coin could easily just go into hyper hype mode and the price would most assuredly pump right along with it.  


That said I think Cardano is will do just fine, yes it is taking a long time and yes they have other blockchains available.  But that means nothing.  when they started building grocery store for example.  maybe a few had a monopoly for a short while but then others stepped up and built stores. we now have stores all over the world that are owned by different companies.  Some specialize in one thing some are regional some are national.  Now think of that in blockchain, we are just at the start of really seeing it boom and get worldwide adoption.  So we will continue to see new blockchains some will stay, some will go some will be popular only in certain regions.  But my point is that the market is big enough to accommodate a vast array of blockchains and side chain and everything in-between.  The more we have the better, the good ones will push out the bad ones and then the competition will keep the innovations rolling out to us the consumers/user.  So I really just fail to see how other blockchains is anything but beneficial to not only Cardano but the entire space.  But then again that's just my opinion and I am just a guy with a keyboard and to much time on my hands!!
That's what I was thinking. What's your thoughts on polkadot as it's usually ada vs dot
You literally cannot be more delusional and you are spreading false information
No they are in discussion about using ADA to track something in the education system.
My problem with Solana is its centralization, other than that sound project.
Wait - how do you know when they start taking on water?  I’m not used to hearing honest assessments of failure risk in some subs. . .  They are all filled with fanboys and hype. . .
There's a difference between hype and empty hype. Being able to create hype is just good marketing. I'd say crypto as a whole is overhyped and there's nothing technical that makes Cardano better than say Polkadot or Elrond. But is there anything technical making bitcoin better than dogecoin? Not really. The difference is mostly in perception and branding.

So yeah Cardano is hyped but I don't think it's in risk of being suddenly ""exposed"" and surpassed by the less hyped coins.
> Unless maybe Africans are not real people for you?
> 
> 

Mate, you sound like a dickhead.
Ignoring your random accusation of racism and ad hominem assumptions about what I’m invested in (as if one needs to shill ETH like it’s some microcap coin) that’s a lot of words to basically say
>still no smart contracts

Lol. Carefully re-read what OP is asking about then reread what i wrote. I think cardano is very legit and exciting as I said in my post. I specifically said plans and “partnerships” etc don’t count. I’m talking about what it’s literally doing right now and it’s not tracking shit in Ethiopia right now. Re-read my post more carefully. And do you know how many times they delayed or pushed back the launch date of smart contracts? My post was balanced and fair and I specifically said I’m excited for ETH killers including ADA, so I’m definitely not an ETH fanboy, your post however does come across as a bit defensive and ADA fanboyish. I’m not going to paraphrase the entire ETH white paper to counter cliched “but muh Haskell code is the best!” Nonsense. I know they’re making an amazing network which why why I specifically said the ADA network will be amazing when it’s finally working in a practical capacity. But right now it’s not doing shit, which is what OP was asking about. You and I are speculating ADA will be a great success when it goes live with smart contracts; it’s hype, it had no track records thus far because it’s not released smart contracts yet. You can keep claiming it will be the greatest thing ever, but that’s just hype with no empirical evidence.

Also you can already essentially write a smart contract in any language for any blockchain network; LINK allows this as do tons of other layer 2 projects.
It’s a shame you attacked the other POV instead of just describing your opposing opinion, I agree with you mostly on the technical side.
Check out the transaction per day. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202328/average-number-cardano-transactions/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1202328/average-number-cardano-transactions/)

That is not to say that things are not being built. But that's why I say speculation.

But then look at bitcoin. So good for them.
There is a lot of detail, not all of which I understand. [This](https://cardanians.io/en/why-cardano-does-not-need-slashing-152) gives a more detailed answer than I can, and if you get time to read it I would love to hear your thoughts on whether it's secure.

What I understand is this: the block forging nodes are selected randomly. Their output is then checked by other nodes. The same mechanism that prevents a Sybil attack means you would need to have huge amounts of Cardano (something close to more than half) to be likely to mount an attack.

It's the carrot and the stick, right? The Cardano team (and Algorand and others) believe that it's enough to make hacking attempts not profitable, rather than actively inflicting a loss on would-be attackers.
Maybe, don't ask your question on a reddit where every moron can answer your question. Look for information on the cardano website itself. It's way more in depth then any redditor can give you. 

At this moment cardano is working on their smart contracting. Which they plan to release in august. 

https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ here's a whole roadmap for the future of cardano
IOHK effectively IS ADA
>Using Cardano with Atala PRISM, this technology..

But, IOHK employs most of the major developers who contribute to and created Cardanao, and they're using it as one of the central technologies behind the project, so, I don't see how it couldn't be related?
>e assets allow metadata. 

That is a bit superficial. Yes, IOHK signed a deal. That is always how it works, companies sign deals not protocols.

But just to give the correct context here

IOHK signed a deal to build an identity solution that will be rolled out to 5m real citizens in 2021 and around 500k people each year after that. The deal also states that the solution will run on the open Cardano Mainnet. 

So how is this not relevant? I know there have been lots of attention seeking adoption headlines in other crypto projects but as things go, this is Cardano thing is as real as a deal can get.
>monopoly for a short while but then others stepped up and built stores. we now have stores all over the world that are owned by different companies. 

Hey where I come from all the stores are owned by one company masquerading as if they are different!  


I do get what you are saying though, any coin can pump in this market. It's not that a coin can't make you money, it's that most coins don't seem to offer any real world use case and they don't challenge traditional finance. I'm still waiting to use crypto everyday for ALL my transactions in the world. That's the adoption I want. What I see instead in the crypto space is greed, everyone wants a dollar but no one cares to actually use it as intended. A fine example is LTC or XMR, functional and affordable with a long history of stability. Adoption on a day to day basis needs to continue to grow for those coins. That's the point of crypto, to be used. We need more use cases day to day, future promises of newer currencies is great but people should focus on what's already been built and learn to use that now. The OG coins also offer a lot less stress when holding for the long haul!
The ADA vs DOT thing doesn't make sense to me.  ADA is competing with ETH more than DOT.  DOT will exist as a Level 0 blockchain and is more about interoperability.  One of the first things that DOT will incorporate as a parachain is a bridge to ETH.  The biggest projects attempting to become parachains will bridge ETH as well.
Honestly I haven't looked into Dot. They both scream the same thing to me. Hyped by people looking for the next big thing. It's possible that Dot has a use case but I haven't looked for it. I prefer coins that have a use case and are accepted as some form of payment or service. Until I see that happening with either of them I will stay away. Seen too many things come and go. Seriously few coins stick around to deliver.

You'll see a lot of people reinforcing others ideas but what really matters is what can be done with the project. You generally wouldn't invest heavily in a company until they have a functional product otherwise you risk the old vaporware. Saw that a lot with indiegogo and kickstarter. Same deal in this space with even fewer repercussions.  


Honestly your best bet is to stick with the OG coins and coins that hold true to the original vision of satoshi - secure p2p cash.
I don’t think anything will ever dethrone ETH, but I definitely own some DOT and thinks it’s one of the most viable ETH alternatives coming up
Check out Algorand, it’s a much better coin than Cardano.
I get it man, you bought some, its the next big thing just wait until \*insert another catchy/intellectual sounding term here\* drops.   


Nothing new under the sun. Coins come and go, few stay. Until you can show me an actual use case you are unfortunately balls deep in another maybe coin. All the best to you and your holdings!
Not in discussion, but committed to putting school pupils' grades and identity on the blockchain.
Why do you think its centralized? 600+ nodes operated across globe which is scalable to infinity right now. Stake distribution very good as well....mainnet only been live for 1 year and already at 600 validators. Sorta incredible.
I would certainly not rely on people from Reddit to give you an honest assessment of the value of a coin or token. It's pretty tough to get an objective analysis of risk from anybody in this space except through your own means. Most people have bags and they're willing to tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to buy in with them. You really need to rely on your own assessments and be comfortable with your own risk level.

With ADA specifically, from a fundamental perspective, it's really based on your confidence that the dev team are going to deliver on their promises at this point. There's tremendous potential upside if they do and there's tremendous potential downside if they don't. You can also use technical indicators on the long term price to give you an idea of other people's confidence, which also seems high. 

I personally don't have any concerns there which is why I've deemed ADA worth some of my money for the time being, but your assessment could be different from mine. I would also pay attention to what's going on with competing projects, like DOT and ETH for example, and see how other coins/tokens are going to stack up. I'm not married to any of these projects in particular and that's mostly how I'm managing my risk. I'm happy to drop any of them if things start going haywire or one or more of them looks like they're going to be market dominant.
Brief aside: [Elrond technicals](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlgorandOfficial/comments/llhd2r/egld_comparison_can_anyone_address_this/gnpvx92/?context=3) are definitely far from the rigor of Cardano
Yeah that punch is obviously below the belt
While I think a lot of points made are valid, I couldn’t agree more on that.
Comparing Bitcoin to Cardano isn’t even apples to oranges though. It’s like potatoes to apples. I keep seeing people compare Cardano to Bitcoin and I have to wonder if they are all just completely new to the space, and only know handful of crypto besides Bitcoin? Why not compare it to Eth? Or DOT, Neo, Luna, XMR, etc?

This isn’t an indictment on you or anything. It’s just a realization I’ve had. Cardano and it’s use compared to Bitcoin.
Uhhh did you even look at the link you posted? That link shows ADA as having one of the highest transactions per day of any crypto....

Edit: spelling
I read through that article, it's not overly technical, I'm curious what the actual mechanisms are to prevent malicious stakers. All of that was assuming a malicious stakers goals are to profit, but what about a stakers that just want to mess with the network? Who knows, it may be 99.9999% technically safe which may be 100% secure in practicality, but it also may not. 

Using game theory is great until an attacker does something unpredictable, they talk about irrational actors in that article, but I'm not sold on what their version of irrational is. If ""rational"" is a staker that wants profits, and an irrational actor is a ""dishonest"" one, but they don't really talk about an irrational actor that has money, and wants to bring the network down instead of profiting.

Also, 51% attacks are the line at which a network is pretty much guaranteed to be broken, but there are theoretical attacks on pretty much any other network that require less than 51%. You can't under estimate the capability or maliciousness of an attacker. Let's say cardano takes over as the defacto money for 3 or 4 countries in Africa. What is stopping China, who has a lot of interest in Africa, from manipulating the system to instill doubt in cardano, so they can swoop in and provide a more ""reliable"" system. Using ethereum for example, would cost China a huge amount of money, probably in the hundreds of millions, to attempt to manipulate the system, and it would likely just slow it down some. I don't know enough about cardano to say for sure what would happen, it might be the same, but from that article I am not super confident.
The fact that every instance of actual Cardano development comes from IOHK says it all really.
> Honestly your best bet is to stick with the OG coins and coins that hold true to the original vision of satoshi - secure p2p cash.

Totally agree with u. Not even eth is able to scale and u have to pay humongous transaction fees for smart contracts and transfers. Ada doesn't even have smart contracts. We haven't even realized the prime aim of crypto i.e p2p money. Have a look at Nano, it seems to be the ideal candidate.
To be clear it’s not an alternative, DOT aims to enable cross-chain and the deployment of smaller “parachains”
Shhh... it's still considered a shit coin. Let them believe what they will. Keep stacking the bags up. Fomo is a powerful thing.
Cant believe you were voted down, okay they can stay poor and behind the technological times lmao. ALGO is the future, and the future is now.
Delete this you numbnut, you still have time😩🤣
I thought it was about qualifications, not grades
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Yea but it has high validator requirements and it is over-reliant on the founders which is not a bad thing per-se, but would like to see more dev teams stepping in. But i guess that comes with adoption.
My company tried running a node on a thread ripper with 128gb ram and it couldn’t do it. Shits ridiculous
It seems as if everything is surging currently. . . .    It’s kinda addictive. . . .
Heh, I just picked a random blockchain but yeah maybe a bad choice
> apples to oranges

But you can still compare them.
better link: https://explorer.cardano.org/en.html

Cardano only has like 40k tx per day. Very low volume compared to other chains.
There is also another problem, inherent in all poss chain, that the incentive to secure the blockchain (staking returns) become less exciting when with defi product you can gain a lot more (yeah there's the more risk disincentive, but i don't think it's sufficent when for example with waves investement you have a 10% risk vs over 60% gain). This is a problem which isn't really talked about much
A more detailed (but more technical) account of the basic idea of the Ouroboros protocol: [https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/ouroborosa-provably-secure-proof-of-stake-blockchain-protocol/](https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/ouroborosa-provably-secure-proof-of-stake-blockchain-protocol/)  


In particular, the claims that it is secure do not require that the adversary be rational or that they want to gain money. The authors assume that the adversary starts with a control of strictly less than half of stakes on the whole blockchain and can proceed to gain more by corrupting stakeholders, provided it externally complies with the protocol at each given date. Under this and other assumptions, they show that the chain will expand in a correct way with high probability, where a key parameter is what is sometimes denoted k in Caradano lore. If from the start the adversary controls most of the stakes, then they can easily steal the rest and kill the blockchain. If the adversary is prepared to spend a lot of money, they could simply bribe many stakeholders and tell them to fuck everything up.  


The discussion regarding rational agents is related to the following different problem. Assuming stake holders are behaving in a rational way, i.e. want to make money, are there enough incentives in the protocol to make sure that following the guidelines is the best course of action? This is where game theory plays a role. But it is just a matter of theoretical equilibria in the protocol. Incentives go beyond how stakes are distributed within the system, and involve politics, how people percieve the community, who and what people trust.
If you are actually curious, the answers are here somewhere: [https://iohk.io/en/research/library/](https://iohk.io/en/research/library/) have fun digging!
Are you aware that the founder of IOHK funded and helped create Cardano? Charles Hoskinson helped Vitalik found Ethereum and then left to start Cardano because Ethereum was so flawed
Nano and Algo are great examples of what a currency should look like, Cardano is more of a utility ecosystem which is managed financially by their native coin Ada. Ada functions as a store of value based on the value of the echo system it represents and it’s utility, I.e the recent deals that have been signed, where as Nano and Algo are more suited for transfer of wealth. I’m not aware of a crypto that does both well, which leads me to believe that there is space in the ecosystem for both at this stage.
Cardano bots are everywhere. 

I’ve spread the truth about Cardano and the bots follow my account and downvote anything with ADA or Cardano in the post.
But with that said am  I ever glad my grades were never record on a blockchain.
It costs around 3-4k to start a validator. Almost anyone with enough determination could become a validator if they wanted. 

Isnt that what we want out of decentralization? We want the nodes to be able to be operated by enough individuals where there is no one institution, government, etc that would be able to take control of the monetary system. Solana checks those boxes imo because essentially every person on the planet if they worked hard enough could start a node. Doesnt have to be easy, just needs to be reasonable.

Also pretty sure cardano nodes cost just as much if not more! 

Reddit - cardano - How much is it costing you to run a node? https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/k8cyfp/how_much_is_it_costing_you_to_run_a_node/
Hmm mind reaching out to me in dm or hmu in the solana validator discord? I can help yall with that.
Ok but why Bitcoin? Is that the only other crypto these people are aware of? Is this an easier way to sell the idea to noobs?

I mean I can compare an Ant to a bird, or what it’s like to live on Mars, but those don’t actually have much relevance.
40k? How is that a lot? I'm not trying  to bash ADA but this is a worldwide usage and a company who's is valued by the investors at 54 billion. That is either 1.35 million per transaction or speculation that it will be adopted much more broadly. 

Ethereum does about 1.7 million per day that's $48,725 of market cap

per transaction  (transactions divided into market cap)

[https://www.etherchain.org/charts/transactionsPerDay](https://www.etherchain.org/charts/transactionsPerDay)

Hedera does about 6 million per day. 

[https://app.dragonglass.me/hedera/home](https://app.dragonglass.me/hedera/home)  That's $378 of market cap per transaction  

Don't get me wrong I think almost all of the crypto space valuations are speculation. If not all. This is a new market and obviously we all believe eventually transactions will be in the Trillions per day if not hundreds of trillions. 

It is a interesting metric though transaction = usage. Of course the grand daddy of them all is Bitcoin. $3.4 mill. of market cap per transaction.

Disclaimer these are all rough numbers and many websites have different counts of transactions. 

But it is an interesting metric.
Ya true, I think that's mitigated with ethereum just because the amount of money involved is so high. You would have to gain control of every individual staking account.
Thanks Ill add it to the reading list for this weekend
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/8x5xad/who\_did\_what\_in\_the\_early\_days\_of\_ethereum/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/8x5xad/who_did_what_in_the_early_days_of_ethereum/)
From Forbes: ""Hoskinson wanted to accept venture capital and create a for-profit entity with a more formal governing structure. Buterin wanted to keep Ethereum a nonprofit organization with an open-source, decentralized governance. "" I think it's pretty clear that Hoskinson did not vibe with the ETH team because he was in it for the money.
he left because he got kicked out and none of the team liked or trusted him...
I think this is a great take on it!
lack of anonymity seems to be a concerning problem with blockchain
It's going on your permanent record! (For real this time.)
Dunno why I was under the impression validators costed a ton, anyways ty for the info.
Not money, fame/authority is my guess since he didn't take his share of ETH with him. Remember the rant he went on when some team support treated him like *a regular customer*? 

He wanted leadership, whether that's a good or bad thing is up to it's community but it seems to be working with the amount of fans he has.
He left because Ethereum was wrong from the beginning
Thanks! I was a little bent when I wrote that and said ecosystem a few too many times, but aside from that I think I got my point across.
One of the things with Atala PRISM (the dID tech being discussed here) is that it supports zero knowledge proofs about a person's identity. This means your information is private/encrypted and certain properties can be reasoned about using zk proofs.

For example: you could have a proof that verifies the identity in question is at least X age, graduated X academic level, or has X set of qualifying credentials. You wouldn't know what age that person is or their grades or anything however you would know they meet all the required criteria for your query (given some level of granularity).

In that sense it's more ""private"" than if you were a fresh grad in the US (since here you often have to provide a copy of your transcript to your first employer).
That’s the funny thing about blockchain.
Yeah, this is very apparent to me and i struggle to undertsand how the majority of the cardano community don't see it. I was invested 100% in cardano till early days, i went out because of CH vibe."
Can anyone explain real web3 use cases?,114,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/r2r8u7/can_anyone_explain_real_web3_use_cases/,"I think the biggest advantage is “peer to peer networks” there is no middle man or central server that connects everything.
Just want to point out that nobody has answered OP's questions so far apart from /u/Maleficent_Plankton.

OP asked for real web3 use cases. Everyone is reiterating the concepts but giving no real examples of the utility.

I wish I could provide an answer but I'm also where OP is at... I understand how decentralization can completely change the game in concept but it's very hard to find projects that are live and demonstrating the value at this stage. DAOs and NFTs are the best the closest thing I've seen but I feel like they only scratch the surface and I'd love to understand web3 more. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places?
Web3 consists of several concepts:

* DAOs
* DeFi
* NFTs
* Self-soverign identity

DAOs and DeFi already have good use cases and don't really need further explanation. They're also not what OP is asking about.

OP is asking more about the NFT and identity part.

The thing about NFTs is that they're just numbers stored on ledgers. They're typically very small to save space and don't store the actual customer data. The ledgers themselves only store transactions for those NFTs. It's up to platforms to determine how they're actually interpreted. Your web3 avatar on one platform might look very different than your avatar on another database unless there's a centralized database that stores a single interpretation of your NFT or avatar.

The biggest issue will be cross-platform compatibility. If your assets and NFTs are stored across a dozen different DLTs, each platform you use will need to have separate cross-platform interoperability with that DLT. If one platform decides not to support the DLT network that records your NFT, you're out of luck for that network.

So what does Web3 provide that Web2 doesn't? More open IdP/SSO APIs. Instead of using Google, MS AD/Azure, and Okta for your SSO Identity Provider, you'll be using Web3 stored on some DLT instead of in a centralized database. However, the exact execution of the NFT/Web3 ID will still depend on how each platform decides to interpret it.
**Note:** *Apologies for the multi-part post, it was the only way I could get it to post to CryptoTechnology*

1/5

Hands down, the absolute best real Web 3 use case is the decentralized internet that [Skynet Labs](https://github.com/SkynetLabs) has built. Skynet is not only a working real world use case of crypto technology, but it also abstracts away the complexity of using crypto from the developers and end users.

&#x200B;

For example, in order for a web developer to begin developing on Skynet, all they need to do is upload their application or website folder containing their `index.html` file to [Skynet](https://siasky.net) and their web application or website is immediately available online. By simply dragging and dropping a folder into a web page they have made their entire application or website completely decentralized and secure with blockchain technology. There is no need for them to buy or hold crypto, search for hosting, or anything. It is just fast, secure and free (Up to 100gb).
The main one is ownership of your data. All the companies take your data and sell it for their own gain. You basically won’t be an asset anymore when using web.
The general theme is to promote and use projects that are based on community being in power and owning data rather than big corps.

Web2: ""Don't be evil please""

Web3: ""Can't be evil""

Of couse there will be evil web3 companies (like Meta...) but that's the general guideline. I view it as open source projects taken to the next step where it can generate value by itself without having to rely on selfless donations or having corporate forks.

i.e. a DAO that controls a decentralized version of twitter would be cool, users own their data and the content they generate creates some kind of ""value"" and that value is retained by the DAO and redistributed to users themselves. This is a pretty big shift from the dynamic from VC's who need to grab as many users as they can and then extract value from them to concentrate that value back to themselves.
i focus on projects that hit the 5 points.

1.trustless

2.permissionless

3.censorship resistance

4.private

5.decentrailized

if there not enhancing these aspects then wtf are they doing?
Who needs email? We already have fax machines that can send a letter instantly.

Who's going to give up their physical keyboard for a touchscreen?

No one is going to need more than X mb of RAM

The point is, sometimes we can't tell how deep the rabbit hole goes... Most of those use cases have not been thought about yet.
The reality is, Web2 is better than Web3. It’s not even close.
Wouldn't it destroy companies like Google Facebook etc ?
I think all those 4 points you listed are pretty big. We just need to build applications on top of them
Web 1.0 - You can read data

Web 2.0 - You can add data

Web 3.0 - You can control data
so web2 was the advent of APIs that web apps could use.  web3 is similar imo where apps can cooperate on a different level where they can reference the same user in a way tied to public state. 

one example that just came to mind is how pachinko parlors in japan will provide ball bearings as a unit of currency in game and provide a receipt to redeem at another store location across the street.  In web3, we could have that receipt live on the blockchain and settlement occur at some other location when referencing that data.  

perhaps more specialization will come out of this.  or perhaps more cooperative type outfits that function as a dao.  i could see a future world of sports where athletes provide their performance data from biometric suits onto a blockchain where read operations require payment and directly benefit players.  that data can be bought by anybody and will be used heavily in fantasy and gambling operations.
Umm I think you answered it. 

No censorship from authorities. The only censorship would have to come from network consensus. Like when eth split to eth classic, it can still happen. But with web 3.0 it won't be a unilateral decision by an ISP or government. 

Failsafe, if you have data stored decentralized and backed up in 10 locations, instead of a data farm somewhere they may go down. 

Encrypted everything.
No central point of failure. This year alone we've seen all of Facebook go down, and more importantly albeit less noticeable, a major internet provider for corporate services went down which affected the hospital where I work in IT. Most underrated aspect of web3 imo
Users can get paid for ad revenue instead of companies like Google/Facebook

\---Best thing that will ever happen. Wealth redistribution.
if it's built right you won't be able to be kicked off a platform
programmability and interoperability of economic activity, especially in a trustless manner.
[deleted]
Among other things, I think Chris Dixon says it best on [Tim Ferriss’s](https://youtu.be/DlNDYMNJ5zQ) podcast.  Web 2.0 is like going to a restaurant and needing to change into the restaurant’s clothes while you are there.  Then, when you leave, you need to strip down again and change back to your other clothes.  And you need to do that everywhere you go.  But web 3 makes it so you don’t have to do that anymore.  You take your identity with you wherever you go.
[deleted]
Imagine a member's only website, something like Forbes or something with a paywall, a car club, anything where you have to pay to access information.

In web3, paying for access could be a token buy, you pay $50 for a year of access for example, and what you get in return is an NFT (not a crappy jpeg thing but a unique token) that token can be programmed to expire after one year, and can be transferred freely to other addresses, bought and sold privately.

You have this token. You go to the website, connect your metamask and the website can just see that you have the access token and lets you browse the full content. You didn't have to make an account and have your email address in their database, you didn't have to make a password and store it, the website owner doesn't need to know who you are or where you are, having the token is the only prerequisite and you've satisfied it.

The blockchain has done this verification for us, the owner of the website doesn't need to do any work to verify that you can have access, it all just works.
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I think ease of payment system for developers is a big plus. For individuals and startups in first world countries, its not a big deal, since there are so many 3rd party services and libraries. But for someone like me who's in small third world country, integrating payment system has always been a big headache. For smaller startups or individuals its not even worth it. Web3 makes it extremely easy even if you have like 5k annual revenue
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>What real-life additional use cases does web3 offer that web2 just can't? 

For one, web2 can't signify ownership of any digital item that works in a widely accepted system. All their system are proprietary to each other. You buy a game in Steam, it doesn't work in Origin/Epic. You buy a movie in Google, it doesn't work in Playstation. You have a Paypal account? Well actually you are borrowing an account from PayPal on PayPal's terms and your account can be frozen for reasons they deem necessary. Twitter/FB account? Even the president of the usa can be deplatformed lol.

>Users can get paid for ad revenue instead of companies like Google/Facebook

The revenue model no longer just relies on ads. Web3 relies more on the ""substack/patreon"" model where you get to interact directly with your consumers. As great as substack/patreon is, they are still beholden to the fiat payment rail. This means it takes a while to transfer, settlements are not instant etc.

I think if you still have this question, you're not fully understanding what crypto stack brings to the table, Among other things, the crypto stack brings (among other things):

* native ownership, which means the way the NFT/ownership is communicated is within the blockchain itself so it inherits all the security properties of the blockchain. 
* censor resistance, as you own your assets on the blockchain, you are free to do any activity in any platform and any constraints that you see fit.
* p2p with no third party due to consensus protocol, so this means instant settlement, programmable conditions, etc
* code/law certainty, this means the platform you are using will give the same functions without the community consensus to change. case in point: Twitter API, one day Twitter just discontinues it and it stops many products/startup in its tracks. FB the same way etc.

The trade off for all of these are also numerous, one of them is the currently high gas fees which means a bit of a fragmented existence of many viable blockchains (BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, etc) however these drawbacks are also opportunities that is being worked on.

Imagine Internet right now, and you would be surprised that there are takes like these:

""by 2005, it would become clear that the Internet's effect on the economy is no greater than the fax machines.""

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-effect-economy/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-effect-economy/)
I actually just wrote this whole blog post about it (and would love feedback) [https://cooperativ.medium.com/procedures-vs-contracts-web3-beyond-artists-fan-clubs-and-royalties-66c788100a5](https://cooperativ.medium.com/procedures-vs-contracts-web3-beyond-artists-fan-clubs-and-royalties-66c788100a5)

# TL;DR

Blockchain could help businesses move away from using legal contracts and towards what I call “procedures.” For example, with traditional contracts, a contractor has to hope that the business follows its agreement to pay her invoice and must go to court when it doesn’t. Instead, we should connect computer programs, running on the blockchain, to the business’ income source on one side and to the contractor’s account on the other. The program automatically allocates the money as it arrives, **and can only be re-programed with the approval of both the business and the contractor** (Blockchain is what makes this last part possible).

There's a bunch of benefits to this approach, which I describe in the post.
i also have many questions around Web3.0 and current try to read all the comments to firgure out.
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Reference: [https://dwebx.org](https://dwebx.org)

&#x200B;

i. Less censorship. Example:  TOR;

&#x200B;

i. Make money when you use the dweb or when you run a node;

Example1.

The search engine PRESEARCH pay you;

https://presearch.medium.com/how-do-rewards-work-73a545ceae60

&#x200B;

Example2.

Decentralized/Distributed cloud pay you;

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/monetizing-computing-resources-on-the-blockchain/  
https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/how-to-make-money-with-blockchain-cloud-computing-companies/  
[https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/](https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/)  


&#x200B;

Example3.

If you run a blockchain node (bitcoin network, ethereum network) you get revenue;  


&#x200B;

i. Privacy. You don't need a search engine like google, the searches are private;

More in generale, the Apps and websites on the dWeb use various distributed database frameworks for storing, querying and modifying data so that centralized data services are no longer needed. Due to the way that data is cryptographically verified, it can not be exploited or fraudulently altered.

&#x200B;

i. Cheaper: you dont't need hosts (godaddy) or centralized cloud. The decentralized cloud (distributed operating system) should be cheaper;

&#x200B;

i. No more IP addresses.

Instead of IP addresses, the dWeb uses hash-based network addressing, where addresses are completely owned and controlled by those who create them. There are enough possible addresses for every atom in the universe.

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

i. Cyber security.

Due to the peer-to-peer makeup of the dWeb and how its data is cryptographically verified across many algorithms, it is safe to say that hackers are truly rendered useless when it comes to hacking into accounts, exploiting websites or stealing money.

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

i. Examples

presearch.org ;

[https://almonit.eth.link/#/](https://almonit.eth.link/#/)  ;[https://dwebx.org/](https://dwebx.org/) ;

[https://peepsx.com/dbrowser](https://peepsx.com/dbrowser) ;

Decentraland ;
This is a list of web3 websites.

https://dailyshortreading.blogspot.com/2021/12/web3-decentralized-web.html
Only real web3 project so far, no nonsens

[https://runonflux.io/index.html](https://runonflux.io/index.html) 

The 1st layer is the Flux POW blockchain & the 2nd layer is the FluxNodes decentralized computational network. Those 2 layers are connected together by a blockchain bridge named ""Fusion""

&#x200B;

What is web3.0 miniseries (must watch these!):

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyhaQ8NaAIli0liklbzmVIoam2zSQp7S](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45h2Q-7jj1c&t=5s)

&#x200B;

If you got any questions, join flux discord and ask: [https://discord.io/runonflux+](https://discord.io/runonflux+)
[removed]
It's funny because it's causing a literal revolution. Where we come back to the beginning of commerce of no middlemen and interacting face to face as a consumer and producer.
Isn't this just self hosted blogs and RSS feeds from web 1.0?

Before the popular centralised websites siphoned off all the users?
[deleted]
So it's up to the users to maintain and host the network?
Defi? If you consider that to fall under the banner of web3 then yeah. 

The gist of it is programmable money. Anyone can wake up one day and money do whatever they want. E.g tokenized stocks, sports betting, high yield saving, AMMs, loans. Without restriction on location too. 

Examples: mirror, augur, anchor, Uniswap, Aave.  

You can't just open up a stock exchange or betting agency as a random person currently. Too much red tape. And if you managed to it won't serve the whole world. And it won't be composable either. 

Composability is what I think is the game changer. If we reach a stage where most financial instruments are composable. It's essentially an internet of money. This stuff is relatively new so you won't see the full extent of that now
I guess you missed my post? https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/r2r8u7/comment/hm8yyok/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Examples:

[presearch.org](https://presearch.org) ;

[https://almonit.eth.link/#/](https://almonit.eth.link/#/)  ;

  
[https://dwebx.org/](https://dwebx.org/) ;

[https://peepsx.com/dbrowser](https://peepsx.com/dbrowser) ;

Decentraland ;
To learn a bit more about decentralized/self-sovereign identity, check this out - https://www.onchainmedley.xyz/episodes
2/5

To begin actually using Skynet as a user however, [Homescreen](https://homescreen.hns.siasky.net) is where you want to start. To begin click the ""Authenticate with MySky"" button in the top right. A popup window will appear with the option to ""Sign Up"" at the bottom. Once you have clicked ""Sign Up"" a MySky account will be created for you, and you will be given a 15 word seed phrase. This seed phrase is now your password to \*\*everything\*\* you accesses on Skynet. So make sure to write down you seed phrase and store it in a safe location. It would also be helpful to sign up for a password manager like [Bitwarden](https://bitwarden.com) so you can securely access your MySky seed from any device. Once you have stored your seed in a safe place, you can click ""Sign Up"" to complete your account creation. Once completed you will then see your Homescreen with a couple apps preinstalled for you and you can begin using Skynet as it was intended to be.

**Note:** *If anyone would like to avoid creating their own MySky and want to try the account I set up writing this, feel free to use the seed* `went wanted height boil axes mailed riots waffle mural mumble rising also ahead gables reef`

To start I would suggest adding [SkyOS](https://homescreen.hns.siasky.net/#/skylink/AQDeIfL5Ghk5PqyFDJIhQQHBb8l56IKNxm_m3XScrPRTLQ) which is a completely decentralized operating system for all of your web3 apps. Once installed click the SkyOS icon to launch into your new OS which can also be accessed directly from [https://sky-os.hns.siasky.net](https://sky-os.hns.siasky.net). Sign in to SkyOS using your MySky seed and grant it access to your MySky. Once loaded you can begin exploring your new SkyOS. To launch your preinstalled apps use the top left hand menu button and to access your SkyOS settings like your profile, OS themes and widgets, click your username in the top right corner.

Once you have finished exploring SkyOS, lets manually add a new app to your Homescreen. To do so click your username in the top right corner and select ""Homescreen"" from the drop down. You'll notice that Homescreen currently has a bug which makes the background transparent so for the moment try to ignore that 😅. Once your Homescreen has loaded lets add a decentralized chat similar to Discord. To do so type ""chatbubble"" into the search bar above and hit enter. Once installed you can exit out of your Homescreen and return to your SkyOS. Before launching a new application make sure to quickly refresh your SkyOS window to force an update of the app menu. Once you've done that you can now access SkyChat from your app menu.
Who’s going to enforce that? What’s to stop me ‘paying for your data’ once and then reselling it all afterwards, or just redistributing it for free?
But do enough people care about that to turn Web 3.0 into mass adoption? I just feel that people I know are aware of their data being sold but don’t care as they like using the product/service. I know everyone is different though
Then do you want to pay them to use their server?
>All the companies take your data and sell it for their own gain.

If you are talking Ads, the companies are not selling your data, they are selling the page slot alongside your data when you retrieve it.
This is pretty on point. Zuckface knew the direction web3 was heading and tried to frontrun data collection onto web3.
Unless they get into blockchain
yes - these companies are bad news.

&#x200B;

Edit: More likely, they will adopt these new standards once they realise they have no choice.
That's over-simplistic.

Web 1.0 mainly consisted of static pages with statically-positioned frames.

Web 2.0 came with DHTML (a term that older devs will recognize) and a new iteration of Document Object Model (often also associated with CSS 2.0). It has to do with interactive and dynamic webpages. The page will automatically respond and reposition elements (e.g. responsive and reactive design) when you scroll down, resize the window, click on elements, and interact with it in other ways. Pages can also use requests to fetch content form other sources.

I built websites during the Web 2.0 transition, and what you've been posting all over this thread is dangerously misleading and non-technical.

Web 3.0 in its ideal form covers owning your own data, but that's only a small part of it. In its practical form, your data will likely still be stored on centralized servers or Validiums (which are offline Layer 2 ledgers). NFTs and DLTs don't have enough space in their blocks to store customer data.
>super dope with the bio metrics. imagine if a person with a unique genetic variant that he/she could control and sell their data to people interested it in. I've seen a defi project play around with dna , noped out. dna is my building blocks, i cant just give it to just anyone, and if you want it, you're paying top dollar for it, directly from me, on my terms. scary shit though.
>web3 is similar imo

Opinions have no place in facts.

Also, you don't need blockchain for what you proposed.
> a major internet provider for corporate services went down which affected the hospital where I work in IT. Most underrated aspect of web3 imo

how is web3 immune to that? If an ISP goes down, how can a hospital connect to other peers on web3 if you can't connect to the network in the first place?
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
That's correct.

1))If you run a node of a distributed/decentralized cloud you get money.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/monetizing-computing-resources-on-the-blockchain/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/monetizing-computing-resources-on-the-blockchain/)

&#x200B;

[https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/how-to-make-money-with-blockchain-cloud-computing-companies/](https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/how-to-make-money-with-blockchain-cloud-computing-companies/)

&#x200B;

[https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/](https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/)

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

2))If you run a Blockchain node (bitcoin, ethereum) you get revenue;

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

3))PRESEARCH is a decentralized search engine.

If you use it, it give you some tokens (pre token);

A pre token today  (december 2021) worths 0.35 USD ;

[https://presearch.medium.com/how-do-rewards-work-73a545ceae60](https://presearch.medium.com/how-do-rewards-work-73a545ceae60)

&#x200B;

[https://www.coinbase.com/price/presearch](https://www.coinbase.com/price/presearch)
This is subjective and almost always going to be wrong. Why would you give bad actors the opportunity to never be removed from a community. That's just inviting chaos in for the sake of chaos.
This is not Web 3.0. This is pretty much just smart contracts, which is not Web 3.0, but part of it.
You obviously have no idea what centralization means in regards to blockchains...
[deleted]
Hey there! I hate to break it to you, but it's actually spelled _mon**e**tize_. A good way to remember this is that ""money"" starts with ""mone"" as well. Just wanted to let you know. Have a good day!

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It will be really interesting to see how it plays out. I still can’t wrap my head around how we will make peer to peer networks work as I think it would require a ton of storage space on the users side. But I’m not too knowledgeable on networks or servers so I’m not the guy to figure it out.
Yeah I suppose it would be very similar to how the web used to work, but with all the modern benefits. That seems like an extremely hard challenge to tackle
No.

The main difference is: you can run a node thanks the blockchain technology.

&#x200B;

Example 1.

Google Inc. has a search engine (google search) executed on its physical computers: google physical servers.

&#x200B;

In the decentralized web, every user can use its computer as server;

The Search Engine is distributed (Distributed computing );

This  server is a node of the network (blockchain).

Call this user: node-user.

&#x200B;

When a simple user searches for a word, the computer of the

node-user is used to perform the search.

The node-user get money.

Today Google get money.;

About security and privacy, everything is encrypted;

Today google can read the searched word and the user ip.

Google can block some words, and manipulates the results' rank.

Example: [https://nodes.presearch.org/](https://nodes.presearch.org/)

&#x200B;

Example2.

Distributed Cloud and hosting servers:

Every node-user can host a piece of a website: data chuking;

The website is splitted between several nodes;

[https://dwebx.org/](https://dwebx.org/)

[https://peepsx.com/dbrowser](https://peepsx.com/dbrowser)

[https://almonit.eth.link/#/](https://almonit.eth.link/#/)

[https://www.originprotocol.com/en/dshop](https://www.originprotocol.com/en/dshop)

[https://www.ccn.com/bitmarkets-decentralized-marketplace-powered-tor-bitcoin-bitmessage/](https://www.ccn.com/bitmarkets-decentralized-marketplace-powered-tor-bitcoin-bitmessage/)

&#x200B;

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/monetizing-computing-resources-on-the-blockchain/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/03/monetizing-computing-resources-on-the-blockchain/)

[https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/how-to-make-money-with-blockchain-cloud-computing-companies/](https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/how-to-make-money-with-blockchain-cloud-computing-companies/)

[https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/](https://financialwolves.com/get-paid-for-leaving-your-computer-running/)

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

Example3.

Facebook Metaverse VS Decentraland.

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

Example4.

Tor is like a VPN, but is decentralized, so it's safer for the privacy and censorship;

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Remark.

The main difference between the web3 and the web1 oor web2, is the blockchain tecnology, in particular the ethereum blockchain;

With it is possible to get: distibuted storage, ditributed computation, encryption, modern consensus policies (proof of work, proof of stack, etc..)
Honestly Web 3.0 is still so far into the future, all we can speculate on is the benefits. How it will actually work and function I don’t think anyone has a clue. It’s just recently started gaining a lot of traction and talk but we are still at least a few years to a decade away
>presearch.org

How presearch decentralized beside it gives you some tokens?  Bing gives rewards as well. And why its token is worth anything? What can you do with those tokens besides speculating?
3/5

Now lets talk about how these apps give you the benefits you are curious about. As you already know, your MySky account is secured using a seed phrase and blockchain encryption. What MySky essentially does is gives you a private place on the Skynet network which all of your user data is stored. All of your videos, images, chats, comments, likes, etc. It all get stored on your MySky. When you log in to a new application or website on Skynet, you are prompted with a permission dialog. This is because every application or website on Skynet must ask the user for permission to access the required data needed. Because of this the you now has the ability to revoke access to your MySky data at any time and effectively gives the you complete control over your personal data. MySky can also be view to act as your universal login similar to ""Sign in with Google"". The difference being that unlike ""Sign in with Google"", the account you are signing in with is yours and only yours. This means you no longer need to worry about losing access to an account because of a deactivated or lost email.

As for monetization on Skynet that is the the next thing to be implemented and the whitepaper is expected to drop sometime next month. What monetization will do is effectively [make everything on Skynet into an NFT](https://2002k4if50e0m3kgq6h0af3gp5e2ivunl3eag9jsmu16gq47pomg6g8.siasky.net/) which can be monetized by the creator. Every app, website, video, image, and even comments, can be monetized. This means that every time a new user load or views content on Skynet, the creators are getting paid behind the scenes by the user ""purchasing"" the content they are viewing. This itself is another very lengthy topic so I will not discuss it here lol. But this is the gist of how monetization is expected to work.

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I will end this here. But please feel free to ask me any further questions and I will gladly try to answer them for you. Hope you have fun exploring Skynet and that the real world implications of Web 3 is now clear.
If your data is an NFT, it could get tagged as personal data and encrypted, so that you can only view it once with one-time passwords. That would make it difficult to copy but not impossible. There would obviously be some theft, but the user would get paid more in that system than in the current system.

Theoretically it could also be possible to have companies use your data without being able to see the data.

For example, if they tell a smart contract to provide them with some summary information about a data set that contains your info, you could get paid if your info happens to be in that dataset.

OR your personal data could be sold just a single time at the beginning to the network somehow and you get paid only at that point.

Companies would be unlikely to share proprietary data though, as it would be like giving money away to their competitors.
Nothing, because I just gave you ownership of my data because you bought it. Therefore you can do whatever you want with my data
>Who’s going to enforce that? 

smart contracts. one of the tenets of web3 is ""code is law"". i'm not sure what or how you are redistributing but if it's governed by a smart contract than that is executed every time it's interacted with and governs its usage.
This can be covered in some ways by the tech implementation.  


For example - You can read X's data only on the Y platform which decrypts it. You cannot scrape it, copy it, download it etc. . You could photograph it and then OCR it, but you wouldn't have the latest info. OR this data could be used by commercial services if the data had an authenticity approval/ validation/ stamp that it was extracted from a certain chain/protocol/tool.   


For anything commercial, there is a counterfeit or a black market of sorts. People will always pirate games and music, but that does not mean that those two industries will not continue to be worth billions of dollars.
I am sorry but the comment you're replying and yours are actually not focusing on the right thing.

The data is available and is available publicly. So on-chain identity analysis is possible now, but the fact is that our current data is now worth something for analysis and advertisements sake. First of all ad revenue won't be the only way to generate revenue in web3. When the data is publicly available anyway then something else is worth. The engagement, the ownership of your tokens, this is all done on user's terms and not the platform holder.
I expect it to be something that people gravitate naturally towards vs something that is being marketed to them.   


I mean, if there was a service that was user-friendly and rewarded the participants for sharing their data, I would expect some nice organic growth. Not on the basis of 'blockchain' and 'decentralized' or 'permissionless' or whatever buzzword. No, just for the rewards.   
Brave has a very nice market size because they don't offer ads not because it's a decentralized browser.
This is only because it's not simple for users to setup a system that pays them for their viewership. If a user had the option between giving their data away for free and having others pay for their data, the latter would almost always be chosen.
Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google are developing compatibility with the web3.

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1)) Facebook.

Facebook: Meta aims for “deep compatibility” with blockchain and the Web 3.

https://247newsbulletin.news/markets/95807.html

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2))Microsoft

[https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/09/microsoft-leads-27m-funding-round-for-palm-nft-studio/](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/09/microsoft-leads-27m-funding-round-for-palm-nft-studio/)

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3)) Google

  
Google Takes Giant Step Towards Powering Blockchain-Based Web 3

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/09/14/google-takes-giant-step-to-powering-web-3-with-dapper-labs-nft-deal/?sh=7d05bb9439ca](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/09/14/google-takes-giant-step-to-powering-web-3-with-dapper-labs-nft-deal/?sh=7d05bb9439ca)

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4) Twitter is building a crypto team;

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/10/twitter-is-building-a-crypto-team
Sia (Sia.tech) is one of the best storage layers for this. Skynet (siasky.net) is building out a Web3 implementation on top of it.
web3 is not even properly defined yet. so.... yea it kinda depends on opinion right now on what a proper web3 approach looks like.

you don't need computers for a lot of things either but it can reduce complexity with the proper on ramps and abstractions.  same thing with blockchain.  in the case of pachinko, you no longer need to be directly involved in settlement as a business.  

do you have anything of value to contribute or do you criticize without any counter arguments?
it wasn't an ISP, my bad - it was an internet hosting service like AWS. Actually, AWS had some outages just today and lots of sites weren't working, I noticed Moody's site was down and I hear certain college sites were also down. This is a better example of what I meant - there is no AWS in web3 that can cause outages across many services.
Right now, if you use Bing search, you get Bing rewards. These are just loyalty points tricks. Running a search engine requires money to buy resources. There is no real free food in this world.
if it's truly decentralized no one will have power to abuse and to deplatform people. instead it should be replaced by curating. everyone should be able to curate who they see. otherwise what's different about it and the current web2.0
what do you mean? (didn’t downvote you btw)
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That's the secret: when you build a trustless and permissionless network you don't even have to store the data yourself to mimic peer to peer communication/transactions.
But the network of blogs and RSS feeds was all decentralised. People ran their own node, and would link to other people's nodes.

A blockchain isn't really decentralised in the same way, every node hosts everything. It's not really as decentralised so much as multiple copies everywhere. I'm not sure what a blockchain gets you for blogs, social media equivalent that HTTPS certs on separate websites doesn't get you.
1)) You can run a presearch node. it is an open souce distributed software.

[https://nodes.presearch.org/run](https://nodes.presearch.org/run)

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2))Tokens is a sort of dividends ( Stock Dividends). You can exchange it for money an buy goods. Today 1 pre-token worth $0.25.

It worth something first of all because the community recognize it as a public good  . It's rational to recognize pre-search token as a public good because it is attached to a real service useful for the community.

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The concept of money as Recognized Public Good is well know by scholars.

[https://coinsweekly.com/a-study-has-proven-cash-is-a-public-good/](https://coinsweekly.com/a-study-has-proven-cash-is-a-public-good/)

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/01/25/money-as-a-social-construct-and-public-good/
4/5

**Additional Resources:**

[Skynet Homepage: About](https://siasky.net/about)

[Skynet Labs GitHub repository of working Skynet Apps (Skapps)](https://github.com/SkynetLabs/Awesome-Homescreen)

[Skynet Guide](https://skynet.guide)
> can only view it once

That’s when I use my ‘single’ view to redirect it all into a database, and sell that database to other companies. This doesn’t make it difficult in the slightest.

> Theoretically it could be…

All the points after this are moot if I can just buy your data once and sell it on the black market. It would all rely on the goodwill of existing Web2 data giants, ironically.
NFTs typically don't store customer data. That would take up too much space on DLTs. Instead, the ledger just stores a pointer to existing data that's on some more-centralized database.
Ok and then I proceed to seriously devalue your data and this entire so-called data economy, by copying it and giving it away for free (or at a marginal price).
I don’t have to distribute it using smart contracts. I can just distribute it the same way I’d do so today.
Can you concretely give an example of what you’re talking about in your last sentence?
Yeah that is also true- lots to consider but I’m certainly excited by the prospect of it all
>web3 is not even properly defined yet. so.... yea it kinda depends on opinion right now on what a proper web3 approach looks like.

Words of a true retard. No point arguing. Can't fix stupid.
These services can double their cost to hold in both AWS and Azure, just customers have to pay for it.   Look at the cost to store a tiny amount of data in Ethereum.
""curate"" same thing as building an echo-chamber. gotta have a neutral feed coming across. you can tailor your own world few sure, but something outside of the bubble you've built has to be able to filter through comfortably.
You're thinking of social media, not Web 3.0.
1)) In the web3, a folder with 100 pics is spitted in 5 subfolders with 20 pics.

Every subfolder is encrypted and stored inside a node;

Redundancy is possible;

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2)Web1 doesn't use distributed computing, or data chuking like the blockchain does;
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But users could use the service without giving their data to anybody. Lets take google docs as an example.

Their documents are stored and encrypted on IPFS and storage is paid for using filecoin. This ensures that the user, and only the user, has persistent access to their documents.

The service (used to view and edit the document) could be executed clientside in the browser, if it's lightweight enough. Or could be a service self hosted by the user. Or could even be executed across a distributed network using multi party computation (eg Secret network), though that might be overkill.  Regardless, all these methods ensure that the user's data is operated on securely without leaking the data to anybody else.

In essence, users get the ability to run their own services on their own data, without sacrificing privacy, and without needing to provide their own infrastructure.
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Right, let's use an actual web3 app, let's say a DeFi platform SushiSwap:

[https://sushi.com/](https://sushi.com/)

So you come with your crypto, let's say ETH and you connect your wallet there. In there you participate in one of the ways you can do DeFi, provide liquidity pair. So you like GRT, so you want to provide ETH/GRT pair. You swap in Sushi swap, and once you have a 1:1 ratio of the ETH/GRT you want to provide you commit them to Sushi swap.

How you make money by doing this is that the next time another user wants to swap from ETH to GRT or vice versa, you get let's say 0.25% of the transaction on top of the incentive that SushiSwap offers when you commit this liquidity pair. The way SushiSwap makes money is from all the financial activity from their user, including lending/borrowing assets etc and also pocketing some trading fee from the users as well that they share with you (if you provide the relevant liquidity pair).

So we don't have any data privacy that is going to be sold to a third party, because how SushiSwap and user can get value is from the activity of doing the DeFi itself. In web3 products, they are not hellbent on getting your personal data because that's not how they will make money. If anyone wants to do an on-chain analysis for SushiSwap users, they are able to do it directly as it's all on the blockchain. This is typically done by platforms called dune: [https://dune.xyz/browse/dashboards](https://dune.xyz/browse/dashboards)

Thinking that web3 users and platforms are making money solely on advertisement is a misnomer, as we will have so much to do with each other directly, the way we make money is from the economic activity itself.
what argument?  you literally have said nothing of substance lmao.
but who gets the power to make a neutral feed? they could abuse the power
Decentralized social media would probably work with different algorithms. If all the data is publicly accessible anyone can design a way to access it.
yeah my mistake, but my point still stands. who is going to get the power to ban people? that means someone has power they could abuse
I don't think every node running every calculation is ""distributed computing"". Ethereum is just multiply redundant computing, it's not computationally efficient at all. It's useful if you want to have identical programs which are verifiable and run identically on every node. But you could just have 1 Ethereum node and get the same results!

Each web 1.0 server running it's own website was distributed. Web 2.0 centralised everything into massive silos. Web 3.0 sounds like a massive silo which is replicated on every node.

Sorting pictures on different nodes is just BitTorrent!
5/5

**Additional Resources (Cont.)**

Additionally you can find Podcast and DevCall repositories on my dLinks page which is hosted on Skynet using a decentralized Handshake (HNS) domain name. Check it out at [https://skunkink.hns.to](https://skunkink.hns.to)
> In essence, users get the ability to run their own services on their own data, without sacrificing privacy, and without needing to provide their own infrastructure.

The example you described is basically “LibreOffice, but my files are encrypted”. I can do that right now, very straightforwardly, using existing Web2 without leaking any significant data about myself. All I need is encrypted storage, which I can get easily using AWS S3 or DropBox, and the LibreOffice source code on GitHub.
Right but what I’m telling is that each individual _datum_ you produce will be bought once and only once. You don’t produce enough data to make that into a significant sum of money for you. It will be so negligible that people would happily give up their data in exchange for some gimmicky feature of the application they’re using. I mean these free applications are already giving you some service for free so it’s no skin off their back if they revoke your access until you cough up some data.
This depends on your concept of ""win"". If the goal is to crash your ecosystem, the other party can win if they have enough available resources.
Ok so sushiswap is a decentralised exchange. I can make money using sushiswap by staking my funds in liquidity pools, the profit I make paid for by market participants. I can of course do this in Web2 (this is how regular old exchanges are operated). Web3 makes this trustless, so I suppose I should use sushiswap instead of a centralised exchange. However, someone can come along and undercut sushiswap as a whole and charge lower fees by utilising centralised compute to operate a crypto exchange. This is why fees are much lower for buying some token once it’s been accepted into a centralised exchange; no more extortionate gas fees. Ironically, we all celebrate when $SUSHI starts trading on Binance.

Don’t get me wrong, decentralised exchanges are incredibly useful but having them trust-less doesn’t add that much value (evidently, given the dominance of centralised crypto exchanges). Like most things crypto, their greatest value is to criminals. Not trying to pontificate here, just being clear about some of the _real_ and _realised_ uses cases of blockchain technology.
subsocial on kusama network looks interesting. theyre playing around with opensourse algos so pplz could make their own.
That would be up to the governance system. One of the biggest problems with crypto that no one seems to be talking is the fact that it's just another system where money = power, currently. Current governance systems require you stake it's governance token to vote on proposals, such as banning. That means that the more you stake, the more of a say you have in the proposal. Concentrated money = power = corruption.
1))When you say, every node running every calculation, probably you are talking about proof of work.

Proof of work is used for decentralized payments (BTC);

Here decentralized means: there isn't an authority, say the central bank;

Furthermore it is safer than the classical bank account, because to crack the network (51% attack), the hacker needs a powerful computer and a lot of energy;

Estimated cost of the attack: $2 millions every hour;

[https://www.crypto51.app/](https://www.crypto51.app/)

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2))Proof of work (every node running every calculation) is not the way works decentralized cloud;

Not necessarily .

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3)) Indeed, there are several blockchains with several  consensus mechanisms.

Proof of work, stake, devotion, authority, hybrid, etc..

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4))Ethereum is moving from proof of work to proof of stake. This mean  only some nodes perform the calculation.

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5)Quote.

\[Sorting pictures on different nodes is just BitTorrent\] .

BitTorrent is a P2P network, like the blockchain;

So what is the difference?

Short answer:  consensus mechanism;

For short we can say: blockchain= P2P + consensus mechanism;

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6)Paper about consensus mechanism

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065245820300668](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065245820300668)
If you want to think of it in terms of self-hosting your own services like LibreOffice, then you can think of Web 3.0 as the share economy for self-hosting. Instead of companies like Amazon or Dropbox providing storage and infrastructure, you have a massive community of users providing that infrastructure.

So really what all decentralization comes down to is where your trust lies. Would you rather place your trust in big companies, or in a community of users? I think Web 2.0 has shown what companies will do when given power over data and services. They get lazy and don't care about user privacy. They get greedy and sell user data. They get selfish and design their services to keep users in the ecosystem, instead working together with other companies to provide interoperability. Web 3.0 is about decentralizing trust to prevent these things from occurring. Everything is public and transparent, so you know exactly what is happening to your data. Everything runs on the same layer, so programs and services are interoperable. Anybody can become a data/service provider, which increases competition and keeps prices low. And these are just a few of the downstream benefits of decentralizing power and trust.
I see what you mean. I would agree the data we produce wouldn’t be worth much in the grand scheme of things. We already know corporations are greedy when it comes to maximizing profits so I’m sure they will find a way to workaround this like you suggested.
sure, the value of for 1 persons data is not worth much. But the value of 100,000 peoples data is worth a lot and if they can co-ordinate (which they can now), then they can put this value to good use as opposed to creating a billionaire like zuck
Proof of work or proof of stake have nothing to do with useful computing. I mean the Ethereum smart contracts are run by every node. It's not a decentralised computer so much as a replica on every node.

Do blogs need a consensus mechanism? It's obviously useful for finance, but a web3.0 social media replacement doesn't really need it!
> So really what all decentralization comes down to is where your trust lies.

Ok but do you think “fuck shady Web2 companies” and vague claims about interoperability are really enough of a reason to bring everyone to decentralised blockchain computing, which is magnitudes more inefficient and expensive compared to Web2 infrastructure? The fastest, most feature-complete applications will always be those where we’re not artificially limited to a distributed trustless consensus algorithms. Given human nature and various laws of least resistance, Web3 is only happening if Web2 gets outlawed. 

It’d be helpful if you could point me to a coherent and complete description of a useful Web3 application, real or imaginary. I think that’s what OP is looking for, not buzzwords/buzzphrases. Show how all this decentralisation, trust-less-ness, privacy, interoperability, and tokenisation, all adds up to some killer app that isn’t possible in Web2.
1))You missed the point about the word decentralized;

When people use the word decentralized about the blockchain, they mean first of all: there isn't a central authority.

You use the word decentralized as synonym of distributed computing, and parallel computing.

This is not wrong, but this is not the people mean.

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2)) You missed the point about Ethereum and PROOF OF STAKE;

PROOF OF WORK:  Ethereum smart contracts are run by every node.

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PROOF OF STAKE:  Ethereum smart contracts are run by A SMALL NUMBER OF NODES, the so called VALIDATOR NODES.

[https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/)

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I suggest you to read something about: validator nodes ethereum;

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3)) Proof of stake efficiency.

Quote.

Proof of stake is more energy efficient (than proof of work), because it removes the high-powered computing from the consensus algorithm.

[https://www.skalex.io/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/](https://www.skalex.io/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake/)

PS. I have read the efficiency  improvement is around 96% ;

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4)) Do blogs need a consensus mechanism?

Consensus mechaism can ENHANCE  security and privacy;

[https://www.csoonline.com/article/3405439/how-a-decentralized-cloud-model-may-increase-security-privacy.html](https://www.csoonline.com/article/3405439/how-a-decentralized-cloud-model-may-increase-security-privacy.html)

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5))Resume.

A)) Here, the word decentralized is used with the meaning: there is not a central authority;

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B)) Only the Blockchains with a Proof of Work consensus mechanism replica on every node.

Indeed the Blockchains with a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism use a small number of nodes for computation: validator nodes;

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C)) The Consensus mechanism  enhances  security and privacy;

In particular, the data stored inside a give node is encrypted.

The owner of the node cannot read it;

Actually this can create legal problem:

Child abuse images hidden in crypto-currency blockchain

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47130268](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47130268)

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D)) Let's assume a given  blockchain is less computationally efficient than parallel computing and centralized cloud (AWS).

Computational efficiency is not the main purpose of the blockchain.

The first purpose is remove the intermediaries (aws cloud, google cloud);
> Ok but do you think “fuck shady Web2 companies” and vague claims about interoperability are really enough

I do. Just like ""fuck overpriced taxis"" were enough to get many people to move to Uber and Lyft, and ""fuck surveillance"" was enough to get many people to move to Bitcoin and Monero. I think getting _everybody_ will take time, but I personally am moving away from big tech services, and I think as alternatives mature, more people will move as well.

I do agree that in some cases centralization will probably always be more efficient. But it's hard to tell just _how_ much more efficient, because Web 3.0 is so new. I think give it a few more years and we'll see how fast Web 3.0 can really get. Because after a certain point, performance actually doesn't matter as much anymore. If a website loads in 0.3 seconds versus 0.35, I probably won't notice. And when the differences in performance are that small, other things become more important. Like flexibility and privacy and interoperability. For example, the iPad Pro is probably the fastest tablet out there. Yet I still wouldn't prefer one because other tablets are fast enough, and less locked down. And I know there are plenty others like me.

As for a concrete example of a Web 3.0 application, [there's a list of them here](https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs#apps). One of the apps listed there is [d.tube](https://d.tube), which is a video platform like Youtube but [uses IPFS for storage and Avalon blockchain for the database](https://d.tube/#!/wiki/faq/how-does-dtube-work). I noticed that a few videos are just youtube embeds, but the vast majority seem to be legitimate IPFS videos, and performance is great too.
“Fuck overpriced X” is exactly why people won’t use Web3 technologies. Blockchain technologies always have a higher computational cost due to computing their consensus algorithms. 

Bitcoin/Monero have very real use cases: anonymised wealth holdings and transfers. Tax evasion, black markets, crypto _currency_ has made these things a whole lot easier. Bitcoin was _immediately_ useful — you didn’t even have to imagine or adopt hyperbolic language, like we’re seeing with Web3 tech.

Web3 technologies are improving but there’s no way around established laws of distributed computing. It will always be more expensive and less performant to operate on the blockchain, unless there’s some high cost associated with a “trust-ful” model. In the case of black markets and tax evasion, “trust-ful” models(trusting the bank and Visa, etc.) has a huge, _huge_ cost: real probability of imprisonment. When it comes to watching TikTok videos, “trust-ful” doesn’t really have that much of a negative cost. Making TikTok trust-less would just be a huge waste of computing resources, and no one’s going to foot the bill for it. Unfortunately, the efficiency will never be close to the kind of numbers you cited (Web3 will never be only 17% slower than Web2).

d.tube looks to be a standard Web2 service, just that it utilises IPFS assets. It’s fundamental operation doesn’t depend on the blockchain in any way (we have a multitude of faster Web2 alternatives). The pros of utilising blockchain-backed storage here are _______ .The cons of this are higher storage cost than centralised solutions, higher latencies, etc.
> higher computational cost due to computing their consensus algorithms

The costs have been coming down quickly. For example, Layer 2 solutions don't even use consensus. The consensus is only used to cement transactions onto the blockchain, and they can combine many transactions in a single block to make it more efficient. Solutions like Iota don't require consensus across the whole network so they can process transactions faster and cheaper. There are improvements happening all the time. I don't deny that centralized solutions will be faster. But the difference in performance will get smaller and smaller. Making other advantages more enticing.

And one of those advantages that we haven't covered yet is censorship. For example, certain words will get you banned or your content removed on Twitter and Facebook and Youtube, even if you are just using them in jokes. Decentralized solutions like d.tube can help to solve that problem. People can create their own communities that have their own rules about what content is allowed and not allowed. It's certainly possible for Web 2 companies to do the same, but they've proven again and again that they can be swayed by politics. People are already moving to federated systems like the Fediverse or Matrix for chat, and then decentralized systems like Peertube and d.tube for video. And these decentralized technologies are still in very early stages.

D.tube uses IPFS and Avalon, not a single part of it is Web 2. And it's fundamental service _does_ depend on decentralization if you consider ""censorship resistance"" to be a fundamental part (which they do). The pros is also no ads, as compared to Youtube. In the future I expect there will be some payment involved (either by providing storage/compute resources from your PC, or by paying money), but I suspect it will still be cheaper than paying for Youtube Premium.

> Web3 will never be only 17% slower than Web2

I believe it will actually be much lower, at least lower than 10%. IPFS and Webtorrent already work quite well, and as the networks grow bigger they will get faster. But neither of us really have proof because the tech is still so premature, so we'll just have to see.
I’m aware that layer 2 solutions are fast, but they have their own set of issues upon re-integration with the layer 1.

Censorship resistance is a big pro of Web3, certainly. But do you think that’s enticing enough to sway your average user away from existing media giants? “Come join my censorship resistance platform! There are no intelligent recommendations, and you have to pay $x/hour of footage, but Alex Jones will be able to post conspiracy theories”.
I don’t think it will ever by cheaper than YouTube premium because YouTube will always, always have the advantage of lower computational costs and engineering complexity. Blockchain technologies, by definition, require redundant computations which aren’t required in centralised solutions. A large part of ads is to pay content creators too, so you should jointly consider their incentives/disincentives towards an ad-free Web3 platform.
As the US becomes more and more polarized, Big Tech is being forced to pick a side. It's not just Alex Jones being kicked off, nowadays it's entire communities being restricted. Which is why interest in alternatives is growing. I personally don't care for the politics, the concept of censorship-resistance in itself is powerful enough for me.

One of the main reasons why I think Web3 can be cheaper than Youtube Premium or Netflix is because users can contribute their resources. To give a comparison, you can look at torrenting. It's quite surprising that people are willing to seed, esp when game theory predicts that everybody would leech. But the torrent community is still rather healthy, and still growing.
You and I both care about censorship resistance, but we aren’t typical users. Typical users will want their bells and whistles, all running smoothly and promptly. No one will use d.tube until it has a better user experience compared to YouTube.
It's not just cencorship resistance, it's privacy too. With third party services, if a company can be pressured into stripping people's privacy for the ""greater good"", it often happens. Eg the NSA's surveillance after 9/11. Or Apple's CSAM scanning. More and more people are caring about privacy nowadays.

So I think if a decentralized service can provide, say, 90-95% of the performance of a normal web service, but with much better privacy and censorship resistance, I think people will switch. Matrix chat is one example I've seen on the rise recently."
How do we change the culture around cryptocurrency?,121,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7pcx3k/how_do_we_change_the_culture_around_cryptocurrency/,"The solution to this problem is one we’ve been yelling and screaming at for years: FUD. From another post of mine...

“Everyone on this subreddit has probably been accused of spreading FUD before, me included. I often write up detailed, researched posts about coins, so I'm not immune to this accusation either.

But we need to stop looking at ""FUD"" as a bad thing, if it's true and well-researched. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are *absolutely necessary* in a dangerous and volatile market like this. Scams and shitcoins are everywhere, and if we don't warn people about their risks, a lot of people are going to lose money. 

Without a certain measure of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, this bubble will continue to inflate, and scams/vaporware projects will continue to rise. If we continue to allow scams to be shamelessly shilled and promoted without fighting back with *facts*, we're eventually going to pay for it with a bloody, merciless day for even the best cryptocurrencies.

So please, do some research about every coin you consider investing in, and if you feel afraid, uncertain, or doubtful because of what you've discovered, *post it here.* A healthy dosage of well-researched FUD might be just what we need.”
I think alot of this is just the nature of a super highly speculative market. Kodak (the stock) went up over 100% today because it announced it was going into blockchain.

During the .com era, there were a million ""CEOs"" walking around, and there was every idea imaginable, the only thing they had in common was they had a website.

Such is the case with blockchain now, but the crazy part is that it's just a sideshow.

These Wild West antics are going to go on for a while. I've learned to ignore them (for the most part), and just focus on the tech I actually like or think is going to have a promise, or something I'd actually use.

At some point, probably after the fiat to crypto onboarding happens, from FairX and Ethos, there will be another gigantic bull run that's going to eclipse anything that's gone on so far.

Once that happens, main street adoption takes place, and you'll see a major shakeout, and a flight to quality. Those quality projects will be the benefactors of all the crash and burn, fleeing capital. At this point, the expectations of investors will be night and day compared to what it is now, there will be no excuse for not even having an alpha-level product available, a transparent team with a proven track record, and open-sourced, verifiable code.
Let's post more about the exciting technical concepts behind crypto.  Let's talk about how distributed consensus algorithms can transform society in positive ways.  Let's talk about how we can bring an end to the few influencing the many disproportionately.

Let's spur conversations that propagate an understanding of crypto tech on a ""common knowledge"" level.  This will lead to TRUST and ADOPTION.
[deleted]
>What are ways that we can educate / change the perspective of newcomers to crypto? How can we bring some focus back to the tech behind it all?

The majority of people have to just learn the hard way how tech affects price in the long term. They have to invest in the Tron's of the crypto world and then lose big, but more importantly they need to be shown *why* they lost big on that coin. It's no different than the U.S. stock market. A lot of investors don't give a single shit about the tech of the companies they invest in. They care about profit potential. For the job they're doing there's nothing wrong with that, but the difference between them and new people in crypto now is that those investors do know they have to know at least enough of the tech (or know the right tech consultants) to know what tech has profit and growth potential and what is vaporware. New people in crypo don't have that ability yet. You can't make people who are here for the money be genuinely interested and solely focused in the tech but we can at least try to teach them the correlation between successful tech vs vaporware and price/profit potential. You also have to do it in a way that is easily understandable for them. There's a reason why the crypto subs for memes and price talk are separate from the crypto subs for tech talk. They just inherently are not the same audience so to speak. So if you want one to come over to the other, some level of repackaging is going to be needed to get the other side to come over.
I don't think you can stop the money talk when early adopters get rewarded. I'd just keep focusing on the tech and how blockchains can solve problems - that's the lead story, the profit is a side effect of solutions actually being valuable.
It's the wild west.  Where YOU are responsible for what happens to you.  I love it.  Let the idiots lose their money.  This isn't a baby game here.
I'm new to this group but wow. What a refreshing read throughout this whole page. As an avid and dare I say intelligent senior technologist in my field I want to see thoughtful debate and consideration of this fascinating change in society. Seeing a reference to Adam Smith brought a smile to my face!

I have absolutely no doubt that this is the next step of interconnectivity that links society, and my mind boggles when I try to consider what this will mean when artificial intelligence really takes off over the next few decades (And then enslaves us of course).

Whilst of course it is useful to ascertain where the crowd hype exists, I'm getting sick and tired of the words moon, lambo, shitcoin etc. that everyone is shouting in other forums. Of course the vast majority of us will be invested and seeking a financial reward but it's just not fun if you're grinding forums for the odd nugget of useful info.

I'd much rather be discussing how I'm investing in the next shift in global society in all the various forms that new blockchain technologies are presenting.

Cheers. 
I think the culture will shift as more morons get wiped out by pumped and dumps. In just about every post regarding a shitcoin, you will see a comment of the type ""I made X00% gains from flipping this coin"". What you don't hear but happens more often at people that bought at ATH and lost a significant amount on the way down. The theory of greater fool assumes someone is willing to buy your coin at a higher value than you did. This is a negative sum game when the founder of the shitcoin hold a significant portion of the total supple. What ends up happening is a few winners who got in early while the rest either didn't make significant gains or made losses. Over time people will either wise up or end up with no money left to invest. And that's how the market moves forward.
All the cryptocurrencies that aren't built on robust technology will eventually fade into irrelevance.
We need to establish some golden rules that noobs ALWAYS have to see. Don't invest what you can't afford to lose. Do your research. Don't FOMO into coins/tokens at ATH. Prepare to get shilled. Know the difference between speculative investment and actually using a coin/token. The community should always stress these, and keep up the FUD to projects that deserve it
What does tron have to do with this? What is the 'perspective' of newcomers that you think needs to be changed?  Ico- people (tron, cardano developers, etc.) Are not newcomers, so I don't see how they're involved with this question....
[deleted]
The sooner regulation comes in, the better imo.
tbh... you probably cant do this at all.

nothing will stop people from going metal with ""stocks"" blowing up 100 or 1000's % a day. Meaning guy buys lambo, drives to work to show mates, mates want in crypto, bring in lambo meme, make some decent cash, etc etc etc... the way the world works, nothing will change that mate, no matter how much some of us want to, because i do agree with you...
I think a big problem is people scream FUD at any negative comment made about a coin they are holding, regardless if true or not. I hate to say it but what it is going to take is a ton of people losing money on shitcoins and shaking the space clear of get rich quick schemes. (I just don't want that to happen yet because I have yet to receive my lambo har har har)
Great comment! I get so annoyed when trying to have a discussion on reddit and I get a single response of ""FUD""
I'm new to this group but wow. What a refreshing read throughout this whole page. As an avid and dare I say intelligent senior technologist in my field I want to see thoughtful debate and consideration of this fascinating change in society. Seeing a reference to Adam Smith brought a smile to my face!

I have absolutely no doubt that this is the next step of interconnectivity that links society, and my mind boggles when I try to consider what this will mean when artificial intelligence really takes off over the next few decades (And then enslaves us of course).

Whilst of course it is useful to ascertain where the crowd hype exists, I'm getting sick and tired of the words moon, lambo, shitcoin etc. that everyone is shouting in other forums. Of course the vast majority of us will be invested and seeking a financial reward but it's just not fun if you're grinding forums for the odd nugget of useful info.

I'd much rather be discussing how I'm investing in the next shift in global society in all the various forms that new blockchain technologies are presenting.

Cheers. 
I think you miss the shoot a bit, but really you already said in your comment : Not FUD, but FACTS. What problem this coin solves, what makes it unique, how well it works, it is decentralized (do not lose sight of this people!), it is open source, partners, exchange support,  bet for the best projects,  and for the love of Satoshi, do not blindly follow pumps!

Pd. Small autopromotion, that's the reason I created /r/cryptocurrencyfacts
The non-explicit part of what FUD means is that it refers to expressing unfounded fear, uncertainty or doubt. If something is genuinely worrying, unclear, or unlikely to succeed, it isn't FUD to say so. 

The problem is that nobody cares about truth, which is especially ironic considering the whole point of cryptocurrency.
I'm new to this group but wow. What a refreshing read throughout this whole page. As an avid and dare I say intelligent senior technologist in my field I want to see thoughtful debate and consideration of this fascinating change in society. Seeing a reference to Adam Smith brought a smile to my face!

I have absolutely no doubt that this is the next step of interconnectivity that links society, and my mind boggles when I try to consider what this will mean when artificial intelligence really takes off over the next few decades (And then enslaves us of course).

Whilst of course it is useful to ascertain where the crowd hype exists, I'm getting sick and tired of the words moon, lambo, shitcoin etc. that everyone is shouting in other forums. Of course the vast majority of us will be invested and seeking a financial reward but it's just not fun if you're grinding forums for the odd nugget of useful info.

I'd much rather be discussing how I'm investing in the next shift in global society in all the various forms that new blockchain technologies are presenting.

Cheers. 
This is my sentiment as well. After a crash or correction there should definitely be a change of mentality, and the market will mature, investors will be more prudent. Many inexperienced will exit completely due to losses. 

The question though is, when? Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this. Are we going to run to a $5-7T market if we draw a parallel to the .com bubble? Or is this being a new global asset class going to be able to sustain a much longer run? How about the current traditional markets? It’s also been on a 9 year bull run and is bound for a correction. 
I agree. I think nearly all trading prices at this point are based on pure speculation, in that many investors have no plans of redeeming their coins within the coin's intended ecosystem and are holding in hope that someone will want to buy the coins later for more than investor bought them for. And in a crazy bull market like we have that behavior is rewarded and leads to more speculation. I think we should all be wary to separate true value, in the sense of contributions to society, from speculative value.

I saw a post the other day about how people are now rationalizing bitcoin as a store of wealth (since it is such crap for microtransactions). IMO this is the thinking that will get people burned, equating speculative value with true value. And for crypto I think most people here will agree that the true value is in the tech. 
I just came here from r/cryptocurrency and I already feel more enlightened
We should launch a blockchain where people can create local communities
Are you forgetting about the first to market Bitcoin?
Tron has no working product, an arguably poor whitepaper, and a market cap of 15 billion dollars (or did). That's the problem. 
What has Cardano achieved? How many TPS? Are Smart Contracts available? What about Interoperability? Any partnerships with industry leaders? etc... Exactly why is it justified sitting in the top 5?
great team, great community, amazing tech, moon! Jokes aside, I'm a cardano fan too, and was also shocked to see tron in the same sentence. Cardano may be overvalued now, but they are paving a path for something very big. I've been on the sidelines for a while, but finally decided to throw some of my BNB profits into ADA.
This post is 100% TRX fud. Why is this uovoted
The problem is when you post facts that are against the project, people invested always accuse you of fudding, no matter what. 
This is so, so right. The problem is that *we need* fear, uncertainty and doubt, and the accusation of spreading it is an inherent negative. This shouldn’t be the case. The entire technology of cryptocurrency is based upon the idea of provable truths. If people choose to ignore the truth because it makes them feel afraid, uncertain or doubtful, we’re going to be in for a massacre eventually.
Well said!  Couldn't agree more.
Your questions are a lot of the same ones I have.

I do think we have defined a new asset class here. At the worst this is a new fund-raising platform, at the best, it's literally a defining moment in history that is changing how value is monetized and exchanged. I am talking Adam Smith level paradigm shift here.

In contrast to the last 2 stock meltdowns, everyone expects this one to just blow up and fall over at any time.

Personally I am guessing we have another 2 years left before a sharp correction and prolonged selloff. Then another slow climb up.

I am hoping I am wrong and the weak assets get drained of capital and that capital flows into the stronger assets.

This is a very exciting time to be alive.
What?
He/she said eventually. It hasn't died yet, but it will.
> an arguably poor whitepaper

I'm sorry but you still get that wrong https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7p7n30/trons_whitepaper_is_copied_plagiarized/

It's even worse than poor.
Ok, so how does that relate to the perspective of newcomers to crypto?

(Whether or not that's even true is irrelevant to my question, as it seems it me to be to your overall point)
I do understand the sentiment of a real working product versus one in development but there is a point to be made about investing in the future of any said tech. I mean as an investor, your portefolio should have some sort of diversification, part of it more risky than others, and some might be simply things that goes towards some of your belief, like renewable energy or so forth. I mean you think any angel investors invest in real tech? No, most case is investing prior to having a real product.

Problem with alot of working product blockchain foundation right now is they focus alot on reacting to their own need, missing some amount of proactiveness, at least in my opinion.

I do have cardano and it does take a part of my risk part of my portefolio but at the same time, for the risk is very well less than many other project with risk involved in the space.

Building the blockchain protocol from ground up with a 2 layer so that one layer can be updated to fix issues over the long run, making hard fork not needed, feels like a + to me.

Using haskell code that wont compile unless issues in the codes are fix, also feels like a plus to me,

Instead of going for tps but for a real scalable solution with tcp ip kind of idea, with more users using it meaning scallablility will rise at the same time feels like a +.

Trying to make their protocol quantum resistant is also a big + in my mind since its a pretty imminent threat at this point.

I know interoperability is on their list of things to implement but i dont have much to bring since i dont have much insight on how they plan to tackle it per say.

As for partnerships, most companies actually listing them doesn’t mean much for most of them, same for advisors. I do usually take note of them but i surely wont base going deep on something on a partner mainly when sometimes that partner is hardly doing much and seem to be just more of a window for hype.

I like that they actually try to build their product from academic perspective, a lot of innovative ideas come out that way and is supported by a system of vigorous verification. Anyone who had their doctorate peer reviewed could tell you...

It still does not mean they will achieve what they plan to achieve, of course. The task is monumental! But I believe they are taking the right path for high chance of success. And if they do, this is going to take the space by storm.

So yes, a risk, but anyone who heavily succeeded took their amount of risk.

Do i believe they are overpriced at this time? Indeed. I bought real early and was expecting no pump until at least this summer,

So overall, yes lots of scam around but reading every bit of details and sometimes going for the risk of a product that can bring much to the space is needed, at least a little in your portefolio

P.S: tron is still a scam, read and be aware of things, more than just reddit, discord etc.






Can you describe why TRX is actually good then, apart from “Justin Sun is a good marketer” and “it made me money”?
Yep. Thing is, I freely admit to spreading FUD - truthful, factual, researched FUD. I embrace being a FUDder. Because if I don’t, more people will fall for scams, shitcoins and vaporware out of greed. If we continue to allow this to happen, the bubble *will* burst.
> In contrast to the last 2 stock meltdowns, everyone expects this one to just blow up and fall over at any time.

Yeah, I think we'll know this things nearing a tipping point when the general sentiment is that it's going to run forever. If everyone is saying bubble, it's probably not even close to popping. When I go on r/investing and everyone is full FOMO instead of shitting on crypto, that will be the time to sell.
Definitely an exciting time. Having all these innovative projects come up and being able to learn about them, invest in them, and make money at the same time, what more could you ask for.

When you say 2 years, are you referring to the crypto market or the traditional markets?
I'm new to this group but wow. What a refreshing read throughout this whole page. As an avid and dare I say intelligent senior technologist in my field I want to see thoughtful debate and consideration of this fascinating change in society. Seeing a reference to Adam Smith brought a smile to my face!

I have absolutely no doubt that this is the next step of interconnectivity that links society, and my mind boggles when I try to consider what this will mean when artificial intelligence really takes off over the next few decades (And then enslaves us of course).

Whilst of course it is useful to ascertain where the crowd hype exists, I'm getting sick and tired of the words moon, lambo, shitcoin etc. that everyone is shouting in other forums. Of course the vast majority of us will be invested and seeking a financial reward but it's just not fun if you're grinding forums for the odd nugget of useful info.

I'd much rather be discussing how I'm investing in the next shift in global society in all the various forms that new blockchain technologies are presenting.

Cheers. 
Local communities as in local economies. A blockchain network where communities are able to apply laws only within that community and where they can exchange digitized assets on a worldwide ""free market"" (aka exchange) where commodities with intrinsic value are considered as currency within the communities. Any participant of the network can join any community as a member.

But to win this battle against the banks that are trying to control our resources for once and for all, we need to take control of our resources. The governments own resources like gold, silver and oil, but we still have other resources that sometimes are more valuable than something materialistic: information and identity.

This isn't possible on worldwide scale without the banks fighting back, but if we forget about the government and we, the people, decide to create our own local communities where we are in control of the law (by voting which rules determine which transactions are valid) and the economy (through a free _local_ ""exchange""), we have a chance to win.

But then again, if Russia decides to back ETHER with their resources (oil/gold) and China does the same with NEO and South-Korea with ICON, other countries will follow quick and the beginning of the crypto era is here. Aka a new world order. This is actually already happening in Venezuela (I think the elite is testing the world's response to an oil backed cryptocurrency) with the Petrocoin.

Armageddon is coming.
Because the newbies don’t know anything about real value yet. They look at what they do understand and that is price and community action. When the community rushes into bad projects that really misleads the newbies. 
OP said Cardano/Tron got a lot of money without a working product. He never said Cardano was a scam. And I agree with him. The fact that you are trying to justify a project with just a wallet sitting in the top 5 is exactly what’s wrong with this community. The mentality to get rick quick by gambling needs to be eliminated. And of course I understand that it’s impossible to do so.
Que Trx fanboi to start calling names and verge investment accusations.
So you want jumpy, easily manipulated people pouring money into your investments instead? The bubble will pop eventually no matter what. The best thing for you and I is to watch the shitcoin boats sink from a distance
Love the analysis on crypto in this thread but disagree with calling a bear market simply because it’s been 9 years. Something has to change in the fundamentals for this to happen. In 2017 there were actually 40bn dollars of net outflows from domestic equity ETF funds, while there was 362bn of net inflows into bond ETFs, which shows that market sentiment continues to be weary of the stock market. Portfolios have remained under exposed to equities relative to historical norms throughout this bull run, and that continues to be the case. Meanwhile corporate profits continue to accelerate and forecasts are being upwardly revised at a strong rate. Until something happens to derail corporate profits, or interest rates rise meaningfully leading to deflating equity trading multiples, equity markets  continue on there way. Everyone has been calling for the jump in rates leading to bear market for over 5 years now. Historical data shows its best to wait for fundamentals / sentiment to change prior to adjusting your portfolio rather than to try to time it and get in front of any changes, so I wouldn’t be running from equity markets just yet, or predicting any bear market just because it’s been a while.
I am referring to crypto markets, but based on nothing more than a wild guess based on how fast new users adopt the software.

Long term I see this as a huge decades long bull run creating entire new industries and ways of thinking and changing government and culture.
Isn't Venezuela in utter economic turmoil right now?
My point is totally agaisnt getting rich quick. It cant be further appart, I believe in the long term of ADA, I even said it was overpriced...I was not replying to the OP, I was replying to you.

Justify? more like discuss about it, I gave my view on it. Lets not be so rash here.
Yeah my thoughts as well. Blockchain is game changing.
Exactly what is needed for a country to make what seems like a desperate move (backing crypto with oil). It's just to kickstart the crypto economy."
"Can anyone ELI5 the technical differences between projects like Ethereum 2.0 (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), IOTA (MIOTA), Cosmos (ATOM), Avalanche (AVAX), Tron (TRX), EOS, etc?",116,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/lmrsse/can_anyone_eli5_the_technical_differences_between/,"That's too tough to answer in both a technical and ELI5 way, just a reminder that none ""*solve*"" the existing problems they just keep improving aspects often while replacing it with new problems. It's hard to optimize data *and* keep it decentralized. You can lower the required amounts of nodes or split the network/transactions itself to offload the needed throughput but you can't magically eliminate it, hence never trust ""highest tps or most decentralized marketing"" it's mostly bullshit. 

While u don't ask for Bitcoin let's take that as a starting point anyway; 

BTC: everyone verifies, there is no data splitting and we limit the throughput artificially to enable everyone to run ALL the data. Exceptions are pruned nodes verifying only part of the transaction with the most important stuff. ""Smart"" stuff (programable/custom tx) limited to just a few OP-codes. High throughput stuff needs to happen in second layers. 

ETH: raise the limits, most will verify but also options to verify only parts of the blockchain + not just a few OP-codes but complete programmable transactions (limited to anything that compiles down to EVM bytecode - the main alternative to Solidity is Vyper.). Limits are reaching the point where here too it's realized second layers are necessary.

ETH 2: PoS is less intensive (downside may be potential centralization) but also more splitting of the data itself; not only splitting transactions but splitting data across nodes called sharding where nodes may run different shards of the network. The new EVM will add more too (called eWasm; will add C, C+, Rust, etc programming for smart contracts, greatly improving smart contract development) 

EOS: even less nodes required (just 21), implement a max and instead people can vote on representatives (delegates) to do the verification. People can still run verification for personal use but not network breaking went you can't keep it. It's trying to make blockchain democratic; your vote can be heard (but also abused) while not needing the hardware. As we have seen this is prone to ""friends politics"" where its fairly easy to buy your way into consensus without actually buying EOS. 

NEO: dBFT (delegated byzantine fault tolerance) is kinda like the Proof of stake vote on delegates exept anyone can try to join and the algorithm automatically checks for dishonesty once a block is produced (needs 2/3 of the vote). More nodes possible, but unlike ETH it can kick out bad nodes making it less decentralized (in theory). Throughput is high though and it opts for multiple programing languages and in NEO.3 it will get lots of stuff on the chain *natively* like oracles (chainlink), filestorage (filecoin) etc. 

ADA: all about the layers, like ETH it doesn't magically solve data but it tries to split it in a different way, for example a 2 person transaction is so insignificant that not all of that data is needed for the entire blockchain, different layers do different things. Other main positive is interoperability, programmable money should be easily to mix and match. Unlike claims, this too is not infallible to centralization or high fees. There are allready stake pools and hoarding ADA can lead to concentration of power eventually. Numbers of the network right now look great though, biggest challenge will be it's launch whether it even gets traffic, since it's all hype it could easily become a case of all hype little use just like other ETH competition (NEO especially fell far since it once was top 6 in marketcap).

IOTA: sorry forgot; this is an interesting one as I'm unconvinced yet it can be verified securely enough. The Tangle splits accounts among users, to get your transaction verified you verify 2 other peoples transactions, basically for an honest transactions you need to prove you're honest yourself. For now, there is a centralized coordinator checking the network but in theory it can work without (at least the math checks out). However this way of ""data splitting"" is highly scalable, getting even better once more people use it. I'd say even the coordicite happens and it gets battle tested enough it's a great competitor to the others, like NANO, FANTOM, Hedera Hashgraph, etc DAG technology is highly interesting but it does beg the question *if so little verifications are needed per transaction, then wouldn't hundreds or shards or layers do the same*?

TRX I won't bother with and I don't know enough about cosmos or avalanche.

For what it's worth I'm personally not really into chain politics but am most excited by the ""small"" improvements and technologies. For example bullitproofs, Schnorr signatures or MimbleWimble (a fairly recent thing that improves privacy *while decreaing data* as apposed to Ring-CT like in Monero). The coins above do different strategies in the way we handle data, it's up to the use case where it may be important.
I don't know exactly  how this related to these exact products 100%, but things to look for

-consensus mechanism - proof of work is the most decentralized but slowest, proof of stake next, and delegated proof of stake the least decentralized but cheapest and fastest. Eos is dpos, eth is pow, eth 2 will be pos. I believe the rest there are either pos or dpos

Cosmos for instance is a data aggregator of sorts I believe.

-smart contracts - honestly can be used for most things. Including decentralized web. But honestly that'll probably be on a project that is focused on it, because that's a big deal. Right now, you can host your site ok ipfs using file coin or storj, then ""point"" to it using a website URL or even a .eth address. I'm sure even better solutions are on the way.

I THINK polkadot and Ava are eth layer 2, so they still need SOME stuff on the eth chain, slowing them down?

Eos is released in full over a year, with a ram and cpu renting system (you stake eos to get a part of the network, or you can rent out your ram and cpu)

Ada I believe is still ""all hype"" but has proven that their smart contracts will work. Still surprised to see it that high (I hodl it too) when there are others that are already doing smart contracts live, like ardor, that are way down.

Swaps are big right now, along with dex, essentially decentralized exchanges and swaps so you don't have to give your private keys up to an exchange, and then that exchange just disappears or gets hacked. There IS a chance of a smart contract being hacked in a dex , it can happen too. Idex, binance dex, ardor dex, trust wallwt, , sushi swap, uni swap, and so on.
AVAX (avalanche) is a rewrite ~~clone~~ of ethereum with a different concensus model. The ""avalanche"" consensus model basically boils down to every node being a yes man to the majority. 

They cloned uniswap, calling it pangolin. Its supposed to have way less gas fees, but the first few days pangolin was live their network crashed, and then they put on the pangolin site that it was ""network congestion"". Their concensus model broke, not at the core, but it broke. I know there's a bunch of smart people that work on it, but it's not battle tested, it's essentially a clone of ethereum, and if it came out 2 years ago would have been a real challenger but I think ethereum has the mass infrastructure around it. Like, technically, if everything goes right, avax is supposed to be a lot faster than eth, but by the time they get momentum and their network/pangolin has some stable time under it's belt, eth layer 2 and eth2 will be way ahead.
In a nutshell most want to be faster/more energy efficient/greener than Ethereum/Bitcoin. Iota actually targets a different use-case, whilst the others aim to be deflationary versions of the existing blockchains, possibly linked to being an ""Oracle"", ""Dex"", ""DeFi"", or something else...

DOT - markets itself as Eth 2.0, solving some scalability problems and fee issues and learning the lessons of Ethereum, but starting from a clean slate ... I was considering investing but Eth 2.0 should resolve the major issues with Ethereum today. Not only that but Solidity is already the most popular programming language and most widely accessed blockchain .. so DOT is more of a hedge against DOT (if you ask me). ""Polkadot is a network protocol that allows arbitrary data—not just tokens—to be transferred across blockchains.""

Cardano - PoS, sustainable, scalable blockchain. I just reviewed their website. They make claims their blockchain is great/amazing, but I can't tell from their website what makes them unique/standout. I'm sure someone can fill in the gap. Its been around a few years now. Looks like an Ethereum competitor to me. Swiss based, research driven.

IOTA - looked into it a while back - uses/used the ""Tangle"" mechanism to validate transactions. Aimed at being an IoT blockchain. The tangle mechanism is what made it unique. Instead of 2n+1 nodes validating a transaction you just needed 2 or more nodes to verify a transaction (or something like that) for it to be considered valid. This makes it fast and scalable, but very much less secure. Apparently capable of 10,000 Txn/s

EOS has a number of (20?) master nodes validate transactions .. attempting to make it more scalable/greener. Ethereum competitor. 1000+ Txn/s

Tron - DEX - Decentralised Exchange. looks like its trying to do a lot of things .. staking, some relation to DeFi. 2000 Txn/s

Avalanche - from what I can see on their website its another ethereum competitor. 4500 Txn/s

Atom - some links to DeFi, >2000 Txn/s, DApps - another ethereum competitor but more links to other blockchain tech.

I'm sure some supporters of the various coins will be along to fill in the gaps :) All are live today and available for use as far as I'm aware.
ETH is working TODAY.  Really working,  not just a poc.
Why not review Tron? Just curious.
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IOTA is changing a bit in the next few weeks, it's worth looking into as this is a new beginning, a lot of the original solution is being rewritten for ease of use and adoption. Iota will end up being a highly scalable, secure, partition-tolerant, fast, feeless DLT.
Cardano is just the best project!!
Way better than shitty Polkadot!
Coat me  7 bucks to move 20 bucks of eth last night that I found on an old drive...... I'm starting to move in to VET, should be a huge winner this year
Trying to extract all that information from a single thread in this sub is not going to work in my opinion. Instead, I'd suggest you to look into the already well nourished sources of information that are already out-there, and use reddit for more specific questions. Most of these projects provide their own documentation (which is in general quite complete). And there are many good quality blog posts covering most of what you are asking.
thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing!
No difference, ETH is a tiny nerd project, others just scams.
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One of the better explanations I've seen with a good amount of info on several projects, thank you for this!
Just a quick correction: ETH is limited to anything that compiles down to EVM bytecode - the main alternative to Solidity is Vyper.
This is very useful thanks. Could you also give us a summary on Algorand?🙏
To add: IOTA uses the tangle and is feeless transactions. There are no miners. Tangle approach makes it so that blocks can expand in the hypothesis. Currently, without chrysalis 1.5 upgrade due in March, is limited in exchanges and tps due to some poor initial design on one time signatures making their protocol hard to manage. They will remove this at Chrysalis 1.5 and will now have reusable address.
Check kadena, layer 1 state pow sharding, it solves the centralization, security, scalability problem, stuar haber, most cited person inbitcoin whitepaper is part of kadenas team
A bit late, but I would not say that PoS on Ethereum can become more centralized, as it most definitely will become less.

Currently there are even issues with centralizing mining, as it requires hardware which is a big barrier to entry. Also, mining is more efficient in larger scales. Additionally, mining pools end up with a lot of power and is inherently a flawed mechanic.

PoS has less restrictions on hardware, and non-custodial mining pools will lower the barrier even more. In the future, people will be able to PoS validate with their phone and a small sum.
"" You can lower the required amounts of nodes or split the network/transactions itself to offload the needed throughput but you can't magically eliminate it""

Avalanche achieves consensus without requiring nodes to communicate to every other node, which is precisely why it can achieve higher node count at high tps.
Very helpful, thanks!
PoW is the most centralized consensus. It’s not even close
Check kadena, layer 1 state sharding pow, so it is scalable plus keeping pow security and decentralization like btc, stuar haber, more cited person in bitcoins whitepaper is part of the team, they are launching a dex also, this month. Kadena scaled from 10 tp 20 chains last summer...proving the ability to scale when needed
Was reading into the avalanche consensus. Very interesting, thanks for the info!
Avalanche is not a clone of Ethereum, its C-chain is EVM compatible. Those are completely different things.
You talked about dot and solidity, dot is going to be using solidity through its parachains (possibly plasm and moonbean). Not sure how solidity being popular would be negative for dot. Dot doesn’t have a smart contract language, they use solidity (I mean the guy behind building Dot and Solidity is literally the same person). Substrate is for building parachains and other things as far as I know.  
    
Polkadot complements eth. You forget that the guy that literally made solidity is the one behind polkadot.
Great info, thank you!
Check kadena, layer 1 state sharding pow, so it is scalable plus keeping pow security and decentralization like btc, stuar haber, more cited person in bitcoins whitepaper is part of the team, they are launching a dex also, this month. Kadena scaled from 10 to 20 chains last summer...proving the ability to scale when needed
Mate, it's not.

They asked eth 2.0 for a reason. I'm not paying $50 for a single transaction or smart contract
The fees aren't working for me.
I dunno man, I'm like not using it as much as I want to, and I want to, because of fees. Instead I'm also exploring alternatives, while keeping a main stack in eth.
[https://medium.com/coinmonks/unhyped-comparison-of-blockchain-platforms-679e122947c1](https://medium.com/coinmonks/unhyped-comparison-of-blockchain-platforms-679e122947c1)   



This article is way better than the vague and biased responses you are getting here.   

   

Mind, I don't think it's the best article, it misses some things in some projects, it seems it might be a bit biased. But overall, there's way more factual information about all these projects than in this thread.
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Iota mostly seems like a marketing project tbh
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I tried to give a non-marketing approach, actually didn't even answer the questions you had directly;


>What problems is the project attempting to solve?
>How does the project plan to solve these problems? ie What are the primary goals of the project?
>What is the current state and ETA of a functional release of the project?
>In what ways is the project similar or dissimilar to other similar projects?
>What are the pros and cons of the project as compared to others? Especially considering fees, confirmation/transaction time, and energy efficiency.

Since they can theoretically all be low fee/high tps and do similar things, it's just a question of which aspects to push more than others. Once we have ETH 2.0 they are all non-mining so energy efficient. IOTA is the only 0 fee guaranteed one and most efficient one, but that doesn't mean it's a clear winner. Their personal goals are mostly what the developing company behind them does (like Cardano pushing for African adoption) it has little to do with the tech. Same in fees/speed, does a governance vote push for blocklimit increases or do they prefer security/more validators? It's not a simple comparison and often marketing. An advertised 1m tps *while being just decentralized/secure* is simply impossible, always realize it's about trade-offs.
Sorry I don't know much about Algorand
How is the network integrity secured if there are no fees for transactions or mining rewards?
Forgot IOTA, added it in!
Dude shut the hell up. You’ve commented this same shitcoin shill on every reply in this thread. Your profile history is only comments shilling this garbage. 

Go away.
I'm practice yes, but technically it is decentralized completely.

It's just that the necessary work the prove means that a small number of massive farms end up doing it.
With pos nobody can force you to sell, plus you sleep on your staking rewards becoming even more centralized, with pow you have electricity and hardware costs , so you need to sell to cover those costs becoming more decentralized
Interesting I'll look thanks
Something for people to keep in mind when complaining about ETH fees:

If a chain with 100x less traffic/users/validators is promising 1,000x higher transaction rates, that either means the tech is 100,000 times better, or 100,000 times less secure/decentralized. And frankly, it's not the former. ETH has a ton of brilliant people working on it the right way. Why would I believe that a much smaller team can accomplish the same goals in a quarter the time, without sacrificing security/decentralization?
try looking into binance smart chain
Thanks, really, if you've any other recommendations for reading I'm super keen to nerd out :)
This is correct. Iota is a case study on just how far bold claims and an optimistic roadmap can get you.
I like your explanations! Can you do hedera hashgraph, too?
Lol, your last sentence sounds very much like Radix. They claim to be infinitely scalable while being more secure and decentralised...
No worries, tx for your speedy reply though.
I was going to ask the same question.   Algo is one that I’ve come to obsess about.   I’m relatively new and seem to be very impressionable... have found myself in Algo echo chamber of folks all say HODL because it’s the best tech for many use cases:  institutional and CBDC.   They seem to be led by true crypto a-listers.  So, I’ve put about 25% of crypto holdings into Algo...  

At the same time, I’m trying to figure out two things:   1) What are the factors that lead a “superior product” to lose in Crypto?   VHS beat Betamax because of industry relationships (which in turn fueled marketing).   Inside the Algo echo chamber their is much talk about Algo’s MIT connections and the connections of Algo leadership to key CBDC players and institutional folks (Visa, etc).   (My mastery of details here is lacking, but i can loop back).   2) Is the play Algo is making essentially something that I would consider evil? “Evil” being shorthand for what I don’t want based on some core values.   I heard Eric Vorhees describe the potential for CBDCs to be totally dystopian and I wonder if Algo would have the same dynamics as what was described above for Hashgraph.

/u/TheRealMotherofOP/, your posts are the bomb!  I’d love to eventually hear your thoughts on Algorand if you learn more over time.   (New to actually participating on Tedfit so I’m not sure how to monitor any posts you make on a topic).  

Thanks in any case for all the amazing information and insight you’ve shared.   VERY helpful!
Proof of work, you have to confirm 8 other transactions now.
The coordinator blocks any attempted double-spends.
You should investigate, i will help you if you have a question, no negativity, peace✌
WTH is that supposed to mean? In practice it is centralized but in theory it's not?

Is that what you're trying to say?

Well i stand my case. Look at the real world, look at how btc is more centralized every day. PoW tends towards more centralization. It's in its very nature. The more power you got, the more coins you mine
No problen, if you have any question, let me know
The information about how Dot and Ada work is not hidden. We know they can work way faster than Eth lol, and they scale even better..

That's literally why Eth2 is being done, to be in that level of speed. You can read about the technical side of it if you are in doubt, your comment makes sense if you are just ignoring the data.   



Here you have a good article comparing them:   

[https://medium.com/coinmonks/unhyped-comparison-of-blockchain-platforms-679e122947c1](https://medium.com/coinmonks/unhyped-comparison-of-blockchain-platforms-679e122947c1)   

   

You can go to the speed comparison part.
I have qualms about CeDeFi, CeDexs, but I do own some and have been using it now
It's a shame Iota's got this rep, hopefully in the coming weeks the update will be released which will show it's not just a marketing exercise.
Warning about Hashgraph, it's ""open-review"" instead of open-source and patented, meaning they can (and probably will) sue others trying to copy it. People that are a fan of Hedera claim this is beneficial due to there not being forked into many shitcoins but I see this is unequivocal centralization. That, and a For-profit company behind it is an instant nono from me, however I was subbed to their subreddit and have been studying the tech as that part was interesting. I don't like their counsil structure either, even though there are term-limits it's still a collection of (greedy) companies who will undoubtedly vote for things that make them money (not that that's different from miner persee). Then there is also it's ""regulatory compliance"" which seems nice to avoid shady stuff or bans which are currently targeting for example privacy coins, however imo that's very anti cryptocurrency as I actively try to avoid KYC/AML etc. Crypto should be about freedom not replacing fiat with a similar system. If people doubt Ripple, than this is much worse. Yes, you probably notice I'm biased on this one by now so let's get into the unbiased stuff;

In a nutshell, it's kinda like NEO's consensus (Byzantine-fault tolerance, with 2/3's of the vote) except made an a DAG like Nano/fantom/etc instead of a blockchain. Instead of *delegated* it's *asynchronous*, meaning the consensus is reached in an order (first A then B etc) instead of coming to consensus collectively. In terms of the actual data it splits it a layers too but also among ""individuals"", instead on verifing on multiple nodes it ""gossips"" as they call it themselves to check others. In ELI5: imagine sending a letter across the world, it leaves the postoffice after it's checked and gets send to the next who also checks it and so on. It doesn't need to be send back for further (re)checking which is that case in blockchains. This makes it lots faster (hence high tps) it may be secure enough, but I'd argue it is prone to censorship as the counsil can delete your files or smart contracts. In terms of programing it seems rather limited, last time I read about it was just solidity (like eth) not sure if that's still true. 

Interesting stuff, I'd love to see a modified version of the Hashgraph that has no counsil but instead an open-to-all version of joining consensus, sadly due to the patents we won't ever see that.
I probably won't look into it anytime soon, there are just soo many projects out there and learning about them all is too much. I actually even know too little about the ones I think I know much about. 

>What are the factors that lead a “superior product” to lose in Crypto

In a technical sense *very little* most change features that boost something while making other lacking. There are improvements for sure but you can only optimize data by so much, everything else not ""improving"" but *changing* the structure. Reality is, that most people don't even care about any of it and just buy into hype/marketing. So I can't advise anything financial as there I know just as little as anyone else, I wouldn't know what goes up or down in value. 

>Algo’s MIT connections and the connections of Algo leadership to key CBDC players and institutional folks (Visa, etc).

This is something I don't really want to bother with as it's what the company does, not what the DLT does. Similary Vechain or Ripple doesn't excite me at all but they do have a strong company making use of it, which makes the value go up. To me that's just investing in a company not in a decentralized project. So if you're looking at tips to make your portfolio go up I'm not the right person to ask. 

Fun fact, VHS vs Betamax wasn't just superior quality as Betamax also just didn't fit long 1 hour+ movies, it was much more doomed than what people think.
Up to 8. If there aren't 8 transactions to confirm due to a dip in usage, your transaction can still be verified as long as you verify a mathematically determined amount of other transactions.
And the more you care about protecting the integrity of the network. At bitcoin's scale and hash rate competition, miner consolidation is natural and the miners effectively begin with PoS inventives given their huge capex outlays.
I have been eyeing iota. Can you sell me miota over hbar, though? I feel like it’s time for eth killers, and short term iota could do well and longer term it will be hbar, and I’m a long term holder, but I am willing to have my mind changed.
Thank you so much for answering. 

So do you feel like the parts that are patented would give it an edge over coins like nano? Like what about it is so fancy that it needed to be patented? Is it the only one that does the gossiping? You said IOTA might not be secure enough. Would HBAR have this problem? Is what is patented the part that “solves the trilemma”. I have bought in to hbar a modest amount on the advice of someone close to me, he used those words, but I want to get outside opinions as well. 

I’m new to investing in crypto, and the “this is not what crypto is all about” type arguments are interesting but I’m not sure if it’s relevant to me, because I’m not your average crypto-libertarian. I’m just a person that wants to invest some of their money, and feels like stocks could crash soonish and inflation is a risk, so I’d like to be diversified. I’m also fascinated by the tech but it’s all quite new to me. I just spent a bunch of time last night learning all about the BCH fork and the fights about block size and such around that. I wonder, if the many people like you that won’t buy hbar because of ideology will actually keep the price from rising. Institutions like huge companies getting together in governing councils have a lot of power, and enterprise customers, who like the stability that patents and councils offer, actually using the network could drive the price up even if current crypto investors don’t get on board for ideological reasons, no? If it keeps out the pump and dump for the early phases, it could even be a benefit, perhaps? 

I don’t want to be in an echo chamber, though. I am looking to poke holes in it, so I don’t get burned. In the hbar circles, they will say the FUD is all because people heavily invested in Bitcoin or Eth are scared of what hedera can do. I feel like there’s usually more to it than that. The ideological differences do seem like they could explain it though. Not afraid it will outcompete in a vacuum, because you could just buy in when you see that, but possibly afraid “not free” coins might push out “free” coins. 

I’m actually ideological, too. I want environmentally sound coins to win out, but it doesn’t have to be this one if others are equally efficient. I can move to iota or nano or whatever will work without the Proof of Waste that powers BTC.
That fact IS fun.  Thanks!   

I really was interested in your tech view of Algo. They claim to have the best solve for the trilemma of security, decentralization and scalability.   Just was wondering the extent which that’s true and, really, what it’s worth.   Founder has a Turing...  (can you get one of those in Marketing?) but I don’t know if he got it for this work or something unrelated

Thanks anyhow
Well the feeless part is what sets it apart as it opens up totally new use cases including non-token data security.
>So do you feel like the parts that are patented would give it an edge over coins like nano? Like what about it is so fancy that it needed to be patented?

What give it an edge is that NANO isn't ""smart"", as in no smartcontracts. As a currency alone NANO is much better though. I'd say the patents are simply because they are for-profit, not that its any special. NANO and IOTA both have very innovative DAG's as well. Their argument of being anti-fork is kinda nonsense considering BTC just hit a trillion marketcap despite hundreds of clones existing. Open-source tech has created lots of Innovation. 

>You said IOTA might not be secure enough

Because they haven't killed the centralized coordinator, once that happens we can see the Tangle in full action whether it works. The math checks out but can't be sure unless we see it right? Hedera fits only 2 out of 3 in the ""trilemma"", it may be secure but it sure isn't decentralized enough. 

>because I’m not your average crypto-libertarian. I’m just a person that wants to invest some of their money, and feels like stocks could crash soonish and inflation is a risk, so I’d like to be diversified. I’m also fascinated by the tech but it’s all quite new to me. I just spent a bunch of time last night learning all about the BCH fork and the fights about block size and such around that. I wonder, if the many people like you that won’t buy hbar because of ideology will actually keep the price from rising.

Okay first of all here, this is currently my third bullrun so I've been here a quite a few years. I've learned to let go of the idea that fundamentals = worth investing. Sound ridiculous, but let's be honest the market is highly irrational so my opinion of Hedera is irrelevant, I'd still trade it if I have to. I think ADA for example is worth way too much, since it hasn't even launched smartcontracts yet but people think hype is worth 30 billion. Or currently BNB being 50b despite being centralized. 

Secondly; this isn't necessarily a libertarian fantasy either, think for example file storage, why wouldn't you just use Google drive or Dropbox? Centralized companies do that far better, it isn't worth investing in something that doesn't do it better than a centralized counterpart. If money is the only reason why not just stay with stocks? It's like the common saying; ""*if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear*"" Privacy is a right not just a thing for criminals. Similarly being censorship resistant is important not just for those those doing illegal stuff. We will eventually get decentralized social media, not because you want to be anonymous but because *your info* should be *yours only* and not for a large company to sell. 

>I don’t want to be in an echo chamber, though. I am looking to poke holes in it, so I don’t get burned. In the hbar circles, they will say the FUD

Keep in mind every community does this, mostly because they have a financial interest themselves. It's important to make up your own mind and even when you acknowledge downsides its not bad to still invest. I'm not telling you to stay away financially from hbar, in fact i think it may be a solid buy if money is all you're after. The market is irrational and people with will continue to advertise instead of analyze and especially spin narratives. 

>I’m actually ideological, too. I want environmentally sound coins to win out

This one is a hot topic! But even here you can spin the narrative, for example Bitcoin is run on electricity = green, the fact that lots of powerplants (mostly China) use fossil fuels is the power plants fault not Bitcoin. Ergo, Bitcoin will eventually be completely green too. The bottem line is that people will say lots to protect their investment, this is mainly why I'm here being interested in the tech and leave my financial interest aside. Hope you find your own conclusions and don't fall for any false marketing!
>Founder has a Turing

I'm not sure what you mean with this, is this referring to turning completeness? If so I'd recommend reading stuff about it (Alan Turing and its Turing test), its really interesting. Ethereum is Turing complete whereas Bitcoin is not, I'd say most ETH competitors are too btw. 

In regards to the trilemma lots of projects claim to have solved it but it always turns out to be trade-offs. If you wanna see the trade-offs in action just look at Bitcoin and it's ""scalable"" forks, where Bitcoin is slow but the network rarely sees issue and the BSV fork has seen lots of orphaned or reorged blocks where boasting ""limitlessly scalable"". As a user you won't really notice it but in the trilemma that's a security/decentralization issue. Worst case some networks even go down completely (XLM and iota for example went down for hours).
Like hedera consensus service? I think that’s non-token data security. Costs some small fraction of a cent per transaction.
I’m not really sure what I mean either...  he won a “Turing award” and a Godel Prize.   Sounds sort of like a “Bear badge” for smart people.    

In case you’re interested (and as a last ditch effort to lure you in), here’s  a description of how past efforts fail to solve trilemma (as you mention) and why Algo’s “pure proof of stake” (drumroll) solves it.   https://www.algorand.com/resources/blog/algorands-core-technology-in-a-nutshell

Sounds Algorgasmic (ha! get it?) to me but I’ve got no tech chops.    People say “do your research” but I’m not equipped.
My brother explained it as like sending just the memo line in a crypto tx, no coin"
The Problem with Smart Contracts Today (part 1 of an X-part series),115,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/q251v9/the_problem_with_smart_contracts_today_part_1_of/,"Indeed, the tools have to be designed for the task, and not the task worked around through all kinds of complexities to fit the tools... Their approach seems much more intuitive and elegant, I am looking forward to see the impact that will have!! DeFi can't thrive with so much loopholes, a solution to that is a specialized dev environment, hope they can push this to adoption!
Radix is a bunch of very bright people doing phenomenal work, standing on the shoulders of satoshi and vitalik and, imo, are able to reach the ultimate goal: global adoption of a DLT as our financial L1 protocol. Their ingenious approach to smart contracts is one highlight of their work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-EM8tkz7gI
wow, now this is informative
This sounds like something that could be built on top of ethereum instead of being an entirely separate crypto. As an analogy, not every programming language has to create a custom CPU to run it. For example, ReactJS (basically its own language) transpiles to Javascript, which runs on the browser, which compiles to Assembly. So in the same way, why not create an intuitive smart contract programming language (with reusability, safety, composability etc) that compiles to Solidity?
Just curious what your thoughts are on Polkadot and substrate to help with ""buildability"" of blockchains. Then there are current polkadot projects working on WASM and OVM (astar network) integration.
why the is this post now waiting mod approval. the guy made great points.
Really cool article, lays out the problem well. I'm excited to see what Radix is all about
Interesting article from Messari about smart contract platforms: [https://messari.io/article/to-evm-or-not-to-evm-that-is-the-question](https://messari.io/article/to-evm-or-not-to-evm-that-is-the-question)

""*As of this writing, 70% of the top ten Smart Contract Platforms are EVM compatible while 30% are not.The EVM is a ‘virtual machine’ that runs smart contracts, first on Ethereum, and now on a panoply of emerging side-chains and L2s. You can think of it like the Android OS - it runs your favourite apps on Google phones, as well as a wide range of other manufacturers.* ***Why is this detail relevant to evaluating Smart Contract Platforms? Who cares?***""

""***Developers care.*** *And developers, as Steve Balmer exhorts us, are the key to success.* ***If you are building a platform, your primary users are developers*** *- they create the attractions that bring users to your theme park. This makes platform choice a critical variable for developers to decide upon from the outset.*""
Video to accompany mentioned blog post:

In a follow-up to our recent blog article ""The Problem with Smart Contracts Today"", **CEO Piers Ridyard and Head of Product Matthew Hine discuss the development Scrypto, and how Radix is changing the way we think about Smart Contracts**: [https://youtu.be/d-EM8tkz7gI](https://youtu.be/d-EM8tkz7gI)
Atomic composability is a tough nut to tackle. I'll read up on the specific solution proposed here and see if I've got some hard questions to ask about that Scrypto thing.
What about this:

https://blog.starton.io/connect-twitter-to-the-avalanche-blockchain-with-starton-4853235cd8d0
[deleted]
What about how LTO network approaches this?
But harmony has evm compatible contracts with infinite scalability
Kind sad it's another post that goes over BTC and ETH and disregards ADA. Hope it'll be mentioned in the next part, as it's more relevant than ever.
First thing first, Ethereum contracts are composable; you can call other contracts. The thing is that *you mostly don’t want to do that* because of gas fees. Not because the gas costs are high or not, but because you would make the contract cheaper to use by not calling an external contract, thus resulting in devs intentionally avoiding it.
meh, i'm bullish on Cardano and Ergo, they have solved these problems already and have smart contracts in prod. Cardano is waiting on some backend apis to make it easier to interact with Plutus but any engineer worth their salt could do it now.
**While** you are right that this approach to smart contracts: Asset-oriented, can be adopted by other platforms

You **have to keep in mind that** every layer of a DLT is interconnected with each other:  
Network layer - Application layer - Consensus layer - Data layer

This makes it **very tricky to** build in a solution that wasn't intended in the original design

Also, the **programming language** compiles down to Finite State Machines which is what the **execution environment** then runs, this is in part responsible for the extra \[**SECURITY**\]

**Existing platforms can then choose 1)** to give on up on this extra security given by the Radix Engine approach to executing smart contract code **or 2)** try to build it in which will then impact all existing dApps already deployed on the platform

=> (!) What I'm trying to say it's not only about the programming language but also about the execution environment that executes what has been expressed in the language  
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) would have need to be replaced or refactored

Another example is \[**COMPOSABILITY**\], this feature is not only a product of modelling objects on the platform as assets but also made possible by:  
\* the way state is stored (cfr. **data-layer**)   
&   
\* how consensus is performed on that state (cfr. **consensus-layer**)

Many of the scaling solutions do not allow for atomic/synchronous **composability across shards** because of their data-and -consensus-layers  
=> (!) It is not possible to perform synchronous consensus on state located in different parts of the network, whether that be in different layer-1 shards or layer-2 scaling instances (e.g: rollups)

**Full composability**, across the entire platform, is sacrificed  
These platforms do still have **local composability**, within a shard or L2 instance

To learn about the data -and -consensus-layers of Radix's Cerberus-based ledger:  
[https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i)
I think that Ethereum sharding (needed for scaling) will break composability, which is pretty imoportant for defi. Radix claim to have a consensus mechanism that allows composability with sharding.
Hi, the new thing that Polkadot does to my knowledge is that they use **heterogenous sharding** instead of **homogenous** sharding

=> Meaning, that their shards (para-chains) can have completely different setups and thus be better suited for different use cases

(!) But let's think about the  ""ultimate"" goal here  
What is a ledger in essence? A transactional system  
What are the biggest markets that have a transactional nature? Finance & Logistics   
So we are talking about assets (financial (e.g: currency, stocks, ...) or logistical (e.g: energy, machines, ...))

""*The beauty of a shared platform for digital assets and applications that work with those assets is that they can seamlessly combine*""

Polkadot's para-chain breaks that seamless combining (ie. atomic/sync composability)   
Polkadot founder answer a composaiblity question from the audience: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IoUZdDi5Is&t=2836s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IoUZdDi5Is&t=2836s)

Polkadot does not support the ultimate goal here, it might work well for other use cases ofc
Not sure either ...

I know it's highlighting a specific project, but how can I communicate points that are made by a certain project without referencing them? :( This is completely different than shilling...

In any case, there are now 3 parts talking about this subject matter

Problem: [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/the-problem-with-smart-contracts-today)

Solution (on the level of the **execution environment**): [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/radix-engine-v2-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-environment](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/radix-engine-v2-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-environment)

Solution (on the level of the **programming language** which enables devs to leverage what has been enabled in the execution environment): [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/scrypto-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-language](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/scrypto-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-language)
**Cross-shard atomic composability** is largely situated on lower layers: **data- and consensus**\-layers

The **application** layer (Scrypto) on top then leverages that but the dApp dev does not have to be aware of all that lower level stuff like which shard am I in, do I have to lock certain state until something completes on another shard, etc

This is the most accessible entry-point for your research into composability:

Cerberus infographics: [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/cerberus-infographic-series-chapter-i)

Then there's a blog post, whitepaper, formal math proof and a prototype implementation on the Radix researchnetwork Cassandra

For those wondering: ""*What is DeFi composability and why does it matter?*"": [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/what-is-defi-composability-and-why-does-it-matter](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/what-is-defi-composability-and-why-does-it-matter)
Avalanche uses the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

All problems the article talks about apply to Avalanche as well
Are Elrond tokens modelled as updating a bunch of balances or as distinct assets in their own right?
Can you talk me through their approach?
The problem is how smart contracts are modelled and executed like on Ethereum (via Solidity & EVM)

So Harmony running the EVM is prone to the same problems mentioned in the article
Yes, the **point is more how good do Eth smart contracts** (including tokens which are also smart contracts) **lend themselves to be composed together?**

**1)  Extra complexity to composability because of shared dependancy**

Eth tokens are implemented as a list of balances in an ERC-20 smart contract  
When an Eth token interacts, that smart contract becomes a bottleneck  
The same type of Eth token but with a different owner again depends on that same, shared ERC-20 smart contract

<-> Compare this with a situation where tokens actually are standalone, they don't have shared dependancies with other tokens of the same type

Composing with these 'standalone' type tokens is far more simple because all the rest that doesn't matter isn't in play.  
This complexity is illustrated by the contract calls that happen with Uniswap and the tokens involved.

Blog part 2 will probably explain the proposal of a solution to this counter-intuitivity that comes from modelling tokens as balances instead of assets

**2) Composability across the different parts of the platform**

ERC-20 smart contracts that govern the tokens of all the holders lives on a specific part of the network (e.g: an L1 shard or an L2 scaling instance)  
=> How well can they be composed across these different parts of the network when you know that consensus is performed in that specific part?

<-> What if you have state scattered across the network, and consensus is not performed per part of the network but per collection of state that can come together ad hoc?  
=> Composability is retained, just like the composability when all state is located in the same part of the network
I'm a fan of both of these, but I don't see how either solve the problem at hand, especially cardano, whose contracts look less intuitive than any so far (although admittedly I don't code in Haskell, this was just based on a few examples I saw)
> What I'm trying to say it's not only about the programming language but also about the execution environment that executes what has been expressed in the language

I disagree with this because any Turing-complete language can be transformed to any other Turing-complete language. There are performance impacts for these transformations, but it's always possible at least. Eg you can run python code in the browser simply by writing a python interpreter in javascript. Though there are cases where the performance impacts are prohibitively expensive. Bitcoin is an example where scalability seems pretty much doomed. Ethereum on the other hand is willing to evolve so it's hard to say.

All the other stuff you touched on is interesting but I will have to do more research to respond to it fully. The cerberus articles seem like a great read though.

However, my overall contention with the general crypto landscape is how everybody seems intent on building from scratch. It's like every crypto is intentionally incompatible with other cryptos. It's all so fragmented. I'm not so sure what the solution is but I am sure that fragmentation drives developers away and makes it hard for consumers to believe in the technology. I mean, if the community is so turbulent and chaotic, it's no wonder the market is so volatile imo.

So in the end, it simply may not be worth the performance gains of switching to a different engine, if it means abandoning all the work and investment made on a previous one. And to clarify, I'm not arguing for any specific crypto, I'm arguing against fragmentation. So I'd say if Radix can figure out a way to integrate their changes into an existing and established engine like EVM or Cardano or something, while preserving existing dapps and data, then that would be ideal.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but composability is a high level language feature, which impacts how programs are _written_. Sharding and scaling are low level implementation details that impact how a program is _run_. I don't think these affect each other very much. You can have a language with horrible composability but the interpreter scales really well. You can also have a language with great composability but the interpreter scales horribly.
It's possible to create a chain with avalanche that uses a different VM
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True but is there any solutions? What about cosmos does that fix this?
Marlow is literally just drag-and-drop to build smart contracts.  Not sure you can make simple smart contracts any simpler.
Composability (to my understanding) is mainly a property that is sustained at the data- and -consensus-layers

The application layer interacts with those layers so it is still relevant for composability

Different approaches are better or worse suited to enable composability

You can see this by reading about the uniswap example in the article:

Ethereum and most (all?) other smart contract platforms = balance-oriented  
Radix = asset-oriented

Look at **tokens**:

An **ERC-20** token is not really a token you own in the strictest sense, it's a balance to your name in a smart contract that keeps track of all balances of that specific token

A **Radix** token is more like a token you really/physically own, it's not stored in a place shared with other people's tokens

Look at **composability** (interaction of assets and/or applications):

It's much more simple if you just have the **relevant assets** that you bring together  
(!) instead of **the needed assets and dependancies on other assets (balances)**

In the last case we are bringing in unnecessary complexity (variables/dependancies we don't need for the combination we want to do)

The same is the case for **scalability** by the way: doing things that are not necessary  
=> Ordering unrelated transactions that have no dependancy with each other and thus can not cause a double spend if not ordered between each other

(!) Impacting the **ability to parallelize**  
<=> I have to wait for my payment of my cinema ticket to go through because other unrelated transaction were submitted ahead of me like you paying for your summer holiday, even though these transactions are not related...

If **state is stored in a more smart manner, then consensus/validation** of unrelated tx can be performed side by side simultaneously  
This is not the case in blockchains, DAGs, ...
In this context it means to ability to feed the output of one smart contract transaction into another as input. It's the basis of a lot of defi stuff, yearn, convex etc. This works on Ethereum currently because everything is executed in one ""process"", but Ethereum sharding will apparently break this, as things will be executed across different shards. Radix claim to have solved this problem.
True, the problem is that this asset-oriented approach is completely new, the programming language and execution environment (VM) are still in development

And the application layer is only part of the problem set that scaling DLTs out there struggle with
This still leaves it open if a native token is implemented as balances or assets
It seems like the vast majority of what you are talking about is how contracts are executed, not how they are written. Scability, performance, parallelization, these are all properties of the execution.

As you said

> Different approaches are better or worse suited to enable composability

This is true. Some approaches will be faster than others when running extremely high-level functions composed of other functions. But this is still different from saying that one approach has better ""composability"" than another approach. It's more accurate to say that a one approach handles composition better than the other. Because composability to me still seems like a property of the language, not the execution layer.

And it's an important distinction imo because they can be developed separately. You can design an amazing language without defining how it's run (like how GraphQL was introduced without a working implementation). And you can implement a computer architecture without specifying what programming languages should be run on it.

This is why I was confused. Because OP sounded like they were trying to solve composability, as if existing smart contract languages don't have good syntax for composition. Which I doubt is true because Cardano uses Haskell, which can express many types of complex compositions. But from what you are saying, it seems like OP is more focused on the performance and scalability. So not really about developer experience, but more about user experience. Which is a fair concern.
Composability is different from being able to have multiple processes though right? Javascript is single-threaded, yet it's still very ""composable"". Besides, if all you want is better concurrency, then why not use Cardano, which uses Haskell to write smart contracts, and Haskell supports concurrency
>It's more accurate to say that a one approach handles composition better than the other. Because composability to me still seems like a property of the language, not the execution layer.

I agree with your first sentence but would challenge you on your second.

Composability ultimately comes down to the consensus layer which then goes on to execute if the composition of transactions is validated

Synchronous composability is in play when a group of transactions undergoes consensus in the same consensus operation

Case of a blockchain: A block is a group of transactions, the block undergoes consensus (1 consensus op for all those transactions)

This in the end boils down to being able to perform consensus on state that is related to all those transactions(!) And this is not possible with across shards of a blockchain or across L2 scaling instances for that blockchain (L1)

=> Composability essentially is located on the consensus/execution layers (imo)

How does this tie back to expressing smart contracts?  
It's easier to compose assets and applications together if they can are considered in the programming language as such as well.  
This makes it much easier to reason about them because they intuitively align with the expectation of functionality.

This extra layer of abstraction is not there when simulating assets with balance updates.  
There is no real notion of an asset built in those languages.  
Tokens are not real assets similar to how physical coins/bills behave.

I give you a token is not like I give you a 1$ bill  
It's more like bookkeeping by updating balances of both of us

This makes composability much harder because there are dependancies that shouldn't be there, it should just be about that 1$ bill, not about all the $-balances that other people have

This complexity can be observed when they deep dive in the uniswap implementation with Solidity, running in the EVM.

We have to wait for the second entry in the blog series to learn more about how they built in the notion of assets in Scrypto

To quote Head of Product (discord): ""*But... a little food for thought for now: The problem with Ethereum and Solidity isn't the choice of syntax, or that it's turing complete. It's that it has no built-in notion of assets at all. This is pretty insane when 99% of the use cases for the platform completely revolve around creating, managing, and interacting with assets – and all of the exploits they've encountered have to do with assets ending up in places the developers didn't expect. DeFi is decentralized asset logic! So how do you make assets a first-class feature of the platform so that powerful logic wrapped around those assets, and the security of that logic, is straightforward? Well, that's what we've been putting a lot of thought into....*""

\+ this article dating back from 2019 is also valuable to learn more about this approach: [https://matthewhine.medium.com/radix-engine-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-alternative-477a086ed2c0](https://matthewhine.medium.com/radix-engine-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-alternative-477a086ed2c0)
>It seems like the vast majority of what you are talking about is how contracts are executed, not how they are written. Scability, performance, parallelization, these are all properties of the execution.

How they are executed is of primary importance to enforce how a paradigm wants to model things

The programming language then leverages those concepts

Part of the blog has been released that touches on this: [https://www.radixdlt.com/post/radix-engine-v2-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-environment](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/radix-engine-v2-an-asset-oriented-smart-contract-environment)

Execution env = Radix Engine v2  
Programming lang = Scrypto
Composability with smart contract platforms indeed isn't really about the ability of a programming language to support concurrency.

It's about being able to perform consensus in one go on state that is related to multiple transactions (possibly located in different parts of the network (shards, rollups, ...))

[https://www.radixdlt.com/post/what-is-defi-composability-and-why-does-it-matter](https://www.radixdlt.com/post/what-is-defi-composability-and-why-does-it-matter)

Composability however wasn't the big point of the article, so maybe good to put us back in focus. 

**The big point in my opinion is** that smart contract platforms are mainly used to transact & manipulate assets but the programming paradigms do not have a built-in notion of assets.

**This makes writing logic about these assets so complex.**  
Devs have to write such logic by simulating assets, this decreases **visibility** of the possible behaviour of those assets and makes **reasoning** in that language hard.

Great quote from Head of Product at Radix: ""*But... a little food for thought for now: The problem with Ethereum and Solidity isn't the choice of syntax, or that it's turing complete. It's that it has no built-in notion of assets at all. This is pretty insane when 99% of the use cases for the platform completely revolve around creating, managing, and interacting with assets – and all of the exploits they've encountered have to do with assets ending up in places the developers didn't expect. DeFi is decentralized asset logic! So how do you make assets a first-class feature of the platform so that powerful logic wrapped around those assets, and the security of that logic, is straightforward? Well, that's what we've been putting a lot of thought into....*""

The 2nd entry in that blog series will reveal what work they did to create a notion of an asset, making Scrypto the first asset-oriented programming language"
What's the deal with the Cardano AMM/concurrency controversy?,116,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/pjobqj/whats_the_deal_with_the_cardano_ammconcurrency/,"[removed]
In as simple terms as possible; Eth and Cardano work in different ways. Minswap tried to make a DEX as they would on ETH, this didn’t work. Now they are trying something else. 

Non of this indicates that DEX’es wont work on Cardano, and we don’t have any proof that they will work as well as on ETH.

It might also turn out that the eUTXO model is better for a DEX and DEFI, but we don’t know.

We only know that a DEX build in the same way as Uniswap won’t work.
They have a 4 years plan to fix this, but they need it peer reviewed by 400 scientists around the world first.
🐷
I'm a fan of Cardano, and I'm sure they'll overcome this, but this definitely has shifted my perception of the project a bit.

The Cardano team has marketed itself as ""we've gone slow so that we could do everything right"". But from this concurrency issue, it seems more like Cardano is a massive experiment. Maybe it will work out, and be better than existing chains, or maybe we'll realize that they've made some wrong decisions and it will fail.

Either way, experimentation is good for everyone.
Cardano is creative vaporware
Two decentralized designs for addressing utxo concurrency. Many new techniques and refinements to come...

https://medium.com/meld-labs/concurrent-deterministic-batching-on-the-utxo-ledger-99040f809706

https://github.com/ergolabs/ergo-dex#off-chain-execution
its..BS...Anybody who is creating a utxo can chain another utxo to it as long as they have the transaction id of the first one. It's all deterministic as the transaction id is just a hash of the first utxo. I think the core issue is people trying to do things the exact same way they would on ethereum. You basically can just keep the output utxos in the memory instead of asking the blockchain what they will be. Then you dont need to worry about waiting for new blocks to arrive before firing off new transactions.

Minswap knew this, but still found it worth to release the testnet, to find other bugs.

I dont udnersnatd all the drama, frankly, people in crypto shouldnt bash each other, but work together and engage in meaningful debates....were not going anywhere if we act like this....

There is also a relevant article from Sundae Swap about this I recommend its reading.
If you want to know an/the answer, checkout the Verus project. You can try UTXO-based AMMs that are better than any available on contracts right now on testnet. We already have MEV-resistant, very easy DeFi AMMs, which have been working seamlessly without errors or any performance/scaling issues on testnet for over a year. We also have multi-chain launches, cross-chain sends (easy), and revocable, recoverable addresses/IDs. We have an ETH bridge coming online between testnet and Rinkeby likely this week, and because our transaction model is more efficient than contracts, conversion rates through the Verus protocol AMMs are 0.05%. All of this is very near mainnet, and everything runs on what we call Smart Transactions, which we had developed before the eUTXO paper, but in fact, eUTXOs are quite similar, if not missing some things we felt were important.
It's not a bug... It's feature... Settlement layer is strict and secure and work in a specified way... Of course it's not limited 1tps per block.

You can put multiple UTXOs into one transaction.

But, you as a developer is in charge how you will deal with concurency
Shocking that the Blockchain with no actual product to test has issues the moment they release the first thing. So much for all that time ""doing it right"". In the time Cardano has developed and released this failure of a testnet (1 transaction per block like wtf), NEO has spent one less year and has a fully featured chain with more features than ETH and speeds of 10k TPS
I read a post last night that someone sold off 17mil ADA at around 11.30 PST...after this the whole market appeared to drop. IDK if it was that sale that spooked the market or if that was just a coincidence. 

Anyhow, I did wonder if whoever sold the 17 mil ADA was concerned about rumors (whether true or FUD) and just sold it as it was trading at around $2.80 at the time.
Can't find anything to back up my assumptions - this is the best summary that I saw so far https://medium.com/meld-labs/concurrent-deterministic-batching-on-the-utxo-ledger-99040f809706
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To repeat my other comment, this post suggests 2 ways of addressing it:

1. Fragmenting the liquidity pools, so that there's more than 1 pool that can be accessed each block
2. Using a centralized sequencer

Both of those are bad options, so i'm wondering how else AMMs can be built on Cardano
> Instead, liquidity is fractured among a number of pools (recommended cardano solution)

Don't like this even with great ""front end matching"" of pool swaps.  To have the same liquidity as one large pool, you need to split orders across all available pools which defeats the parallelism attempt.
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Both of these require centralized agents to order, bundle and execute transactions

Transaction ordering is an _incredibly_ lucrative power to hold (see Miner Extractable Value). Today this power is held by miners/validators, so the MEV power is as distributed as much as the miner/validator pool is distributed.

Giving all that power to a single entity definitely seems like a digression from fully decentralized AMM models.
The SundaeSwap post suggests 2 outcomes:

1. Multiple, fragmented liquidity pools
2. A centralized sequencer

Neither solve the problem, and both are a major regression from the AMMs that exist on other chains.

Is there another way to build an AMM that avoids these issues? Everyone seems to be suggesting that there is, but I haven't seen it described yet.
It's almost as if they're just CS101 grads who just learned bubble sort, right?

If they need time to test, then they should be given time to do so rather than be held to held to a schedule that was set just to prove the prediction markets wrong, and probably best not to ridicule them as they struggle to figure out your ecosystem.
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Is it somehow possible to increase the block transactions in Cardano if required eventually?
*Just a newbie question*
Not 1 transaction per block, it's 1 trade per AMM pool per block
What features does it have that ETH does not?
It’s test net. The whole point is to find things that need to be fixed
It was Alex becker and his buddies trying to make a point…
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The authors claim that there is a third option but give absolutely no details on it: 

> We’ve chosen a solution that differs from those above; Very soon we will be ready to pull back the curtain and reveal how it works.

I'm skeptical, but will be impressed if they demo a sound, non-centralized, solution.
****



The fragmenting of liquidity pools seems like a terrible option. Slippage would be insane (as was seen in early small Uniswap pools), order sizes would be limited by mini-pool slippage, arbitrage bots would make a killing just arbing between identical pools, and the number of same-block transactions would be limited by the number of pools (so in order to increase scalability, liquidity would have to be fractured).
More importantly, they failed to mention the other obvious option - to use a semi-decentralized relayer. Which leads me to believe that's what they will do. But this is a very poor solution, for the same way Polygon PoS is a poor solution. This relayer will necessarily be much more centralized than L1, even if it's not fully centralized.
The whole article confused me to be honest. It seems to say that Cardano doesn't have the aforementioned problems, but then it lays out the solutions to the problems that it doesn't have? And the solutions also don't exist yet? The whole thing felt kind of weird to me.
Fragmenting pools is a terrible idea because it makes things less liquid. These protocols live and die by liquidity. That would mean worse prices on every trade.

This seems like a massive oversight but I'm not surprised.... I'm a strong Cardano skeptic because I get major shill vibes from them. i literally have the coin of every major smart contract platform except Cardano. 🤷‍♀️
No idea if this is true or not, but I’ve read statements from various Cardano project teams stating they’ve had decentralized solutions already. I think Ergo was one of the teams that said this?
I like this answer.   


I do however wonder how their bridge will work out to be for EVM contracts, has anyone explored the limitations of translating solidity code to a eUTXO model? 

It seems that re-entrancy would not be an issue, right? given that you are supposedly dealing with completely pure functions. Have you seen any literature on that?
Are these centralized agents though? Take the second example with Ergo...looks like an open system where ""miners"" can earn by executing the dex? Part of the dex fees going to the executers.

Interestingly it looks like even UI of the dex is decentralized. If someone's UI is used they receives part of the fees.
The fragments are supposed to be abstracted away and you will only need to interact with one pool manager, I don't understand how that will affect liquidity. 

Like in Uniswap you also dont use the pair directly and use the router to route your orders.
Give the devs time to develop. It is a new technology it needs time.
Everything we do in the Verus community is 100% open source. Here are our repositories, though many developers, including myself, maintain our own repositories and do PRs or fork into the Verus repositories when systems are ready.
https://github.com/orgs/VerusCoin/repositories
What do you mean by block transactions?
Why? if eutxo can be chained in the same block and AMM pools can have multiple eutxo each, what enforces this limit?
You can simulate smart contracts ahead of time, so you know exactly if they'll succeed, and you can know the fee ahead of time. And native tokens.
>Alex becker

I had to google him as I've never heard of him!  Lol
Yeah, that's what I gathered as well, their solution would be centralized. Otherwise, given that this is an article that is coming as a sort of damage control pr move, why wouldn't they at least hint at their solution? Keeping it 'secret' in this article says to me something along the lines of :   
""We are freaking out, things are on fire, we have been building on false assumptions and sh!t is starting to hit the fan, we hope that we will be able to come up with something soon.. hopefully it works.""
Fragmenting the pools together with the 1tx/block should also make sandwich attacks by validators extremely easy and rewarding. Unlike big pools, you don't need a lot of capital to raise the price before the buy.
I think they phrased it incorrectly, the fragments are just fragments of the reserves. There is still only one pool that you interact with and that pool manages the fragments. At least that is how I am designing mine.

Having multiple pools will just lead to arbitrageurs making bank. They essentially already do that anyway across the different defi pools.

The relationship would be

1. One pool has many fragmented reserves
2. Each of these reserves just store the value of the fragment
3. Only the pool can interact with the reserves
4. Traders would then send their tokens to the pool, the pool will find the best fitting reserve and take the value of the other token to give it to the trader

Point number 4 is the fun part as there is no one solution. What algorithm would you use to split the reserves into fragments? What algorithm will you use to pick the reserve to take out from when a trade happens?
It’s not a problem, because there is a solution. And it goes to another school. In Canada.
It's an oversight that would have been caught way earlier if Cardano built a proof-of-concept instead of publishing peer-reviewed papers in conferences and focused on reality instead if theory. 

You know, prove that things work in practice, actual engineering.
> looks like an open system where ""miners"" can earn by executing the dex?

How do users connect to the ""miners""? What happens if two ""miners"" try to execute at the same time?
Of course!

But the whole point of this sub is to discuss the technical merits of various crypto protocols. Right now I'm just curious if AMMs are _even possible_ on Cardano as it is.
No project has spent more time in the dev phase of smart contracts than Cardano. The fact that they're in this place now after all of that time and peer review is embarrassing, and I think shows that this methodology is a terrible fit for blockchain development (and probably software in general). The fact that Charles has been able to make ""peer review"" into such a strong selling point is a bit crazy.
I agree, I dont udnerstand the downvotes. Concurrency isnt a flaw...just a feature that means things dont work exactly like in Eth, thats it. Gosh crypto is fraught with drama queens.
Regarding the concurrency ""issue"", basically people against Cardano are trying to spread FUD about it. I'm not very deep in understanding Blockchain but i do understand economy and Cardano clearly is growing.
I was just wondering if someone could explain me with clarity about this subject.
I haven't seen an example of an AMM with multiple eutxos that doesn't fracture liquidity, but maybe there's some way to do it
Cant you do that on the testnet?
Just some woke millionaire mfc
I been saying the same thing all yesterday in the cardano sub, and members there are claiming that it's just FUD from eth maximalists. When I pointed out that they were stated by developers, they said that they were just bad developers. I started questioning reality multiple times.

There are only 4 dex devs claiming solutions, and all of them are keeping it under secret. If the solution weren't either super engineered/complex or centralized, they probably wouldn't need to hide it.

Maybe 30% of the members in the sub care about the technology, but the other 70% are way more vocal.
Good question. Not sure but seems like safe/fair/random selection should be achievable. I'd like to know their plan.
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But isn’t the difference that either the throughput or the decentralization is reduced by it, making decentralized scalability required for broad adoption very, very hard? And aren’t those the big promises of crypto?
I looked back at some ergodex blogs but I can't see anything that concretely backs up my point (I thought that the cross chain liquidity would reference but it was just my assumption). I'll shout back if I find something solid, but I'm assuming that the dexes will be able to reference multiple eutxo as a logical single pool in the same way that wallets can do.
As in **end users** will be able to do that without having to use a testnet or getting gas refunds. Imagine that before I submit a transaction, my wallet will know exactly how much it'll cost and whether it'll succeed.
>they said that they were just bad developers.

The common trait of all good. developers is asking questions, especially ""what if"".
The common trait of good PR manager is dodging questions.

Which side are you on?
We will have to wait and see the solutions that the individual teams come up with, but if there was a problem not easily solved that you had a solution for, would you share that idea with your competitors before profiting off of it?
I'm assuming that the ""DEX"" (if you can call it that) is going to run a centralized sequencer for now, since they haven't announced any details about node rotation.
I am pretty sure there will come a decentralized solution.
no, there are on-chain decentralised solutions. Its hard, because of the transaction limit (16 kb or sthg) but doable, plenty of teams are on it. Regardless, the ""centralised"" solution ErgoDEX will be using (bundling off-chain) isnt as bad either, its a decent first step. Bear in mind IOHK is also working on ""concurrency state machines"" that would palliate this. As I say, its all drama, we will have funcioning DEXs and DeFi protocols like any other blockchain, fuck u eth bois for downvoting
Let me know if you find any details about that, I'd love to read about it

Right now, seems like most of the DEXs are claiming they have a ""secret solution""
Very interesting, gunna have to do more research on it.
[https://github.com/ergolabs/ergo-dex/blob/master/img/OffChainExec.jpg?raw=true](https://github.com/ergolabs/ergo-dex/blob/master/img/OffChainExec.jpg?raw=true)

Well that's not how it is shown in this diagram.  Sequencing is done by anyone off-chain, not a specific centralized entity.  There will be x number of bot sequences created for a given batch of transactions, and the ergo miners will select one of the sequences.

In practice, I think the miners will be the ones also running the sequencers.  So miner A will be choosing their own sequence A, miner B choosing their sequence B, etc.  In theory if all ergo miners choose to run sequencer bots then the dex sequencing is as decentralized as the main chain.
What development gives you that assurance?
What are they doing exactly? Is there a theoretical outline that allows us to verify in what direction the decentralized solutions work. Especially if it’s hard, by not giving implementation details you can at least infuse some confidence. Why all the secrecy?
This is the best reference that I could find - theoretical descriptions summarised in a medium blog. https://medium.com/meld-labs/concurrent-deterministic-batching-on-the-utxo-ledger-99040f809706
Ah I read this through another time, and I think I have a better understanding of it now

Seems like it _is_ decentralized, although I'm still not sure how you deal with the issue of multiple bots competing against eachother, I guess it's just first-come, first-serve. This opens up the possibility of MEV, so I'm guessing large pool operators like Binance will end up being the main ""sequencers"".

I'm also curious how this model affects scalability. Typical AMMs only need to execute token transfers, so there's minimal state changes for a trade. This model however requires storing trades on-chain before they can be executed, which makes the trades slightly slower and probably more expensive.
I have done the plutus pioneer program and there lars (the teacher) mentioned the problem and also said from a technical view it is possible. The next cardano era will solve it (basho) or a good dev will do it earlier
Did he give directions to explore?

This is not a good dev issue, this is an architecture/protocol issue. A good dev cannot overcome impossibility.
Look into coming up with new design patterns tailored for a decentralized entity. That's what it's gonna take to become a good dev on the eUTXO architecture. To think outside the box, to reconsider what we know of programming and adapt it to a new industry. I knew all this before it ever became FUD when I looked into it in March... Cardano was always meant to run differently. Ethereum is a blockchain that processes everything in line. So things like high TPS and bandwidth are absolutely necessary to the success of the project. Cardano realized this was an issue from the start for long term scaling up and decided to use a model more adapted to decentralization. Now we just need to get good at creating design patterns for it that make sense only in this context. Then that's when we'll unleash the real potential of Cardano. It was always meant to run multiple things in asynchronicity. It's a new market, we just don't know much about it yet. and the dev industry is full of overpaid lazy idiots who started relying way too much on the answers being on google and stack overflow for maintaining their ""skill"" which they would never have the capacity to adapt effectively on their own to an eUTXO model.
In the lecture he mentioned by now we should solve it by our self but the team is aware of the problem and have some ideas to solve. He hasn’t explain what the ideas are because wasn’t part of the lecture. 

Why is it impossible? 

There are solutions, offchain but solutions. 

It is still a young technology, look at eth they have a big problem with fees and also try to solve. 

I haven’t looked much into the problem by now because I don’t need a solution for the ideas I have. I thought a bit about it and maybe will try a solution I have in mind.
> Look into coming up with new design patterns tailored for a decentralized entity. That's what it's gonna take to become a good dev on the eUTXO architecture.

Please link to those resources, because it seems only you got the memo.

> To think outside the box, to reconsider what we know of programming and adapt it to a new industry. I knew all this before it ever became FUD when I looked into it in March... Cardano was always meant to run differently.

Please show me your smart contract because it seems dozens of devs didn't get the memo.

>  Cardano was always meant to run differently. Ethereum is a blockchain that processes everything in line. So things like high TPS and bandwidth are absolutely necessary to the success of the project. Cardano realized this was an issue from the start for long term scaling up and decided to use a model more adapted to decentralization.

I don't think you wrote what you wanted to write, you are basically saying that Cardano choose a model with low TPS. If a blockchain wants to power even a fraction of transactions happening all over the world it needs high transaction throughput.

> Now we just need to get good at creating design patterns for it that make sense only in this context. Then that's when we'll unleash the real potential of Cardano.

This is a technical sub, I want technical arguments, papers and references not faith-based arguments.

> It's a new market, we just don't know much about it yet.

So you admit that actually there is no known solution yet?

> and the dev industry is full of overpaid lazy idiots who started relying way too much on the answers being on google and stack overflow for maintaining their ""skill"" which they would never have the capacity to adapt effectively on their own to an eUTXO model.

Ad hominem attacks on developers is not going to help the emptiness of your arguments. If Cardano researchers had actual solutions to DEX on eUTXO they should share it instead of forcing that model and passing the bucket full of shit to devs.
offchain usually means centralization or at the very least DOS-able.
if anything you just proved my point that 1. you can't wrap your head around decentralized based design patterns, as you can't find them on google or stackoverflow just yet, and 2. you can't do your own research, because i'm far from the only one who got the memo, but looks like your brain can't wrap itself around decentralization and needs a linear TPS architecture to be of any use. I'm not the best person to ask the technical details to because at best I would botcher what it truly entails for a good dev, but I know I'm right and I can tell you didn't DYOR well enough.

&#x200B;

https://zycrypto.com/cardanos-rumored-smart-contract-issues-and-limitations-thoroughly-debunked/
You know not much about cardano, right? 

It should be possible to solve it in the wallet Code. Yeah you can Dos your own wallet but it is your own wallet so nobody except yourself is getting attacked. Haven’t tried but with the state machine and some wallet code I am pretty sure it can be solved. The wallet code is also the one who prevents that you pay fee if the tx can’t be fulfilled. 

Also what I don’t get, why now everybody is crying about the concurrency problem. Can only be people who haven’t done their research because since I know about the eutxo model I am aware of the problem.
There is no ""thoroughly debunked"" in your link, it only states ""it will be solved"", ""these things takes time"". The difference is that Cardano was always touting taking careful and measured steps backed by research so that smart contracts were the best they could be at release.

This type of development is called waterfall and is usually behind all dev woes in big companies and governments. It does not work when the target is fuzzy and has bever been done once.

You continue to attack me instead of my arguments, this is typical troll behavior. Then you say you're not a technical person as an excuse to not give your argument or point me to code. Hence your defence is empty and the conversation has not advanced at all.
It does not sound very science based to have such an open vector still persist and have “ideas” or tell people to be able to solve it themselves, if the solution invokes centralization. UTXO problems aren’t that widespread I think, so why the secrecy?
>You know not much about cardano, right? 
>
>It should be possible to solve it in the wallet Code. 

I know code, if you want to convince me, show me code or at the very least a technical description/spec/papar about the problem space and solutions. Everything else is speculation. 


>Yeah you can Dos your own wallet but it is your own wallet so nobody except yourself is getting attacked.

What owns the DEX funds? If it has its own wallet, it can be DOSed.

I don't care about pretty sure, we're talking about billions here, if it can be exploited it will. Many protocols were pretty sure they were secure, didn't prevent them from appearing in rekt.news

>Also what I don’t get, why now everybody is crying about the concurrency problem. Can only be people who haven’t done their research because since I know about the eutxo model I am aware of the problem.

Because smart contracts are only being released now and can be tested by the wider public. There is a gap between research and implementations, and the smart use of time when you have limited is to test what will resemble production aka testnets not reimplement the ""theory"" based on paper when your work is not the core protocol.
You're trying to ask a non coder to explain in code how you are wrong on a logical level. It's not my fault you are looking in the wrong place. There are plenty of sources, I just linked the first I found that was addressing this issue, I didn't write the clickbait title. Is it your only argument? Claiming mine have no foundation when I'm giving you material to look into?

Clearly you're having stackoverflow withdrawal symptoms...

What was promised is going to be delivered. But huge work on the blockchain development side of code doesn't mean coding on the side of smart contracts will take no efforts. Cardano uses a different architecture that requires for an optimal use of its advantages to master design patterns we haven't clearly identified yet because decentralized networks are a new industry that is merely being born at this time.

So far most blockchains like Ethereum and centered around defi have taken a stance that fast transactions at low cost fees is the most important but that's very narrow minded around finances and it's a mindset that was designed for a different kind of programming than the one that will unleash the real potential of decentralization. Think back when developers had never heard of OOP yet or multiple core CPUs with multiple threads each.

Programs now are designed to run around a client, and sometimes with a server replying to the client or connecting multiple clients. Decentralization in essence is a headless entity that shouldn't be designed around a server architecture or really any central entity, even client side, that's the job of the dapp to provide an UI. The blockchain itself is there to save and communicate data, and smart contracts are there to link specific behaviors/rules between the blockchain and the users/wallets, and in the case of a centrally controlled dapp, them too. But the data on the blockchain itself is immutable and provable so it shouldn't be used as a processing power playground but as a data transcriber. 1tps for each wallet address is perfectly acceptable, just stop saving your temp variables on the blockchain lul. the computing power can be done on the dApp client side and upload everything in one packet. that's much more efficient and leaves the blockchain do what it was intended to do. I'm sorry but the defi space is a virtual pollution dump as far as electricity consumption and useless data transmission that saturates the blockchain just because it can take advantage of it. In the eventuality a project needed absolutely a fast blockchain and couldn't work around that they have alternatives other than Cardano, and Cardano is even capable of incorporating other blockchains and tokens in its smart contracts as a side/para chain. In fact it would be king for that use, a global cross chain DEX fully in the hands of decentralized governance.

Cardano is much more robust and should not be treated like a cloud server to run whatever stupid code you feel like running. Code running on Cardano should be tailored around the eUTXO architecture model to take full advantage of its potential. Right now it is mainly something in the reach of the smartest and most serious/determined devs because it is still an unknown world to explore. We've seen MinSwap fail to adapt and blame Cardano for their inability to circumvent the issue, but it's fair play to bring up the issue in the spotlight because it will take bright minds to create the design patterns that the devs in 5-10 years will use to learn blockchain coding.

Ethereum and TPS blockchains have a linear architecture that is very inefficient when grasping the real potential of what decentralization means. If you have 100000 users wanting to transact at the same time, would you rather have a eUTXO model that doesn't care how many addresses interact with it as long as they're all verifiable between each other and validated on the network but can only transact with each one only once per block, or would you prefer an architecture that runs everything in line mindlessly by relying on how fast the chain is capable of handling. Both have use cases. For a game of the scale of World of Warcraft with its in game economy connected to a blockchain it would make much more sense to use an architecture like Solana or AVAX that can transact information as fast as possible. In the case of defi transactions as well.

But in the case of government adoption it is another story. Especially when decentralized governance is at the core of its architecture, and it is meant to retain value over time. It's not just a blockchain that is meant to be had fun with, used and abused until the next best chain comes up. This isn't Ethereum. ADA is aiming for working in symbiose with Bitcoin's taproot upgrade and get the same type of adoption. Cardano could replace banks after Bitcoin replaces fiat while keeping the government happy still in an ideal world.

Of course in terms of actual adoption, only time will tell. But Cardano is ready to stand the test of time provided the adoption remains and grows. That's why I believe in it so much personally. I was very into the idea of Bitcoin back at its inception I knew about it despite no money to invest as a kid... and I really believed in the values it brought to the table. Incorruptible permanent data accessible by all, in this case, in the form of money and an economy, even though I didn't believe in its price growth as much as it did of course. I would have paper handed at 700eur for sure. But I kinda became disinterested in 2015 when defi became an ape zoo. Then I came back in for fun with doge this year and got into Cardano and that is a project I can get behind, that is a project i see a future for. That is a project that shares core values with Bitcoin, and not just the same technology.

All it takes is decentralized creativity that leaves the ego behind in the thought process. I'm fairly certain Charles used mushrooms for that purpose :)

&#x200B;

edit: a little closing note, Cardano is the Bitcoin of smart contracts. it will stand the test of time and unlock new ideas and possibilities, helping the technology evolve. Treat the information on its blockchain like stone engravings, not sketches. Ethereum, Solana and the like are more like a decentralized, public RAM that anyone can share and use to prove authenticity and share information, but anything goes because its fast and forgiving and who cares what's recorded, it's all converted to profits anyway. Two very different use cases.
What secrecy? 
The pioneer program is about building dapps and not about how to build a blockchain. It would need another course to explain the math and all the stuff a good blockchain Need.
> You're trying to ask a non coder to explain in code how you are wrong on a logical level. It's not my fault you are looking in the wrong place. There are plenty of sources, I just linked the first I found that was addressing this issue, I didn't write the clickbait title. Is it your only argument? Claiming mine have no foundation when I'm giving you material to look into?

May I remind you which sub you are on?

> Serious & Technical Discussion of CryptoCurrency/Blockchain Technology

I'm asking on a technical sub to have code, paper or a technical article. What you linked does not address your issue, it's just faith-based.

> Clearly you're having stackoverflow withdrawal symptoms...

And you're still trying to discredit me using personal attacks.

> What was promised is going to be delivered. But huge work on the blockchain development side of code doesn't mean coding on the side of smart contracts will take no efforts. Cardano uses a different architecture that requires for an optimal use of its advantages to master design patterns we haven't clearly identified yet because decentralized networks are a new industry that is merely being born at this time.

That would be fine if you didn't pretend at the same time that solutions exist without giving any direction even to your own dev ecosystem and investors.

> So far most blockchains like Ethereum and centered around defi have taken a stance that fast transactions at low cost fees is the most important but that's very narrow minded around finances and it's a mindset that was designed for a different kind of programming than the one that will unleash the real potential of decentralization. Think back when developers had never heard of OOP yet or multiple core CPUs with multiple threads each.

So what kind of programming is Cardano designed for? Slow transactions and high fees?

> Programs now are designed to run around a client, and sometimes with a server replying to the client or connecting multiple clients. Decentralization in essence is a headless entity that shouldn't be designed around a server architecture or really any central entity, even client side, that's the job of the dapp to provide an UI. The blockchain itself is there to save and communicate data, and smart contracts are there to link specific behaviors/rules between the blockchain and the users/wallets, and in the case of a centrally controlled dapp, them too. But the data on the blockchain itself is immutable and provable so it shouldn't be used as a processing power playground but as a data transcriber. 1tps for each wallet address is perfectly acceptable, just stop saving your temp variables on the blockchain lul. the computing power can be done on the dApp client side and upload everything in one packet. that's much more efficient and leaves the blockchain do what it was intended to do. I'm sorry but the defi space is a virtual pollution dump as far as electricity consumption and useless data transmission that saturates the blockchain just because it can take advantage of it. In the eventuality a project needed absolutely a fast blockchain and couldn't work around that they have alternatives other than Cardano, and Cardano is even capable of incorporating other blockchains and tokens in its smart contracts as a side/para chain. In fact it would be king for that use, a global cross chain DEX fully in the hands of decentralized governance.

All I see is the same narrative shift similar to Bitcoin from digital money to digital gold. If Cardano wants to power multiple parachains it needs to have decent throughput at the base layer.
Contrary to what you are saying, Ethereum is not pursuing extra high TPS at the base layers, the future is rollups, aka what you call packing multiple transactions and publishing the results on layer 1. However for transactions worth millions, it is worth it to have the full security of L1.

> In fact it would be king for that use, a global cross chain DEX fully in the hands of decentralized governance.

What characteristics of Cardano makes it better than Cosmos or Polkadot or Ethereum for that purpose especially given it's smart contract limitations?

> Right now it is mainly something in the reach of the smartest and most serious/determined devs because it is still an unknown world to explore.

So you agree that currently there is no solution published?

> Ethereum and TPS blockchains have a linear architecture that is very inefficient when grasping the real potential of what decentralization means. 

What's the real potential of decentralization according to you?

> Especially when decentralized governance is at the core of its architecture, and it is meant to retain value over time. It's not just a blockchain that is meant to be had fun with, used and abused until the next best chain comes up. This isn't Ethereum. 

Please, I appreciate discussing technical merits, there is no need for social jerking here.

> But I kinda became disinterested in 2015 when defi became an ape zoo.

The only DeFi project in 2015 was MakerDAO and being an ape required you to wrap ETH (WETH) then pool ETH (pETH) then get SAI (the Single collateral version before DAI existed).
A DEX is a Dapp and everyone is saying that they either have a solution or they have a solution in mind that might work but haven't tried yet. Doesn't that smell fishy to you? Why has no one straight-up came out and said ""Here is how we are fixing the concurrency problem in a decentralized manner"". Could it be because this solution doesn't actually exist?
You know, the opposite of peer-review public papers that explain in detail what works and what the limits of the solution are and what needs further research, so that people can individually assess if it fits their use case? So that they know for sure concurrency really isn’t a problem for them?
I'm not google, you're not worth all this time for me when clearly you don't do any research on your side but only repeat FUD and what i say falls in deaf ear. DYOR. And FIY, technical doesn't mean code. That's not a dev subreddit.
Oh really. It’s like saying there is a tree in a forest, why this tree isn’t the first to cut. 
The testnet is public for a short time. Do you also planting seeds and wanting the fruits on the next day? It needs time to grow. 

Please sell all your ada you don’t deserve them.
 > I'm not google

You don't have to be Google since you said a couple comments above:

> if anything you just proved my point that 1. you can't wrap your head around decentralized based design patterns, as you can't find them on google or stackoverflow just yet

If what you said is true, the resources just doesn't exist. Given how big the issue is becoming, I would expect we would have been pointed to answer already if it existed, but there is none.

Even the official Cardano article recognizes that scalable DEX on eUTXO requires orderbook (https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/10/concurrency-and-all-that-cardano-smart-contracts-and-the-eutxo-model/ ) but Uniswap v1 did use orderbook and it was a fundamental issue for asynchrony and also settling everything on-chain as makers and takers need a matching engine.

> what i say falls in deaf ear.

All I am asking is actual code, or papers or technical in-depth articles or a working DEX even on testnet, not marketing pieces that try to hide issues under the rug.

Walk the talk.
I am okay with waiting. I hold ADA for the long term because I believe in the eutxo model and the benefits it brings. However, I can admit that this side effect of the tx model has been and being addressed very poorly by the developer community. Just how much longer do they need? Why is the public testnet launch so close to the mainnet launch? What about the private rounds for developers and the pioneer program? If anything, this speaks volumes about the incompetenency or dishonesty of the teams working on this problem. ""It can be fixed"", ""we know of a way to fix it but won't tell you"", ""we know how to fix it but we haven't implemented it yet"", ""this has been fixed, go look it up!""

The undisputable reality of the situation is that the eutxo model is limiting for our current understanding of how a DEX works. This won't just go away by condesendingly waving away valid criticism of the existing products for their centralization or less-than-ideal UX.

&#x200B;

>Please sell all your ada you don’t deserve them.

Not even going to comment on this line, pathetic really."
Cryptocurrency and privacy question,113,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nhoeme/cryptocurrency_and_privacy_question/,"[removed]
I am not the most knowledgeable, but as far as I know Monero allows you to do exactly that. The system is pretty solid, never been hacked. The only way to have an educated guess of who A gave money to on that blockchain is to use Bayesian inference. Don't know how familiar you are with that, but it means you only get a probability that A gave money to B. Other than that except A and B no one is aware of that particular transaction. 

&#x200B;

I think it is a pretty established blockchain.
Yeah the exchanges are pretty much KYC'd at this point in time. You can always buy monero at an exchange and send it to a private wallet, though. And then spend it privately. 

Some additional privacy is coming in Taproot upgrade for the BTC, but probably not as much as you are looking for.
The transparent blockchain also leads to fungibility problems. You may not be interested in buying illegal goods with crypto but what's stopping someone from sending you coins that have been 'tainted' by being used for those kinds of transactions in the past? There are numerous examples of people having their accounts frozen because the exchange didn't like the history of their outputs. Monero also solves the fungibility problem by obfuscating the history of each output. Other privacy coins which offer optional privacy will all suffer from fungibility issues.
""I heard about Monero that is supposedly allow you to keep your transaction private but I feel like there is a catch, otherwise everyone will use it constantly and it feels like it’s not the case today.""

There is no catch, to my knowledge. Monero still hasn't reached widespread adoption, that's true and perhaps never will because the masses are notoriously stupid but guaranteed, it's your best bet. Even if not yet widely used, it's the most widely used crypto currency available, mind you. Not most widely traded but most widely **used**. Like actually used to buy goods and services.
Everyone does use Monero constantly for transactions that need to be private. Dark net markets started recommending XMR > BTC last year and most don’t allow you to use BTC anymore.
Secret Network(SCRT) = Monero + ETH2.0 
Please consider.
There are a lot od privacy coins, some better then others. There is no catch besides the need to understand how the privacy is acheived, and the level of privacy they offer.

The reason why some privacy coins are underperforming is a different question. Monero for example has a tonne of network use, people use it. But the rest of the space is mostly speculators not users. The reason privacy coins are not widely popular to investors is because exchsnges are having a hard time supporting them, vendors also, and they cant do any partnership stupidity like the rest of the space.

Theres so many cool projects nobody knows about and are doing amazing work tech wise. Fundamentals matter but in markets like these they are offeten overlooked in favor or marketed coins and vaporware.

We literally have instant private transactions on proof of stake for a year now, but the people behind are fine with just building it and not throwing it out like an investment in peoples faces. If you value privacy, the tools are out there for you, free to use.
Everyone liked how monero added privacy and security to BTC as a store of value. You'll probably get excited about adding greater privacy to smart contracts deployed on the Etherum network.
  

Check SCRT, secret network, this project is working hard on privacy and security, and it's a really good one.
Monero is the Bitcoin of privacy. SCRT is the Ethereum. 🖤
Everyone is talking about monero (BTC equivalent) but not Scrt (ETH equivalent). Scrt is the first smart contract privacy first coin, and has a private governance coin, staking, and many bridges to other coins ALL COMPLETELY PRIVATE. Secret Network is paving the way when it comes to privacy, not monero
If you are really concerned about your privacy, you can do one of a couple things. The first is simply buy a hardware wallet, buy the crypo on an exchange, use a crypo tumbler then send the money from there to your hardware wallet. Your hardware wallet is not associated with your identity. You can also try finding places other than exchanges to buy your cryptocurrency, where you interact directly with someone who wants to sell their cryptocurrency to you. The other person is motivated to avoid fees, you are motivated for privacy.
Monero, Zcash, PIVX all good privacy coins its just most people don’t use them for private transactions.
PIVX is another option: https://pivx.org/
Navcoin is another privacy coin. There's a lot to choose from
I would say PIVX is actually your best bet. It is among the most advanced privacy-capable networks out there with the most active developer community (see [https://www.cryptomiso.com/](https://www.cryptomiso.com/)). It features private and shielded transactions, is based on proof of stake, staking gives you over 8% apy, has near-instant transactions, has not been premined, and offers transparency as an option, so as not get delisted from Binance and KuCoin where you can get it quite cheaply still.
Not all cryptocurrencies are fully anonymous as they are a 100% transparent networks that allows anyone to download a history of every single transaction. 

If you want to be completely out of the radar when buying crypto you should go to some peer-to-peer marketplace, find someone you trust  and buy a privacy-centered currency.

Regarding keeping the privacy of your cypto transactions, you should look further into:

* Privacy coins (I'll admit that I don't know enough about them to make recommendations);
* Privacy-centered updates coming to established currencies (Taproot for Bitcoin, MWEB for litecoin and so on);
* Mixing services.
I'm also privacy minded. So far what I've found is that zcash and monero are mostly private but they aren't accepted anywhere.

The best solution for now is a hybrid of privacy chains and the public accepted chains. You can wash your funds  through the private chains and maybe hold a majority of your money there. For spending, you'll need to transfer money to burner wallets on Eth or BTC because those are the most accepted.

The best privacy chain I've found is Incognito with bridges to BTC, ETH, and XMR. You can do private transfers and swap funds as needed. Then send funds to  the main chains. Next is Secret Network with even more privacy but only bridges to Ethereum (so far). This is so secret, that you need to generate a viewing key per asset that you hold. If you hold wBTC and wETH, that's 2 viewing keys. Also if yu make a new viewing key on a new computer, then the old ones are revoked. It's so private that's it's scary. If you forget which asset you held well then you'll need to waste a lot of gas and make lots of keys. Both of these options have a DEX and options to earn as an LP.
Hey check out Moneros subreddit, I made a post on there the other day and me and this dude went through it on how to make your transactions untraceable. Its tough but I think we got it down in that thread.
I think the brains at Decred did a real good overview of this topic when implementing their own privacy standards

write up here- [https://blog.decred.org/2019/08/21/Surveying-the-Privacy-Landscape/](https://blog.decred.org/2019/08/21/Surveying-the-Privacy-Landscape/)

and what the team decided to do here - [https://blog.decred.org/2019/08/28/Iterating-Privacy/](https://blog.decred.org/2019/08/28/Iterating-Privacy/)

The thrust of it is that some forms of privacy make auditing the total coin base impossible. If the technology that pins those privacy schemes get breached, you could have a bad actor mint their own coins and it would be impossible to know. Unlikely, but the team wants to build a system that will last far into the future. If we see a big leap in Quantum computers (or don't see if it's behind closed doors at the CIA or similar organization) such attacks would be possible. Some privacy tech would be completely undone, while others would just be rendered useless going forwards.

Monero is one of the best for user privacy, but this fact as lead some exchanges to de-list it for fear of running afoul Money Laundering Laws. Decred uses a method that is opt-in, much like zchash, but is tied in with the staking mechanic. Last i heard if you staked with the privacy opt-ed in, you got mixed with about 40% of the total Decred volume, providing significant obfuscation.
Secret Network is a better option if you’re looking to dive deeper into privacy DeFi and NFTs. Monero bridge will be going live next week on Secret Network.
Monero is it, most people just dont care about privacy that much. That's why they arent using it.
I did a deep dive on this a few months back:

[2021 Guide to Private Cryptocurrency](https://reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/md3toy/2021_guide_to_private_cryptocurrency/)



Considering doing a follow up in this subreddit or an XPost
Yo have you ever heard of SCRT?
Take a look at https://localmonero.co/ , like localbitcoin for monero.
i dont have a technical background but i’ve heard several different times on different podcasts when talking about privacy, Zcash is more private than Monero. is there truth to that? I felt like hearing multiple times thru older and newer + unrelated podcasts must mean there’s some truth to that
Monero is very traceable though...CipherTrace has an entire tool suite dedicated to tracing Monerno transactions.
[based](https://files.catbox.moe/rrxzzw.PNG)
Wake with Litecoin, called the “Mumbowumbo” upgrade I think? (Spelling?)
On the flip side. Depending on your jurisdiction and your bank(s), if you want to buy something expensive, like a house, with money made from crypto, you may be required to prove that it has not been 'tainted' by being used for these kinds of transactions. Good look doing that with any privacy coin.
>Monero still hasn't reached widespread adoption

It has reached widespread adoption where it is most needed. Just look at /r/darknet ;)
With the monero secret bridge on the way, widespread adoption will be an understatement but we wouldn't know the number of users or transactions because it'll be very very private. So it'll seem as if adoption is low.
For real. Lol. Such an undervalued asset and a great achievement of technology. 🖤 Community is pretty dope too. 🤙
You say that because you don't understand the underlying implementation.

SCRT uses COSMOS (ATOM) SDK, hence to execute smart contracts it needs to decrypt the inputs on TEE(Trusted Execution Environment). which has been known to be backdoored by state level actors. If you want to shield your transactions from your snooping neighbour then SCRT will probably work, if you want to shield your transactions from uncle sam, then you'll need monero.
Why the downvotes? I answered to my best knowledge. If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to know more!
Great post!

Have you heard of Dusk Network? They are building up a private smart contract platform - would love to get your take on it if you ever do a follow up post
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Monero is more battle tested. ZCash is also a trusted setup. You have to trust the founders threw the keys away when they set it up. Monero has no such thing. It's trustless
Zcash is heavily government funded, yet governments despise Monero. Something's fishy about zcash.
Zcash also Has under 1% private transactions so the anon set is small
Zcash's trusted setup had a large number of parties involved, it's exceedingly unlikely that the waste is still around in order to forge proofs.  Don't listen to the FUD.
> different times on different podcasts when talking about privacy, Zcash is more private than Monero. is there truth to that? I felt like hearing multiple times thru older and newer + unrelated podcasts must mean there’s some truth to that

i disagree, is opt in, trusted setup problem is an issue with the protocol, hoow is zcash more private zksnarks in this case dont hide the amount
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Yeah Mimblewimble is not going to solve anything. It's well known that that protocol is deeply flawed. [source](https://medium.com/dragonfly-research/breaking-mimblewimble-privacy-model-84bcd67bfe52)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe using litecoin privacy through mimblewimble will be 'opt-in' like shielded transactions on zcash...not private by default
With Monero you can selectively give someone read-only access to a wallet, or even to specific transactions, through view keys.
Yes sir. That's why my last two sentences.
Their community is one of the best and the devs are something else.
You're forgetting about sSCRT and SEFI
ooooooo.... damn. now i really want to read into both. thank you! i think whichever privacy coin becomes the most widely used will have incredible upside in the years to come. people want privacy.
regardless of the coin; if govt’s are involved in any way i want no part of it.
xmr is the criminal coin of choice, its replaced bitcoin in many shady areas. ive never heard of zcash doing the same thing
You have a good point, but I prefer ""impossible"" over ""exceedingly unlikely"" any day of the week when it comes to minimizing my risks. AFAIK, Monero is impossible to trace from a protocol level if used correctly. Can't say the same about Zcash and its ""trusted"" set up. Trust and crypto are not things that go together.
i appreciate everyone’s input! i’ll def do my own research as well. ultimately gotta make your own conclusions
Of course the bounty in unclaimed. Most work with CipherTrace is going to be conducted in a FISA court setting. We continue to see the contract for it's software purchased across the greater IC. The tool suite works. While it might not be a standalone product to identify individuals, couple it with other collection methods and it's more then sufficient. If you're using it for nefarious means I can assure you it can be traced. Every day use within legal parameters because you just like privacy? No worries about anyone tracing you. 

Gov contracts to Cipher: https://govtribe.com/vendors/ciphertrace-inc-dot-7e0x3
Same, they both rely on TEE(which is backdoored by the NSA)

TEE in most cases refers to the hardware block in your processor either intel or amd.

For social proof, try finding a darknet market that accepts SCRT or even ZCASH nowadays, there's none.
Get the book on Amazon or free PDF ""mastering monero""

As for ZCash, it's probably fine but if you're privacy conscious, why choose the coin with the potential rigged setup?
The government is offering 500k to the person who can crack Monero. So far nobody has done it and I think it’s been 4 years now?
There's a reason why monero is the main coin used in the darknet. It does what it should do and it does it best.
i got some bad news for you about hashing algorithms.
Just generate a new XMR address every few transactions or so and all of CipherTraces' statistical inference tools have been defeated. There's also still zero proof that they actually can trace XMR in the first place, you did not provide any rebuttal to that original statement.

All the evidence I need that XMR works best is that criminals have adopted it for their payments. Why would they use XMR over Dash or Zcash or Grin or Beam if it was traceable?
nah, exactly. that makes sense. will def get that book. adding to my list of crypto reads
well they do have an incredible code. The markets have been really now pushing on privacy based coins like monero and secret network.
no fucking way😂 that’s incredible
I think it's up to 625k now or maybe even higher?
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ik the NSA created sha-256. i meant if a govt is presently & directly involved in a coin
Oh I see what's happening here. Everyone is confusing transaction anonymity for being untraceable. From what I have seen you are correct that they cannot reliably see the specific transaction. However as I stated above, couple the CipherTrace software with other collection methods and it's more than sufficient for identifying the INDIVIDUAL not the transaction. 

XMR is like the VPN myth. Do they both work at what they claim to do? Yes, but it's completely pointless because the data is already there. The steps you would have to go through to be completely anonymous using XMR are astounding. 99% of individuals aren't doing that.
Free version available here: https://masteringmonero.com/

If you want to pay for it I'd still recommend the website above, just use one of the donation options rather than Amazon.
will look this up too. i’m gonna learn a lot in this sub
No, I meant what I said. Monero is untraceable if used correctly. ciphertrace's product works through statistical analysis and monitoring network protocols that are not part of the Monero protocol.

 If you want to avoid statistical analysis, just don't be predictable with your addresses and transactions. If you want to avoid network monitoring, use Tails and harden your networking stack.

The Monero ring signature protocol itself is untraceable. The best you can do is run statistical analysis. If you are using multiple addresses, it becomes exponentially harder to trace to the point where it's impossible.
you the GOAT! much appreciated
You get a paperback in Amazon which is why I suggested it, not the Kindle version. But yes nothing wrong with the free one either.
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i’ll prolly read the free one in short term, then buy the paperback version. i wanna build up a little crypto library lol
Good point, I completely forgot there is a paperback version.
i have my crypto secured on a Trezor! and i appreciate the resource, will read this too. like i said in my original comment i def didnt consider myself tech savy but i’ve have been learning a TON this year. so excited to check all this out. eventually i want to learn the basics of coding. i’m in the cs50 sub, just gotta start! yall have been great 🙏
I love crypto books! I always try and get some when I see them.
No problem! I love my little Monero book 😂"
Would having or using a Blockchain be the perfect way for a charity to be analyzed for transparency and to make sure it's funds are being used properly?,112,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/t5f5xy/would_having_or_using_a_blockchain_be_the_perfect/,"Love the thinking here. Being able to demonstrate a donors contribution in a trustworthy, transparent manner would be huge. 

We’d need to see a rise in stablecoin usage to really see this play out as the trail would be over as soon as a non-profit exchanges their crypto for fiat.
Would love to see charitable projects connected to geographic areas with their own token and minting process. So, local businesses and people could finance infrastructure changes that benefit everyone in that region long-term, and the minting of that token is only given out lightly among contributors and largely once deliverables are achieved.

It would be especially cool if this sorta thing could scale up and down depending on the size of the project, and were constructed to be pegged to similar tokens/ projects.


So, like a neighborhood project of fixing all the potholes by the nearby highway, is suggested and pegged to larger projects of renewing county signage.
In my opinion yes! I have thought about this extensively and plan to implement a solution in the future.The only issue is that outgoing transactions will not have a clear destination. For example if I send x BTC to someone from the charity’s account, it will not be clear to who that money is being sent. For all anyone knows it can be an account I control. For true transparency, all ingoing and outgoing transactions would need to have a short description available somewhere on the web, but again you will need to be able to trust those descriptions as an external party.
Yes, but I think the best case would be charity DAOs so that governance tokens could be issued to holders and all donations of funds would need to be approved via governance consensus. 

So basically:
Charity type DAO says they are for cancer research
Companies who were doing cancer research can propose for help and they have to supply their plan on how the money they are requesting will be used
Governance members review proposal
Based on relevance to DAO mission statement, solidity of plan and team to receive funds, etc governance members approve or deny 
Money can then be moved. 

As other users have brought up just having blockchain doesn’t remove the embezzlement factor we see in current charities like Susan g komen because you don’t know where the money is going and for what purposes. That’s why the DAO becomes an important part for transparency sake
Meh. A lot more to transparency than just seeing where money is sent. & banks have great transparency as it is. Not sure this is very applicable. 

- worked in cash for year +, been through 3-4 audits
I don't think so, like unless everyone is using the blockchain you might track how much money the charity got, but not where it spent it.
The use of blockchain is a way to record anything verified 
And put In a box  once box is filled  box is closed and  hashed. Now its permanent
Smart contracts could take a lot of the burden out of a charity's financials I would think. Rather than annual financial audits to ensure funds are directed as intended, it could happen real-time. For example, earmarking a donation to a certain use (btw - better to not earmark your donations, let charities direct where needed!)
Recently, there was actually a blockchain project that was able to do this. Utrust put zero fees on any transactions coming to and from Ukraine. This helped immensely and since Utrust does KYC, it was surely going to the right places.
Blockchain could help a charity to provide proof of impact imo. A crude example:

* A charity raises funds to ship containers of flour to a famine-stricken part of the world.
* Each container load is divided into 1000 bags of flour represented by ERC1155 NFTs
* When you donate you buy one of these NFTs (representing a bag of flour)
* Once the 1000 NFTs are sold, the full container ships
* Each container has a sensor allowing you to track it's journey from A to B online
* Relevant ID data is attached to the NFT you bought, accessible via an online portal
* This includes a map (like airplane flight path maps) showing where your container is
* When it arrives a photo is added showing the container and its ID
* Photos are added showing the flour's distribution from that container to end users

With GPS, blockchain and NFTs we can see our support goes to its intended recipients.
There will always be a gateway between crypto and real life use. Whilst this would ensure that the funds reach a destination on the blockchain, what happens with them after they leave is still beyond that scope . So it would certify a part of the cash flow but not all of it
Interesting to see this point. As of right now I am working on this very proposition. As it stands we've been able to make an escrow smart contract to enable NGO's to utilize funds - donated in crypto - by fulfilling requirements. The hard part is still the proof of work (not as in the consensus mechanism) but to ensure compliance on the NGO side. And as it stands right now - it does not seem sustainable to host this rich media on the blockchain but instead off-chain. We've been looking into IFPS to have the security aspect and decentralization hightened instead of traditional cloud solutions. But we're still a ways off to realize a workable prototype as it requires several architectures. A very real issue in this space is also what are the technical competencies of the NGOs and potential donors? Blockchain, as a technology, comes with many benefits out of the box but implementing them as a holistic service for the humanitarian/philantropic sector is still hard.
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Blockchain technology has indeed made these transactions more secure and transparent. That's one of the reasons that even off-chain ventures like real estate have moved their platforms onto blockchain like Bricktrade. Aside from the transparency, the decentralization also allows you to get into fractionalized properties for a considerably cheaper price of £500. There may be some loopholes around it, but this is definitely a more secured way to start charity funding.
This question is actually completed unrelated to Blockchain. If you took the word ""Blockchain"" out of your entire post, it'd still be the same: ""How can we track the cash flow of charities?"". Your post simply asks ""Maybe blockchain?"".
Lets start donating fir war casualties
Blockchain unfortunately does not solve incorrect or malicious data entry, which is much more of an issue than transparency of the data entered.
How about supported by different blockchains? KOLnet is one of it. You can earn  by staking KOL and it's perfect mix of DeFi and Martech. Pay a visit on their page.
I believe so, yes. This sounds like a superb implementation of Blockchain technology.
Why just charities? Would shareholders not want this permanence and transparency as well?
No way. How would corrupt politicians fund their corruption with all that transparency and accountability.
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Good point. What about charities like unchain that are partnering with web 3 projects like DEIP to assist the Ukraine situation? Would that count as charities on a blockchain?
This is really cool especially the last part. It allows people to bypass the government/ local municipality and directly find contractors willing to do public sector work. Those contractors would be financed privately (as donations) and everything can be governed under a DAO.

I've been thinking about this for a while and there are certainly a lot of hindrances, but in countries where there is little hope in the public sector this concept should be able to work (from a strict paractical perspective minus all the bureaucracy and paperwork)

Edit: only reason im mentioning this because this pothole thing you mentioned is very relatable haha. The roads where im from are super neglected that its up to local members of the community to fix them and bear the costs.
CityCoins do something similar but in a more straightforward way
And what about if those addresses have to be public who's holding them? And only those allready known addresses are allowed to receive btc?
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Ye this would solve it. Like nobody is doubting the Ukraine Btc address posted on Twitter by there approved account. But this moves the trust from the blockchain to a 3rd party. Still much better tho
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Can we have a real debate about the Bitcoin scaling issue?,117,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/7lnlab/can_we_have_a_real_debate_about_the_bitcoin/,"A big reason for Core's reluctance to increase block size that many people are ignoring is that it's simply a drop in a bucket. If the current maximum throughput with 1 MB blocks is 4 tx/s, then with 2 MB blocks it would still only be 8 tx/s, even with 10 MB blocks it would only be 40 tx/s. In order to be even *remotely* competitive with VISA's 24,000 tx/s, you'd need blocks in the gigabytes. And blocks don't always come in regular 10 minute intervals, they vary a lot and sometimes two blocks are less than a minute apart.

And remember, while you may have broadband internet, many people don't, and entire geographic regions are sometimes separated by tiny network bottlenecks (see Great Firewall of China).

This all combined means that it's only possible to either crank up the block size limit regardless of the consequences and get a network that is a patchwork of a few participants with enough bandwidth, completely cutting off some parts of the world, essentially destroying Bitcoin's egalitarian vision... or find another solution. Like Core is doing.

[And it's not true that LN will never arrive. It's working already.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k)

As for Bitcoin Cash, I don't see the need to be paranoid about it. It's just another altcoin. There are many altcoins that can be used to transfer money until Bitcoin has resolved its bottleneck. The main problem is the discourse around it, with people turning a technical debate into a war between opposing factions.
i’m happy I subscribed to this subreddit, this is information that is well needed 
As unfortunate as the current situation is, it's also really fascinating, almost like technological speciation at work. Bitcoin was the first, like the first mammal to evolve (though obviously with a clearer point of inception). That prototypical mammalian species died out long ago, but it's multitude of successors inherited the earth, with one in particular coming to dominate it.

I would be surprised if the same did not happen in the crypto space. I am very much invested in crypto succeeding, less so in Bitcoin in particular, because there's nothing about Satoshi's vision that restricts it to Bitcoin in particular. In fact, there's nothing about Satoshi's vision that even restricts it to a single platform, rather than a constantly shifting collection of platforms like what we see today. A knife is a knife because it cuts, not because it has a metal blade or a ceramic blade, a plastic handle or a wooden handle, a straight edge or a curved one. 

Those who truly care about banking the unbanked can rest easy, it will happen. But under what banner(s) that tide of liberation will come, is anyone's guess. If you're in it for the cause not the money, that shouldn't bother you. Natural selection will find a way.
While both side's arguments do have merit, one thing that I do believe in, is that BTC's time has come. Fees are absolutely crazy at this point, transaction times so long I get scared sometimes, and the community so toxic and cult-like. I've divested and now only own a fraction of a BTC instead of the few I had before. 
I've seen at least 3 fairly large companies that have stopped accepting Bitcoin as a payment. BitPay won't allow any transaction under $100 due to fees.  Core devs have known about the issue for a long time now, and said that SegWit would fix everything.  They still are clinging on to the first mover advantage, but it's getting really hard to support them.  As of right now people are just buying it to sell it later like you mentioned in your OP, and using alt coins for everything else.

On the Bitcoin Cash side of things, I keep seeing people argue that increasing block size isn't the way to go because we'll need 1GB+ blocks ""eventually"", and just ignore the fact that it fixes the issue right now and possibly into the next year or two.  From what I've read, it is currently set at 8MB blocks, but can scale all the way up to 32MB before needing to fork.  They are also picking up quite a few new supporters, including BitPay next month.

IMO it is starting to look like Bitcoin is going backwards while Bitcoin Cash picks up the remains.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7lq22a/why_did_so_many_people_oppose_the_move_to_an_8mb/dro4uq2/
bitcoin forks are actually a (partial) scaling solution.  You don't need a $1M/hour network to secure coffee transactions.  If the last fork gets enough adoption for fees to go over 0.1cents, then launch another fork.

Still, the scaling roadmap will help.

But currency applications don't imply value appreciation.  Sure if every phone in the world needs to have a $100 crypto balance for coffees, it can add up, but the real value is held in investment portfolio balances.  If its easy to transfer from latter to former, then maybe former stays less important.
I think [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUJJpDlG9Ko) is worth watchking. This does an amazing job as to why bitcoin doesn't just raise block sizes like Bch and why increasing blocksize is a horrible solution for future problems.
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Competition is solving scale already. 

People getting religious about this shit is just plain stupid. It is just software. Scaling is a software design problem, not a social issue, a hardware issue or even an economic issue. There are enough people, hardware and funds in the world to solve the issues faced. The software design is the key, adoption underpins this.

So why get tied to one software design pattern? 

Dollars. The dollar value and subsequent vested interest is hurting software progress for the bitcoin core project as far as I can see.  It is causing division and an impasse in the community. Now isn't that ironic?

Measuring bitcoin success in dollars is crazy, it should be measured by users.

Adoption is the key issue as it causes scaling issues, lack of adoption fixes them instantly. People are already adopting alternate innovative coin solutions already in order to fix their transaction problems, and surely this is a good thing? Isn't this called progress through competition?

People being vitriolic toward other coins betrays our tribal roots as humans - it's like cavemen arguing. 

Scaling is already achieved, features are already added, security is already robust and the decentralisation is already here through the availability of so many variants of cryptocurrency. If lack of confusion is your goal, then educate, don't entrench your position in dollar value. If greed is your goal, well....

Don't like bitcoin scaling plans? Don't bother commenting online, just swap your tokens. That seems to me the greatest scaling solution. Same goes for every coin out there. All coins (including Bitcoin) are alternatives, or altcoins if you prefer and should hold no special reserve. Freedom to choose is my privilege.  It's when regulation tries to say otherwise comes the problem.  I don't particularly see traditional money market adoption of Bitcoin helping this at all. 

As far as I understand it, merchants are already able to move to cheaper fee alternatives, regardless of the scaling initiatives on the table. Competition is good. 

I don't see trading floors being the original envisaged user of any coin and can't see how this helps adoption other than people buying into inflation through media hype - but that won't end well. 

We are all sleepwalking into the problems of the past if we think dollar inflation is equal to true value. The dollar is the real scaling issue here. 

I wonder for example how many transactions in the current blocks are actually payments for goods and how many are pure speculative trades on dollar backed exchanges? 

After all, if you can't spend it easily and cheaply, what is the point of holding it?
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> I think many of us will agree that a great many crypto subreddits have become completely toxic. 

and putting:

> evil masterminds behind a massive, unrelenting, coordinated attack to destroy bitcoin.

makes you look a little absurd.

Either drop the ad hominem stuff or don't.
No one is doubting or questioning it's a ""drop in the bucket"". What people are bitching about is, why can't you put a temporary measure in raising the blocksize in place while the real solution is being developed/implemented. This is not hard to implement. Give us a real reason why this isn't being done.

It's like saying if your car breaks down, you could fix it or just walk. I could fix it and have a car to use but it's still going to be a shit car, so I'll just walk until I save up enough money for a new car.

Most logical people would just get the car fixed for now.
>This all combined means that it's only possible to either crank up the block size limit regardless of the consequences and get a network that is a patchwork of a few participants with enough bandwidth, completely cutting off some parts of the world, essentially destroying Bitcoin's egalitarian vision

I find it difficult to believe that people without broadband and with shitty computers are mining and contributing to the network. High fees are already excluding a lot of people from using bitcoin.
That 'drop in the bucket' may not get us to Visa levels but why does that matter? We just need a few drops right now to help with the insane fees. We don't need to scale to Visa levels right now, we just need to scale a little bit. There's no good reason not to go to 2MB or 4MB immediately. 

LN is not the answer right now, LN will take time to roll out. Increasing the block size will give immediate relief. LN needs to get rolled out everywhere and we know how long it took just to get segwit support. There's no way LN will be usable by a majority of Bitcoiners in the next few months.
By my calculations, to reach the average tx/s required to sustain 10 minute blocks for everyone on the planet would require 1.5GB blocks,  a 7.5gbit/s connection, and use up 2800TB bandwidth a month / node.


yeah  its hard to believe that it took that long to create a place dedicated to rational discussion among the crypto hype
The coming Bitcoin bloodbath will allow the future of th crypto market without 1000+ competitors.

It needs to die like AOL did for the dotcom era.
Completely agree! I've diversified into altcoins because of this exact reason. Bitcoin is the OG but looking at the new technology coming through in this space, I can't help but think that bitcoin will go the way of the steam train. Being a relic of the beginning of full decentralisation of global currencies. 

It will be remembered as the first, but it won't be the dominating one. 
I'm sorry, but the answer ""bigger blocks will eventually push the little guy out with increasing hardware costs"" doesn't really jive when those little guys are being pushed out PRESENTLY with crazy tx fees. That's prioritizing a theoretical future over an actual present.

Bitcoin is dying, something needs to be done now. We can't afford to wait anymore.
The problem is companies that accept crypto payments for these coffee transactions cannot be reasonably expected to take 20 different coins that have all been formed. Without real world transactions you can have all the coins with the lowest fees you want and it won’t do any good. There are already hundreds of coins with low or no fees, dozens forked directly from BTC, and that hasn’t helped BTC at all. 
One comment on the other sub reddit and it's just shilling a coin... Not sure what I expected but damn...
Any technical argument to support this statement? The whole reason this sub was created is to avoid these kinds of posts.
I didn't create the narrative, I'm just summarising it. 

Also, lol at lecturing me for using ad hominems  by using an ad hominem.
This. The scaling solution (and that's not LN) will be worthless if it takes them 5 years to implement it. By then nobody will use Bitcoin.
I can only speculate on that. My guess about their thinking is that they see it similar to [public roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox), where adding additional lanes paradoxically makes traffic congestion not better but worse, since it results in more people using the road.

In this light, even an increase to 2 MB, while not immediately terrible for (de)centralisation, would not bring the expected relief and would just be pointless.
Block size cannot be changed without a hard fork. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork. It's incompatible with Bitcoin Core. Segwit is a soft fork and allows block size changes but it is optional and thus doesn't require a hard fork. Only ~10% use Segwit atm. That's a big part of the problem.
>Give us a real reason why this isn't being done.

Bitcoin is a consensus protocol, and changing the base block size doesn't have consensus. It's really that simple.
Segwit is a permanent fix, at the current level of activity. If a majority of people adopted segwit, and we still had tx congestion, I'd be totally onboard with a block size increase. But if a majority of people used segwit we wouldn't have tx congestion, but hardly anyone is using it? Why? Stupidity, laziness? Who wants to pay these stupid high fees?
While his is mostly a well thought argument, I agree with this totally. It's a little ridiculous to insist everyone should be able to run a full node and verify their own transactions no matter how antiquated their hardware is when the fees have already priced out basically all but the world's richest societies.
Point being that this is a transition phase. Core is trading the congestion and high fees, as a temporary thing holding Bitcoin back, against the freedom to keep designing it as they wish and, hopefully, make it a truly capable and decentralised cryptocurrency in the future.

In essence the debate has always been about ""how fast should we scale?"", with small blockers saying ""maybe not too fast."" 
> hen the fees have already price

I don't  think it is about using shitty computers. It you want to scale the Bitcoin network, the most used blockchain, then 10MB, 100MB blocks will not be enough. Then what type of computer will be needed to just catch up with 1GB, 10GB, 100GB blocks? Asic custom systems?
Ten years ago requiring gigabit speed would've seemed ridiculous, but we're on the cusp of it becoming the norm. Who's to say what the next 5 - 10 years will hold in terms of progress?

I remember a time not long ago where mobile sites for the developing world were a complete non starter, but now, most of the world has access to smart phones. It's a fallacy to apply the technology of today to the theoretical problems of next year.
This sub will only be rational if the number of subscribers remains low.
Nah bro, just hodl til you die. BTC 4 lyfe!!
People who are expected to *not* be able to run a capable hardware are expected to pay the high fees that go to the miners, which otherwise could, in turn, and ironically, be used to upgrade that very own node.

Assuming that the easiest coin for merchants to add in addition to bitcoin is a fork of it, and they did add it, it does help btc holders have some spending coins.

This process is slow, perhaps because its more complicated than it should be, or there was a widespread expectation that fees would not get worse, or that price of forks could collapse.  Its the latter point of not knowing if a fork will persist that makes taking advantage of them by the entire society a difficult choice.
Surely some platform will come along that does exactly this though right? I can easily imagine a vendor setting a preferred coin/currency and then a payment can be made in whatever other coin/currency the buyer wants - conversion can all be done on the back end. Doesn't seem much different than being able to use a credit card in countries with different currencies. Essentially just an automated market order on an exchange. 
> companies that accept crypto payments for these coffee transactions cannot be reasonably expected to take 20 different coins 

Why would that have to be different than companies accepting multiple credit cards? (and cash and Paypal and checks...)
XRB for sure needs its own mega thread in here. I would love a deep dive on this coin. I just bought a little bit to play with, and would love a real conversation about it. Also agree that this isn't the place for it really. 
[deleted]
What? do you actually think doubling the blocksize would not help? TBH Segwit2x was needed, they just went about the wrong way. Sadly everyone has hidden agendas hence the non-development of Bitcoin.
The public road analogy although applicable in some capacity, does not adequately convey the problem of bitcoin.

* The problem of adding alternate routes is already achieved by alternatives.
* The road seems to be **not capable of basic demand**, and the only reason that road is used is because people either do not know the other routes well enough yet, or the road has made some so filthy rich that they don't care to use the other roads.. yet.
* With basic demand, I mean it's not like every single person in town wants to use it to go the grocery store instead of a 2 minute walk (daily transaction) or use it to go their next door neighbor (micro-transaction)
* There's a lot of ease for people to switch to the alternative roads, while this will not be overnight, it will happen.
* Adding extra lanes is an immensely expensive ordeal in real life, it's so expensive that you may have to nationalize private property. Bitcoin on the other hand has an 8 year old limit and the space around the road has become very easy to make use of.

I really can go on for a couple of more points.

1MB is an 8 year old limit, and it's becoming to look more arbitrary as technology improved much beyond it. Taking the sweet time will crush Bitcoin unfortunately.

The absurd high fees cause more centralization than bigger blocks. I'm almost afraid to say that if Bitcoin does not come up with an immediate plan, it may go bust.

**Braess's paradox**

Braess's paradox (often cited as Braess' paradox) is a proposed explanation for the situation where an alteration to a road network to improve traffic flow actually has the reverse effect and impedes traffic through it. The paradox was postulated in 1968 by German mathematician Dietrich Braess, who noticed that adding a road to a congested road traffic network could increase overall journey time, and it has been used to explain instances of improved traffic flow when existing major roads are closed.

The paradox may have analogies in electrical power grids and biological systems. It has been suggested that in theory, the improvement of a malfunctioning network could be accomplished by removing certain parts of it.

***

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The same people who use this fallacy say that Segwit will help, because it extends capacity. If the paradox is right, then Segwit should not be implemented and if yes, then only with L2.

Using Braess's paradox upfront without testing is crazy. This is not a traffic, where we hope that people use alternative roads. Why bitcoin users/devs want other people to use altways (=altcoins or fiat)? That is something that undermines bitcoin itself.
The reason so few people use Segwit comes down to two issues.

1 - it fundamentally changes what a Bitcoin is, a string of signatures; and for some people it's a little hard to reconcile that transactions no longer contain my signature.

2 - it is a huge technological challenge to integrate. A massive change in the protocol, and as such, many in the BTC ecosystem are finding it challenging and integration is crawling along as a snails pace. 
There is nothing wrong with hard forks as long it's a consensus hard fork, and leaves a dead side chain. People have now associated hard forks as alternative takeovers. Before Bcash, BTC had been hardforked with major upgrades. Same goes with ETH, even Bcash had a hard fork to fix their difficulty algo. 
As much as it’s “consensus” people rely way too much on the opinions of a small group of developers to determine what consensus is. Even if the majority of people holding bitcoin wanted to increase block size it wouldn’t be done because bitcoin core “team” wont implement it and nobody trusts anyone to hard fork without their “blessing”
By the time they have figured out how fast to scale, bitcoin would have completely lost market dominance and relevance to an altcoin. 
> decentralised cryptocurrency in the future.

LN is centralising the network
Interesting point. Have my upvote
Bitcoin has certainly entered another stage, or is at the end of its current one. 

With side chains and second layer it will be the first (yes, I see you there too ltc) to enter the new, second stage of crypto currencies. It is not dead yet. Again. 

The current transaction fee crisis has me torn. They are expensive; 0.001 as of writing. But, how many transactions are you doing a week? I’m doing zero. Hodling. BCH for all its vast, traffic free blocks is seeing dozens of transactions. Dozens! Mostly traders I bet. My point being it’s not useful as a currency if there’s nowhere to spend it. Tx fees are perhaps a sort of moot problem right now. Volatility is as big or worse a problem for merchants, with *no* solution at all, and nobody discusses volatility. 


I understand that argument, but Bitcoin is dying NOW. We all agree that blocksize increase alone is not a long term solution. But it is a short term solution to a major pain point. BTC has the eyes of the world on it right now. If we don't do something, it may never survive for us to have debates about the feasibility of 8mb blocks. As others have said, it's a years old limit that is no longer relevant given how much technology has advanced.

Also, we don't know how much technology will advance going forward. It's entirely possible running a full node, with gb blocks may become a trivial thing to do, even in the developing world, within the next 5 - 10 years.

Edit:

And anyways, those people that would be priced out once block size is too big, are being priced out right now! To claim that small blocks is protecting the little guy is intellectually dishonest at best, and out right propaganda at worst.
And if the mods are on top of things, and if they remain  unbiased.
There are already platforms for accepting payments in tons of different coins. Problem is there little to no incentive for merchants to actually implement them. And so there’s not a lot of incentive for a unified platform that keeps up with all the coins either. People really don’t want to spend crypto, especially bitcoin; they want to “invest” it. Until the market stabilizes for a long period and people’s attitude changes then everyone will just *hodl* because “why buy a coffee for $2 if it will be worth $10 in a few months?” as someone else put it. 
No I have not used XRP, but I see its potential. But what reasons did you now actually give?
1. Instant 
2. Free
3. Good lead dev

Those are not really technical arguments. Really not here to bust your balls or anything, but I would love to here some real arguments that would give me and other readers a better technical view of XRP and other alts. That's why we are here. So genuinely excited to hear some technical details why XRP is able to pull these instant and free transactions off, in stead of just saying it can.

Besides, if you supposed everyone knew these arguments you are giving, what exactly are you trying to contribute with your post?
I don't know if it's going to be XRB, but I too believe that DAGs could turn out to be more efficient than Blockchains (even with a 2nd layer) when it comes to scaling. The problem I see about XRB is that it's totally untested tech and the code isnt peer reviewed. Raiblocks is basically written by one dev while bitcoin has been around for years and has been tested and updated by the best people in the industry. And DAGs are way more complex than simple blockchains which are already complex af, so I would be a bit careful. But who knows, maybe Lemahieu (lead dev of xrb) created a flawless protocol.
[deleted]
I'm not sure. I was just speculating on possible reasons they haven't done it. Anyway, I think it doesn't matter anymore at this point, Bitcoin is already unusable and people are already using other coins for payments. Might as well sit it out till LN arrives.
So basically it's hard? Tough titties. Bitcoin isn't simple, it wasn't created to be easy to understand, the long running joke amongst programmers is that you should never write your own cryptographic code because you'll get it wrong because it's so hard.

If it was so easy to take control of our money and cast off the banks, we'd have done it much sooner.

The average user doesn't need to understand segwit anyway. If you have bitcoin and don't want to pay high fees, it's simple: use segwit. 
Can you please elaborate on this. How come Bitcoin had been hard-forked before, yet retained the name and the money? Isn't **every** hard fork a split from the original, that everybody has to adopt, to become as popular as the original was? Meaning that there should be old-bitcoin chains that may still have miners?
> Bcash 

BCH pls
If the majority holding bitcoin wanted a block size increase, then bitcoin wouldn't be worth what it is now.
> But, how many transactions are you doing a week?

It is not about you and most hodlers. It is about the minority of people who actually use bitcoin in grey or black economy. They create the crystallization core that makes bitcoin so special.
Are you talking about XRP or XRB??
This is the kind of discussion I'm here for. Thank You for your Insights. I've seen this coin shilled a million times because its 'free' and 'instant'. 
The devs are probably broke or just barely standing. People were donating to luke-jr for example. I think the real reason (both why they are broke and why they do this to btc) is that devs do not understand finance and economy at all.
Naw bro, ""do it cause I say so and Fuck whether you understand."" Is not how consensus works.

Your attitude is everything wrong with these communities. And people like you are what has put wider adoption in jeopardy.
> Tough titties. 

We have major retailers giving up on Bitcoin or moving to alts and your response is 'tough titties'? Can't we do better than 'tough titties'?
Yes - there are obsolete chains of Bitcoin core. Any major modifications require a hard fork, we cannot keep using the same tech from 8 years ago hence there are continuous upgrades. When there are major upgrades they are well announced so people (mainly miners who run the nodes) can prepare to upgrade their software so they aren't mining the previous chain. Best example is ETH and ETC. ETH decided to hard fork to fix the DAO hack, most of the community followed since that's where the development and community support was, however a bunch of people disagreed and kept the original chain going. This could be the same for BTC, say if Bitcoin Core needs to hard fork for lightning network people may oppose off chain scaling and try to keep the original chain going, to do so they will need hash power and I believe there are still previous BTC chains going. 
How did you come to this conclusion? Honestly a large portion of users *do* want this, as evidenced by the split with BCH. I don't know if it's a majority though. Maybe it has shifted a little as LNs get closer..but honestly those can't solve the problem either, IMO, and block size increase will again be something people clammer for.
Absolutely, so what about volatility?
My bad, typo. XRB
This is one of the reasons I do not trust the Core devs one bit. How can you ba Bitcoin devs for several years and NOT have shitloads of BTC right now?? The clearly do not believe in the future of Bitcoin. If they did they would own some.
This
Understand or care? Say you are a painter, you consume yourself with your work, it's what you live for, to create that next masterpiece, to appreciate the fine strokes, etc etc. If people started trading paint for other shit, would you really interrupt the one thing you are completely passionate about because everyone else is playing some game of trade and moon landing with paint? What's money when all you want is to build cool tech which you can do with a laptop, an internet connection, and oodles of open source software dumps.
>Can't we do better than 'tough titties'?

No, obviously we can't, because so many people are either unwilling or incapable of adopting segwit. 

But catering to the lower common denominator in terms of user competence is how we got where we are today. 

The best solution to a problem, especially if we're talking about a technical solution, is not automatically whatever is simplest and easiest to understand. 

I don't get how there's a fork, yet nothing changes for the users. After a fork, why when I go to a store and pay with Bitcoins, I use the new chain instead of the old chain? Shouldn't there be some prerequisites for the store, before that's possible?
The volatility is being swallowed at those niches. Not with love, but becase of high ROI people live with that. That said: much easier is to handle it on bull than on bear market. When/if/after bear market comes, it might be a different story.
Yes, but try to tell it to them. Same is AA sadly. It absolutely shocked me. I do not say everyone must be a billionaire, but the reasons like I am so devoted to the technology and mission so I had to sell everything. What the fuck.

At certain point everyone involved in btc had shitload of coins. If he sold it means just the one: he did not believe in bitcoin that much. Which means his estimation of reality was way off. And those people now decide about bitcoin. And it is not just about bitcoin, any other currency is the same.

There is a reason why devs have project managers in other projects. Indeed there are exceptions. Hal Finney for example probably did not have tunnel vision (and his kids inherited a fortune).
If no one cares then also does not understand. I agree the fault is their ignorance and arrogance where they think money does not matter as much as their masterpiece. It is the same kind of arrogance that have the people from the other (financial) side. World is full of self-centered brats.
> The best solution to a problem, especially if we're talking about a technical solution, is not automatically whatever is simplest and easiest to understand.

So basically we're fucked.
I am tired of hearing: use segwit.

My wallet (electrum) is not supporting usable segwit. Many wallets still do not. 

On the top. If people have to use Segwit, they have to send btc to new address. I think several million addresses is funded. Just that fills over 1K blocks. So segwit is temporarily worsening the mempool (together with the ongoing forks that need users to do the same).
Unless you're running a wallet that stores the blockchain like the core wallet, you don't need to update. If you're using exodus or ledger it just reads the blockchain. When there is a hardfork all nodes have to upgrade to make sure they are on the new chain.
No, we're not, but people who can only look 2 weeks into the future will only ever see doom and gloom, because we will see this same cycle of the past few months repeated many times. Non-technical people will get tempted by bitcoin because they hear it might increase in value, they'll rush to throw their money at it without understanding it, we'll see a surge in price, 'adoption', transactions, and general media attention, then the mempool will get full because the network wasn't ready for a sudden, essentially instantaneous jump in the number of participants in the btc network, tx fees will rise, confidence will waiver, arguments (reasoned or otherwise) will give the impression of bitcoin as unreliable, or that mistakes are being made, the price will start to plateau or drop a little, and those same non-techy people will scramble to get their money out causing the price to drop even more, until it settles at some new, actual level of support.

The scaling issue is both hard and not hard. The solutions are known, implementing them mostly just takes time, but gathering consensus and having to wade through all the non-technical people who've suddenly think they've become experts in cryptography because they have money on the line, makes that all harder, and clouds any sensible view of what are reasonable timelines for development of new features. 
I don't have a very deep understanding of the ledger, so I'm not sure if I get you. 

You mean that after a Bitcoin fork, all stores updated the nodes, so everything worked. But for Bitcoin Cash, many didn't, that's why there wasn't much adoption? 
This is the kind of argument I can get behind, whether we agree with each other or not.

Your argument makes perfect sense, but the issue is we can never reach wider adoption, we will never become world changing if we keep this as fringe technology for only the biggest technophiles in the know. We need the normies too. We have to find ways to help them understand or adapt the technology to make it more intuitive.

Edit:

Also, if this will be a repeating cycle, and given what you've outlined above, I can see how that makes sense, then we need a mechanism to dynamically increase the capacity when these events do occur
Miners are the most important part. They decide which chain is propagated and which isn't, because they create the blocks. So they need to upgrade for the fork to succeed.

Also exchanges and all other people running a full node (i.e. a full wallet program that downloads the entire blockchain) – if they don't upgrade, their software won't find the new blocks but will keep waiting forever for blocks on the old chain (because that's the one that agrees with the protocol).

Stores and other end-users would usually run an SPV wallet (light wallet), where [the situation is a whole lot more complicated.](https://bitzuma.com/posts/spv-wallet-users-beware-segwit2x-may-take-you-for-a-ride/)
> We have to find ways to help them understand or adapt the technology to make it more intuitive.

I agree to a certain extent, but at the same time, I am a realist about how long it takes software to improve and mature. 

From a traditional software development point of view, bitcoin is essentially in early alpha, except everyone decided to start using it anyway. There are very meaningful features that are yet to be finished, and from an uninformed user's perspective all they see are complicated inner workings exposed but not explained, so I really don't think it's the time for my grandma to be testing out lightning clients. 

It is perfectly logical to say that we need mainstream support for bitcoin to achieve its aims. The question is when do we expect that, and when can we achieve that. December 2017? No, we can't achieve it now, clearly, and that's fine. The market self-corrects when people try to push it further than it can currently support, and that motivates developers to come up with scaling solutions, so I see it as a net positive. "
I'm giving a TedTalks presentation on Blockchain!,112,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/tjlr5e/im_giving_a_tedtalks_presentation_on_blockchain/,"I think explaining the core differences between defi and cefi are necessary. Like how cefi means your assets can be seized vs defi where you are the owner of those assets and unless your wallet is compromised you are the only one who can move assets. I think mentioning how current interest rates pale in comparison to what can be made via staking and how holding money or even assets (shares, stocks, etc) in traditional bank accounts means they’re being used against you such as brokers lending out shares you own without your permission, some essentially just giving you ious and how instant settlement and immutable ledger technology combats predatory behavior.
Also consider looking at applications of zero knowledge proofs in blockchain and cryptography
There’s too much stuff.. I’d say someone understanding these topics should probably give the talk.   
    
Regardless, my advice is keep it simple. Most people here are suggesting amazing use cases  (some that I follow personally) but they will distract from the talk to someone new.   
    
You want to talk about:   
   
- handling democracy and immutability  
through code    
   
- what btc solved (blockchain 1.0).  
   
- what eth solved (blockchain 2.0). Here you can give a vault example through smart contracts, DeFi, NFT, and one more advanced use like Descentralized Identifiers (DiD).  
   
The on challenges:   

- energy, descentralización, interoperability, regulation. Those are the big issues.    

- In energy you can introduce PoS (without going much to the technicals).    

- In descentralisation you can talk about the threelema of blockchain. You can talk about governance here too, DAOs as an exciting example.   

- In interoperability there are 2 types. One is chain interoperability, here you can talk about bridges and layer 0 blockchains (polkadot, cosmos, etc). Other one is between blockchain and real world assets. Here you can talk about oracle and other protocols   

- In Regulation you can give both extremes, like San Salvador and China/India. And what the scenario is in the West
   
That’s it
You might point out that Blovkchain != Token and NFT != PNG - there is so much hate for NFTs and shitcoins from non crypto heads that Blockchain tech in general and esp. NFT is not being understood. Course it is getting abused for nonsense just cuz its new but there useful stuff there. Check out the Mastering Monero paper available at site of same name.
[deleted]
Will the phrase ""Utterly useless/pointless if not fully anonymized"" be included?
Good luck 🍀 i wish you well
Congratulations! Maybe some of us will be able to check it out 👍
When it comes to what can be solved with blockchain, DeSci (Decentralized Science) is not to be missed. There are various projects on how to use cryptos to support research. For example, check out r/cryptoforscience for at to read more about it.
“Very slow, write-only serverless database.”

There you go!
The Think Lair YouTube channel by Keir Fonlow-Bates has amazing short clips. It's criminally underrated.
When speaking of legal issues, it can't be over-emphasized how destructive tax classifications have been: having to track basis and profit/loss on every single satoshi in and out of every single wallet, for daily transactional use, is so impractical that it makes it de facto illegal to use crypto as money in countries where it is taxed as such (thus helping to keep even large market cap coins stuck in purely speculative cycles...there's nothing else to do with them *but* speculate).
I think you could pick example - voting. How election could be ran on blockchain and be available forever for scrutiny. It would practically eliminate possibility of rigging election, or to be precise - rigging it without proof.
Blockchain is a public read-for-free write-for-fee database. An NFT is a piece of data with you name on it (FT: bob- 10ETH -> NFT: bob- ANY_DATA)
just an idea. I've come across people who use the tech and people who understand alot of the tech and use the tech. Maybe give confidence to people new to the space that you don't need to understand physics or how anything works to use the new tech. Only geeks, coders, and those curious need to dive deep into the tech.
Smart contracts = vending machine for an example
READ DEFI FOR THE DIASPORA

Shoot me a message and keep my contact. I’m in the space, I’ll get you interviews. 

You got this bro.
I'm always keen to learn new things, especially in terms of technology. looking forward to your speech.
One of the issues blockchain faces is the privacy laws that are popping up around the world these last few years. Due to the immutable nature of blockchain it increases thresholds for companies to use blockchain in certain processes. There are projects out there that tackle this, among others LTO Network: [https://medium.com/ltonetwork/legalthings-one-blockchain-gdpr-made-possible-68a5ce09e7ca](https://medium.com/ltonetwork/legalthings-one-blockchain-gdpr-made-possible-68a5ce09e7ca) (older article).  


LTO is also working on Web3.0 solutions which is of course where everything is headed. The creation of self sovereign data for people is the next step into the digitization of the world. And where NFTs are merely touching on the aspects of digital ownership, steps are already being taken to improve on current structures and bring true digital asset ownership into the space: https://blog.ltonetwork.com/litepaper/
For ethical resources, i believe Whiteboard crypto on Youtube is a great place to start. Also for the first part you can use the example of how blockchain is making it easier for funds to move around like with ukrain receiving millions of dollars into donations  through the blockchain and in a matter of minutes.

You could also speak about how blockchain is bringing about a sustainable future when we have entities like the HBAR Foundation dumping hundreds of millions of dollars to encourage sustainable development.

&#x200B;

Good luck with the presentation!
remind folks how important privacy and anonymity is in crypto. between corrupt governments, corporations and institutions and sjw/woke culture, keeping and maintaining your freedom and sovereignty means being able to take your finances do what you want without oversite from those mentioned above is the only fighting chance to make meaningful change in the world.  Anyone that tells you neither privacy or anonymity isn't worth it are blatantly ignorant and or direct adversaries to crypto. Ask Satoshi Nakamoto . where bitcoin stopped, monero began.

kyc survallaince in the name of aml and other bullshit acronyms are just an excuse to control the population and the limit the human experience. fuck social credit systems. fuck cbdc's. 

the crypto tenants- decentralization, trustlessness, permissionlessness, censorship resistance, privacy.
Worth briefly mentioning *why* crypto is needed by showing examples of the worst examples of civil forfeiture, dictators stealing the countries people's savings, and political attacks by targeting political dissidents money.

Unfortunately most people will likely just not get it because it often hurts people they don't like. For example recent sanctions on Russia, ""nobody"" cares because it's universally accepted that Russia is doing bad things, but the citizens are struggling too and crypto would better allow them to escape the country with their savings intact, but people don't care about that because everyone is more preoccupied with hurting the enemy than protecting their ally.

I also think the Canadian trucker attack on people's money was quite atrocious, even though I partially do not agree with them on a lot of things I find the way Canada handled it by confiscating their money and labelling them as domestic terrorists for protesting to be downright dystopic as it sets a precedent for doing the same thing with more and more minor disturbances until eventually protesting is practically outlawed if you value your bank account. Dangerous precedent.


I think you might be interested in talking about Proof of Humanity on Kleros. Vitalik has an interest in using PoH to distribute Universal Basic Income to all of humanity by using sybil resistance to ensure all users are unique humans.

To Vitalik that is one way he wants to see his ""socialist agenda"" come into play, so it goes to show that crypto is more than just a right-wing tool like many unfortunately have painted it as when crypto is for *everyone*.

Kleros is not anywhere near ready for global adoption even if it had increased scale already, but the subjective oracles themselves are quite interesting as a concept.
An important one is governance.  
How is the process of developing and updating the software that is running on nodes.  


Another is distribution. How well are nodes distributed geographically, amount of them, and if they are anonymous or not (known nodes have less quality because they can be contacted and facilitate collusion, which is not good for consensus)  


Another is scalability. Is there any centralization 'force' that impeeds network expansion?  


HTH
Good summary. One thing I'd definitely add in challenges  (as part of the decentralization topic/trilemma) is the issue of scaling transactions/transaction fees. This is IMO the biggest issue by far that is being faced by Smart Contract platforms aka Ethereum the premier smart contract chain.
It’s a TedX hosted on my college campus. I haven’t been given too many details other than expectations, speech length (12min), and other requirements quite yet. I was told those will be emailed to me within a week
don't like to upvote this, but did it bc it is true...
Why such an extreme opinion? Not everyone is interested in making purely anonymous transactions. Are you saying that 99.99% of crypto transactions are utterly pointless to the people who make them?

The original point was to be a replacement for a cashless payment system, not anonymity.
“Very slow, **append-only** serverless database.”

It is definitely more inefficient to have to look up the merkle tree to verify the history of the transaction, and that's part of the flaws of append-only blockchains.
Agreed, left gas behind. Haven't used eth in a while so forgot about it a bit :S
Watch the gensler MIT class in blockchain technology, gives a good explanation of the crypto world as it exists circa 2018. From their I would go in one of two directions: the pros and cons of the various smart contract platforms or the different ways dApps and NFTs create value by disintermediating existing rent seeking business models and financialization currently unused resources

For the first I would focus on the block chain dilemma as a starting point and run from their, for the second I would probably pick some existing services and explain the potential value add in a concrete way with numbers based on total addressable market
Fully verified, kyc transactions = government can shut the whole thing down with a tweet
Awe, it's cute how you've never thought about this before.
>bullshit. anonymity and privacy were the last things that satoshi wanted to put into btc because he knew how important it was and even had convos with fluffypony one of the creators of monero about that need. people are definitely interested in their privacy and anonymity but dont know how to attain it in a meaningful ways and the bullshit parasite class thats running the show wants to scare folks away from gaining their freedoms back.
Yup! It’s like XML. There are situations where it is the perfect tool. But usually… not
so are you a XMR enthusiast?
Maybe you shouldn't be giving suggestions on cryptotechnology if you're new to blockchains and don't understand pseudonimity or Monero. These are very basic blockchain concepts.
No idea what that is. I just heard a basic Blockchain explanation once and asked a couple questions like, ""If it's a fully public transaction log and no one can get money into crypto without a paper trail....the government can just say you can't move any money in or out, and if you do, they can just come and arrest you and take your stuff. Is that right?""

Seems like a fine store of value...with even less inherent value than 99.9% of the gold out there, but does anyone think the powers that be aren't either going to make sure they can control it or shut it down and start their own?

Seems like for the idea to work at all, it at least needs to be as anonymous as cash.

Edit: That said, smart contracts seem like a big slice of fried gold dipped in dark chocolate. If crypto can be reliable enough to back smart contracts, THAT is the future.

Edit: ...but you CANNOT do full verification or full retention. You must accept and implement partial verification and must algorithmically sunset most transactions.
Awe, gatekeeping...that's adorable. Maybe if you're a fuddite who thinks Blockchain is difficult to understand you should just let the adults talk and go back to listen to your Jojo Siwa tracks. At any rate, I certainly hope you enjoy being on the cheer team.
Sounds like XMR is right up your alley. /r/Monero

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_giHgwBqwzo3UXbDbOdByt4k4GjcbnX
Monero sounds like what the doucheiest bartender in Destin calls money when he asks if you have enough of it to cover the round for the table before he says, ""Just messin' with you champ!"" and gives you the double finger guns.
Meh, this sort of thing has sunset for me, but the kids have some in their college funds.

Good luck changing the world, you crazy kids.
Monero literally just means ""Money"". And it is the best money because it is the only fungible coin as your own wallet cannot become ""tainted""."
What are the Most Interesting Projects Uniquely Enabled by Crypto?,109,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nluv1w/what_are_the_most_interesting_projects_uniquely/,"From the top of my head (which may be in the clouds—I am not a blockchain engineer): 

Make digital items more tangible. NFTs allow a digital copy to behave more like a physical one. For instance, a video game could be uniquely tied to your purchase, and you could re-sell that very copy to someone else. In fact, by combining various different blockchain projects, the entire process of purchasing, downloading, and re-selling your copy of a video game could be done entirely without any monetized distribution platform. 

Storing information on a blockchain makes it virtually impossible to tamper with and to remove (unless agreed upon criteria are met, probably). You could have your certificates stored and signed by an issuer on a blockchain, and never have to worry about having its legitimacy or origin be questioned, have its integrity broken, or even losing the data.

Trustless trade in general. You can replace the broker in most trades with a blockchain.
One of my favourites is fairly ignored/unknown in the crypto space, because it has no ""coin"" attached to it, so it isn't tractable for speculative mania: [RedGrid](https://redgrid.io/).

It uses Holochain to allow energy devices (e.g., solar panels, and any appliance that uses energy) to communicate and coordinate energy use, which is needed in order to address the problem of variable energy availability from renewables.

Edit: Pleasantly surprised to see this get top comment! If you are interested in learning how to develop on Holochain, they have a free devcamp coming up next month: [https://forum.holochain.org/t/devcamp8-announcement/5879](https://forum.holochain.org/t/devcamp8-announcement/5879)
Brave Browser and subsequently BAT token
Helium network is a good one.

Hotspots provide lora radio coverage that sends and recieve packets of data from IOT devices.  Helium network token are rewarded to Hotspot owners for providing proof of coverage.  Helium is sold and burnt into data credits, the IOT owners need to buy data credits so they can use the network
The Reserve Protocol allows people un Venezuela/Argentina to automatically exchange between dollars (RSV stablecoin) and their local currency. The project even supports withdrawing and depositing from a local currency account! 

This is big. Imagine PayPal but crypto and with full support of latin american countries. I think they're planning to open the app on Lebanon and other high inflation countries.
I think the first project you need to look into is Monero. It’s like bitcoin but with special modifications to make it private, untraceable, digital money; it has a use case that will always be in demand and is uniquely enabled by cryptography and blockchain.

Second project, a bitcoin code fork, Ravencoin. It allows you to issue out your own security tokens on the blockchain. It can be useful for entrepreneurs and SMEs (small/medium sized enterprises) to access a larger audience to raise capital.

Third, I’d dig deeper into the top Ethereum projects, especially the top DeFi projects like Uniswap, Maker, Aave, Chainlink.
if you want to understand how blockchain works with regular cryptocurrencies you see on coinmarket cap. check out mastering bitcoin. i recommend the paperback but the book is on their github for free. it also has some code examples in full from the book https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook. 

The other aspect is about understanding the use cases. what does blockchain solve, over using a centralised system ? when its appropriate to use? which the book doesnt really cover 

for that id recommend reading this paper:

[Do you need a Blockchain?](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf)
My current favorite project is working on a decentralized database that enables decentralized social networks and other decentralized applications. This part of the project isn’t supposed to be commercial, but on the other hand it has a clearing house to generate income. 

While I’m looking forward towards its commercial success on the clearing house, I would really love for the decentralized social networks to become a success. 

A decentralized database will essentially allow the users to own their own data, and choose to sell it to advertisers or lock it. The power that social networks and any other enterprise that extracts users’ data is great, and they are not trustworthy to handle it. Many thinkers believe that data will be the new oil, and I agree to a degree. If we become a commodity and can be easily manipulated by anyone who owns our data, that will make this world really dystopian and scary.

I think that given the decentralized nature of this blockchain, people can get the power back. This blockchain can handle many more services such as music or movie streaming, e-commerce, and many other applications. If it becomes a success, and people start using it for most of their services, it could force companies to use it as well. If that happens, the power of data will mo longer be held by a tiny amount of individuals in Silicon Valley or somewhere else. It will be in the hands of the people, and we will not be heading towards the dystopian future we currently are.

Edit: its name is Revolution Populi.
The use-case most unique to crypto that, as you mentioned, isn't sexy is cross-border payments. Its amazing how far things have strayed from this to the point where no one in here has even mentioned it; its literally the core purpose of crypto.

Why is it unique to blockchain? To answer I'll simply propose a scenario. 

You live in the US with a family member overseas, say Nigeria. Your family member needs money. You decide to sell from your investment fund to send the money to your family member. 

How long does that take?

Well, depending on the investment, itll likely take 2 days for your sales to settle. Once those settle you may need to withdraw from your investment account to your bank which would likely take another 2 days. Then you may need to transfer those to family members account. Then your family member would need to find a place to convert USD to Naira. That's, what, 7+ busines days with potentially 5 layers of fees just to send someone money?

How long could that take with blockchain?

Potentially less than a minute. Sell from fund, 5 second settlement. Send directly to family members wallet where funds are auto exchanged from USD to Naira. Done.
session messenger and lokinet
I like the idea of controlling the secondary ticket market. For example you could program into the contract that if a ticket gets resold the original issuer gets 50%, or that it can't be resold for a higher price at all.

https://get-protocol.io/ is what I found when researching this use case.
Defi, NFTs, supply chain traceability and provenance. You can do some of the same functionality with out the blockchain but you can do most things without blockchain, just not as well or as trustlessly. 

Then you can start to mix these things together - tokenize assets and free up value by using as security on defi, for example.
I have this question as well.

So far, all the answers I see are not unique. They are things you can already do with a centralized system, P2P, or a normal distributed system. Blockchain isn't the only way to run a distributed system.

I think zero proof financial transactions might be one of the few unique things for cryptocurrency. (Edit: Never mind. Even that can be done centralized)
Haven’t read all the comments but flash loans are something blockchain enables allowing you to loan tokens to anybody with no collateral and they go and make arbitrage trades, pay you back plus profit and they also make a profit all in one transaction without the risk of not being repayed. While you certainly don’t NEED blockchain for this...I just don’t think anybody would loan a random person on the internet money without collateral unless every person on the internet was 100% honest 100% of the time. Blockchain enables very interesting ways to lend and borrow through defi smart contracts essentially.
Decentralized finance is a given now in the crypto world but 5 years before now it was almost non existant. This is already huge and can't wait to see what the future hold.
Look up Maidsafe (Crypto: MAID) web: [safenetforum.org](https://safenetforum.org)

They've been plugging at this since before bitcoin, just getting into the final product testnets.  It replaces several layers of the web stack, and is not blockchain based but includes state of the art crypto.  Essentially a fully encrypted permanent web.. the basics are full encryption and redundant storage of data with granular permissions, Byzantine fault tolerant CRDT data structures, AT2 transactions.   You can save data, host websites, build web apps, use completely private email etc.  Instant, private, scalable transactions.

Because the research/engineering has taken so long, many have written it off (or never even heard of it), but it is right at the finish line now. Worth a deep dive.
I'm biased since I'm the developer, but using Nano, PlayNANO offers a multiplayer provably fair roulette (gambling) that requires no login.

It's provably fair, meaning all spins are fair. Not the user nor the server (PlayNANO) can predict the outcome of any spin until the roulette stops spinning.

It's also multiplayer, as in, you can see other players betting, and the spins are the same for everyone playing. Your bets actually affect the outcome of the spin.

Lastly, by using Nano, an instant and feeless Cryptocurrency, you have one of the best user experience one can have. You just have to place your bet, scan the QR code to send Nano, and wait for the round to end and then if you win you're also paid instantly. No login required.

Link if you want to check it out: [https://playnano.online/roulette](https://playnano.online/roulette)
Check out the Bankless podcast for some truly amazing talks about Defi and the practical uses of crypto. 

Some unique projects I think are awesome:

Pooltogether is a fascinating concept that can only be practically done on a blockchain. It's a Lossless Lottery where everyone pools their assets, the pool earns an interest rate, and then the interest earned is awarded out in a lottery. Code is audited and public so you can see that it's truly random and fair.

A new one I'm researching is Alchemix. The concept is that you deposit a stablecoin and then borrow against that stablecoin. It uses interest rate arbitrage to pay the loan off automatically. It also has the feature of extremely low risk of liquidation.
Algorand and their CBDCs and how governments and orgs can utilise their blockchain.

Cool stuff.
Lokinet, a better sybil resistant onion routing network like Tor. It used incentified service nodes instead of nodes based on altruizm. The team also built Session, a messenger that onion routes messages to achieve network privacy.

Intried both, the tech is quite amazing as is the codebase.
I focus almost solely on the project use cases when making investment decisions rather than hype coins, and I have a few at the top of my list:

- VeChain: supply-chain management platform built around blockchain technology. They can place RFID trackers on physical assets throughout production so when you find them at a retailer you can scan a QR code on your phone and learn about the product from start to finish. Imagine buying produce and being able to see information about the organic growth conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.). They’re doing it with wine too, from the planted seeds all the way through the bottling process. Or imagine buying clothes and being able to check that it is not counterfeit with a quick QR scan. The beauty of the blockchain is that it’s self-auditing and uneditable. They are also working to track carbon capture in China on top of some other uses.

- Basic Attention Token (BAT): You can download the Brave browser on your computer or phone, which comes with a built-in ad-blocker. Instead of normal webpage ads, you’re given Brave ads (you can disable or customize the number of ads you receive up to 5/hour) and are rewarded in a small amount of BAT for viewing them, hence the name “basic attention token”. You’re also able to tip BAT to content creators that have enabled BAT tipping and can schedule those tips monthly.

- Helium: Helium is mined via radio waves on hotspots owned by users for providing proof of coverage. These hotspots create an IOT network, and Helium is burned into data credits that IOT owners need to buy in order to use the network. The returns on the hotspots are INSANE right now (up to $1000+/month in urban areas). The logic is that compared to a network company like AT&T which pays employees to install and manage the network, the users are paid out in Helium to install and manage the network and provides incentive to mine and contribute to nationwide/global proof of coverage for the network.

I do not claim to be a genius on any of these technologies, so if anyone has corrections or added comments please feel free to correct me here.
ALGORAND ALGORAND ALGORAND
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/say-hello-nightfall-paul-brody-1f/

Also look at Baseline, also by EY.
I am interested in new projects, but where can I find information about them?
For me, the best part about crypto/blockchain are the projects that utilize it to establish trust and tamper-proof scenarios. So, there are projects that help you prove certain conditions are met, like I really was there at the concert and the blockchain can prove it. Better yet, blockchain technology could set up a smart contract that pays me because I was at a concert in person.
I’ve felt that r/stacks is basically already ETH 2.0. Has limitless scalability, multiple apps, smart/active dev team, and a good foundation for web3. If the time comes where people can host their own full customizable sites on blockchain with integrated automated financial protocols/contracts then I see a lot of potential.
Non Custodial Financial Services.

It's a feature of UTXO blockchains (so more like Bitcoin and less like Ethereum, which has an account model). 

Basically, you can provide some financial services without ever taking custody of funds. One practical example in production is Blind Escrow used by local.bitcoin.com. 

This is enabled by the check data sig OP, that has been added to BCH somehwere in 2018-2019.
Are there any projects in crypto technology that could feasibly tackle the Ticketmaster problem in some fashion? I would love to support anything that disrupts their status in the industry.
I think EthereumMax is big. It’s highly versatile. Check it out. Big gains.
/r/SyntropyNet - safer, faster internet

/r/AmpToken - decentralized, instant payments (with crypto or fiat)
Check what Dusk Network is building with their XSC standard.

https://dusk.network/news/confidential-security-contract-standard-xsc-v2
When I was introduced to crypto, recording data in an unalterable way wad by far the most important use case all. The coin or tokens seemed like a lure that would draw the average person to it. Human greed is tangible and calculable. 

Crypto is the future of commerce. It needs tokens and coins to get us to use it. Immutable record keeping, fruitless transactions, and On chain transparency is needed and will succeed. Jmho
> Trustless trade in general. You can replace the broker in most trades with a blockchain.

I never really understood this use case so perhaps you could help me get it.

How does the smart contract (/blockchain) “know” when the conditions have been made in order to execute the trade? Wouldn’t you need a third party to confirm and input this information?
> For instance, a video game could be uniquely tied to your purchase, and you could re-sell that very copy to someone else.

This would be a positive DRM solution.  You can't share your private key, because the person you share with could sell it and invalidate your license.  But you can still install on all your devices.  Buyer having full resale rights means essentially rental/try options.  MSFT could for example rebuy ""used"" licenses to keep price up.
These aren't unique. They are just decentralized versions of doing things that centralized systems already do.

You can sell digital goods on many game trading platforms.

Public key certificate is the centralized version of the certificate topic. If you're just talking about key exchange, that's existed decades before Bitcoin. Cryptography is not cryptocurrency-specific.

So it really depends on which question OP means:

1. What can only be done with crypto?
1. What can only be done with crypto, but decentralized?

The 2nd is a slippery slope that has tautology issues. Almost everything could fall under the 2nd as a use case.
I couldn't find out how they leveraged blockchain to provide their service. They mention AI and IoT but neither require blockchain to operate. Could you enlighten me please?
Why does it need a Blockchain and not just a database?
Definitely an area I know nothing about. Will look into it. Thanks!
You can also do this centralized, so I don't consider it unique.
Will look more into it. I do personally think one of the most apparent problems in the world is the transfer of money, so I am particularly interested here
>on Monero

Censorship is one thing blockchain stands against by deploying its Decentralised nature and leveraging on such [technology](http://twitter.com/railgun_project) while utilizing the various DeFi Legos on chain is a big plus.
Have actually read the Bitcoin book before way back in the day, but will read again. Downloaded them. Appreciate it
XLM is the way I would go if I were in that situation
[https://strike.me/](https://strike.me/) doing revolutionary stuff
Doesn't really need crypto/blockchain, does it?  


Any centralized platform could track who the original owner of an item was and give them a cut of all future sales. Which from an end-user perspective would look the same, I think?  


Obviously, this ignores the whole ""trustless"" aspect, which I am personally bearish on (but learning more about!). I'm still not yet convinced that end-users don't actually like having a centralized party they can trust, but that is a separate topic
I think the biggest reason I am bearish on most projects is I simply don’t think most people care about “trustless” and privacy. They want the fastest, most convenient, and most affordable way to solve their problem.

I also acknowledge this is probably a very first world way of looking at things
Anything in particular I should look at?
Sweet. Added to list.

My initial skepticism is just that nobody (or only a tiny fraction of people) actually cares about privacy. Most just want stuff that works the best and younger generations increasingly don't care at all. Nobody is switching to a private internet with less functionality or a private social network that has no one else on it.

Will update with how my opinions have shifted after reading!  


\*Editing to add that this is clearly a very first world viewpoint\*
You stated that they were working on this before bitcoin. You can still do this without crypto, so it's not unique.
My biggest skepticism here is that I am not yet convinced that the population of people that care about something being ""provably fair"" is particularly large. Though could see how this increases in importance the more amount you are gambling.  


Will look into it more and update with how my opinions have changed!
Someone else recommended Bankless so I downloaded some!  


Pooltogether doesn't really seem uniquely enabled by blockchain. Prize-linked savings accounts are this exact thing, right?  


Will look into Alchemix! Thanks!
Will look more into these! Leaving my initial skepticism below so I can report back later with how my mind has changed.  


Vechain. I don't see why you really need a blockchain for this. Companies aren't incentivized to lie about their production practices because they would get fined by governments and you can easily state how a product was produced without a blockchain. Also, I just don't think very many end-consumers really care.  


BAT. The idea of getting paid to view ads is interesting, but if the CPMs are anything like what I've seen in my time in the consumer space, you are literally getting paid fractions of a penny to view ads which no one would care about. My own personal belief is just that very few people actually care about privacy (especially younger people)  


Helium. I do actually think this is uniquely enabled by blockchain and very cool. The next questions I need to answer for myself are: is there actually a coverage issue for IOT devices that needs solved, is this the best way to solve it, and what needs to happen for IOT devices to connect to Helium network instead of whatever is out there already.  


Great recommendations. Will look into them and update my opinions
Why wouldn't it be possible on Ethereum? I don't see the problem with an escrow smart contract.
Surprised you haven't got a straightforward answer yet. The answer is oracles (e.g. LINK, BAND). And they themselves use several decentralised sources that must arrive at consensus in order to verify some fact external to the blockchain. :)
I imagine that's up to individual situations. If I have a signed asset I want to sell to you, we would set up a trade so that it happens automatically once that very asset is committed for trade by me, and you have committed the agreed-upon payment. The ""third party"" is the people validating the integrity and state of the blockchain.

Exactly what the conditions are would be up to us. I imagine niche platforms will establish and prepare common conditions for their typical trades.
>Wouldn’t you need a third party to confirm and input this information?

Smart contracts automate blockchain activity.  Where ever blockchain activity interfaces with the real world then an agent in the real world must *attest* that a condition of a smart contract has been met.  See the [Tim Ferris interview with Nick Szabo](https://tim.blog/2018/06/01/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-nick-szabo/), search for ""inherently wet"".
Smart contracts are just code that lives on the block chain. So smart contracts are the ""third party"" of those transactions. The thing with smart contracts is that they are immutable, once they are deployed to a blockchain they can not be edited, so the creator has to get it right. Developers can view the code for smart contracts to verify the security and validity of the smart contract. But ultimately that smart contract is a bit of code that ""knows"" when conditions are met and executes trades accordingly, getting rid of the need for a legit third party to facilitate that transaction.
Developers would have less than no incentive for implementing anything like this though. Why would they want to decimate their own market just to enable easy reselling of their products through NFTs?
Reselling digital goods? Proving without a doubt the integrity of data? No, those aren't possible. That's like arguing e-mail wasn't something new because regular mail already existed. For many products and services, becoming decentralized will is what will take them to the next level.
They don't use blockchain, actually. They use Holochain, which is more of a general purpose app framework for distributed networks (i.e., energy devices are by nature distributed nodes, so Holochain is ideal for it).

I'm not sure I'd be able to explain it adequately, but you can ask them in [their Telegram channel](https://t.me/redgrid). They're very friendly and the Telegram has fewer than 200 people, so it's pretty chill. You can also try googling ""redgrid holochain"" and you may find some info. This is an article that I just found that seems to have some info: [https://blog.holochain.org/building-together-redgrids-internet-of-energy-mission-and-the-holochain-community/](https://blog.holochain.org/building-together-redgrids-internet-of-energy-mission-and-the-holochain-community/)
I don't know about this project but Holochain despite the name is not a blockchain.

A regular database has a owner (for example imagine facebook) which may do what he wants with your data (even not allowing you to see what data they have about you), using holochain you have much more control over your data.
Upon basically 30 minutes of research, I do agree that this is actually something uniquely enabled by crypto.  


My open questions are whether IOT actually has a coverage issue that needs to be solved, if this is actually the best way to solve it if so, and what is required for IOT devices to connect to the Helium network.  


Will continue diving
You can, but no one has - the problem with centralisation is there has been no inventisation for the network to be built out.  Amazon sidewalk might kibosh helium, there's always rivals with everything but nothing comes closer to what helium has achieved in just under two years.
I've used stellar xlm for international transfer before and the fees plus exchange spread made it pretty expensive.

I don't know whose fault it is but the system is faster but not inexpensive yet.
What blockchain is that running on? There's probably a million competitors in that space, atm.
Yeah, you're right, it could be done centralized. 
For me the value in most blockchain applications is eliminating the middlemen and not having to pay someone just so I have a party to interact with that I can trust. With this I can be 100% confident that the I will receive the ticket I paid for and am the sole owner of it, which I'm currently not when interacting with secondary ticket markets.
Perhaps Defi Loans and Smart Contracts to name two
You can't do this without cryptocurrency techniques.   Aside from the fact that AT2 is a very recent cryptocurrency algorithm, Byzantine tolerant replication of data and agreement of network state is at the very heart of what crypto currency does.
That's true, not that many people care about provably fair. But in this case, that's not really where crypto makes it unique.

I mean you asked for things that can only be accomplished with crypto, and provably fair can be achieved without crypto (although it uses crypto on this case).

The ""unique"" thing here is not requiring a login. I don't need anything from the user, no data, except their address/transaction.

I also offer Gift Cards users can purchase, again, with no Login. Not sure that would be possible to make without crypto.

Also not possible to make with Bitcoin for example, due to the fees and how long transactions take, but yeah you get my point. Just giving you an example of what's possible, like you asked. Much more is possible, especially if you use an instant and feeless crypto.
> Vechain. I don't see why you really need a blockchain for this. Companies aren't incentivized to lie about their production practices because they would get fined by governments and you can easily state how a product was produced without a blockchain. Also, I just don't think very many end-consumers really care.

Supply chain verification is not just an end user issue, although it is beneficial for them as well. Finding the source of counterfeit introduction into the supply chain, or precise extraction of a tainted batch are just two great use cases. Beyond that, using blockchain is cheaper and much more secure. Additionally, each party, seller, buyer, and transporter can use the blockchain to verify the integrity of the product without having to expose their various private databases to others. Supply chain is one of my favorite use cases.
Curious if you have any updated thoughts after some further research; my opinions are always open to new knowledge and ideas!
To the best of my understanding, the escrow would still take custody of the funds in some way (and so, be labelled as a money transmitter, and be subject to regulation etc). 

I believe *blind* escrow is not possible on Eth (but am open to be corrected)
[removed]
Not trying to be obtuse but wouldn’t you need a third party to facilitate you “committing” your asset for the trade? Unless you’re trading bitcoins for bitcoin (or whatever the on chain currency is).
Licenses could last 1-5 years so as to have declining value.  They would have more buyers,users if lower cost due to resell potential.
Steam is a huge platform for trading digital goods (remember hats?). Kids were selling/buying Diablo 2 items decades ago.

All done through centralized systems or P2P systems.

Also, NFT does not solve the issue of 1-to-1 transactions. I can create an infinite amount of NFTs on different platforms pointing to the same good.
Thanks for the info, I'll definitely be asking. Seems like a great project.
Ok you made me look a bit into holochain, thanks it seems interesting. However, my observation was just that I don't really see why that project needs a blockchain. From what I read this just let you coordinate some devices in your house, so a database should be enough, I may be wrong though.

If I am the owner of the database and/or the data is encrypted I have nearly no problem.  Using a Blockchain where it's not needed increases the complexity for nothing and you also loose performance.
This is probably one of the few cases where it's more efficient and secure to do via crypto, but you can totally do this via a normal distributed system without crypto.

In fact, almost every example in this thread can be done via a centralized system, P2P, or a distributed system. So they aren't unique.
Bitcoin lightning network -here's some of their work in El Salvador  
https://twitter.com/JackMallers/status/1383825111363461124
Fair enough. Definitely think cost savings would be a legitimate benefit
BFT has been used in aviation years before cryptocurrencies. That's actually one of the things you learn in crypto classes.

Fault tolerance in general is used everywhere. BFT is just a specific category of it.
Appreciate your discussion, I too prioritize use cases when investing and was literally researching VET just now and stumbled in here.
Well said and entirely agreed. VeChain is honestly top of my list, I’ve been recommending people to check it out since I dove into the project in 2017 and bought in at the ICO.

The potential uses related to supply-chain are endless too—they can extend into healthcare, automobile manufacturing and reporting, carbon emission tracking as I noted, etc. Can you imagine a blockchain-backed carfax report that you can access with a quick QR scan?
Very interesting. Will need to learn more
Haven't gotten to VeChain yet! It's on my list though. Been reading mostly DeFi stuff so far.   


The core concept behind Helium of individuals providing value to a network and then getting to reap the rewards of that value instead of some centralized company providing and collecting all the value is very interesting. I am not bullish on Helium as I think IOT is not the proper application of this, but that underlying concept is super interesting.
Hm, interesting. I wonder for a long time already if smart contracts can be regulated (instead of the Interactions with one).
But indeed, if the capital would be send to the smart contract upfront, it would have custody over it.
An alternative would be to just authorize the escrow contract to deduct up to x tokens from your balance. That way the sender holds custody of the tokens while the escrow contract is allowed to send it another way when I is triggered.
A downside would be that the other party can't be sure there will be enough tokens available when the payment is due. I guess that's exactly the benefit of UTXOs then?
Interesting. Which oracle(s) is this true for?
You wouldn't. It's preprogrammed in the smart contracts, thus making it trustless, no third parties required
I think people are missing your point here, but I get what you're asking. 

The onus is on the person selling the item to be accurate about it, but they won't want to scam themselves.

For example if I had an NFT for my car, and someone wanted to buy my car, then I'd transfer ownership of the car to them manually in exchange for money, like transferring the title of a car. 

But yeah it's not automatic.
So if you are trading something that is not digital, say Real estate, there needs to be some way to get the information required by the smart contract in order for the smart contract to execute. There are ways to do this that do require a 3rd party, and ways that don't. 


Ex 1. We make a smart contract where I pay you $100,000 when and if I recieve the title to the real estate. The smart contract can automatically transfer the $100k as soon as it gets the signal, but there needs to be some input. We cannot trust the seller to input the signal, because they have incentive to input the signal before the transfer. We cannot trust the buyer to input the signal becauae they have incentive to never input the signal. So it requires some 3rd party verification of the signal (since the signal is inherently non-digital).


However, we could write the contract as:


Ex 2: When I send you $100k, the real estate deed is automatically signed and released to the buyer which transfers the property. In this case, the smart contract CAN see the movement of cash if we use public wallets. Legally, it would be a little complicated, but we can put the contract itself into the blockchain, so that should work as well.


Now, while some contracts can simply be re-done slightly differently, that is not the case for many contracts, and smart contracts cannot replace everything. (for instance, there is no way to send a service such as plumbing work, over the blockchain)
No that's the point of trustless, you don't need the third party
Yeah I didn't ""defend"" that argument because I really don't know what the project does, but Holochain is promissing and if they deliver what they intend it can become something REALLY interesting.

>If I am the owner of the database and/or the data is encrypted I have nearly no problem. Using a Blockchain where it's not needed increases the complexity for nothing and you also loose performance.

Yeah that's true you add complexity but you also get advantages from it. For example if you want to share your data your own database might make it harder.

For example, a nice use case would be to sell your data directly to whoever is interested. This way there is no centralized service earning from your data, with something like this you are in control and it is easy to access these kinds of deals.
It's not just for devices in your house, it can also be used for microgrids in communities, or creating a larger ""Internet of Energy..."" not sure what that means exactly, but from what I have heard from the Redgrid team, they absolutely require Holochain to be able to do what they are doing. As I mentioned in another comment, I'd suggest asking the team yourself in their TG channel if you want to know more about why they chose Holochain and not a basic database: [https://t.me/redgrid](https://t.me/redgrid)
Agreed. I actually should’ve phrased it “what is something that crypto/blockchain does better than centralized services” instead of “...that centralized services can’t do”. But this is one of those cases. However, I have concerns about whether IOT coverage is actually an issue
I've heard pretty unfavorable feedback about using lightning. I personally think other blockchains are much better suited for that use case and some are well under way.
OK, fair point.   AT2 transactions are squarely crypto for transactions though, hosted on a decentralized p2p system..  and there's a lot more in there. 

I'm struggling a bit to find your specific objection..  I mean take Bitcoin...   RipeMD, SHA-2, ECC, none of it new.   It's the system that makes it.   Same thing here.  AES, ECC, AT2, SHA-3, multiple kinds of threshold signatures... wound up in a decentralized system that is not a blockchain, but enables a unique suite of applications that can't be replicated in its entirety without crypto... You may or may not agree with the project's value, but there is no way you can call it unrelated to what OP is looking for.
Glad to have helped provide some useful info where I can. You have good taste in blockchain projects!
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But doesn’t someone have to verify that the smart contract is doing what you think it is? Or you would have to technically know enough to understand the smart contract.

Most lay-people probably can’t read a contract?
I think a good example is if you want to buy concert tickets via smart contract.

You could decide under what conditions the purchase is made

For example:
- if weather.com say it raines, the money stais in your wallet
- if your government forbids concerts, you keep your money
- etc.

If all the criteria are fullfilled, you get the ticket and the money is getting transfered to the artist.

You wouldn't need to do claim your money back in case of a storm or anything, no 3rd party is needed.
See my comment above, but the problem here is that the ""smart"" contract is just dumb. In some cases (sach as for a car) you could rewrite it to be smart again, but there are a lot of cases that will never work with smart contracts.

The ideal smart contract actually completes the deal when conditions are met (ie it does not rely on a third party OR the buyer OR the seller)
Could even do it more elegantly through the use of an escrow wallet, and have the escrow wallet hold both deed in form of NFT and dictated amount for the purchaser, upon expiration of escrow, both parties provide some positive input via a txn, or some other mechanism, and the deed and currency are swapped to the directed parties, upon failure to successfully transact, the escrow wallet returns NFT and currency to the original parties.

Because smart contracts can have wallets in many cases, and be programmed explicitly and transparently, these would be automated/mechanized steps that only require human interaction for confirmation, rather than the transactions themselves.

Throw a contract on a chain, give it a wallet address, have two key confirmation from two specified wallets for executing contract by X day, if wallets do not send their side of the bargain into the escrow account by execution date, it fails, if both do, they're automatically swapped and the transaction is verifiable and valid.
If you have some large number of distributed sensors (agriculture, ecology, utilities, asset tracking, etc), it's very expensive to put a SIM card in all of them and pay the telcos for service for every single sensor. It's much cheaper to put a LoRaWAN radio in them and connect to the Helium network. That's the promise, at least.

Fair to say that they probably have more coverage than active users of the network at the moment.

They're also adding 5G to their network to create a decentralized telecom network.

Very interesting project.
OP's wording of ""use cases uniquely enabled blockchain/tokes/crypto in general"" is vague, so you might be right that he's looking at technologies that were expedited by blockchain, and not ones that are solely allowed by blockchains.

Just some notes for myself from cryptography class:

- AES: Used everywhere for symmetric cryptography. Became ubiquitous with WPA2 around 2005.
- ECC: Used everywhere on the internet. It's the central backbone to public key exchange and key generation (along with RSA and DHE). Ubiquitous with HTTPS.
- SHA-3: This one is really new (2015), and I don't think it has any widespread use. Designed by NIST in a project unrelated to crypto. It was bound to happen with or without cryptocurrencies. ETH uses a SHA-3 candidate, but not the final winner.
- AT: I'm not familiar with AT2 at all. It sounds like a class of consensus algorithms designed specifically for blockchains.
Sounds like there's lots of work still to be done.
Well I guess you'd have to be technical enough to inspect and understand but it's the same as using a VPN for example, you just need to know the product is reliable and trusted but most people won't be able to verify that it's doing what it says as it's pretty complex tech.

I'm not that technical but I understand there are DAOs, decentralised autonomous organisations, which is a coded structure's that do the ""decision making"" and self governance. I'm still learning and new to all of this so trying to fully understand myself. But there is no person or entity controling it, as it's decentralised. 

https://www.scl.org/articles/10493-in-code-we-trust-trustlessness-and-smart-contracts
Well, weather.com and the government are third parties. I'm not splitting hairs, it's important to understand that anything that's not on the immutable block chain is a third party.

For something like tickets no big deal, but it's good to avoid 3rd party points of failure for expensive things
But if there is a glitch on weather.com you lose your money.. and does this even solve a real problem?
I don't follow. I mean the contract is about as dumb as if I sold someone my car title directly
Read your comment, and yep agreed, I actually thought that NFTs could already do that (automatically transfer ownership once the eth price has been met)
So the biggest problem with your solution is that it is potentially very costly.


Now are probably going to say, ""But there is no cost, its actually the lowest cost you can have!""


But in finance and accounting we deal with both monetary costs, such as paying a fee to a broker, and non-monetary costs such as oppurtunity costs.


So with that in mind lets think about the contract you presented. First lets assume that the contract is not settled immediately. In many cases of Defi, we want long term contracts, such as loans. If the contract is executed immediately, then we probably don't really have much need for blockchain except as means of transfer, which as previously discussed, blockchain may be able to provide, but it is somewhat clunky at it.


But to keep the example the same, lets say we enter into the contract that you portray above, and we have a ""closing date"" that is 30 days from the time we put assets into the contract. So we each need to accept within 30 days for the contract to execute.


What is actually happening here legally? There are a few key things:

1) The buyer loses control over his money for at least 30 days. 

2) Both parties can unilaterally cancel the contract for any reason by simply not submitting verification.

3) The seller has to wait 30 days to recieve any actual money.


This creates what we would call...""perverse incentives"". Basically, it encourages people to take actions that are bad for the other parties in the agreement. 

First, the seller knows there is X crypto in the contract. If on day 29, he sees that crypto has greatly increased in value, he accepts. On the other hand, if he sees the value of the crypto has dropped, he simply cancels the contract and re-lists the property at a better price. The seller has these same incentives, if the value of the property or crytpo has changed, they have incentives to cancel the deal. Since each party can cancel the deal unilaterally, if there is any volatility in prices, the deal is unlikely to actually go through.


Second, the seller does not actually contribute anything of value into the contract until the transfer happens. The deed/title cannot be transfered to the contract itself. For all legal purposes, the seller still owns the property until both parties submit their acceptance. This means that although the buyer has made a commitment, the seller has actually committed nothing. If at the end of the 30 days they walk away, they have lost nothing and it cost them nothing.


Third, on the buyers side, entering into this contract is very costly. As discussed, the.probablility of the contract successfully executing is low, but they still have to commit. The seller need to place the crypto in the contract wallet, that means if the price keeps dropping and the contract fails, then they are stuck without any option to have mitigated their loss. On top of that, they have lost out on the use of that money for the time of the contract. If we are talking about a major purchase such as a car or house, it means that the buyer probably needs to take out a loan which will have an interest cost, and then pay X days of interest on the loan even though there is no guarantee the purchase will actually go through. Even if they dont need to take out a loan, the money could have been invested somewhere to provide a return (this is the oppurtunity cost).


All of these things are reasons why most large transactions are denominated in USD, not crypto, and why they are set up in certain ways. Now you could absolutely attempt to fix these issues by changing the incentives, adding in deriviatives and other contracts, but it is definately not going to be simple or elegant, and one really needs to think about the economics and incentives created before writing up these contracts.
Yeah, I need to look into it more as well.  


My initial skepticism is that individual users would rather just trust a large 3rd party than have the onus on themselves to figure out if the smart contract is actually doing what they think. Someone (or some group) has to convert the smart contract into lay-people terms, I think
You're right, they absolutely are third parties. 
But since they are not aware of being 3rd parties I think the risk of getting scammed is incredibly small. Especially if you take more than 1 weather app (for example) into account.
So obviously the examples are simpl, because....welll...they are examples. But sure lets look at something mire complicated, and remember that we can only contract on something that is publically identifiable and digital.

So let us say you are a marketing firm and you want to contract with clients on a smart contract.

So maybe the contract looks something like this:

1) Client deposits $10,000 into the smart contract.

2) If the client's twitter following within 3 months is 100k people, the contract pays the marketer $2,000.

3) If the client's facebook page has 10,000 followers in 3 months, the contract pays the marketer $1,000.

4) The contract pays the marketer $100 for every tweet which gets more than 1,000 likes, up to 30 tweets within 3 months.

5) The contract is hooked up to the hyperlinks in tweets, and the marketer gets paid $100 for each tweet link that is clicked at least 100 times, up to 30 links. (This may be also linked to the client CRM system, to actually capture sales, but not necessarily)

6) The contract pays a bonus to the marketer of up to $1,000 if the marketer has met the maximum for various goals. $200 for hitting 2, $500 for 3, and $1000 if the marketer hits all 4 goals.

7) 50% of earned Payments to the marketer are made at the end of each month. The remaining 50% is distributed at the end of the 3 month contract.

8) If certain goals are determined to be inflated (such as earning likes from bot accounts, or inflating clicks of links) The final distribution to the marketer is reduced by the amount that was incorrectly paid out. (This could be done for instance by looking at some decision tree for determining fake interactions, such as only counting on interaction per IP address etc)

9) Any money not distributed to the marketer after 3 months is returned to the client.




So what can we see about smart contracts here?

a) Contract terms need to be based on electronic observables.

b) It will usually require cash up front (although this risk for a business could be mitigated in certain ways)

c) Contract terms need to be based on measurable outcomes. Notice that none of the terms are based on ""hours worked"" or ""effort"". These would require outside input and be manipulated.

d) Because the contract is immutable, it should include contingencies for any events that might happen. 

e) Disputes are going to be harder to bring after the contract because the money will already be paid out.
As the technology gains adoption, I suspect most users won't know or care that their accounts are handled on a blockchain. Same as how they don't care why their credit card works now, I figure.

The bottom line is that it's cheaper, faster, and more secure than conventional methods. Adoption is just a matter of time, as it was with the internet.
This doesn’t sound very useful let alone smart to be honest. But thank you for the write up"
"Outside of currency and voting, blockchain is awful and shouldnt be used. Can anyone explain where blockchain is worth the cost?",105,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/8ifexp/outside_of_currency_and_voting_blockchain_is/,"There's some good papers/info by EY and Accenture on this topic, googling those names along with something along the lines of ""Blockchain use cases"" should get you there. Both of them essentially identify three or four use cases. 


The first is financial services and targets the problem of digital money being very cumbersome and expensive because of safety mechanisms. Blockchain - not necessarily cryptocurrency - is already being used to reduce friction and save money in this space, most notably in international payments. The problem is that banks and remittance providers need to park extraordinary amounts of money in foreign currencies, which they then cannot invest, effectively costing them money. Also, international payments can take days to settle. A blockchain based system can eliminate the need for those pre-funded accounts and cut the settlement time to seconds. Accenture also names some use cases around streamlining processes like invoicing, where the stamp on the document is the usual, but ineffective, safety/trust mechanism. 


Then there's supply chain. Like you say, companies already have good equipment for logistics tracking and monitoring. The difference is that there are many, many stakeholders across a typical supply chain, and most of them don't have a lot of trust in the other parties. It's cooperation and competition at the same time. What it usually comes down to is that supply chain data is exchanged either very ineffectively (with literal stamped documents, as these require less trust than setting up an API and getting the data directly from the other firm's system) or not at all. Firms are moving towards models that emphasize cooperation and data exchange, but it's a very slow process. By eliminating the question of data authenticity and conflicts, blockchains can massively accelerate that.


Then there's healthcare (there's a great EY paper on that). Similarly to supply chain, lots of stake holders (insurance, patients, hospitals, doctors) need to exchange information but don't necessarily trust all the other parties. The result is siloed data and heaps of paper documents. If there was a universally trusted database that, for example, the doctors could upload their license information to, an enourmous amount of administrative work could just be eliminated. All the involved parties could look up the information on there instead of painstakingly veryfing everything with the particular party they want to have a business relationship with.


But apart from cutting out intermediaries, paper documents, and administrative work, the things that get people excited are de-siloing of data and smart contract automation. Removing silos is interesting because it opens up a lot more possibilities for analytics, which usually leads to streamlined processes and cost savings. Smart contracts are the cherry on top as they allow automation while being completely transparent and trustworthy for stakeholders.


The fourth use case is digital identity and authentification. It's a little less clear what those systems should look like but they key point is that identity data and blockchain make a lot of sense together - data has to be immutable but everyone needs to have access. This isn't necessarily to disrupt the systems we have in place but rather give a digital identity to people in developing nations. Other than that, I don't know much about this one.


Finally, something that is not mentioned explicitely in my sources but implicitely part of the supply chain use case: IoT scenarios. If all those IoT devices just feed data to my own company, there's no reason for blockchain. But if I want to use IoT data (and automation protocols, i.e. smart contracts) from other sources, I'd like to be able to trust those without having to trust the provider. Think large scale intelligent production environments that want to communicate really granular data to other large scale intelligent production environments. This isn't really a use case yet but *could* be a missing piece in an IoT enabled global economy. Essentially, I could automate processes across multiple enterprises without the trust and safety issues. But we're entering the realm of science fiction now so I'll stop myself.




**In a nutshell**: Blockchain makes sense when there's multiple stakeholders.




My understanding of business processes is admittedly better than my understanding of IT, so if any of that doesn't make sense to you from a technological standpoint or could be done more easily without blockchains please let me know. I'm eager to learn about it and I think scepticism is very important in this phase of buzz and inflated expectations. 
I think that online casino gambling is the perfect use case for blockchain technology- the industry **needs** it. Quite literally, regulators are crying out for provably fair solutions:

[Gambling operators face landmark enforcement action over unfair practices and promotions.](http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/news/2017/Gambling-operators-face-landmark-enforcement-action-over-unfair-practices-and-promotions.aspx)

[Operators must make “big, bold gestures"" on fairer and safer gambling.](https://totallygaming.com/eventblog/ice-live-2018/operators-must-make-big-bold-gestures-fairer-and-safer-gambling)


[FunFair](https://funfair.io) is a company that is aiming to tackle the many issues that online gaming faces- there are many costs, headaches, and complications with online casinos. Briefly, they are the fees associated with operations (servers, infrastructure, large employee-base, fraudulent activity investigations, chargebacks) etc. Attracting players and gaining their trust comes afterwards, which is another issue within itself. There is a blatant trust issue with conventional online gaming that FunFair aims to diminish, while creating a seamless experience for both operator and player. 

By including blockchain technology into their protocol, FunFair’s platform becomes decentralized, serverless, and provably fair with trust-less outcomes that can be witnessed on verifiable smart contracts (fully transparent). Casinos feel safer, with no risk of fraudulent charge-backs from player credit cards, and so forth.

Something you might find interesting is how they've created excellent scaling technology which they call Fate Channels-their custom, proprietary version of State Channels. They are superior technology to current State Channels, as they are what support the communication during game sessions between player and casino, while executing entire game logic and random number generation off-chain. They provide a fast, low cost method for RNG, starting game sessions, ending them, and settling with smart contracts on the blockchain. There is only one gas fee needed to start the game session, which solves scalability issues with platforms like Ethereum.

So it's not clogging the network.

And as a matter of fact, Vitalik Buterin is quite fond of the technology- he even mentions he's hoping to see more companies like FunFair around:

[Vitalik speaking on the technology here, at EdCon last week, I've timestamped it for you.](https://youtu.be/JTF0VUm0D7U?t=5299)

I do honestly believe this is a perfect example where blockchain ""is worth the cost.""
You are thinking too small. Because blockchain is immutable, it effectively creates a new layer of reality. Data on your hard drive is in your hard drive. Data in the cloud is just on the cloud providers hard drive. Data on the blockchain is *everywhere.* It doesn’t exist contingent on any single or even set of physical things, it’s so interspersed it can be said to “just exist.” It’s the only data that’s “real”, in the sense that everyone experiences that same reality. 

If you think humanity can’t come up with some interesting new uses for a new layer of reality, you’re not giving humanity enough credit. It’s finishing what the internet started. The internet communicates just information. The blockchain communicates value and identity. Those are two more fundamental building blocks of society that  the internet natively lacked and required kludges and intermediaries to force in. Blockchain makes it natural....eventually. 
> I believe this is only useful in currency and voting.

You forgot resource allocation, which is huge.  (Think filecoin, cpucoin)
I'm not a programmer or tech savvy guy but the part of blockchain that excites me (most) is the decentralized nature. You made the example of Facebook and Google being content hosting services/providers. While they provide content, their main business is selling your data. You are the product.

Imagine there would be a substitute for Facebook or Google which has all the pros, it might work slower but it works and looks (fairly) the same.
I would totally use the platform if that means that I'm not the product. In a capitalist system I don't think companies can be trusted not to sell their users data or harm them in another way.

Maybe it's just me, but I think I'm not the only one that lost trust in big centralized systems (be it multinationals, governments or whatever)
I'm excited by the potential for blockchain data in the face of corrupt governments. For example, a land deed registry blockchain makes it a lot harder for corruption or fraud to prosper.
You are correct. And even as a currency it is very inefficient. But banks have billions of $ in revenue so I guess the wasted resources have a value for some people. Bitcoin can be a store of value such as gold or an expensive trustless bank account, I am not sure if it is sustainable as a everyday currency.

Another value I see in blockchain's immutability, is to store hashes with a timestamp of important files, that way you can prove that a document or passport existed at a time, could be valuable for corrupt countries.
What about smart contracts? 

They allow corporations to make agreements that can't be renigged. ETH is currently second in marketcap because it offers them. 




When you have multiple parties who may have different interests, but want to make sure some data is accurate and untampered with, you need consensus to verify it. Currency and elections are obvious use cases, but there are lots of things in the world people consider valuable. The costs you save by implementing these things of value in a blockchain is that you cut out middle men who traditionally manage them, you make transacting more efficient, you make auditing cheaper and more transparent.

What else has value that you may be overlooking? Data. Literally anything and everything you can google. Facebook has a lot of it, and monetizing it is the basis of their enormous value. It’s also the pie in the sky goal of smart contracts to be able to interact with real world data and make a program that executes on certain conditions. Data is the thing we take for granted since we can so easily access it, but the trick is making an automated system that uses it how we intend.
Transaction liquidity. That’s the answer. For businesses to complete transactions of all kinds today, Dozens, sometimes hundreds of people are involved. That’s why some transactions take so much time to complete.If businesses are confident that those transactions can be validated as trustworthy because the recording media is immutable, the cost will come down way down. The time it takes to conduct those transactions will come down, way down. The quiddity is immensely valuable.
Thanks for starting up an interesting conversation! 
You're not wrong that *everything* does not benefit from blockchain. Anyone say differently is a tool.

What it does provide is trust in a trustless environment, which is very valuable in a large amount of scenarios. Logistics being one of them even if you disagree. Helps with fraudulent shipment manifests etc. As others mentioned, asset tokens are also a huge leap forward to prevent fraud.
\< For media, facebook and google have done nothing wrong with hosting content without having this decentralized verification. I do not see how blockchain would ever ever ever make media better.

Because then no one would own your data and abuse it for voting manipulation, data scandals and emotional manipulation. Facebook has done all that.
Blockchain, apart from being a decentralized ledger, is also an append-only data structure. Past entries are essentially immutable.

This lends itself well for all business processes that need auditing, be it GLP/GMP/other good something practice, especially in regulated areas. Furthermore, notary services or land registers need this property.

And I personally hope and believe that in all kind of financial services, blockchain could be a foundational API that abstracts away a huge, expensive, and usually fragmented landscape of legacy systems. While technologically dissimilar, spiritually similar to how XML unified data storage and exchange formats. I am not sure it will happen, but I can see a future where issuing a bond and tracking payments would be radically easier for a company thanks to blockchain tech (not necessarily crypto coins)
one point springs to mind: you should maybe read up on the broader concept of the tokenisation of ""assets"", be it stocks or shares of all kinds of property, if not in fact things 'n stuff in general. this is where you do not wish to rely on or have to trust a centralized entity. the implications of said tokenisation cannot even be grasped in their entirety imho, but the possibilities are clearly there, big time.
Paralegal here. One of the biggest issues with tokenizing assets of any kind will be updating the legal framework.

However, one of the biggest issues we run across when dealing with private companies and centralized servers is agreeing on which database is 'correct' or truthfully under the law.

This issue could be mitigated with public ledger technology, especially in the industrial, production, and informational sectors.

So essentially if we use some sort of blockchain technology to compile a public ledger of corporate transactions. We could then prosecute and convict white collar crimes such as embezzling, fraud, price manipulation, etc.

Right now the conviction rate for suspected white collar crimes is less than 2%. But it is estimated to be costing the US economy alone hundreds of billions each year.

Just my two cents.
Business/economics perspective on this issue:

So far blockchain has been described as three different things:

1. a general purpose technology increasing productivity (by cutting out middle-men)
2. a way to reduce transaction costs and move towards a true peer-to-peer market
3. a new way to organise business and thus an institutional technology that might replace the current system of markets, hierarchies and governments

While every one of these points has its merit, its essentially all of all of them at once. Transaction costs are btw not relating to the gas limit you put on your transaction, but they describe the costs of preventing an expected opportunistic behaviour of your business partner. 

With less pathos and more examples. 

The blockchain is a way to coordinate business transactions. Yes, there currently is a weak spot whenever you link the digital and the physical world so to speak. You could deal with this though by having some sort of prediction market, an IoT like system of connected sensors, some general 'immutable hardware' or similar stuff. It stays a weak spot - but one that could be tackled. 

The *cool* thing about the blockchain though, is that you are less exposed to trust issues. That opens up a whole lot of possibilities as insurances against trust breaches in the form of multiple back up suppliers in the supply chain, never-ending contracts etc ARE freezing crazy amounts of money. This is so expensive that mining costs etc really are insignificant. All this is described very well in here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/53228995/Blockchains___econ_institutions_working_paper_-_April_2017.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1525981749&Signature=reUppKORqS7BAKBi%2FJb0oiFwJ7Q%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DBlockchains_and_the_economic_institution.pdf




**If you like this topic and are interested in the link between trust and the blockchain please fill out this survey here. It's for my master thesis and touches these issues both direct and indirect. Would be much appreciated:**

https://institutions.typeform.com/to/sPTrPU
I'm with you OP. There are some very niche areas where blockchain tech makes sense, and there could be a benefit. But they're few and far between, they're the exception. 

But this belief that blockchain will solve problems in every area of human existence is ridiculous. The peak of the ICO craze was a bit hilarious.
Blockchain and governments will in theory go quite well. As you've stated, voting will hugely benefit, but so will everything else that the government has to keep public. Such as financial records, legal documents, ect. This will keep the government almost completely transparent (of course they can't disclose some things). We could easily cut down on government corruption and fraud if every dollar spent is documented for the public to see. 
Well said! This is really interesting.
https://link.smartcontract.com/whitepaper
What about the argument that a decentralized system reduces the risk of single-point-of-failure?
I wrote a lengthy article about this exact topic a while back, here’s the link: https://hackernoon.com/why-use-the-blockchain-instead-of-a-database-what-gives-tokens-value-263449681153
you are not wrong, ""blockchain"" is a buzzword.

You need an \(actual\) blockchain first and foremost for censorship resistance. You could also do an internet currency just fine using today's internet infrastructure bureaucracy \(ICANN\- and RCA\-like organizations\) as validators. But this is not censorship\-resistant, as we can witness websites being censored. Hence, Bitcoin's Proof\-of\-Work to find consensus among potentially \*anonymous\* participants in an open, \*untrusted\* network lives \*below\* this layer.

That said, once this infrastructure is in place, \*maybe\* Bitcoin can become the native internet currency standard that is also used for mainstream use cases. There are also some use cases that make sense because they can be done in a scalable way without incurring any overhead if done right, like \(aggregated, merkle\-ized\) timestamping. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenTimestamps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenTimestamps)

All other often purported use cases are mostly hype, ""decentralization theater"", or plain scams. ""Smart contracts"" and ""decentralized apps"", if ever meaningful and necessary \(time will tell\) shouldn't run on\-chain, but on a 2nd layer. This would be much more efficient, but arguably still less so than on Amazon Cloud. But still, sometimes new standards emerge \(see Nick Szabo's ""social scalability"" argument\).
I think that most of new blockchain companies that are emerging are exactly that -- bull crap. But those companies, even though being failures, they teach the community on where blockchain goes well, and where not so much.

Beware that you are not alone there who thinks like that, a lot of techy people think likewise.

But, being also a scepticist of the current state of blockchain, I know that it's only the beginning of the technology. It's so new, that no one knows what's going to happen with it tomorrow. This technology brought us excitement and hope of a better future.

So...Let the explorers explore, and maybe one day we will be happy with what they have to offer ;)
We're not just enabling trustlessness through blockchains, but also decentralisation of ownership and liability. This is a more robust and fair model in my opinion.

In the coming years, you could own tokens that prove your partial ownership of a driverless car fleet. Whenever someone rents a car, they enable its operation using a smart contract which then sends you rental funds in proportion to your stake.

As partial owner, you're responsible for the car fleet's maintenance costs and will only receive your full share of rent income if the liabilities are paid.

In addition to this, you can vote on the organisation's business strategy which is instantiated in code updates. Perhaps, for example, you want to airdrop your most loyal customers some tokens, granting them a small share of ownership. 

In this way, blockchains enable the existence of [Decentralised Autonomous Organisations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization).
For me it's about reducing the overhead that companies have to pay to track a supply chain, keep records safe or maintain account ledgers at banks. With blockchain the cost becomes near zero.
99.9% of all these blockchain projects is total fucking bullshit just scammy marketing from shitcoin projects trying to get rich!

Blockchain is ONLY GOOD for TWO THINGS CENSORSHIP RESISTANCE and CONSENSUS. With the obvious trade off of being decentralized...so its naturally inefficient as fuck! 

Literally its best use cases boil down to either a store of value/money (bitcoin) and maybe storage of sensitive data.

Voting will not work on blockchain because its not an effective system to counter act voter fraud/corruption (see Lisk cartels for example) 


A global stock/asset market. 
You are grossly underestimating the important of trustless systems. That's the key here. For your example on media, think about censorship and how that would change in a decentralised system, for logistics, think about immutability of data. 
Your position is exactly why Vechain is one of the few cryptocurrencies I invest in, because I believe it solves a tremendous amount of trust issues and as a company focuses on trust dependency problem solving.  Blockchains solve the problem of ""convenient trust.""  If you really dig deep at the problem of trusting someone, the idea of conveniently trusting someone is practically oxymoronic, and yet in many ways blockchain allows that.

You say, ""this is only useful for currency and voting,"" but I would say rather it is only useful in matters of required trust.  It's trust that doesn't require a human to tell the truth to be the truth.  Once you see it from that perspective, it becomes a lot more useful.  I don't see the point in many altcoins all the same, but I do understand the struggle to compete for whose trust system is best.  I'm investing in various systems of trust, trust mechanics and trust development.

That's why Bitcoin works when the fees are dumb.  That's why DogeCoin works when it's literally a meme\-born currency.  It's all about community, trust, and solving the problems the ""right way,"" when the right way has been corrupted for so many millennia of human culture.  This is a race to master the idea of trusting people you don't know better than we ever have before, because you can't trust them based on what you know if you know nothing and yet you must.
Its an interesting security architecture and has a lot of use cases in highly secure environments. Its also being used in artificial intelligence.
> Blockchain is a (public), verified, decentralized ledger. This has 1 advantage. If you dont trust everyone to agree about something, this solves the problem. I believe this is only useful in currency and voting. 

If you think that the only areas where trust is required is 'currency and voting', than I guess it makes sense you're confused.
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Re the science fiction element, it reminds me a bit of those zeitgeist / jacque fresco ideas where it was envisioned that cities would be able to autonomously ""buy and sell"" power and other resources from other locations using IoT nodes with a shared ledger of value. Verifiable and unhackable (at least the ledger part of it).
All of the things you mentioned are done outside of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Those are merely programs/services.

Having it decentralized doesnt change much. We already trust doctors, suppliers, etc... If they perform poorly, we stop doing business. It might be a 1,000 USD mistake, but 1000 USD is likely far cheaper than blockchain. 
Your first point is why I'm most bullish on xrp and lesset on xlm they make up over 40% of my portfolio
does this protocol support an online version, it seems to be a product sold to casinos
That is currency. I 100% understand currency.

I dont understand outside of that.
Patronizing post.

The argument is about the incremental value of having 100s of copies of the same thing to make it trustless. Centralized systems are superior in most real world use cases.

Nah, this is exactly where blockchain doesnt work and I feel strongly about it.

You might be able to write an expensive twitter program, but you would not be able to make updates to the software without getting concensus which seems to be difficult.
Google doesn't sell you data, where did you get that info from?
Time stamping things sounds useful! Love that example.

Not sure how much people would pay for that, but I can easily see and understand this application.
Land title. People do have their land stolen by successive government regimes in some parts of the world, and later cannot prove their original ownership.
It may be inefficient, but it's the only platform of its kind. It performs secure tasks that no other platform can. I'm not aware of any other system that can tokenize assets. 

The first computer was inefficient too. 
>Another value I see in blockchain's immutability, is to store hashes with a timestamp of important files, that way you can prove that a document or passport existed at a time, could be valuable for corrupt countries.<


I agree that timestamped data is a very powerful use of the Blockchain. You may be interested in a project called Decred that has a tool that enable storing timestamped hashes of documents on their Blockchain. [The tool is called Dcrtime, and is agnostic to any particular use case. ](https://blog.decred.org/2017/06/14/Dcrtime/). 

Currently they are using it to implement [on chain governance, known as politeia](https://medium.com/decred/politeia-proposals-in-a-timestamped-filesystem-4b628a9d88f0), but there are many potential uses. Decred hosted a competition involving Dcrtime that challenged participants to come up with additional use cases. [You can read about the winners here, who submitted working proof of concepts that demonstrate solutions to some of the ideas in this very thread that involve timestamped data. ](https://btcmanager.com/decreds-politeia-challenge-overview-winners/)
>smart contracts

I doubt the total automation of this. Someone needs to confirm quality. For instance,

>You buy a refrigerator with a smart contract

>The refrigerator gets dented during delivery

>The contract says there is a refund, but you still need someone to confirm the damage.

Decentralized is an amazing dream. If we could hook the refrigerator up and already solve the issue of dents and smart contracts, wonderful. I worry that the cost of adding refrigerator censors and blockchain, this exceeds the cost of the refrigerator manufacturer from just hiring someone for 40,000 USD/yr to inspect and approve damages.

Also, do you have any articles/examples of ETH being used by corporations? Things are easier to understand when they are real.
>When you have multiple parties who may have different interests, but want to make sure some data is accurate and untampered with, you need consensus to verify it. 

Can you specify real examples that are worth paying the expensive fee of blockchain?

I dont understand why facebook data needs to be verified outside of you and facebook.


Seconded. I never knew this sub existed until two days ago. Who knew that people who talk about crypto on the internet could be reasonable and respectful, while at the same time disagreeing on some points? This is great stuff; thanks again, OP!
A token is a token, and even if you buy all the tokens but the company refuses to redeem it for the real stocks or shares you will be left with the tokens only. This is the weak point, you should trust a third party to redeem the tokens for the real shares. No one guarantees you that you will get money for your Bitcoins, but there is always some speculator willing to buy it and that give value to it as a currency.
Assets that are backed by tokens are currency IMO(or at least use blockchain as a verification).

I dont see things like logistics validation, media, or apps being better on blockchain. I would specifically like to ask about those.
I doubt blockchain would solve this issue. 

Money laundering is hiding in plain sight already. Blockchain might make connecting the dots easier, but not be much. 
I'm working on my own currency/token that is backed by an asset. 

I am excited that crypto looks to pave the way for me. 

Again, this is currency though. It isnt storing data. 
**Decentralized autonomous organization**

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes labeled a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization that is run through rules encoded as computer programs called smart contracts. A DAO's financial transaction record and program rules are maintained on a blockchain. The precise legal status of this type of business organization is unclear.

A well-known example, intended for venture capital funding, was The DAO, which launched with $150 million in crowdfunding in June 2016, and was immediately hacked and drained of US$50 million in cryptocurrency.

***

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so now you have an immutable data base, how do you trust the data to be *valid*?
> you can't find anything useful

Disagree, the moment I was on the internet, I was never bored. 

That said, I did it mostly for video games, but from the moment I had internet, it was useful. I cannot say the same about blockchain
If you don't need decentralization then permissioned databases are pretty much superior in all aspects.
>We already trust doctors, suppliers, etc... If they perform poorly, we stop doing business.

We don't trust doctors and suppliers. That's why there is a lot of inefficiency in APIs and more. Also, there is a lot of damage to happen before you will stop doing business with supplier and fraud often never get discovered. 

Finally, you can't stop making business with doctors, malpractice and bad practice almost never gets discovered either.
Having to cut ties with a supplier is usually closer to a hundred million dollar mistake than a thousand dollar mistake. 


But the real point is that the need for trust, and the need for inefficient processes that build trust, are reduced. I don't know of any other technology that can do that, but like I said, my background isn't in IT so I'm happy to be corrected. 


I'm not really talking about decentralization in the same way that /r/cc usually does, by the way. Most if not all of the use cases I mentioned would use permissioned blockchains, meaning that only the process stakeholders can access them. 
How much money goes into preventing the mistakes though? The cost is in keeping the cost of mistakes low. I think where you and the other guy differ is that he's saying everything is being done on paper (to prevent these mistakes), whereas you're saying that's not necessary anyway. Idk enough about the shipping industry to know one way or the other. 
I believe what you said is true for very developed nations, like the US/Canada some parts of Europe etc. For most of the world, I think this breaks down pretty fast. 
The point is blockchain speeds up the human parts of those processes and allows multiple parties to rely on the same data. 

If you were buying millions of dollars of goods (eg chicken) from China that needed to be kept in a specific temperature range, would you trust the supplier in China when they provide the temp range data? They could fabricate this. A blockchain would stop them from fabricating it. You could get your own trackers placed onto their shipment theoretically, but your company isn’t in the business of tracking goods and implementing hardware etc. A specialized company like vechain could handle the hardware and data collection that both parties rely on to verify the delivery terms were met.  Adding on, the company doing the hardware and data tracking could be centralized, but then what makes you as a buyer trust them and ensure they aren’t colluding with the supplier? The answer is blockchain. 

Supply chain is probably the clearest use case to me. The inner workings of bank payments and settlement are more obscure, but generally there’s people making sure it’s all good before banks release funds, and those people/processes can be automated with smart contracts. If you’re transferring billions+, two firms won’t rely on private systems to release funds.

Think of how companies and the government can lie to the public; in general blockchain can stop that. Imagine if government spending was tracked so the public could audit it. 
FunFair is not just a currency. It uses Ethereum's smart contracts so the games are fair and verifiable. As described above, this tech is good for multiple parties that are interacting where interests diverge. In FunFair's scenario, these parties are the casino and the users. 

If the users think the casino isn't being fair, they can examine the blockchain to see how many people have actually won at, say, roulette. It can be verified that the casino actually has the funds to payout for winners since the FUN tokens are locked up *in the smart contract*. You can't do this with current online casinos.
The FUN token is a currency- the native digital token which powers every aspect of the FunFair gaming ecosystem. It is the betting chip that pits player against casino, the financial reward paid to developers for their games, and the fuel that enables key processes on the network. 

The FunFair platform is an entire protocol based on blockchain technology- currently Ethereum. **It will be used to power hundreds and potentially thousands of casinos.** The use case is real.
*Most contemporary real world uses. 

The value is only incremental today. In the future it will be fundamental, because it will be used to build things that don’t even make sense outside of context. 

There was a long time while people argued about whether internet news was better than the newspaper, or whether online shopping was better than the mall. No one argued about whether traditional social media was better vs facebook - because you couldn’t. There was no traditional social media. It didn’t exist before the internet, and it was a solid 10 years after the internet went mainstream in the 90s before Facebook pretty much changed the world. 

So sure, it’s fair to ask the question now about whether DLT is better than this or that centralized system, but the real breakthrough will be when we start seeing things that simply couldn’t exist without it. And I’m old enough to remember when people doubted whether that would happen with the internet. 

To put it simply - take the OPs post and imagine posing it 20-30 years ago. Most people (even tech literate ones) couldn’t even comprehend the question. WTF is Google? Or Facebook? Or Alexa? Or AWS? Or blockchain? It’s not just the brands - these idea behind them were science fiction at best back then. There will come a day when people take blockchain for granted and debate whether a certain thing built on top of it is better vs the traditional blockchain. You can already see a glimmer of it in the lightning vs big blocks debate. 
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Personal bias. Thanks for pointing this out! Did some reading and it changed some of my views and learned something today.

It doesn't change the fact though that I'm not comfortable having half a lifetime of data being stored in such a large centralized place. I'm still the product, not the client
Decent chat here OP! Good work for the thought provoking question.

I'd say that this example (of the smart contracts) is something that is currently being developed by various projects in the supply chain industry - where smart contracts have certain restrictions set (such as temperature monitoring), which are triggered when they fall outside of the given thresholds. For example: 

Imagine that you have a drug that needs to be transported from Producer to Retailer and that due to its chemical composition it needs to be refrigerated as it cannot be outside of 5 degrees Celsius - 11 degrees Celsius. Having a smart contract connected with IoT and hardware sensors would render that drug useless should it break those conditions and in real-time be able to notify the Retailer that it has transgressed those boundaries. Now, imagine that the invoice was also written into the smart contract and to be paid upon receipt - this would certainly mean that the drug wouldn't have to be paid for (and probably not even purchased, depending on the type of drug etc.) and therefore the Retailer could dodge a bullet in terms of jeopardising their customer base because of sketchy products. The net result would be, theoretically, 1) a mitigation in loss of customers from low quality/dangerous products 2) fewer cases of people getting poisoned from consuming expired/unproperly treated drugs 3) more efficiency from the transport/Producer due to desire not to lose revenue from inefficiencies in the transport etc. I think you get my drift.

Add to this the benefit of having blockchain in this instance is the verifiability, traceability and transparency to prove that nothing has been tampered with due to it being all automatically triggered using smart contracts, IoT and sensors. The result is that you can have the chance to accurately scrutinise the whole supply line from beginning to end and be fully sure that the origins of that product are where they claim to be from, as the data input on the blockchain, as we know, cannot be changed once input. 
Decentralization isn't a dream. We have far more processing power than we need. The point isn't being efficient (like a database), but rather, provide guarantees of immutability. In 20 years, we'll have far more processing power in a cheap CPU that running efficient code will really be of no concern, even for things like running a node. Ditto for internet bandwitdth.
I meant simpler examples like a bank wiring money. When a smartcontract confirms Bank 1 sent the money, Bank 2 can instantly release the money, and because it's trustless there's no chance of fraud. 

[Here's a similar example where a smartcontract is used to aggregate interest data and create a SWIFT payment.](https://www.coindesk.com/swift-startup-winner-demos-smart-contract-trade-5-financial-firms/) 


http://bitcoinist.com/us-and-china-use-blockchain-to-trade-soybeans/
Look up the Chainlink project (www.smartcontract.com)

They are attempting to address the oracle problem of data validation via a decentralized network. 
One real-world example is real estate.  Keeping track of documentation for the lifetime of a loan has been a problem for some banks.  There have been instances where banks have been unable to foreclose on properties because the loan documentation was incomplete after a number of transfers.  In the future, these transactions and agreements will be digitally signed and immutably stored via blockchain.
So there are costs involved with having many nodes verify something redundantly, but a great deal of the cost I think you are referring to is the proof of work algorithm. It’s proven to be a resilient way to reach consensus, but the basis of it is that each node can prove they have spent a significant amount of power to mine a block. So it is by definition, expensive. It is, however, not the only way to achieve consensus, and none of the smart contract platforms plan to use PoW moving forward. There are other clever scaling solutions like Bitcoin’s lightning protocol, Ethereum’s plasma, sharding ect. That intend to drive down what you perceive as the expensive fee of blockchain.

The reason I personally don’t want Facebook to control my data is because they are not transparent with how they use it, and have proven to be untrustworthy with it. I don’t think the future lies in blind trust to big companies that contain sensitive information that inevitably gets hacked and/or used for nefarious purposes 
When you say 'expensive fee of blockchain' are you specifically referring to the mining process?
> A token is a token, and even if you buy all the tokens but the company refuses to redeem it for the real stocks or shares you will be left with the tokens only. 

A token doesn't represent a share, it IS a share. The only risk is counter party related. 

> This is the weak point, you should trust a third party to redeem the tokens for the real shares. 

Same answer. Why would a token represent a share, which represents a stake of ownership in a company? The entire point of blockchain is to cut out the middle man. 

Not only that, but you could use blockchain tech to automatically execute mandatory convertible shares, and include voting or non\-voting rights, via smart contracts. 

It's not that block chain has no value. It's that the people criticizing blockchain are small thinkers, with smaller imaginations. 
> even if you buy all the tokens but the company refuses to redeem it for the real stocks or shares you will be left with the tokens only

this would be a regulatory and/or legal issue, first and foremost - for which we need updated frameworks, sure. give it some time.


The issue is access to information. Public trades companies are the only companies that have to file public reports. Private companies require a subpoena to obtain information. Which requires us to prove that we have enough proof to issue the subpoena, which is nearly impossible without the public data.

Once the money is transferred to a private company (usually multiple teansfers) the money begins to be impossible to account for. 

I see blockchain becoming a public oversight tool for finances and manufacturing. An example could be the Pentagons budget for hiring private companies, we could use a blockchain type tech to oversee the budget and hold companies accountable in ways we are not holding them today.
I guess my question would be: how can a buyer know it is in fact backed by an asset without storing the information related to the specific asset? Location, legal custodian, audit information, etc.

This is where I see the value of blockchain. I shouldn't have to trust anyone, i want to know where that asset is, and know when/where it is being transferred.

Obviously you could move it without my permission. But the blockchain should have all the info I needed if I wanted to sue you in civil court. In that way you are guaranteeing me legal control over the asset. Without all of that info, there is no proof it was moved without my authorization, and I may lose the case if I bring charges against you. Meaning I cannot trust the legal custodian, and would be better off putting my money in a highly regulated market, such as stocks, bonds, etc.
Respectfully, you do see an immediate use(currency/commodity which is a rather large use case, time stamping, voting) for crypto, you just don't think it can be used for everything which is entirely reasonable. I submit that the internet went through a similar phase and so will cryptocurrency. Could you predict the many uses of the internet pre dot com boom?
[deleted]
That is true. However in a small number of cases (see above) what's needed is a point in between a permissioned database and a blockchain, i.e. a permissioned blockchain, the most well known ones being the different hyperledger templates. And then, you can make the decision to store data on the chain, or only store hashes of data on the chain, or even just store things like permissions and metadata on the chain, depending on how much computing power you can allocate to it.


There's a lot of room between bitcoin and private server farms. 
This is my fear. And my understanding.
Garbage in garbage out. How do you know the data fed into the blockchain is accurate and not manipulated?
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This makes me think the 'currency' aspect of these app/logistics/etc... was not thought through.

I dont see how the currency will be useful when the program is the real technology. 

Copypaste ETH and run a lower cost private blockchain.
Oh yeah, google does collect a ton of data, and unless you delete it yourself they'll just be storing it forever. Like I can understand the people that are still uncomfortable trusting them like that. I just have realized this myth that they actually sell your data is really widespread and idk how that spread.
[deleted]
> benefit of having blockchain in this instance is the verifiability, traceability and transparency to prove that nothing has been tampered with due to it being all automatically triggered using smart contracts,

Okay, so this is the benefit. What you described could be done by any computer without blockchain. 

The most major question-

Is it cheaper to have this verified on blockchain? Or cheaper to deal with the problem?

I have done automation programming and there is an idea there. However I worry that the cost to have blockchain on a 30$ box of peppers exceeds the value that provides. The stakes must be much higher. 


But it will still cost more than a computer without it.

Wont we want to move more information? More data? More complex systems?

We still need to use power. 

Mr. Business Owner-

Would you rather have a slower and more expensive FB, or a free and instant FB?

This is the tradeoff.
The point very often, if not nearly all the time,  *is* being efficient. You’re not familiar with how much modern databases are tuned and pushed to their limits. Often workarounds have to be used because they simply can’t do it.

Moving to a *grossly* inefficient (by necessity of) design blockchain isn’t going to come even remotely close. It’d be like moving from SSDs to tape. 
Ahhh I think payments/currency is useful.

I dont think apps outside of currency/voting/timestamp benefit. 
> Bitcoin’s lightning protocol, Ethereum’s plasma, sharding ect

Your solutions to the 'lower cost' blockchain, stops using blockchain... 

I like layer 2 for moving currencies, but layer 2 on logistics or data fails to keep the trust.

>personally don’t want Facebook to control my data is because they are not transparent with how they use it

This is 100% irrelevant to blockchain, public ledgers, verification, etc... Blockchain is worse than facebook because your data is public rather than to your friends and advertisers. 


Depends. Even POS is more expensive than a server.
And what problem this solves? What if you lose the private key? What if someone hacks your computer and now owns 51% of the shares? It is a bad idea that only creates problems and solves nothing.
If its regulated/legal, then we require trust that the government will enforce it.
In which case it's still centralized via enforcement from a court...
If there needs to be regulations in order to trust these tokens, there could also be a law that states that you can trust tokens issues by a centralized party, much more efficient and simple. It doesn't need a currency in that case.
>we could use a blockchain type tech to oversee the budget and hold companies accountable in ways we are not holding them today.

The tech doesn't really matter though. You'd still need to pass a law that required those companies to make that information public. How they do so is not relevant. 
The internet was a new way of moving data.

This is a new way of verifying data. We have verified data for 30+ years. This is simply a different way of doing it.
Great point, the token economy has existed in gaming economies for many years now.

It has already paved the way for using tokens in the real economy.
But when is spinning up a private permissioned blockchain as cost effective as leveraging public blockchain infrastructure while restricting access to the data and services to permissioned parties?  Consider the trust benefit of having smart contacts evaluated by indeterminate 3rd parties outside the circle of stakeholders. Consider, hardware, developer and maintenance costs. 
Your fear? Excuse me if I don't follow.

Sometimes blockchain is suitable, sometimes not. It doesn't need to be useful for every problem. 
Keep in mind that the Value aspect of any crypto is in it's network effect, because the utility of any blockchain can be copied easily, but the network cannot. So for the bulk of cryptos, the network isn't critical, so they don't have a huge future value. The currency coins do rely on their network, and they are the coins that will maintain and grow in value beyond speculation.
Open sourced and verified hardware. Especially if the hardware and tracking is a decentralized third party
possibly IoT sensors feeding data directly to the blockchain? not sure on all the technical details of IoT devices
Ok so you are more into the hyperledger model, it sounds like. The novel thing about having a currency is it incentivizes independent actors that have different motives and goals to work together to secure the network. If you don’t have a currency, you need to control who has access to the network because you need some kind of quality control to make sure all the participants are working for a common goal. It would be like a company having an internal intranet, which definitely has value. You should see that both public and permissioned blockchains have their place, and are useful for different reasons
Therein lies the problem. You can in theory copypaste blockchain code and start your own, but your blockchain wont be as secure because cryptoeconomics are an inherent part of every single decentralized blockchain.
You could absolutely copy paste a chain and use it. That's basically what Quorom or Microsoft's Coco framework allow you to do by spinning up a private, permissioned ethereum chain. That being said, there are still points in most workflows where settlement against a public ledger is useful or even required. 

I think of blockchain as a public tamper\-proof database that anyone can read or write to. Imagine never having to write or use an API against a private database again. It's clunky now but it will only get easier and cheaper over time.
I guess people see selling data and selling target audiences for ads as the same thing. Or at least don't recognize the difference. That's what was my view up until a few days ago
This is where the sensors - connected directly to the blockchain - come into play. They omit the need for a third party because the data is updated real time and therefore no bullshitting can be done on the part of the transporter. So there's no situation in which the transporters can tamper with the medicines (due to them having tamper-proof sensors too) as the temperature sensors would be placed directly in with the meds. 
Immutability cannot be reproduced with certainty on centralized systems.

You're right, with the current sensor technology that we have at hand it's difficult to justify for products under a certain threshold of value. However, if we are talking luxury food goods and pharma, there's clearly a lot of benefit to be had from having these things tracked. You just have to look at the myriad examples of people consuming fake alcohol or drugs unfit for human use to see the value proposition. The end user will most certainly want to know this information, too. And as more research is done on sensors over time we will see them becoming more affordable and therefore standard goods would also be considered, such as your example of the box of peppers.

As for whether a regular computer can perform these actions, the nature of the blockchain means that no one can tamper with the information. Surely this has got to be the main benefit as stakeholders who may have their bottom line jeopardised are willing to go to any extent to get their pay check. Hence why having a trustless system in this sector makes such sense.
Why do you assume blockchain is always more expensive? One of its selling points is its ability to reduce costs to a business. Decentralized data storage is [much more affordable](https://siastats.info/storage_pricing) than even the [cheapest cloud storage platform](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html). People may not care about decentralization, but they do care about low costs.
Would you use an excel spreadsheet using some formulas on it (~1h of work), or rather rebuild an entire system custom built to serve the same result that one sheet of excel would use (~40h of programming time) ?

You have to ask yourself what you're trying to optimise. 20 years down the line the costs will change greatly.
I am very aware of database performances. I even wrote a time series database layer to speed up bulk processing of data. Point is, we’re already at a point where the performance loss to using a BlockChain is not a concern for many tasks. Most of the inefficiencies are mostly a matter of getting proper scaling (while staying decentralized, no real point otherwise), and since those are mostly code related issues, we should have them fixed within 2 years. Add like 10 years and a lot of the inefficiencies will become meaningless for more and more tasks.

But anyway you personally attacking me just proves to me you’re not looking for an argument, or giving one.
The goal isn’t really to use blockchain because blockchain is cool, the goal is to have everyone agree on what is true without having to trust a central authority and be resistant to attackers who will inevitably try to break or cheat the network

A lot of development is in creating privacy so the ledger can verify that something happened without revealing what that something was. You could conceivably use privacy features to make information accessible to whoever you choose, and inaccessible to anyone else. And you could do this without having to give free reign to some central authority like Facebook 
But a huge bargain compared with the massive administration infrastructure required to maintain the current fiat system.
I understand the law would have to adapt as well (which happens all the time). But once blockchain becomes more mainstream that is where I see a viable use case.
>hyperledger model

Can you explain?

>You need to control who has access to the network because you need some kind of quality control to make sure all the participants are working for a common goal. 

I agree, this is why currencies are good. Everyone needs to pay.

I dont understand a usecase for these top alt coins because they are all public.
Okay, you hit on something.

Why not copypaste ETH and run your own chain? Sure you dont have 10000 people verifying, but I bet people will trust 100 people verifying.
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Is it worth the greater cost? That is the question.
I’m not so sure on that. 

Databases can encrypt exactly the same. Databases can be copied and distributed. The copies can be compared.

Set database that there are no updates. Throw away key. 

???


Very cool about Sia, I dont think that pricing is going to last very long if the network grows. I also didnt understand if that flat fee was on each upload or was limited to the original contract. (thinking its on each upload since blockchain)

But Sia is definitely an application where everything can be automated without humans involved. A private Sia chain with 2 computers is cheaper than the Sia network.

Blockchain is always more expensive than a centralized system. 
Ha, you clearly *are* familiar, even more so than I. I wouldn’t take it personally, it’s the Internet, most people are not familiar, I took a punt. 

I still think use cases for a truly decentralised blockchain are limited, and the vast majority of projects are solutions looking for a valid problem. 

(If this is the thread I think it is) as op pointed out the use cases seem to be limited to abstract objects, like currencies, votes, and kitties. Digital items that because of a blockchain cannot be copied, something previously impossible. 

The proof of this theory is the number of working cryptocurrencies compared to other projects. 

PS what was the scenario that required a time series layer (if you can say), genuinely interesting. 
I 100% believe in blockchain for currency.

This  isnt something Im debating.
You're right of course. I'm just less optimistic about the law changing before the tech. The law will have to change first imo. 
Check out this article:
https://medium.com/@philippsandner/comparison-of-ethereum-hyperledger-fabric-and-corda-21c1bb9442f6

You might see more sense in hyperledger than Ethereum. It doesn’t use a currency so it has a different approach to securing the network
Btw the following article is a great read on plasma if you're looking for more details:

[https://medium.com/loom\-network/practical\-plasma\-volume\-i\-gaming\-9cfd3f971734](https://medium.com/loom-network/practical-plasma-volume-i-gaming-9cfd3f971734)
Yes, Oyster Protocol is decentralized storage, for example. They intend to allow dynasties of nodes for businesses to use. This won't be in blockchain, however. It uses Iota nodes instead, but it's using same principle of sharing the verification of the storage layer, payment, deletion, etc. 
The necessary trust is a lot smaller. The sensor buyer should have access to change the private key in the sensor. The only way the manufacturer could cheat would be leaking the private key someway. Most straightforward ways would be easy to spot by the sensor buyer in a test network. And you need both the sensor manufacturer (that depends on people trusting his sensor to keep making money) colluding with the companies responsible for transportation.
T.D.: This raises the bar for potential malfeasance by an order of magnitude at least.
Fair point. I get that the machine is only as reliable as it's individual cogs. 

Trust in someone or something is currently needed whether that be an entity within a centralised company or a mathematical algorithm, though, and so that is something that will always be there. Whether we choose to have it be within a centralised company or decentralised one, whereby information cover ups are less likely to happen, that's where the argument lies. The blockchain allows us to see the objective information in this regard.
You’ve hit it on the head; blockchain works best (only?) with purely digital or abstract items like money and votes. Physical items don’t mix well. 

“Blockchain” can’t leave the digital realm, and as such is always open to the “rubbish in” problem. If a person enters information anywhere on the chain then it is always open to false data. The rubbish data is then permanently on the blockchain. 

All the solutions I see are just “kicking the can further down the road”. They’ve either “solved” the problem by moving it somewhere else, or replaced it with a new one. 

I’d like to see other programmers’ takes on this too. I suspect we all agree on this more than most. 
Why wouldn't I trust the sensor manufacturer? I trust the data carrier for transmitting my data without modifying it, I trust the satellites for accurate GPS.
At the end of the day I will trust a service provider that has nothing to gain from modifying the data. I would not trust the transport company to provide the sensors, but if I provide the sensors with the freight then I inherently trust the sensor data.
This is not true. Hardware that is open source can be audited and verified that they are running exactly how you expect them to. Just like people trust hardware wallets today and hashes confirm software downloads etc. 

The hardware may not be 100% there yet but it’s on the way. 
Are you assuming cost based only on current standards, without considering the numerous scalling solutions in development? Emerging technology is typically clunky at first. 
Immutability *is* superior to not having it. In just about every domain I can think of. It is far less efficient, but again, efficiency isn't why you're using a blockchain. 
Nobody can guarantee the key was lost.

A distributed system isn’t the same as a decentralized system. The problem in your example is that having distributed copies of the same data doesn’t work as soon as the data differs. You have a DB copy with 5000 records, mine has 10000 records. Nobody can say which is the proper version. Now multiply this problem times the number of nodes, it can quickly become unmanageable to establish trust.
The problem of all blockchains is that they all depend ultimately on cryptoeconomics for any decentralized design. As the name says, the economic part is an inherent part of its/their security. The economic part acts as the ultimate « stake » mechanism, whether it’s PoW/pos/whatever, guaranteeing that nobody will act against their own personal incentives.

Now with this said, if the blockchain manages nothing of pure monetary worth, it’s hard to make cryptoeconomics as a security model work. That’s why most non-asset based blockchains are centralized (like steem for example).

With this said, currently there is little perceived value in data immutability and having a concept of trading (rather than copying). We’ll be a long way before the full potential of blockchains will be realized, because the benefits include censor-proof news and tamper-proofness, which isn’t immediately obviously valuable. Maybe after we lose bet neutrality after a years long protracted battle the people will wake up. 

For your question, I worked for fun to make a crypto trading bot. I be followed machine learning for a few years and dealt with near-trillion rows database tables, so I’m familiar with problems of scale. To store all the ticker data on all exchanges I estimated could somewhat easily go to 1000 rows/sec, so that would prove to give poor performance for red/write on Postgres. I looked into timeseries databases but none offered what I wanted besides akumuli. So I decided to just make my own database layer on top of Postgres to basically store agglomerated columnar timeseries data as efficiently as I could with the limited resources I can devote to this project. Basically, it acts similarly to what akumuli does, but instead of using their b-tree I use Postgres instead. Also I care little about reading efficiency, I want compression first. So in essence its inspired from akumuli but with zstd tacked on top of it. Depending on data that yields sometimes an extra 20-30% more compression than akumuli. My layer itself compresses about 8GB/core/s under ideal conditions, so it’s proven to be more than adequate. I haven’t open sourced the data layer yet (no plan on doing it for the bot), but have been considering doing it for basically helping my resume if I need to search a job one day. I haven’t settled on the license to open source it into, since mostly what I care is to have my name on top of source files (again, for resume) but don’t actually care what anyone does with the code besides keep my name there. Anyway, there you go.
You can apply that to most use cases also where a centralized authority has to employ massive armies of administrators to ensure compliance and establish trust relationships.

The soybeans exchange between the US and China is a good example of where this applies in supply chain.

If you have ever dealt with international supply chain, especially with China, you probably know what a huge mess it is. You have to traverse multiple trade zones and entities just to do the smallest movement. This relies on expertise and tons of babysitting the whole way through. China trade, in particular, relies almost exclusively on multiple trust relationships. Trust is a major issue as unauthorized shortcuts will be taken to save money in the short term and loyalty between providers and consumers of services is always on shaky ground.

Blockchain is the perfect solution to pilot there as it removes all the intermediaries and replaces it with a trustless platform.

Another area where blockchain makes sense is removing intermediaries for things like creative royalties. SingularDTV is a good project with a few creative efforts released. Instead of big music publishers taking in most of the income, it goes directly to the creator. There's no need for a centralized authority here to ensure quality, in fact the opposite occurs. Smaller creators are held down and don't have the same power to reach mass markets due to the entrenched, oligopoly content publishers controlling the airwaves and advertising channels. Quality here should massively go up if consumers have a way to directly reward content creators. There are quite a few projects out there like Publica handling the creative side.

Basic Attention token does the same with advertising, where publishers earn more income from ads instead of it ending up in Google or Facebook hands. Actually, this is one of the best use cases for the blockchain and where it's desperately needed. If you thought the China supply chain was complicated, the digital advertising network is even more complicated and the incentives are completely out of line. Online content providers are losing tons of money and users are tired of instrusive, creepy ads and companies stealing their data. Users have rebelled with ad blockers and it has been killing online revenue. Brave platform solves this problem. The creator of Netscape, Firefox, and Javascript is leading that project so knows the landscape well. They have already signed up some big names like Dow Jones, Washington Post, and Guardian.

Tokenized assets and securities are where removing these intermediaries is taking off this year. Ethos, Stellar, Raven, and Polymath are working hard here to bring this to fruition.

Next year, products like Ocean Protocol will be bringing Token Curated Registries to life. There are other companies in industry areas like legal, medical, and academic publishing, with the exact same problem -- a couple of huge names control the entire market, creating and maintaining an oligopoly. Content is protected and gouged, making it extremely hard for small players to purchase, and causing a debt to society by leaving small players out of the game. The University of California system, for example, boycotted one of the big publishers in revolt because the curation cost had gone up so high and it was turning into a predatory act upon the good of society. On the other hand, content producers give up an increasing share of their efforts over to the centralized oligopoly. This in turn has a bad effect on society where opinions and research is only being put forth and being accessed by deep pockets. Decentralizing removes barriers to entry and brings the little guy back into the game.

Decentralization is an absolute game changer, it affects literally every aspect of society by tokenizing value, reducing costs associated with intermediaries, incentivizing creators, and destroying barriers to entry.
I tend to see it the other way around. Once the tech proves itself to really be trustless, we will see voters and politicians begin to back the changing of laws. 

I see crypto and blockchain as a type of grassroots movement. Once the tech becomes mainstream and proves to be effective (example would be seatbelt laws) then voters will require we use it as a mandatory service to better our society.
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Yes, i think the thing to keep in mind is that block\-chain is not a miracle solution, but an improvement over what we have now.  We will never reach utopia. 
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So you wouldnt use blockchain outside currency/voting/ledgers?
Thank you for the illuminating answer. I’m doing a dozen things including cooking bacon as a gift for a dog, learning how to be a DM for Dungeons & Dragons, supervising homework, and making coffee.

I’ll read again tomorrow :)
Wait, but why would you use those tokens over Bitcoin?

Those tokens are unstable and unlikely to break into an international market. Each token requires development.

Bitcoin already has this developed. 

The use-cases of Legal, medical, and academia have their own legal requirements and politics. Blockchain will not work in those fields as they require humans to make decisions. They are not decentralized. (A doctor/lawyer/professor is given more power than the consumer/competitors through laws and politics.)
> There is nothing that keeps the transportation company from putting the sensor into a minifridge.

The sensor owner may very well package in a way that if any package is opened some signal is sent by the sensor...
Fully agreed. It's certainly not the answer to all our questions, however a move forward in terms of solving certain iniquities within certain current systems. Well said though.
> ...but the data inputs and outputs require trust. 


Bingo. 

People in this sub and similar just *will not* understand this, as simple and as obvious as it is. 

I think it’s because to the uninitiated a blockchain kinda sorta resembles a supply chain, and both have the word “chain” in them, so ...blockchain is the answer!!!

The problem is, as you said, there’s no trust for the inputs, and no way to verify. Rubbish in. 

You can stop right there, when you are entering information into the chain. It’s a hole at step 1. 

It’s a big hole blockchain doesn’t solve, at all. 

However blockchains do handle *abstract* items very well, like money, votes, digital cats, and that’s the new world. 
> And if you have to trust someone, you no longer gain anything by using a blockchain.

That is simply not true. The gain by using the blockchain is the distributed ledger and the benefits that provides in the reduction in the duplication of work. This is a fundamental argument for blockchain in business.

The question is whether those infrastructure (sensor and network) concerns are reasonable, and whether the benefits of the system outweigh the reasonable possibility of bad actors manipulating the system.

There is no reasonable situation not to trust the GPS data for the purposes of tracking freight. Therefore, the system is trusted to the degree necessary for the job. At the end of the day that is all that matters.

Now in terms of the cost, forget permissionless blockchains, they wouldn't be used in supply chains (which is where my interest lies). In a permissioned system most actors would run their own nodes and therefore the cost of being part of the system would be part of running the business. 
Even to those extremes it’s possible. Your company could do random inspection on the hardware and verify them with contract terms stating huge penalties if tampering is found. I agree it’s much more work to get perfect. But even some of this stuff will throw off the current incentives and make the savings worth it
I would use blockchain in every single aspect of the internet. Literally. Even simple things like Wikipedia. The entire software tooling suite should run on blockchain. Code reviews should run on blockchain. Source code repositories should run on blockchains. News should run on blockchain, as well as providing their sources (where desirable). You could verify that a news is legit or not. The entire software ecosystem should be rebuilt entirely, including every single line of code that runs between your computer and the website you connect to. Even having access to signature for the entire OS of the server that runs the website you download data from. And far far more.

Obviously, I'm talking long term design here. In 20 years those mere efficiency gains were talking between doing things efficiently or decentralized will be a mostly pointless detail. In the same way that today we use libraries to do just about any line of code, but back when computers were limited (say 20 years ago), you would probably struggle to find the leanest and most efficient code to do what you needed, whereas today you write kind of shit code, even in javascript, even in script code that isnt compiled (like say excel), and for the most part we dont care because thats just how further ahead we got.
Tokens are needed because of the network effect of incentives. As more participants engage in the network, the more the value of that network grows. If you used Bitcoin, the value of the network is not accurately reflected in the participation rate. If people find value in an idea or project, they will grow its value through usage and investment, which drives demand. It's like trying to invest in Apple instead of an index fund. 

And, those networks are already growing in value with their own tokens, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, *it's already happening.*

Regarding the stability argument, you could also make the same argument that Bitcoin is also unstable. Projects like MakerDAO are working on stable coins.

The fields mentioned do not need a human to review and make decisions if those decisions are in a repeatable framework. Publishing platforms also rewards peer reviews by providing token incentives, which drive the demand in the network, and punish bad actors who try to game the system. 

All of those fields are some of the very last to be improved through workflow and technology, ironically. Medical especially is backwards and using a decades old infrastructure. The argument of, ""that's how they do it,"" actually argues against itself. These are prime candidates for disruption and need it the most.
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So we should just say fuck-all and not improve the parts of the system we can actually improve?
You are not looking at the proper use case for blockchain (as opposed to crypto). It is where you have disparate organizations that need to exchange data. In this case it does not make sense for the database to be centralized and any other method will result in duplication of effort.

Please consider taking the HyperLedger for Business course. It is free through EDX, another is the Blockchain basics from IBM.
The Intel demo for Tuna fish tracking is a great use case, as is the car manufacturing from IBM. 

Your examples are edge cases that would not be applicable to what distributed ledgers are designed for. 

Saying that the physical system is 50% secure when you are talking about a temperature sensor for a pallet system ignores the cost to modify 1 sensor to fix 1 shipment. It would be unreasonable for the attempted gain, particularly when the transport company is not the one providing the sensor. 

Are you seriously implying FedEx is going to hack a GPS satellite just so a pallet can be seen to travel where it was supposed to? The cost benefit makes no sense."
Why is Ripple considered a cryptocurrency (by many)?,110,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/84ji1h/why_is_ripple_considered_a_cryptocurrency_by_many/,"I agree with you, as a mechanism aimed that allowing SWIFT like transactions, it's very much less a ""cryptocurrency"" and more of a ""crypto protocol"", much like Ethereum is more like a potential block chain for enterprise and less of a currency in traditional measures.

I think the ""cryptocurrency"" tag is just a wide sweeping title for anything crypto related that has a tradable token. Whether or not it attempts to act like a currency doesn't seem to matter in the eyes of the market because you can trade the token for goods / money like a currency, even if it's not designed to do so. 


Ripple is more like a consortium centralized payment system than a cryptocurrency.
> So why has Ripple been advertising itself as a cryptocurrency?

Source for this claim? As far as I can tell, Ripple advertises itself as a ""blockchain solution"" and ""payment infrastructure"". And it advertises XRP as a ""digital asset"". I can't find any mention of ""cryptocurrency"" on their site or in their advertising literature.
What's your source on the default UNL being only 5 validators that Ripple runs? I'm pretty certain this is dated information at best. There are over 150 validator nodes and I know in February they expanded the default recommended UNL.

That being said people can choose to trust any nodes they want, Ripple only has as much control as network participants give them. If banks wanted to fork XRP tomorrow and cut out all Ripple validator nodes they could.
Ok, define cryptocurrency? Not a joke. Please define cryptocurrency, and we can start the discussion. :) (Little explanation, everyone thinks they know what the word means. They model their definition after bitcoin, and that is ""a"" cryptocurrency, not ""the"" cryptocurrency.) Let's define blockchain and cryptocurrency, and we can have some fun. :)
""Ripple chose deliberately to be the most trusted validator operator in the network during the initial stages of development of the XRP Ledger. This decision involved trade-offs to prioritize security and scalability ahead of decentralization.""

In 2018 this situation will be changed and Ripple will be decentralised in a way that is arguably more decentralised than some other crypto's.  
https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-update/

Where  most other cryptocurrencies (or whatever you want to call it) decided to start with decentralised ledgers, Ripple decided to focus on 1security and 2speed. As a result the XRP ledger is now the fastest and most secure ledger (Whitepaper promises don't count) in the space, with countless updates on the ledger.

In the rest of the space we see a lot of drama in this regard doing a tiny little upgrade to try to scale.

Ripple has got it all sorted out and is ready to move, or has moved out of the sandbox phase and into the real world while idealists are bickering over a tiny little MB change.
Can I just say that this is a great discussion? /u/crypto_ha great thought provoking question on what the nature of blockchain and the real definition of cryptocurrency and blockchain, and how those are different for different people. We are examining assumptions here that people didn't even realize were assumptions. 

Brilliant question, /u/crypto_ha!!! Well done!!!
All coins are cryptocurrencies because they use cryptography to secure and validate the transactions. That's it.
I think that banks would want a centralized cryptocurrency so they know who has control over it and they can still benefit from the cheap and fast transactions.
Could you be a little more specific? What qualities do a coin need in order to be a crypto currency? And how does Ripple not adhere to this definition? 
Actually, Brad Garlinghouse (Ripple's CEO) has stated many times that he believes XRP to be a digital asset and not a cryptocurrency.
It’s really supposed to be a protocol to be used by banks. However, many “investors” couldn’t care less about what it is if it will get them rich quick.
My answer:

'cause it got a berth on Coinmarketcap. About August, 2013, I think. There were only about 50 cryptos listed at the time. It was fascinating to us: the first (sort of) 2.0. It was *like* a crypto. So . . . 


It's the same reason Susan Komen is considered a cancer charity.

It *is* a cancer charity. Just a shitty one that doesn't do the thing most people like about most cancer charities: fund research (and have low overhead). 
cryptocurrency started off as a decentralized coin with bitcoin. 

But with the proliferation of altcoins, you have different people with different ideologies coming in here to invest in these coins for different purposes. 

I am a huge fan of cryptocurrencies and root for it to succeed in future, but I am not a libertarian. I am not that huge of a fan in libertarianism like the people in /r/bitcoin. 




Because it's built on a blockchain. There's no real formal definition of cryptocurrency, so it's difficult to say it's not. 
This – out of inertia or lack of understanding, people seem to have gotten into the habit of referring to anything that can be swapped for Bitcoin on an exchange as a “cryptocurrency”. I guess there’s also been an incentive to market cryptographic tokens as ""cryptocurrencies"" to catch the wave of interest that’s been building over the last few years.  

If you actually stop to examine the tech behind a coin/token, it’s often plain to see the differences between a pure cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin, Nano), a utility token (e.g. VeChain, BAT), and a security/security-like token (e.g. Modum, Corl). Ripple's one of the trickier ones, since it seems to fall somewhere between a pure cryptocurrency and a utility token, though I'd argue it's closer to the latter.  

We may begin to see more clarity as government regulation steps up, which is likely to bring in real-life consequences for the currency/utility token distinction, as well as hopefully offer up an option for the security-like tokens to be seen as genuine securities.
I believe that's his point. It's like trading IOUs for a bank no one has access to because it's for enterprise.

Actually, it's a lot like trading Blockbuster gift cards or loyalty points. These points don't matter at all to anyone that isn't affiliated with Blockbuster (and no one or very few people are currently)

I don't get it, but hey Im just a dev and not one of them crypto geniuses or whatever
Are you going to expand on your comment or not?

I don't see why a comment like this has the highest amount of up votes in a sub that is meant for mature discussion.
Could you expand on your comment? I thought this sub was for discussion. Can you qualify your statement about how it's a consortium? 

Nothing stops you and I transacting xrp. 


Regarding decentralisation, could you care to comment on this? https://xrphodor.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/2018-xrp-ledgers-year-of-decentralization/
Yes that's what OP said.
Garlinghouse called XRP a ""cryptoasset"" in the Yahoo Finance interview and asked people to stop calling it a cryptocurrency, so his stance seems to be pretty clear. 
I'm sorry for the confusion. Ripple has 5 default validators owned by Ripple, but they have a lot of other trusted validators now. Still, Ripple ""validators"" not only can validate transactions, but they can manually decide what the consensus is. It's a system that heavily relies on trust. Without decentralized consensus, how can Ripple considered a cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to secure its transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets (distributed consensus). Cryptocurrencies are enabled by Distributed Ledger Technology.

A distributed ledger is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institutions. There is no central administrator or centralized data storage. One form of distributed ledger design is the Blockchain system, but not all distributed ledgers have to necessarily employ a chain of blocks to successfully provide secure and valid achievement of distributed consensus: a blockchain is only one type of data structure considered to be a distributed ledger.

I think these are quite accurate definitions.
>and most secure ledger

Under what definition of secure? 
So the next problem most crypto's or digital assets face is, that there is a finite amount. Who in their right mind would spend something that is only going to get more valueable in time right?

Ripple chose to make XRP, a settlement asset. That means that the users do not have to hold it, and therefore they aren't exposed to the assets volatility. 
A bank or payment service provider can enjoy the other benefits of XRP (speed and low cost) without being exposed.

FIAT is entrenched in society and is impossible to be ripped out of it, and is not going away(atleast not in this decade). 

What Ripple is doing is taking this new technology to the masses without them even knowing it. 

Central banks, governments and frankly the majority of society likes their FIAT. And i bet you, they like it even more if its being made faster and cheaper under the hood through a digital asset.



How is it the most secure ledger if it isnt at all (by your own admission) decentralized? 

Your statements in this post indicate you wouldn't even know how to determine whether a ledger is secure so why are you blatantly lying? 
Really good point. We are discussing the definitions of things, and there is a huge spectrum of definitions of what is a cryptocurrency, and what is a blockchain, and how do they interact, and who controls them, and what are the ""core"" pieces of each of them. It's fascinating. For example, do you realize that if you want to talk about only blockchain, without anything even resembling a token/coin/you get the idea, it's incredibly simple? Like 9/10'
s of the complexity is stripped away, when you don't need to worry about token issues, token security, token sales, blah blah blah.
Ripple is most certainly not built on a blockchain.
You're almost right. The ripple network allows you to issue your own tokens which could represent anything - like gift cards.

However, you and I can use the ripple network to send value very quickly, and very cheaply, using XRP. Just because a company targets xrp for banks, it doesn't mean it can't have any other uses.

If a company came along and started trying to target bitcoin, or ethereum, towards banks for international payments, how would you consider that scenario?
Ripple's wikipedia page has more insight on the subject than you do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(payment_protocol)
Could you read this research paper, published by Cornell University, and provide comment on how consensus can't be reach in a distributed fashion?

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07242
Hmm well that opens up a good question. Does a crypto currency require decentralized consensus? Just from dissecting the name, I'd say that *decentralized* consensus isn't mandatory but I'd be interested in your thoughts.

And if that's what dictates a cryptocurrency, then what about systems where for whatever reason there are only a handful of nodes and again for whatever reason the software isn't open source. If the technology behind it is near identical (cryptographically speaking) to current systems are those systems not cryptocurrencies?
This simply isn't true. Every node picks the other nodes they trust, Ripple simply offers a suggested list. By the end of the year Ripple will be removed from the process and the code will choose which nodes to trust based on node behavior.
Have you read the paper (submitted for academic peer review) yet? Can you share your thoughts?
> that uses cryptography [...] to verify the transfer of assets (distributed consensus)

It sounds like you make Proof of Work a hard requirement to consider it a cryptocurrency. By that definition something using a Proof of Stake or other Proof of X algorithm would not qualify as a cryptocurrency.

I think the defining feature of a cryptocurrency is the usage of public key cryptography for ""wallet""-like features (= ownership of private key establishes ownership of units of currency). How consensus is established is in my opinion no part of the definition of cryptocurrency.

Of course, you are right that different consensus mechanisms come with different advantages/disadvantages and some probably should not be recommended for mainstream adoption due to some centralization in the consensus mechanish.
Curious (not trolling) to understand why you restrict cryptocurrencies to ""medium of exchange"" since ""store of value"" is also a valid (and needed) use case for currencies in general. In time any currency that succeed at those two will almost certainly also end up as a ""unit of account"", so that third leg seems less interesting.

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that, without sufficient weight as a ""store of value"" *any* currency is unlikely to succeed as ""medium of exchange"". If I sell something and accept a token/coin/note in payment, I absolutely *need* for it to hold substantially the same value until I get around to paying the rent (or whatever). On the flipside, a good ""store of value"" need *not* be very good as a ""medium of exchange"" -- witness Gold.

But other than my nitpicking, I do like your lucid summation!

eta: To back up my argument that an insufficiently strong ""store of value"" function leads to diminished utility as ""medium of exchange"", witness the Venezuela Bolivar or Zimbabwe Dollar -- useless stores of value due to runaway inflation, resulting in local populace using almost anything else they can lay hands on for trade.
Nicely written. Good on ya!

So let's dicuss. Investopedia's definition of blockchain: (not calling them authoritative, just a useful juxtaposition)
What is a 'Blockchain'
A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order, it allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically.

Ok, what is different from yours and theirs? 
> There is no central administrator or centralized data storage.

This is the key piece right here. They mention decentralized storage, yes. But no central administration? That's all yours. Nobody said a blockchain couldn't be centrally administered. It can. For example, a private blockchain is almost always centrally administered. 

The idea of no central administration is part of the mythos of cryptocurrency. No one controls it!!! Yeah, not so much. :) Totally possible to control any cryptocurrency, with enough investment. A big enough whale? Can destroy, or shape a cryptocurrency. 

Not trying to be rude, just wanted to point out the romantic in your reason. :)

Good question though!!!!





My question to you guys: Why are you so hostile?

Ripplers do not hate Bitcoin or Ethereum. In our view there is not going to be 1 ledger to rule them all. There is plenty of room for all of us.

This is why Ripple is paying for the open source project called Interledger. Aiming to create a standard procotol like TCIP, to connect all the ledgers and make them interoperable.

It's a big party and you are all invited.

Peace out.

Its simple. You can hardly improve anything on a ledger if you dont have a majority. Making the ledger decentralised in the last stage is certainly not the industry standard, but as you can see, it works best.

We could go into the technicals, but you are not giving me the idea we are having a normal talk about it, since you accuse me of lying.


You're asking a lot of a random person. Why dont you read it and provide us with the main points? Because as far as I know that ""research paper"" could have been written by some random undergrad student with little to no experience. On the other side of the coin, I have heard many established people (and come to the conclusion myself) that XRP can not ever be decentralized and that it is most likely a funding vehicle for Ripple's actual goals with their InterLedger/xCurrent 
I believe a cryptocurrency has to have decentralized consensus, or at least has to *aim* at decentralized consensus. Ripple, by design, clearly does not have anything to do with decentralized consensus.

If the software is closed source, I don't think that would change anything about the nature of the system. If it's decentralized, it's decentralized. If it's not, it's not (pretty sloppy English but I hope you get what I mean). Whether the users believe in the system without knowing (part of) the code is a different story.

The problem with a small number of nodes is very subjective. If the system is *designed* to have only a small number of nodes, that's not decentralization. If it just *happens* to have a small number of nodes (for whatever reason), then it can still *aim* at decentralization. What I want to say is it's the code that really matters.
Proof of Stake mining is still a distributed consensus algorithm.
A store of value that can't be exchanged for anything isn't a store of value. It's a store of whatever it is.
Cryptocurrency != Blockchain.
A blockchain that's not decentralised is completely untrustable, whereas a decentralised one is trustless, i.e., you don't need to trust it, it's self-guaranteeing, and therefore actually infinitely more trustable.
I don't understand it either. My best guess is that they are unhappy about a crypto network operating that doesn't require proof of work or proof of signature, and performs better than those two consensus models.
You are definitely not representative of the average Ripple user. 

Either way many of us feel as if you are being lied to for the purposes of funding Ripple Labs and their non-XRP goals. And if if it only hurt you honestly I probably wouldnt care but the fact is Ripple is wrapped up in the umbrella of ""crypto"" and those scumbags Jed and Chris Larsen getting rich off this and eventually fucking investors like you over will end up reflecting poorly upon the community and likely the market.
Your response is essentially 'lalala my head is in the sand, not going to believe you no matter what evidence you provide'.

This isn't going to end, so I'll be the bigger man - I have no ill feelings towards you. You have your views I have mine. Its only crypto :) See you around.
Why do u think centralised consensus is a bad thing? U see this with dpos, but centralisation seems to be the big no no with xrp. But I don't really see the risk. With dpos I suppose stake holders could collude somehow if they knew who  they were
Sorry, my previous comment was a bit unclear.

Your previous comment seemed to imply that in order to qualify for a cryptocurrency by your definition, cryptography has to be involved in the consensus algorithm, as it is with the ""cryptographic riddle"" in PoW.
A decentralized blockchain can still be centrally administered. 
It's about trading off the most important aspect of this technology in the first place and also about the staggering levels of ignorance needed to overlook how important that trade off is. 
I follow Ripple's progress intensively and I havent got this feeling at all. I'm also convinced that they do everything in their power to make XRP a global settlement asset.

From a regulatory point of view: I feel that if Ripple fails with XRP, basically every other Crypto is going to fail.

With Both Ripple and us investors owning lots of XRP, our interests are alligned. Solving the cross border payments problem will take some time, but i expect to see some action on banks and payment service providers in the coming months.

Please don't associate Jed with Ripple. Hes a scumbag.
He asked you for the main points from the paper so that the community can address them. I don't see what you've understood from his comment.
Centralized consensus may be a good thing or a bad thing. For the use cases that Ripple is targeting, it's a perfectly fine payment system. What I'm saying is Ripple is not really a cryptocurrency.
>Ripple would be most appropriately described as a centralized payment network that can be audited by third parties for transaction validity.

The above description of Ripple would be a more honest one than a cryptocurrency.
I just don't see where you draw the line between what qualifies as ""valid"" consensus algorithm for a cryptocurrency.

A system with a limited set of trusted validators is usually classified as Proof of Authority. That system is still _distributed_, but it's not trustless anymore (which is a property a lot of people look for).

So Ripple, as far as I can tell is still a cryptocurrency with a distributed (albeit trusted) consensus algorithm. I don't see any point of your definition of cryptocurrencies that Ripple does not fulfil.
What is blockchain administration?
It can be many things. Who is allowed to write to the blockchain, what transactions are allowed into the blockchain, who can pick the next .... validator/writer/picker of songs on the jukebox, whatever is a point of control on the blockchain."
Proof of work vs Proof of stake,105,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/nbh1rm/proof_of_work_vs_proof_of_stake/,"Generally POS is less decentralized than POW.

Concerns about energy consumption are real and valid though. BTC maxis will tell you a large majority of mining comes from renewables but multiple studies have disputed the one (miner funded) study that found the results.

Most POS chains are dPOS (delegated) where users delegate their tokens to an entity they “trust”. In reality this is always the entity giving best returns. Then top 21 validators with the biggest stake will decide the chain. TRON and BSC do this.

ETH2 is actually decentralized and true POS, with over 120,000 validators rotating on a pseudo random basis to propose and validate blocks. Also uses very little energy
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We need to as a community continuously push back on the easy black and white ideas of this one is better or this one is newer. The reality is usually nuanced and in this case, POW vs POS isn't about old vs new or one being more efficient than the other. They have different compromises and have different results.
PoS sounds to me a lot like ""the rich get richer faster"".
A security concern for PoS networks boils down to staking vs. yield farming. If you are yield farming, you aren't staking - if you aren't staking, the network is less secure. If yield farming is more lucrative than staking, will people stake for altruistic reasons? We'll find out soon enough.

PoW capabilities have not yet been fully realized and there are dev teams pushing it to the limit. I recommend reading [Ergo: Why Proof of Work?](https://curiaregiscrypto.medium.com/ergo-why-proof-of-work-47c9b25fae70) to get a fresh take on why PoW still has room to grow and remain competitive with PoS
What are the attack vectors of POS vs POW?
What about Nothing to Stake issue at PoS?
Only use case i've seen for PoW that can't be done in PoS is anonymous distribution.

One thing that's been done to counteract this is have a PoS system reward Folding@Home points with crypto. So you aren't mining crypto and wasting energy, you are using that energy to help research.

I think PoW is on it's way out, mainly because I have not seen a single coin move PoS=>PoW, they all move PoW=>PoS.
I'm not an expert in this, but one thing that was very obvious to me was that POS is more complicated than POW. There has to be some consensus on who gets to produce the next block whereas POW is just about who is first to submit a block with a correct  hash to the network.

Now, POS has negligible or even no speed difference which is probably the most important metric. Aside from this I don't think POS has any big disadvantages over POW. I think POS is here to stay, and POW is here to go.
Does anybody have any links to ongoing research or work in cryptography which can reduce the energy cost of pow?
I remember sometime back ethereum foundation was pursuing an efficient implementation of VDF(verifiable delay functions) with respect to this
What's interesting about this dilemma is that there more solutions than just choosing one or the other, actually a hybrid model could even be done. 

For instance you could have Proof of Work in ensuring some type of work is done and spec followed in order to propose a block and Proof of Stake for making governance decisions. This incentivizes people to lock up tokens for a period of time in order to participate in governance, and consequently governance is done by people who are incentivized to see the platform grow long term. There are holes here that have to be addressed of course, but it's doable in general. 


Now if we go back to Proof of Work and its inefficiency, I believe it can be made efficient as well. For instance, if there was a Proof of Work which involved not doing various mathematical computations, but instead went like this: 

- Use PoW based random beacon generation to get random entropy (see https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1033.pdf for example)

- Based on entropy decide on an ordered set of block proposers 

- Wait x seconds for block to be proposed by first proposer, if it fails, move on to second, and so on. 

- Validate proposed block, when sufficiently validated, add to chain and continue

- Repeat 

This sounds very similar to classical PoS solutions and it is aside from the randomness generation. The key is that staking isn't necessarily required since we use a light PoW for randomness generation, and the network could scale out and even do randomized sharded computation based on the entropy generated initially. 

Note this is follows the strict definition of Proof of Work, but we could just do collaborative random beacon generation (instead of PoW based) and instead treat 'work' as following the protocol correctly. This ends up being similar to staking, but without the stake. The ability is gained for greater decentralization, but the downside is there must be robust anti-spam and protocol deviating detect and punishment measures which results in a far more complex protocol when compared to just PoW or PoS. 

For what it's worth I think we will see (and there probably are) blockchains which use similar models or odd combinations of what I described above. All in all, it's a series of tradeoffs between the level of access, decentralization, speed, and complexity/protocol semantics that occur when deciding between PoS, PoW or a hybrid. I don't think PoW will necessarily become useless or go away, and do believe it can be useful in conjunction with PoS in certain cases as well. 

Note: PoW is not harmful by definition, there could be the case that useful work is done and is easily verifiable through zk proofs, but it is hard to define what is useful. Notably it can help in sharded consensus protocols since global randomness can be generated without paying quadratic communication cost for a collaborative random beacon and increase security by having shard shuffling through this global randomness. In this case, I think PoW is very useful since the communication cost is likely higher than the PoW cost and likely quite a bit more reliable/robust.
>However by going to pos did these cryptos compromise on a being a fully trust-less system or is pos legitimately a better substitute for pow without any compromises?

Yes they compromised. PoS has tradeoffs. For instance in ETH, new nodes or nodes that have been offline for a long time have to ask a trusted source or trusted sources which is the main chain, whereas in PoW they trust no one and default to the chain with the most PoW. This is called [Weak Subjectivity](https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/).

[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/n8hpet/why_bitcoin_is_not_moving_to_pos/gxijdza?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) another good reddit comment on the matter
PoW isn't a proven system without block rewards.
PoS is why PoW was invented
There are several variants of PoS that address its issues, two of my favorites are Algorand's ""Pure PoS"" and Nano's ""Open Representative Voting"".

There's also a few newer ones with novel consensus mechanisms that seem very promising, such as Hedera's Hashgraph, Avalanche's Snowflake, IOTA's ""Fast Probabilistic Consensus"", etc.
[Yes, we think so](https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/nbdism/ergos_efficiency_and_interplay_with_pos/)
Consumption does equal emissions either. And once we have nuclear fusion figures out within the next decade these conversations shouldn't even be taking place. We should be looking at other more harmful things that we are doing to the planet IE gold mining and mining as a whole. I am not up to date on the compromises, but bitcoin has never been hacked while I am under the impression that systems like IOTA are more vulnerable because they use centralized processes.
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Proof of stake is the future, just like Catcoin
It’s outdated. Bitcoin will eventually suffer if it does not keep up with  blockchain trend of moving beyond PoW. PoW is an orthodox religion for some. Blockchain science  —  like any science  —  changes with the times.
Outdated
Why not the best of both? PoW for security and decentralization. Direct PoS voting (no delegation or trust required) by thousands of token holders to decide the chain.

Decred
There are a lot of complex questions involved. 

Fundamentally it is a human belief problem.

As a counterexample, the USD is entirely centralized, and rather undeniably carries a lot of value. And security. 

The crypto community generally believes that decentralized is better but is an absolute objective view it may not be true.

The only true is what the greater community collectively believes. Today the greater community believes in certain centralized, and is POW decentralized, with ongoing experiments to see if the community can be convinced of the value of other propositions.
As a user (not invester or miner) of blockchain, I think PoS offers very little difference (except in mining cost) from PoW because be it through high compute power (expensive) or just raw purchasing power, voting power still lays with the wealthy.
Because of the reduced computational needs, it should confirm transactions faster. 
The fact that this cuts down on power waste is an improvement. It's still trustless and it's still BFT.
algorand run by silvio micali also proposes this pseudo random basis of choosing validators, does it also have sufficiently high number validators to be called decentralised?
This is not true of all PoS. I would consider Nano's ORV as PoS and it has a higher nakamoto coefficient than bitcoin and monero.

Also I think eth2 & cardano have one of the highest nakamoto coefficients. 

So when you say less decentralized what do you mean? Because by measures of decentralization, plenty of PoS projects are more decentralized than PoW projects. 

Also keep in mind that the equivalent in PoW projects is solo miners who are “delegating” their hash rate to pools.
79% of the worlds electricity is generated using fossil fuels. Calling out Bitcoin without calling out other industry is just pure FUD - plain and simple. Why aren’t people calling out the EV industry (e.g. Tesla)? Their vision of the world won’t be achieved until all energy is green - but they won’t get there unless there is demand. Bitcoin is the demand. Why do people have such a hard time with this? The academics love crunching numbers but they mostly use reductionist approaches to formulating a hypothesis. Its ridiculous and disingenuous. I don’t know how these studies stand scrutiny - stop quoting them.
How many nodes and validators does cardano have in comparison?
Oh so you on ETH2 testnet or you just talking out of your ass?
ETH2 has 100 hard-coded economic variables -- that's according to their own developers. And they're constantly tweaking them and will be forking for years to ""fix"" them because that isn't how markets work. So even if we're supposed to ignore the fact that Metamask runs the entire network ETH is about as decentralized as a Stalinist State Planning Commission. No thank you.

Not like POW isn't any more decentralized -- 51% attack encourages cartelization.  People think it's decentralization that makes Bitcoin ""open"" instead when it is being powered by volunteers. So we get projects scaling up ""decentralization"" like it is a tech problem and then getting surprised when one guy ends up owning 90% of the network because someone needs to pay for it.

Future imo is [Saito Consensus](https://saito.io). Nothing else like it in the crypto space, and it makes these POW and POS debates look like a schoolyard argument. Or maybe DAGs if they can get costs down to the point we can scale volunteer-powered networks, although I guess that makes OP_RETURN hard.
it does come down to the individual projects, POS seems to have some interesting ways to be applied but i also think there is an argument for the robustness of POW. 

there is even the odd hybrid architecture which i think is where the future lies. a scalable POS makes a ton of sense but then leveraging some POW into the consensus is an idea i think will take off
So a POS based chain needs pre-mined tokens in which case it cannot be truly trust-less.

Maybe this then implies that pow is needed and a transition to pos after staying on pow until sufficient adoption is achieved is the right thing to do like ethereum is doing
Given that you attack a PoW network by controlling 51% of hashrate, why wouldn't PoW need bootstrapped in some way? If I start a network tomorrow with 10 GPUs, what's to stop someone joining with 15 and doing what they want? Genuine question btw.
This is not an issue.

If you query x nodes and they tell you all the balances in network are x y z. Exactly what is the problem?
I have to disagree with this. Over time people would get smarter and smarter in doing things, get more efficient and learn from previous mistakes.

The key for any network is to be flexible enough to adapt to the latest ideas, technology and trends in doing things to advance forwards.
Which is also true in PoW, but instead of rich people getting richer due to staking larger amounts, in PoW the rich get richer by building huge mining farms, taking up space and ungodly amounts of energy in the process.
Not necessarily. Through coinbase you can stake ETH without having 32.. Someone like me, hardly the rich, has the opportunity to earn ""interest "" from staking
That’s why POT as it’s a more fair system
I read it. I don't see how PoW can stay competitive. Can it lower energy usage with memory hardening? Sure. Can it improve in ways no conceived of yet? Sure. Can it compete with PoS on an efficiency level? I don't see any possible way. How do you prove work without spending energy?
> If yield farming is more lucrative than staking, will people stake for altruistic reasons?

Well yield farming isn't completely without risk, is it? Its also not as predictable (or maybe that will change in time?).
I would direct you to this well written article: [https://medium.com/coinmonks/blockchain-myth-5-proof-of-work-wastes-energy-a848000aea9a](https://medium.com/coinmonks/blockchain-myth-5-proof-of-work-wastes-energy-a848000aea9a)

A PoS long-range attach involves compromising staking and pooling software with malware, with ability to do a hostile takeover of the majority of the network. In this situation, you don't really need much funding
PoS has so many flavors that there are not necessarily general attack vectors that apply to all.

Might be best to not even group them all together as some are vastly different because they have completely different underlying ledger structures. 

Not all PoS is used with a single chain synchronous DAG (i.e blockchain). Thus there should be at least two groups differentiating PoS on blockchains and PoS using more loosely ordered ledgers (block lattice, tangle, etc).
You mean nothing at stake right?

>This can be solved via two strategies. The first, described in broad terms under the name “Slasher” here and developed further by Iddo Bentov here, involves penalizing validators if they simultaneously create blocks on multiple chains, by means of including proof of misbehavior (ie. two conflicting signed block headers) into the blockchain as a later point in time at which point the malfeasant validator’s deposit is deducted appropriately. 

>The second strategy is to simply punish validators for creating blocks on the wrong chain. That is, if there are two competing chains, A and B, then if a validator creates a block on B, they get a reward of +R on B, but the block header can be included into A (in Casper this is called a “dunkle”) and on A the validator suffers a penalty of -F (possibly F = R). 

[The developers of Ethereum 2.0 really has thought about all the known issues.](https://eth.wiki/en/concepts/proof-of-stake-faqs)
Folding@Home is cool, but it's not guaranteed by the protocol. Banano for instance just has a large fund dedicated to paying out rewards for folding, this fund could run out or the ones in control could just stop paying out rewards. So it's really no different than you just making an address, doing a service or trade with someone, and then they paying you in that address.
Can you name a coin that has moved from POW to POS? ETH has NOT (in case you were going to name it).
Then there is Nano with a form of consensus that falls under PoS called ORV and escapes the problems that come from having “block producers” in a single chain synchronous DAG (i.e. blockchain) ledger structure by not having a single chain synchronous DAG. 

Not only is it time for PoW to go, but it is time for single chain synchronous DAGs to go.

Agree with your points!
here's a disadvantage of PoS over PoW: weak subjectivity.
I can only speak to what I currently know, the Ergo team attempted to launch their PoW chain with pool-resistance, but ultimately could not work around pools. If someone could solve the pooling problem, it could help. ASIC resistance and memory hardening are the best tools currently to reduce power usage I think
The more energy cost, the greater the security.  POS rewards are like stock splits:  Everyone has the exact same percentage of the circulating supply as prior to rewards.

Energy use of POW doesn't matter because it is necessary for 100% renewable powered world.

Without bitcoin mining is actually a reason to get much smaller solar+powerwall system that is dependent upon utility continuing to buy small power surpluses, and only for customer credit.  

With bitcoin mining, I can double solar and powerwall size, and then either go off grid, with 100% unrationed reliable power every day, or have the utility beg me for some of my surplus power.   

In 3 seasons, I can get ""free"" heat from bitcoin miners, and in 3 surplus long day seasons, I can monetize the larger solar/battery system with bitcoin, such that power never goes to waste.

The same system that allows 1 home to be an off grid power fortress, scales to 1M or 7B homes.  Arguably, cheaper too.  Solar power is under 2c/kwh, and batteries add 3c/kwh.  Having a bitcoin mining alternative allows home owners to obtain a fair price from utilities for their power.  Deals from utilities today aren't certain to last for 25-50 years.  Also, huge cheap self power production significantly improves the total cost comparison of EVs vs dirty vehicles.

If Texas had enough renewables to drive 1GW or so of bitcoin mining during normal winter days, that resilience could have been used to avert this last winter's power crisis.
The ergo founder actually wrote a paper on this before he started ergo

https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/twinscoina-cryptocurrency-via-proof-of-work-and-proof-of-stake/
I have to read up on some of the concepts you talked about, but you highlight the main problem with optimising pow, its about making the miner do valuable work which can be easily verified, maybe the randomness generation idea you propose could be a hint in the right direction
Which if these are more decentralised?
Where can i look this up? Is there a project, which uses this?
Agreed. Though BTC has so little flexibility I doubt it will ever transition.
U need just 3 to be ""technically decentralized"", more is better ofcourse, but there is also nuance in it. For example Binance has so much (not just Algo but every coin) they divide stake on several nodes which makes it appear more decentralized but its still 1 entity in control. This is true for every company or even whales, heck even I divided my holdings on different wallets and stake with different nodes. Algorand seem to be doing fine, much better than plenty others shilled everywhere, but it's no where near ETH in terms of decentralization.
It has relay nodes in the network that aggregate votes that are a big centralization issue.
I think the issue is more electricity for EVs moves people around, for POW it’s just doing a bazillion hash problems
Yes, this. Bitcoin (and EVs) are the demand for energy. If that energy increasingly comes from renewable sources, we are moving in the right direction.
But there are other ways that show that PoW is not necessary, so why keep on doing all that PoW?

That's like someone inventing an EV that can run on a phone battery, but still insisting on driving around in a Tesla.
Last I remember the number of stake pools was about 2000 with maybe 500ish having a meaningful amount of stake. Number of delegators just passed 500,000
Yes I operate an ethereum 2.0 validator
You’re viewing things in term of bitcoin. The fact a protocol will change it’s variables to *improve* the protocol is not bad.
Can you elaborate on ""Metamask runs the entire network""?
This is great insight, see my comment or this paper (https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1033.pdf) for how it could be applied.
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History. Plenty of POW coins were started by someone announcing when they would go live and everyone can come mine it and they didn't have this issue. The incentives didn't exist to make it an issue.
I believe smaller projects starting out don't have enough value to make a 51% worth it, whereas helping the project with your hashpower could prove fruitful if the coin does well
TokenFounders can dump the premine, or use it to gain a 51% majority of the PoS network
Nowhere do I say that old is always as good as new. I'm just saying that that is an example of a reductive narrative that is often given. I.E. POW is old technology, POS is ""new"" technology, therefore POS is better. Fact is, POS was conceived on the bitcointalk forum in 2010. It has its advantages and it has its disadvantages although I'll let other, more educated people argue the finer details of those pros and cons. That's the point I was making and I was also leveraging that idea to call upon the community to fight overly reductive arguments in general. We are seeing a lot of very black and white mindsets in this community and we need to do better.
The wealthy, not having to spend and through compounding, could slowly and then quickly acquire the majority of the supply with little to no work. PoW requires them to spend and distribute the coin as they pay for operating costs and keeping up with other miners increasing hashrates. An entire thriving economy is built off of PoW. The rich keep a competitive % while in PoS they keep 100%.

PoW is business owners/employers. PoS is more like the rich being able to charge everyone taxes. 

Say BTC did 8% return on staking and Satoshi put in their estimated 1 million BTC. In less than 40 years Satoshi would have the full 21 million without ever lifting a finger. Of course this example doesn't include any other whales accumulating the other coins, without any plans to spend, which would consume the supply even faster.
difference in PoW is miners sell most of their mined coins, whereas stakers don't. Wealth distribution is better in PoW
You have a good point. I suppose as long as staking pools exist PoS can be a good option.
Yes but if you stake through coinbase that leads to centralization.

Also you are earning less ETH than majority holders who have no need or incentive to sell any of their coins. The distribution mechanics are worse than PoW where miners sell most of their mined coins to cover their costs, getting newly minted coins out into the ecosystem. In PoS large stakers just keep everything and don't sell, reducing sell pressure resulting in a higher price for smaller investors while the large stakers get richer
This is something I will watch later, but sounds like it is useful to debate PoS vs PoW:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxFm1QieUdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxFm1QieUdE)

Speaking generally, there are just some things PoS cannot do that require PoW. Additionally, until we see the longevity of PoS, we shouldn't assume it is as secure as PoW. There are long-range attacks on PoS that have not come to fruition yet, but could. Additionally, there is security concern when DeFi yield farming out-competes staking yield - moving coins to DeFi takes coins away from staking, thereby lowering security. Will a secure PoS ecosystem need a parallel PoW ecosystem for DeFi to maximize security for the PoS chain? I.e. stake on PoS while yield-farming on PoW? I have no idea how that will play out.

Edit: There is also talk of how to collateralize stake to also participate in yield-farming. In my view, this compounds the security risk of rapid depletion of staked coins due to liquidation in a bear market, and should be avoided. Imagine something like the MkrDAO liquidation, but stake coins are liquidated.
Yield farming definitely has risks
Can't those same things be applied to PoW? Infect miners with some malware, get them to do what you want. ASICs eventually interact with software, and the transactions are chosen by a software program, or by a central server with Stratum (AFAIK). Mining pools probably run a lot of the same software, and you'd probably only need to infect like 2-3 pools to get a majority hash rate.

There was even a bug in bitcoin that didn't require you need all that much energy, the value overflow incident, which allowed someone to get billions of coins from thin air.

Software faults can be exploited on both PoW and PoS, I don't see how the author doesn't realize that
I don't understand how PoW or PoS give any guarantee on ""security"". 

For PoW, it is used as a criteria to decide who adds a block to the chain and of course it requires a lot of work (energy) to do so. It is apparently assumed that people who make such effort will play fair and won't cheat. 

Same problem with PoS. Having a lot of stake does not guarantee that someone won't cheat. 

Is there something that I misunderstood ?
Ah yes the inevitable PoW maxi.

ETH 1.0 => ETH 2.0 is PoW=>PoS. Denying it just makes you an ass.

So where's your PoS=>PoW coin? Anything? Anything in the future?

Or just salty that your mining rig is going to be someone's low end graphics card in three years?

As for current PoW=>PoS I would invite you to look at the top-1000 list for all coins that started as ERC tokens and now have their own PoS chain, which is .. all of them I think.

ERC tokens are PoW, the Mainnet chain is PoS.
May be a rube but isn't it planning to?
Great read. I think the proposed chain is very nice for public security heavy use cases. Unfortunately scalability is a problem in that case. 

Using a PoW for randomness generation and then shards with randomized participants is a more scalable approach, but likely is less secure (collusion is still very difficult though) but practically I think it should be fine. 

A sharded approach based on PoW randomness generation would limit collusion of sub-chains and the network would remain live which can be a problem for PoS blockchains depending on the consensus mechanisms. Sub-chains blocks could fail (e.g. if enough malicious attackers get grouped in shard), but on next randomized participant shuffling, the block would be ignored and a new block proposed. Effectively this means that sub-chains can stall due to malicious actors, but not the overall network (provided a majority of honest nodes). 


Actually the idea proposed in the paper could be used as the randomness chain for high security, and sharded chains with shuffled participants can be derived using that chain for scalability purposes.
This is a great summary, thanks. Randomness generation across a large network has a lot of communication issues. PoW randomness generation is very useful and can allow for actually optimizing the communication and security in a large network (through use of randomized sharding, or just using randomness to generate random optimized network topology)
""most decentralized"" is subjective in blockchains. U want to remove single points of failure, both in node distribution but also other factors. 

Example in XRP the Ripple SEC lawsuit saw a drop and surge just because that 1 company was in a legal battle. Has little to do with their network but still highly dependant on the success of XRP. 

In those 3 above all are still dependant on a single entity for development, contrary to for example Ethereum. Aside from that, Hedera is fairly centralized in node count, openness (u can't join governance) patents (they sue you if you fork + it can't survive without Hedera), IOTA still has their coordinator so it's still reliant on a central server until they release their decentralized coordicide update and Avalanche seems to be doing much better, however I do believe the current ownership is still heavily skewed towards exchanges and founders/company which matters a lot in PoS. 

All in all, if you care for decentralization ETH is still King among the platforms.
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Moving people around unnecessarily is more important than levelling the global financial playing field?
>considered premine

No. It was a premine full stop. ETH devs printed 70% of the supply before PoW even began.
These are two different things: 
1. Token distribution.
2. Bootstrapping/pruning of transactions.

Premine vs mining can influence token distribution but mining doesn't automatically make a token more distributed. If you mine for years and token is cheap and some believers buy up all token then the distribution could just worse than premine + sending it to random people.

And 2) is something completely else. I could start up a node, ask all bitcoin nodes for what the current ledger is, then start mining/validating whatever and everything is fine.
Unfortunately in this world we live in when you have to categorise things like using new ideas like randomness, then it has to be black and white. When you have to categorise things like latest trends like climate change, then it has to be black and white. Traditional (centralised) banking vs. blockchain (decentralised) banking is also black and white.

It’s just a fact of life.

Pos is a white elephant in the room especially for developers who helped built it all. Flexibility is key for survival.

Having said all these I still hate Elon for his recklessness for not doing his research properly aligning to his/Tesla’s value before buying in.
In PoS the participants are incentivised to behave well, because they would loose huge amounts of money if people sell because they think the currency is rigged and don't want to be a part of it.
the fact that asics do not load arbitrary software, and don't have a programmable brain, vs validators working from desktop OSs makes them unlikely to be compromised.
You're right, and I don't know if the author actually knows that PoW is more secure in that regard. I'm not a miner or pool operator. I would need to know more to argue if malware is an equal threat to both or not.
No that sounds right. I think with ASIC resistant PoW chains there is less prone to centralization of voting power. Massive stakes could collude in the same manner of mining farms
> It is apparently assumed that people who make such effort will play fair and won't cheat.

At least for the bitcoin blockchain, it's only assumed that 50% of nodes aren't conspiring to cheat.

It's possible for a malicious miner to get lucky and mine a bad block, but as long as honest nodes are the majority, the honest chain will be the longest one, and will win out.

In addition, you can't spend the block reward until it reaches a certain depth, so a malicious miner is likely to lose any block reward after expending the considerable effort needed to mine it.
Adding a block doesn't enable you to cheat. It merely enables you to arbitrate, on behalf of everybody, which of the pending transactions are added next. The fact that those transactions are legitimate is self-evident to anyone looking at the block, so they are not placing trust in the miner for that.

It's only when you have >50% of the mining power or stake that you become able to prevent anyone other than yourself from adding blocks, and you become able to undo existing blocks, because you can always produce the longest, and therefore the accepted, chain of blocks.
If you cheat, you lose your bond in POS systems.
> It is apparently assumed that people who make such effort will play fair and won't cheat. 

That's not quite how it works. It's not so much that we assume people won't cheat, it's that people won't build upon a cheated block.
What's up with the attitude? Raise the level of discourse a little.

 I was asking because we have not yet seen a successful blockchain transition to the best of my knowledge and I was curious as to what chain has. Ethereum has it in the plans but it has not yet been executed. I guess I was too generic when I asked what coin when I should have said what chain. Have there been any actual blockchains that have converted yet? I'm not asking because I think POW is better; I'm asking because of the difficulty in the transition.
Yes it turned out not to be feasible. 
>
>Simulations show that with not enough stake adversarial miners indeed needs for more than 50% hashpower to overtake the honest miners.
>
>However, simulations are not good, and show results for a simplified model. In particular, in the real world it is easy to partition the network (split PoW miners) by generating multiple PoS blocks. Then we can do PoS voodoo magic (slashing etc), but this would make the protocol more complex and less analyzable (and likely, less secure). 

>PoW is good for its simplicity and expensiveness of block creation (protects against various DoS attacks). Adding a PoS component is compromising these advantages.

Now he's focusing on side-chaining with PoS using NiPoPoWs - and something working on 'Ergo.Meta' - a cookbook on interaction with off-chain and sidechain protocols
Ethereum seems to be becoming more centralized around Infura. I'm struggling to see how it can maintain decentralization given the demand for dApps and block space
Fascinating men. I thought about this concept, but couldn't think of a way how to do it exactly. Let's see how they are doing it
So all movement in electric vehicles in unnecessary? Get out of here

POW specifically is not the best way to level the global playing field or whatever due to its externalities.
If the people with concerns about Bitcoin actually believes that it is actually leveling the playing field, then we wouldn't be talking about energy use as much. I believe in crypto's potential, but I know there's uncertainty and a ton of hurdles to overcome; huge energy use just adds to all of that. We are allowed to wish that our dream doesn't come with too high a cost, especially if the dream is still far away.
There is no misbehaving in my example, it's literal hands off, letting the protocol chug along. The time line goes well beyond 50% of the supply being absorbed into whales or Satoshi. It mirrors the flow of money in the real world. The 1% funnel it all into their coffers with no effort, and without inflation there wouldn't be anything left. Jeff Bezos is buying a half billion dollar super yacht and it's a drop in the bucket for him, they're isn't enough for them to spend on to put it all back. At least with fiat that wealth is recirculated through stocks/bonds and banks lending it. If that same wealth was staked and constantly accumulating, it's just going to keep accumulating. You can't consider it out of circulation because at any moment it could be dumped on the market and he isn't going to be giving it away faster than it builds otherwise there isn't an incentive to stake.
Imagine if a country wanted to stake and then control the supply? You could dump and go to another PoS coin, but so can they. Essentially the wealthy and nations will eventually control PoS coins.
I thought that was universal too, but apparently some, like cardano, don't operate on that principal
Whats up with the attitude right back at you. Your comment ""Do not say ETH"" is disingenuous, because they already said they are going to do it.

You also say (in the above comment) ""Have there been any actual blockchains that have converted yet?"" and the answer is yes. All the coins that started out as ERC tokens moved to PoS because they found ETH too slow, too high fees, and if they went PoW they would be immediately attacked with blockchain reorgs due to low hash rate on a new coin.

There is difficulty in the transition. it's a whole new technology. That's why you see it first as a ERC token, and then they swap to a PoS chain.

Top one is PancakeSwap which is a clone of Uniswap.
Interesting, will have to look into it, thank you! For the random beacon PoW chain, that would have to be NiPoPoWs compatible ideally.
I’m just responding using the same logic that solving hash problems has no utility. It’s absurd.
It isn't disingenuous. It is simply a fact that the transition has not been accomplished yet. That's we are talking about: successful transitions between these two technologies.

The example you are giving is where someone is making a copy of code. That has nothing to do with moving an existing blockchain. Did the Pancake Swap move bring with it all of the past history, transactions, and coin statuses of Uniswap? If so that's crazy and I will have to read up on it.
I mean when you can have an alternative consensus method with equal or better decentralization, and reduce externalities by 99%, yeah spending almost 1% of the world’s electricity on doing hash problems is pretty stupid.
Nobody will do it the way you describe. That’s why i said it’s a false argument.

When you swap chains to PoS, you start with a new genesis and then set everyone’s balances from the genesis block. You would never copy the transaction history, as that allows for replay attacks, and would require you to copy the entire chain rather than just the transactions for your token.

Every chain that did a ERC20 ICO did it the way I describe. You allow people to claim coins on PoS based on their tokens on PoW.

There’s new tech that allows you to do it using atomic swaps, but I haven’t seen it used in a PoW to PoS conversion. I would bet most teams just make an excel sheet and run a job against the rpc api.
Yeah bicycles and mass transit is the answer to the EV problem.
False equivalency.

EVs are faster than bikes but take more energy

POS is equal or better in decentralization and takes less energy"
Namada’s Multi-Chain Privacy Solution for Secure Blockchain Transactions - thoughts?,108,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/11huglu/namadas_multichain_privacy_solution_for_secure/,"I’m keen personally to understand how the protocol rewards are given out! I’d certainly like to be rewarded for preserving my privacy :p
Wow, Namada's technology sounds really impressive, I’m rather curious to see how this affects various D’apps.
Sounds very impressive, having looked at their blog that you shared, I’d to know more about how they’ve made this scalable (long term)
While Namada's technology sounds impressive, I'm always wary of new blockchain solutions. It's important to thoroughly vet any new technology before using it, especially when it comes to security and privacy.
I'm not convinced that Namada's technology is really necessary. There are already plenty of DeFi solutions out there, and while privacy is important, I'm not sure it's worth the potential risks of using a new, untested technology.
I agree, and I hadn’t thought about the fragmentation of one’s privacy but, now, once you’d said it, it’s a bit like a very complicated file system and Namada is simplifying all of the appropriate trusts/permissions.
This is impressive and good growth in the privacy sector and a disjoint problem being solved here. Privacy is gaining better adoption.
Now i am more interested in Namada
Yet one more innovation which the tax laws in most places would prevent people from using.
This is a pretty interesting one, just as good as Railgun, because it's also a multichain solution with easy SDK integration into already existing L1 or L2 platforms to enjoy full privacy of transactions and it is based on ZKPs and uses Relayers to handle the gas fees.
That's definitely a valid point, but I think Namada has put a lot of thought and effort into their technology. Plus, they seem to have a lot of experience in the blockchain space, which gives me confidence in their solution.
Bots going full swing on this one :)
zk-SNARK as a branch of ZKPs is the highest adopted solution for those looking to improve privacy in crypto transactions. Q ID is a digital ID using zk proofs, which means you can log into platforms and only reveal your age or country for example, without sharing all of your details.
Stake a shitcoin, see number go up, inverse of its $value.
I agree that we need to think twice but several major players in the blockchain industry (Binance, Polygon and Polkadot - just to name a few)  have shown interest in this particular solution, so it seems legit so far. Time shows all, in any case.
Namada uses  ZKPs to provide privacy and anonymity for its users by creating an overlay network that hides the original transaction sender's identity. So as an option, its very valid and needed imo
I second you,op. The use of ZKPs for anonymous web browsing with Tor is really exciting. It could help to protect people's privacy online and keep them safe from hackers and cybercriminals.
You are right but we need more developments and also we need projects to create products that can work on other projects like the TIDV which helps encrypt KYC data.
ZKPs are becoming widely used and accepted relative to privacy protection. The tech looks superb for now and that's what the majority of privacy protocols are using.
ZKPs are already largely being used by various protocols like Railgun, Zcash, and Grin. It has proven to be the best when it comes to staying anonymous with transactions.
I agree with u. Not many people know that so we are early. You should dig into Q, it has lots of unique points
I'm a fan of privacy and love the adoption coming so I will dig just as I am using other privacy protocols.
Q also has a few fees. Gas limits and gas fees don't matter on Q Blockchain (EVM compatible) because instead of all gas fees being burned and going to validators like Ethereum, they are partially redistributed to Q holders. This means you always have enough gas for your transactions as a user (as long as you start with a little Q in your wallet)."
The olympics will have blockchain powered tickets to avoid UCL final scenario,107,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/vdxgi0/the_olympics_will_have_blockchain_powered_tickets/,"What is so special about blockchain that it will reduce lines and scams?
Which blockchain though? Where's the alpha!?!
I don't get the benefit?

What's different to today? Look at Roland Garros (Paris). When you buy tickets you get them in the Roland Garros App. So you now they are legit.

If you buy from 3rd party, you get them transferred from the 3rd party via email to your Roland Garros app. So you now they are legit.

I understand that paper tickets that can be easily scammed. But there are already many teams using digitalized technologies that already work and are easy to implement (Roland Garros, FC Bayern Munich, ...).

What's the benefit of blockchain powered tickets then?
Blockchain, crypto, every industry is integrating it bit by bit
If I go to any online marketplace tomorrow and advertise two tickets to the Olympics, there are enough people that would just buy those tickets and not think twice about it. You can have some great centralized or decentralized tech, but scammers are going to find ways to scam you.
If the tickets were numbered and booked online. A database with the last 4 digits of the payer’s credit card would be proof enough.
Have you a link / source for this  information please.
More and more industries are really considering crypto to innovate and adapt to these changing times. Olympics is just one of these industries. E-sports is definitely another. This innovation is really interesting. That's why I've got my eyes on Nobility.
> the French companies are toying with the idea of using blockchain tech for tickets distribution.

Source? :)
French officials are just trying to save face after all their lies and incompetencies. Let them try to make a bmockchain and ridicule themselves even more
Blockchain is already doing that and in a major way in fact. By any chance, do you know Sports metaverse and the digital world of sports they're creating? With its brilliant design in connecting fans to their favorite sports, one of the major incentives is getting tickets, at incredibly cheap costs with even better experiences, if the user is part of the NFT club. Like you said, blockchain might revolutionize how tickets are acquired and it's quite interesting that it's already happening
Sports is increasingly making its way into the blockchain space, giving it widespread adoption; other industries like music, entertainment, and so on are also finding their way through the platform. I also recently learned of a project that will use NFTs to transform the Sports ecosystem by bridging the gap between sports enthusiasts, their idols, and the sports they love. I have a big flair for sports and I think all of these from your mention to the metaverse will be a great deal for me.
What is so special about the ability to verify without flaw any transaction or digital information with the possibility of someone forging a ticket close to zero. If you had such a capacity would you sell tickets at a stand or maybe through an app
Honestly, not a whole lot, but it's still interesting. You could avoid fake ticket scams since the authenticity would be verified, and you would also make 3rd-party reselling easier (I personally don't mind scalpers, and I don't get why people complain about them). You could maybe just use a digitally signed PDF for this, since that'd be good enough to verify authenticity. If the ticket isn't bound to someone's name though, someone could sell the same ticket to two or more people.
Your question is worded in an unusual way. As if you dont understand blockchain and are only here to troll.

Please establish good faith by describing how blockchain is in fact *special*.
I'm guessing VeChain.  That's what UFC just announced they're using.
I'll definitely be watching this race! A real olympic competition!
I think the benefit is that the information systems infrastructure and operational costs required by current ticket management systems — like the Roland Garros system you described — can be reduced by using smart contracts on a blockchain instead of servers, databases, and complex private networks. 

Current systems are incredibly complex and expensive to run and maintain. Smart contracts are a cheaper and more elegant solution.
Agreed and I think in some cases it's a good thing.

Whenever blockchain is mentioned, I just like to understand what problem it's solving that can't be solved with traditional database solutions.
Agreed, crypto is currently rife with scamming.

It would be interesting to see how that's being addressed here.
I think, with blockchain adoption, some kind of standardization is adapted as well that can help and decrease the number of scams. You cannot stop every scam because of people's habits.
Agreed, it's still very much in its infancy and had a long way to go.

I think we'll find the implementation of blockchain or distributed solutions will be on private networks and not on public networks.

So ultimately they will be centralised solutions using decentralised tech.
Seems like every company would use it for everything. The way you describe it.
You do realize this already exists? At the end of the day, people don’t work for free and that fee pays the business and the employees behind the business. You can argue with their morals and their treatment of their customers, but I’m tired of hearing 100000x the new decentralized ticket system that’s gonna eliminate all fees and ticket issues in one magical step.
How do you see the 3rd party reselling working and how is it possible to avoid fake tickets?

The only way I can see that being possible is through a fully centralised and controlled system.
What they're saying is that there isn't really much unique to blockchains that couldn't be solved by just using a fully-electronic ticketing system.
Your comment is so weird. But assuming you're not being satirical, why wouldn't these companies in that above scenario use e-tickets instead? (No need for web3 as there are existing versions of such product in web2).

Unless there's something i'm missing in regards to the specifics of the looting situation like what actually happened.
Are you being intentionally difficult?

There is nothing this being implemented with Blockchain actually solves vs foxing it with a centralized DB and better API.

Verify ticket authenticity/ownership: api that can verify authenticity/ownership with centralized db.
Way to transfer ownership: have an api that allows transfer of ownership when user is authenticated.

Support for 3rd party resellers: allow api access with no fees

Worried about stealing logins? Force users to have crypto key strength passwords

Now the only benefit is that it will ensure access even if nodes are down and immutable.
Some geodistribution and load balancing will give comparable uptime to blockchains decentralization. Good web security gives you comparable immutability as long as you trust the owner of the central DB. Since you'd still have to trust that they will honor the nft tickets, a level of trust has to be there anyway.

So nothing special about blockchain is the only way to prevent scamming, especially the type of scamming they are trying to prevent. It just gives better uptime and removes the possibility of an insider or really hacker altering tickets.

Blockchain isn't necessary for what they are claiming to fix with it. But it lets them say they are using the blockchain so people will think its cool.

The real benefits are that they don't have to spend as much on servers or web security. They are just going to offload that to the network of other people's computers.

Or did I miss something and there is actually something special about blockchain that can't be accomplished otherwise (as listed above)
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I totally agree with you on this one. I just find it so exciting that more and more integrations with blockchain are happening now. I'm actually excited to see Nobility go to places with this one. Combining esports with blockchain - GENIUS!
Anything that would benefit from a public record on an inmutable ledger could use it. Which is not most things but also no no things.
The true path forward is a maximally off chain practice. Small data which authenticates everything else on chain. A lot of situations and ways to cut the cake but just splashing data on chain is clearly the wrong way.
The true path forward is a maximally off chain practice. Small data which authenticates everything else on chain. A lot of situations and ways to cut the cake but just splashing data on chain is clearly the wrong way.
The true path forward is a maximally off chain practice. Small data which authenticates everything else on chain. A lot of situations and ways to cut the cake but just splashing data on chain is clearly the wrong way.
This.

The problem with the ticketing industry isn't the technology. It's the business practices, blockchain doesn't solve that.

I'd argue blockchain actually makes it more expensive for the consumer due to the the high transaction costs.
>How do you see the 3rd party reselling working and how is it possible to avoid fake tickets?

You would know who minted the NFT, so all you would need to know is the venue's wallet address and make sure it originated from there. The same way people give out their GPG public keys so you can make sure emails they send out were actually written by them, the venue would just put their wallet address on some trusted platform (probably their own website)

As far as reselling goes, it'd just be like selling any NFT, except this time moderately useful!
Correct. Of all the blockchain ticketing solutions I've seen, they're just using a blockchain database, but in a centralised manner.

The problem with ticketing is not the technology, it's the business practices. Blockchain won't solve that.

Comments around verification and decentralisation show a lack of understanding of both the problem with ticketing and the application/use cases for blockchain.

I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be used. I'm just not convinced it's a panacea for ticketing.
Which seems to purposefully avoid what makes blockchain *special*. Yeah, I get that part.
You didn't spend any effort describing what makes blockchain *special*.
> There is nothing this being implemented with Blockchain actually solves vs foxing it with a centralized DB and better API.
> Verify ticket authenticity/ownership: api that can verify authenticity/ownership with centralized db. Way to transfer ownership: have an api that allows transfer of ownership when user is authenticated.
> Support for 3rd party resellers: allow api access with no fees
> Worried about stealing logins? Force users to have crypto key strength passwords

And you need to pay someone to build all that, then you need to pay them to maintain it forever, you need to pay for the servers, you need to pay for the insurance for a variety of legal liabilities, you need to pay for a third party service to maintain backups. Or you could simply pay cents for a record to be kept in the blockchain subsidized by the fact the same blockchain is being used by a variety of other businesses and people. You want to minimize all that as if its not important because it kills your argument. Its a lot of money and a lot of liability.
One more time. My point, is that starting off by saying blockchain is not *special*, betrays an agenda. 

You're just repeating what OP said. Like, you pretended to say a different thing. But really just added words and moved the blockchain is not *special* to the end.

Again, why don't we start with what is *special* about blockchain.
> Anything can be done faster on a single random server then on a blockchain that is an objective fact.

I disagree. It's all about scale. A single server can't handle tens of thousands of transactions per second, but next gen L1 blockchain systems can. You need a distributed system to handle large transaction volume — blockchains do this cheaply. Forget about gas fees on legacy blockchains, the future is cheap, modern, next generation smart contract systems.
Right. So not ticket sales then
>As far as reselling goes, it'd just be like selling any NFT, except this time moderately useful!

But every other day you hear about NFT scams or people having their NFTs stolen or buggy smart contracts that get exploited.

How do you see that being any different in this scenario?
I think the blockchain here Is not so revolutionnary or difficult to understand. Company like compell.io already make Zero value NFt that connects a real ticket to a NFt ticket which verifies itself thanks to the metadata. 
Normally in web 2 it would Be as you Said a centralised database which could be manipulated or duplicated.
Blockchain easily and technically Solves both of those issue in a trustless manner. It Also sound amazing to say that it's protected by NFts.
uhh that is what he is asking, what makes blockhain special
So you're saying that a blockchain solution would be cheaper and less risky?

I don't understand your argument about legal liabilities. Could you explain that more and in particular  how Blockchain makes that better.

The cost to process (validate) a transaction on the blockchain is many magnitudes greater than a centralised solution.

No one buys servers anymore, everything is cloud based and it's dirt cheap.

So I don't think the cost based argument is valid - I'd go far as saying a blockchain solution would actually be more expensive for the consumer.
Blockchain is special, but not for this application. That's what they and I were saying
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Yeah, I'm not getting why having a ticket on the blockchain would be an advantage. Why do I, as a ticketholder, care about anyone else's tickets? It should just be a transaction between the attendees and the entity hosting the event. This seems like something naturally set up for the traditional client-server kind of setup, since you already need the central authority of the host.

And if you're worried about scams, it seems like a technology that will not allow a central authority to reverse someone illicitly getting ahold of your tickets via a scam isn't a great idea.
I can imagine some benefit to it. Maybe not right now. But consider a future where all tickets are digital. Imagine your centralized electronic ticket validator getting DDoSed with thousands of overheated angry fans at the door. You'd need some some proper distributed infrastructure and top-tier DDoS protection to ensure it doesn't happen. That couldn't be cheaper than just using the blockchain. Of course the blockchain would have to be mature too. EDIT: and I'm sure there are other ways to mitigate this, it will depend on what's easier, cheaper and more secure when the time comes.
If you want to be able to verify a ticket is real then yes it is useful. This acts against counterfeits which could be resold to unsuspecting victims.
>But every other day you hear about NFT scams

Those are usually stolen artwork, etc, or someone uploading someone's art as their own. You could just have a list of venues/etc and their wallet addresses, and then just use that to verify, I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes an app for this if the idea catches on

>buggy smart contracts that get exploited.

You probably won't be interacting with smart contracts that often. All you would need to do is somehow purchase/obtain the ticket, and then just keep it in your wallet until the day of the event.
Wait, neither of you are OP, how confusing.
>So you're saying that a blockchain solution would be cheaper and less risky?

Yes. The less code you write, the less data you hold, the fewer servers you manage, the fewer things you are liable for.

>The cost to process (validate) a transaction on the blockchain is many magnitudes greater than a centralised solution.

Its a couple cents or less in pretty much any blockchain, considering the cost of a ticket I don't see how this is relevant. The fees don't come from the costs of validating a transaction, but from all the responsibilities you have to take on yourself as a company to be trusted to do so. To ensure you are not going to have an outage when its go time, to ensure you are not going to be hacked a day before an event, or to ensure that you will quickly recover all legitimate records if you are.

Having said all that I want to make it clear that I consider every blockchain as they are right now really young tech, except for maybe ethereum but even that is about to go through a huge software update in the coming months, and I personally would think twice or thrice before using them for something as time sensitive as this.
Sorry that we aren't seeing it as a magical solution that is always the best way to fix a problem
That counts as a step forward. Maybe we could turn that into some serious progress.

In what ways do you believe blockchain is *special*?
> Sounds like a great service to spam until it overloads

Same for your single computer. You will need a load balancer and multiple redundant systems. Then you will need to maintain concurrency between them. The complexity builds quickly. Blockchains systems handle all this complexity and provide the utility at scale for a very low cost.
You can trade tickets with confidence, you can use it as a way of authentication at the door, you can check if your ticket has been voided even if their website or whatever is down, its easily and predictably available to develop third party tools around. It's all the good parts of centralised services, with the security and trust of a blockchain, and all the advances decentralisation of data brings. Plus if the issuer goes bust, they don't need to pay to maintain their data publicly, it's just there... there's lots of reasons. Like the person said, not all applications are ideal for it. But there are many tickets, documents, contracts, tokens, deeds and such where this would be beneficial.

In this Olympic example, the main benefits would seem to be that because the data is immutable and the data is verifiable at will, it'd stop counterfeiting and there could be other benefits such as let's say you treated tickets for a massive concert as tokens (Or NFTs, whatever). Could also be day one pre sales on something, whatever. Anyway. How many times have you heard about people getting fucked over in these situations because the site crashed? What if they could buy tokens on a dex or cex? The issuer could still build things like commission into the contract as not to be too divisive with existing businesses and systems. This could apply to future Olympics and such.

Various benefits I mentioned throughout the post also apply to things like expanding the idea to things like property deeds or car ownership or whatever you likes. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to trade you lighter tokens, or chilli competition entry tokens to the place two streets away from me. Its not universal. You can be reductive of tickets as tokens or nfts with selective thinking as you can tout them.
You are a very dense person. 

You want a random person who is asking what the advantage is here over a traditional ticket database to... describe some random advantages of putting data on a blockchain? The fuck?

Go away troll
>Yes. The less code you write, the less data you hold, the fewer servers you manage, the fewer things you are liable for.

I'm not sure I follow. Why would a blockchain solution be less code?

Have you considered the additional overhead to ensure the blockchain doesn't get hacked.

>Its a couple cents or less in pretty much any blockchain

Really? Ethereum Gas Fees would like a word. :)

>To ensure you are not going to have an outage when its go time

This also applies to blockchain. Solana is a good example.

Have you considered the time it takes to validate a transaction/ticket. Again blockchain can be many magnitudes slow than a traditional solution.

> to ensure you are not going to be hacked a day before an event

This is blatantly wrong. Blockchain projects are by far the most hacked. Rarely a day goes by without hearing about another hack or poorly tested smart contracts that have led to millions of dollars in losses.

> or to ensure that you will quickly recover all legitimate records if you are.

I understand what you're trying to say here. Although this is more a hypothetical problem. 

This may have been a problem in the 80s/90s. However, with modern replication processes (for example) this really is a non issue.
You're sounding real *special* yourself actually
[deleted]
Also things like real transparency on occupancy; you can verify real tickets are with real people, and that they really use them, for another example. Both privately and publicly this could be useful. No one could say your concert didn't really sell 5000 tickets, and 4500 people showed up and scanned them.
Instead of using your words to describe what I'm saying. Have you thought about using my words to describe what I'm saying? 

It can be scary starting from a point where you don't have all the answers. I'm here to offer help if you find yourself struggling.
>I'm not sure I follow. Why would a blockchain solution be less code?
>Have you considered the additional overhead to ensure the blockchain doesn't get hacked.

You wouldn't write a blockchain from scratch. 

>Really? Ethereum Gas Fees would like a word. :)

Don't use ethereum then.

>This also applies to blockchain. Solana is a good example.
> Have you considered the time it takes to validate a transaction/ticket. Again blockchain can be many magnitudes slow than a traditional solution.

Didn't I say that I consider the blockchains as they are right now to be very young tech? Maybe you missed the edit. Anyway, most have never experienced an outage at this point, which is already pretty good. Some have cheap transactions and experienced no outages right now. 

>This is blatantly wrong. Blockchain projects are by far the most hacked. Rarely a day goes by without hearing about another hack or poorly tested smart contracts that have led to millions of dollars in losses.

This is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Unless you can show me a situation in which the ledger was changed by a hack. Which is the part of the blockchain that would be used for this purpose.

>I understand what you're trying to say here. Although this is more a hypothetical problem.
>This may have been a problem in the 80s/90s. However, with modern replication processes (for example) this really is a non issue.

Its not a non-issue at all. Companies can take days to do it right now and it isn't cheap.
It depends on the consensus mechanism used.  Some are incredibly efficient.  It sounds like your understanding of Blockchain is limited and/or outdated.
Ok I'll bite; explain what consensus mechanism achieves negative overhead for it to beat out running on bare metal?

This isn't some gotcha or dunk on blockchains they are pros and cons efficiency is just not one of the pros. You want a real argument for tickets on the blockchain say something like composability. 

The open and trust-less nature allows everyone to build onto of the tickets that have been sold in the past to provide value adds such as artists giving early access to tickets to long term fans or a digital copy of the new album from the tour without having to coordinate with the ticket seller. No one owns the customer list at this point so they can't block an artist from reaching the full fan base or charge for it.
It doesn't make any sense to compare a single computer running a database ticket sales system to a single blockchain node running a smart contract ticket sales system. We need to look at both solutions at scale and compare the costs.

The traditional system is probably going to be cloud based consisting of: application containers, database containers, application software, software libraries, container orchestration, network routing. You need a team of engineers, dev ops, and system administrators to build and maintain it all. Plus you're paying for bandwidth on your cloud service provider.

A smart contract system might consist of a lot of the same underlying parts, but the infrastructure is shared so you don't manage it or pay for it directly. The costs are paid indirectly through transaction fees. You still need a team to write and manage your smart contracts.

Both systems have the same costs for building, maintaining, and running the front end.

If a smart contract platform can fulfill the requirements of your application, are the transaction fees less than the infrastructure and operational costs of running a traditional application stack? Which solution enables you to sell your product at lower cost and/or with a higher profit margin?

It's a paradigm shift, like going from hardware to cloud, but I think there are a lot of applications that will be cheaper to build on a smart contract platform compared to the cloud. Plus you get benefits like composability, data integrity, network redundancy, etc.
Well, negative efficiency isn't something that is even possible, that I'm aware of.  However, I would say the two most promising in terms of efficiency are Proof-of-Stake built on Byzantine agreement, and Proof-of-Authority.  Both allow orderly block processing that adds little overhead compared to bare metal, but still provide the trustless, immutable qualities of Blockchain.  Now Proof-of-Work?  Oh man, it's incredible how inefficient that is. Intolerably so.  I almost wish it was outlawed globally, except I know it would be impossible to enforce."
Can blockchain realistically be utilized as a mechanism for voting at elections,107,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/v5noxt/can_blockchain_realistically_be_utilized_as_a/,"Vitalik wrote a great post about the potentials and challenges of real-world blockchain voting

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html
Technically, its trivial. In practice, not so much.
Had a group of students working on a fake vote mechanism just because once voting is digital, forced votes are an issue.

I hear this is not that far fetched, examples where bosses force employees to vote for a certain party, etc.
Physical ellections gurantee voter privacy. 

The other issues revolve around digital identity, I hear tokenized votes are a bad idea mostly out of same reasons as above and more.

Not realy my topic of interest so I could be wrong, just my off the bat concerns.
National databases already exit in the form of Social security numbers, birth certificates, passports, and now Real ID licenses. Issuance of the digital IDs would be the hardest I think. The simplest 2 ways would be: embed a smart chip in your driver's license which would act just like the chip in a debit card. You can use this smart card to submit your vote from home if you have a card reader or go to any trusted location to vote. The second way would be to get an app, generate your own public private key. Log into IRS.gov to verify all of your information and link your generated key to your identity. Maybe there might be a requirement to send a one time use password to your house to physically verify you are you.

That covers the IDs, but the voting system would be a little complex. You would want to be able to verify that people voted but publicly wouldn't be able to see who voted for whom. But personally you should be able to verify whom you voted for and can offer a public proof if needed. Also the counting system should be private until the end of the voting period and then reveal everything. That way it can avoid people just voting for who they think will win. Combine that with Ranked Choice Voting, Score voting, or the best of them all STAR voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) https://www.starvoting.us/

I agree with the others. Blockchain voting should run in parallel with traditional voting for a long period of time until it is trusted and people have worked out all of the kinks of issuance, fraud, etc.
First and foremost, poll voting and mail in ballots MUST continue for a very long time, if not forever, along side of blockchain voting.  Trust is critical for the success of elections, and many people will never trust digital voting, and should not be forced to do so.
I think just allowing mail in voting would be sufficient.

The main problem with voting now is disenfranchisement: if you can’t take a day off to vote, your vote is lost.

So just allow mail in voting, and maybe go to instant runoff voting, and done.
Those who organise elections, don't want an honest voting system. Why would they accept that, they would use every possible chance to discredit such a system.
We cant have that!!     It’ll be World War 3 once votes are true….     Deep State would never allow it….  Voting macchines have been subdued for over a decade now
Feeless protocol are the most likely candidate. IOTA comes to mind. they use voting for governance inside the official wallet. feelessly. Digital identity is also a great feature that can be supported by protocol like this one.
Once you solve the identification issue fixing duplicate and fake ID than fully transparent, anonymous and verifiable bitcoin based counting the votes is cheap and trivial to hard fork from the main repository
Im not sure if this is an answer to your question but you could look up the e-voting (internet voting) system used in Estonia. It was implemented first in 2005 and has ran ever since with close to half of the population voting trough the internet.
I'm sure there is a peer reviewed paper on this from there Cardano project. CH did have a whiteboard video on it IIRC.
I'm sure there is a peer reviewed paper on this from the Cardano project. CH did have a whiteboard video on it IIRC.

EDIT: This should be it
https://youtu.be/DZf-LE-LZAI
Estonia already does this. Yes it's possible.
It would take a lot of work but it can be done,, yes I nominate CARDANO as the likely chain to accomplish this voting system that would protect the people as well as the integrity of our government…… CARDANO is working towards that as we speak.
You kind of need a legally bound public register on the blockchain before you can really do voting, and you need to be able to prove the existence of the individuals registered. 

&#x200B;

Which means you likely need personally identifiable information logged too, not to mention deciding and executing updates, Its probably one of the hardest things you can do with the blockchain.

&#x200B;

I suppose the only workaround would be to develop a chain incorporated artificial intelligence which questions and asks for proof of peoples existence. IE step into the booth, let me see your face, tap your fingerprint and take a cheek swab. At which point we calculate your lineage, and place in the database.

&#x200B;

We're in this terrifying zone between the falling into the promised land run by the perfect algorithmic bliss generator and a post Orwellian cyberpunk nightmare which we may never escape.
Essentially: you can, but by itself blockchain is insufficient; you need more.

Some things are there - a verifiable public record, distributed, generally tamper proof. But the secrecy is a problem - how do you verify that the votes were cast secretly and record how people voted secretly?

One thing that academically-proposed electronic voting systems provide is the ability to verify that your vote was counted; consider if a hash of your voter ID and vote was included in some published list (the academic versions of this are better).

Putting the vote casting and totting up on a public ledger is fine, but getting the vote there secretly is a problem generally involving third parties.
I think he's missing something important here. IMO the real core security problem is this one:

>Rather, the authors focus on a different security problem: can users' devices even in principle be made secure?

His rebuttal is that computer security has been improving, pointing to custom made hardware designed specifically to be resistant to attacks. But outright admits that 

>Trusted hardware (deservedly!) often gets a bad rap in security circles and especially the blockchain community, because it just keeps getting broken again and again. And indeed, you definitely don't want to use it to replace your security protection. But as an augmentation, it's a huge improvement.

It might be an augmentation to security hole riddled software based voting, but he's talking about replacing paper voting with this stuff. This is also naively assuming that attacks will be coming from outside. But what if someone involved in the design of some aspect of the hardware or software involved in the process is intentionally building a system to enable undetectable mass scale vote fraud?

At least with paper, regular people can look over it and see if everything checks out. And it can be done in pieces, the damage mitigated by the scale of local counting operations and the difficulty of expanding any conspiracy. With software voting, an attack manufacturing huge quantities of votes from all over could much more plausibly go unseen.

Honestly I think the involvement of many people taking time to count manually is a major positive feature of the current system, and not a bug to be automated away. The benefit of being able to vote more often and cheaper is not at all worth the tradeoff. I think maybe blockchain integration into the voting system could have advantages for transparency, but that should be a supplementation to a paper voting system, not a way of replacing it.
nice, I will check it out
The bit about bosses and employees is a big problem with caucus systems like in Iowa. Without anonymous votes it's hard to avoid outside influences that shouldn't be outside influences.
Unfortunately, privacy is significantly lacking on the blockchain, thanks to the public. But I've seen talks around Railgun and ZK-Proofs centered systems enabling such privacy functions. It'll be cool to see it in a voting system which is not far fetched in my opinion
That's ridiculous. Mail-in voting or in-person voting, either way the process is opaque.

If people don't trust a transparent system with decentralized validation, they most definitely shouldn't trust the inverse.
Shit half the people wouldn’t trust the tech and there would be whacky conspiracies
There's no reason you need a feeless protocol for real-world voting. If it's only a couple cents per transaction (like many L1 and L2 chains are), then governments could easily subsidize that.
And it's insecure as explained by experts countless times. See for example: https://estoniaevoting.org

An EU funded site claims concerns about Estonia's online voting are ""disinformation"" btw and that it would be impossible for their system to be hacked. Make of that what you will, war is peace as we all know.
Couldn't the validity issues be solved using zero knowledge proofs? I've been thinking about this for a while, but if Vitalik can't come up with a solution, well then fuck me for now - back to studying.
giving each citizen eligible to vote their own unique token or NFT would solve it.  Could you create a login or something like that where the token would only be ""live"" in a polling place?  (eliminates mail in balloting and all the potential fraud that comes with it)
Again, further exposing the privacy and lack of anonymity gap of the blockchain. Ironically, the blockchain is meant to be anonymous. Yet there are limited clear and defined way through which an average user can indeed stay anonymous when interacting with smart contracts, except going through on-chain privacy systems of course.
Online voting in inherently insecure. It's not just anonymity that's an issue, it's fundamental trust in democracy that's at stake.
You need to convince people like [Tom Scott](https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs), who, frankly has some pretty good arguments.
could do this with immigration and work visas as well.  would be able track people etc.
[removed]
Yes, this is called [MACI](https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/maci) and Vitalik has talked about it before.
Yes, as long as you trust some real world entity - otherwise they could stuff the ballot with fabricated votes. 

Academic e voting systems include things like verifiable ballots - each ballot paper has a QR code which you can verify, etc etc. The idea is not that it would be impossible to cast a fake ballot, but that any fakery would be easy enough to detect at the scale that would affect an election result.

Some address the trust issue by using multiple distrustful authorities (e.g. one from each political party etc) so that no single authority has to be trusted for any given part of the process.
I think the problem here is the mix of anonymity and certification - bitcoin can be anonymous because all that matters is the assignment of tokens. Anything interacting with the real world in which there are rules about how the transactions are to be done requires other stuff which isn't on the chain, and for which you need some kind of authority structure. 

So for banking and finance you need KYC, AML, credit assessment, and for voting you need voter identification and ballot casting assurances. This is the bit that crypto currently fails at.
I have seen that video before (love Tom Scott!), but he doesn't seriously consider blockchain technology here. He practically dismisses it as ""It won't work because you cannot explain it to people"". 

All the issues of trust, transparency, and safety can be solved by building on crypto technology.
I'd be surprised if he didn't haha. Are there any more technical takes on the topic by him?
Thanks a lot. That's very interesting :)
Hmm, well don't you think it is wrong that users' details and transaction histories can be tracked without their consent? even estimate their balance? especially with active people who interact with smart contract in decentralized finance.
Lets just be clear about something.  I am in favor of blockchain voting.  

However, paper is simple and has a proven track record.   And my grandmother can understand it.  If my grandmother wants to use paper, she should be able to.  

Next, I think you are right that Tom Scott doesn’t *really* take blockchain all too seriously.  However, he doesn’t need to because he addresses the larger problem.  You need a computer system to interact with a blockchain.  That computer system can be compromised relatively easily, and most computer system hacks can scale well.  

Imagine, for example, a windows exploit that goes unnoticed (or that may have even been put there intentionally).  Now every single person who votes on a windows machine may have their vote added to the blockchain with their choices altered.  The blockchain is transparent and immutable, but the devices that interact with it are not.
Yes.

The original q was about voting, where at least anonymised information is supposed to be public. With finance it's much worse because unless you can adequately hide the ownership of accounts, nothing is private. But it is exactly this anonymity which is a problem for regulations.

We can imagine a world with a 3rd party, where the 3rd party does the verification and regulatory stuff, and the signs off your account as verified. This way the private information only goes as far as that service, not to everyone on the chain. This is what I meant about needing external support for a realistic system. Bitcoin only works if there is no need to regulate.
>With finance it's much worse because unless you can adequately hide the ownership of accounts, nothing is private. But it is exactly this anonymity which is a problem for regulations.

It can be quite crazy on the blockchain. I guess that's why it's considered to be pseudonymous. Everything (wallet/transaction history)  is literally visible public unless shield using on-chain privacy systems like Railgun or keeping them anonymous in privacy coins like Monero.

>But it is exactly this anonymity which is a problem for regulations.

Even with regulations, there will still be a need for privacy that complies with the standards of protection act."
Some colleges are starting to teach courses about crypto and blockchain technology.,107,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/py4pi3/some_colleges_are_starting_to_teach_courses_about/,"This is great. But school should stick to foundational concepts rather than industry latestest and greatest.

Again cool but I'd prefer they taught the theoretical design implications. Similar to how they teach in systems OS what mechanisms are implemented, the design pattern, why and how it has evolved over time. This is better than a structured ""heres how to build"" practical development course. Which sounds more fitting for a crypto dev bootcamp or capstone course which exist.
My school offered 1 class on blockchain this semester. Also, some of my finance courses touch on the crypto market now. My school is also like any other regular public uni at a state school in US. I think in the next few years colleges will start to make crypto/blockchain a major given the market is opening largely to jobs.
You mean MIT?
I think it's great that schools are expanding courses to include crypto and such. Afterall, knowledge is power. It's always better to know things regardless if you decide to put it to use. 

Think about the amount of all the useless courses we had to take in school. At least this decision seems practical and more with the times.

What's your most useless course?
in university or college in USA. i did computer science. the lecturers were useless and so were the classes. after the first year i just taught myself.

these days there is far better information online to learn xyz then paying huge fees for a degree. that said sometimes you need the peice of paper to get a job, that and you do need some learning progression structure.

if you want to learn blockchain do this:

- read mastering bitcoin
- read mastering ethereum
- do a udemy course on eth dev (i have a link to a good one if u want it)
- read read read, plenty of great artciles. 

this is how ive learned about blockchain
It is a waste of time and a way for schools to make money.

We in the crypto space don't have any certificate in crypto or blockchain but we are expert in the space. Most of us are self taught because we practice by trading, making mistakes and changing strategies.
I am currently in the middle of a Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency course at my school. It has been quite educational when it comes to the encryption process and the other basics of what a blockchain is and how Bitcoin specifically implements the blockchain.
In Germany there is the Hochschule Mittweida where you can actually study 'Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies'. It‘s a master’s course and I think you should have a bachelor in normal computer science.
I think education will go a long way towards legitimizing crypto and growing the industry but think honestly Tik Tok and ""Fin influencers"" are driving teens into crypto via NFT by the boatload
Now they can teach you how to use blockchain to make money, while they take it from you for information you can find quicker and more up to date online for free.
My ecommerce business class does a week on blockchain. Teacher did the first lecture in a bitcoin shirt. Apparently he helped work on creating the first internet structures.
They can learn about blockchain online, all resources are here and the space changes so quick it will be hard for colleges to keep up. 

What people really ought to study is economics and learn reading scientific papers so they don't end up reading The Bitcoin Standard and basically become extremised.
BanklessDao's community have an education section and are starting to form a syllabus with a view of colloborating with consensus.  For something more immediate thats noob friendly [https://rabbithole.gg/](https://rabithole.gg) does quests for learning about different topics where you can also earn rewards.  Always found it easier to learn through doing personally.
My college has been doing that for at least 5 years and now all the students and teachers who were into it are loaded
I have seen ads that NUS is offering blockchain and fintech education.
Hope the tech about data security and full control because that is exactly what we need now in this crypto streets.
This is great. I wish it can be taught in schools all over the world the younger ones should be introduced to crypto as it is the future and is changing our lives positively especially crypto projects like the Easyfi Network that aims to provide fast and secure financial lending services for the globe, especially those unbanked in emerging economies.
Very soon educational content would be displayed to passengers while traveling to their destinations through virtual reality, holoride is making sure of that. Adoption level would increases as the metaverse space would be popular also.
Kinda related, if you’re a math major, take mathematical cryptography. It goes through all the mathematical group structures that make encryption even possible at a higher level.
That's exactly what we do at the University I teach.
At my school all we got was foundational knowledge. I think a few more software engineering and classes like this are good to compliment the slough of theoretical classes you have to take.
Have you seen Gary Genslers MIT course?
Id say this is only true for basic or introductory concepts. Good luck being able to teach yourself algebraic geometry or jet propulsion, for example.
Can I have the course on eth dev? Thanks :)
[deleted]
A lot of pure math subjects are very difficut to teach on your own and almost impossible to master on your own.
i dont mean to say university is useless. i think its very subject dependent e.g. you cant become a dr with just wiki. there is alot more than your narrow subject interests of choice, there are also subjects on ethics which are important in medicine.

ditto on the math
It’s completely free on MIT Opencourseware. There is no cash grab. Also the guy teaching it is basically the head policeman for finance. 

What crypto firm do you work at?
Expensive ass-course

[xkcd: Hyphen](https://xkcd.com/37/)

---

^^Beep ^^boop, ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot. ^^- ^^[FAQ](https://pastebin.com/raw/vyWra3ns)
Yeah I get what you're saying from a money perspective.  I'm conflicted about what to tell my future children about higher education.  I think the majority of the benefit comes from exposure to different types of people and ideas that come with moving away for college, but the amount of money required for tuition is insane.
STEM degrees are usually worth it, stuff like humanities / sociology etc, read a book. i was curious about sociology. so i read the first year book i got off a mate. i saved $600 on the course at the time and learned just the same."
My state is exploring blockchain voting and I'm offered to give proof-of-concept,104,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/z2pp39/my_state_is_exploring_blockchain_voting_and_im/,"I’m sure there are political science tenets that define a healthy election. I would look up some theory about this first. Off the top of my head, I would suspect it’s something like proof of identity, proof of one vote per constituent, proof that vote counts sum up correctly, proof that a voters decision is secret.


I would also consider what a blockchain can do that web2 can’t, and highlight that aspect. In my mind that’s the decentralization and availability for data auditing by anyone on the network. A voting chain would also need a high guarantee that it hasn’t been compromised by 51% exploits (ie. you don’t want all the mining done by a partisan entity).


Finally, at the practical level, you’ll need to deal with the hurdles of the tech, such as giving non-techie users a wallet, dealing with lost or compromised keys, anonymizing who voted for which candidate, etc.
I agree with others that voting via a computerized blockchain system is a bad idea, and others have already provided resources describing how they create a terrible risk of fraud by the government body managing the system. This would be doubly true if the blockchain is centralized on their servers.

If the goal is increasing the integrity of potentially corrupt elections, why not instead use blockchain to make voting results publicly auditable? That is, counters record votes as normal, but enter them into a transparent, trustless system, which will not be used to determine the final result, but rather as a layer of redundant transparency on top of the system of paper voting. Public key encryption could be used to allow voters to verify that their vote was counted correctly while keeping it private. Snapshots of the blockchain could at least tip people off if the government went and edited previously recorded results.
""Blockchain voting"" is actually a really bad idea and there's [this long and incredibly thorough report from MIT](https://dci.mit.edu/voting-on-the-blockchain) that goes into why voting on a blockchain for things like democratic elections is a *really bad* idea.  Anyone that says it is trying to get you to buy snakeoil.  Ignore all the paid Iota shills in this thread, there is *nothing* unique about it that solves the intrinsic problems with the concept.  Anyone that's a proponent of the idea needs to specifically address all of the ""critical questions"" in that section of the paper or you shouldn't even pay attention to them.
IOTA is already working on digital identity (self Sovereign Identity) and the feeless nature of the network also allows to vote without using the token.
Basically it is built for it.
Have you looked at the voting mechanism in Ardor? See for example [here](https://ardordocs.jelurida.com/Voting_system/en).

Ardor has been running since 2018, and is based on Nxt which was the first fully proof of stake crypto back in 2013. It implements voting by using specific types of transactions that are implemented in the core, rather than by using a scripting language like Ethereum. It has many other features implemented like this.
That is one of the use cases for www.verus.io . Secured by proof of power, a mix of proof of stake and work and truly decentralized. They are layer one with a carefully designed self-sovereign identity system, which would be necessary. I would check out their Discord.
Does your country have federal identification numbers? Aka SSN. I'd use that to create your voting keys . You'd need a frontend app to allow people to easily login and choose their voting options tho.
If you Google 'Ethereum election voting' you'll get some white papers for it. 
It running on national servers misses the point of a Blockchain. They should just have it on an Ethereum L2 and they have admin control of the voting contract.
You don't need a blockchain for this, though I would recommend using existing crypto wallets for citizens to manage private keys and allow for more interoperability.

You should look into verifiable credentials and zero knowledge proofs. VCs can be used to register each citizen's wallet to show a proof of citizenship. You can use zero knowledge proofs to demonstrate to each person that their vote was included and that no non-citizen has voted while still keeping each vote private.
Ah finally! Here are some ideas:

1. Every voter gets a wallet/address. Registered in system. Sent through secure mail (or other secure means).
2. Wallet could be in HW form, with a key ideally. However, given that sometimes is an issue they can be given a secure website to access / use their wallet.
3. For further address anonymity they can use a VPN to access (optional)
4. Every election period the wallet is given 1 unique credit to ""vote"" for each unique voting area address. E.g., local, state, federal. They can use a single credit to vote for each.
5. Then they simple ""spend"" and transfer their credit to the voting area address. They can't pull their votes. An awesome feature is they can confirm in the online ledger the vote was ""received"" and counted.
6. Voting stops at X day. No more deposits allowed. The voting management simply adds the credits in each area to see who won. The voting receive wallets can be retained for historical purposes.
7. Next election - rinse/repeate. The voters get their wallets filled again, and can submit their credits to each vote area address.

===

These ideas can be implemented with any, basic blockchain today.

Now critics will say there are security concerns. So to address those here are some steps that can be taken:

1. What if a voter ""loses"" their wallet? In the case they have to go to the voting office to request a new one. Show ID etc... The nice part, is the voting administration can track the lost wallet address to see if something unscrupulous happens with it. If/when that wallet does a transaction it is rejected, and later can be investigated.
2. What if a voter ""sells"" their wallet to someone else? This is a legitimate concern. To address, the voting administration could hold a periodic audit of people's wallets to ensure they are owned by the user. Although tbh, this isn't much worse then if companies try to buy people's votes.
3. Is it truly anonymous? What if someone finds out your address? This also is a concern, could use Monero or simlar algorithms to hide transactions. Alternatively, voters need to ensure they always keep their addresses unique/secure.
4. Is it too complicated? If done right; now. Could be as simple as clicking an app button on your phone, or a button on a website after logging in (via 2FA). For people without phones/devices, they can vote the regular way.

===

Just some ideas, but I think blockchain voting is a ""killer app"" for cryptotech.
Check out what Estonia does
Online voting is a trend that is gaining momentum in modern society. It has great potential to decrease organizational costs and increase voter turnout. It eliminates the need to print ballot papers or open polling stations—voters can vote from wherever there is an Internet connection.
Iota votes on initiatives ,and has some sort of identity protocol, might be worth a look.
$IOTA and it's testnet $SMR are limitless. Due to it's feeless structure,  it's speed and  scalability it can serve any usecase you can think of.
Hedera has a free and fair voting initiative you could check out https://hedera.com/free-fair-voting
I see this as a huge move to transparency in the voting system and one of the best use cases of blockchain to date.
There's no need to use a blockchain.

Add a password field to the ballot, and a unique ID number. 

After the election the ""proof"" can be a plain old spreadsheet of all votes. Each row is a vote, and the name of the voter is encrypted with the password that they put. Use the password to verify your vote. 

Much easier, a blockchain adds nothing.
Avalanche subnet could probably work with the national server limitation

Who else has subnets?
There are good ideas mentioned. Good luck. You could become famous.
I’m all for blockchain, when it makes sense. As for your use case, nah.
This is the game changer. Needs to run on mirrored servers not owned by the government as well in order to be ""incorrubtible""
Let me ask over in r/Ergonauts. I am not sure if the project has dipped its toes in to this area much, but I think the values of the chain and community would lend itself well to democratic initiatives like this
Firo Network did this some time ago. Maybe ask in their channels
Isn't the decantralization questionable if the voting rights will be given using the existing ID app? If so, what is the advantage of using a blockchain?

Isn't it almost impossible to deal with compromised keys? 

I feel like the only use case that makes complete sense is transferring value.
There are a few projects that have used Chainlink services for this. You could contact them about using DECO too. 

https://blog.chain.link/blockchain-voting-using-a-chainlink-alarm-clock-oracle/
I recommend you get in touch with snapshot devs they're pretty accessible on twitter.
Does the current paper ballot system work? In America, yes for the most part(hanging chad). In dictatorships like Russia, you see videos of old women just shoving ballots into a box one after the other as obvious election fraud for Putin. Paper ballots in general do work but not in all cases. 

Blockchain is immutable. This has advantages and also disadvantages. Fraud is possible, however if there are trusted 'nodes' which would be essentially voting centers, the choices could be done on computers logging in with a voter ID(tied to an offchain registry controlled by government) with choices regarding election made on the spot and published to blockchain immediately. Results would be instantaneous. 

In this setting in America, voting centers would look like prometric centers probably. There would be screening process to present ID and voter ID # provided to you on a small laminated paper with dry erase marker. You go into a room with cameras proving that you are who you are without capturing your voting choices. 

Everyone would get anonymized voter IDs linked to an off-chain registry from respective government where people know their voter ID and can reference the blockchain to ensure their vote is accurately recorded. 

Afterwards, if there is an issue with voter fraud or discrepancy this could be dealt with off-chain to rectify the votes and then present that information having been human screened as 'final count.' Significant deviance of final count from blockchain data would be suspicious and probably warrant investigation.

I don't know a ton about who is developing this but I know Cardano is working on advanced governance systems and may have some applicable infrastructure. I know that they did work with an educational system to record their grades. That's probably also a great application of blockchain. No need to request info from colleges, can just reference your student ID on the blockchain.
I hope you are aware of possibilities of ZK proofs in providing mathematically provable fair elections, without revealing individual votes. I didn't go deep into it, but there is already a lot of documentation on the subject, available online. With quick Google search, I found this project: [Zero Knowledge Private Voting](https://github.com/grakshith/zk-priv-vote).

I'm interested in digital identity aspect. Is this some implementation of EU eID? EU outsourced example libraries for this functionality: [eSignature Building Block ](https://github.com/esig/). They are not prod ready, but meant as working examples. Should suffice for POC, if you are indeed in EU.
There are lots of exciting developments in this space, but I don't think any are anywhere near ""production ready"".
https://priviledge-project.eu/about/project-use-cases

Use case 1
The requirements you mention are incompatible: anonymity is orthogonal to auditability.

Op is not qualified to even consider this endeavour.
There should be an option on Reddit for tipping comments. I’d Venmo you but I forgot my password lol.
Yes, I've been in this space for 7 years now, shills roll of my eyes by now.  
Your confidence makes me a little skeptical but will read, thank you for actually linking a resrouce.
Zero knowledge proofs would resolve some of this, but yeah Blockchain doesn't help a ton, here
Decentralized Identities (DID) will be huge when giving away voting-rights. A trusted entity (for example Government) has a publicly known DID on the blockchain. This DID can then give out verifiable credentials (VCs) to other DIDs, such as ""this DID has voting rights"".

From that point on the owner of this DID can proof to anyone on-chain that he got voting rights without any intermediary.

IOTA is leading in this tech. But dont know if stuff is fully implemented yet.
The problem is that the the ballot should not connect to the person who cast it or else your vote is not private.
I agree, but I don't make the rules.   
Risk of comprimising all state servers and possibly university support servers, is lower than the already ongoing voting count fraud, where they throw away your ballot if it's one of the controversial parties. It's not perfect but a step in the right direction imo.
existing crypto wallets? Then only crypto-bros TM would be able to vote, majority have never touched crypto.

Yes zk-proofs are interesting here, the registering of voters would be done by a national identity app though.
that would solve the voting count fraud problem, but wouldn't do much to improve the integrity of total vote count for each party.

Also the security of that database would be under quite the pressure, blockchain (decentralization) adds security/robustness if done properly, when compared to a such a structure with single point of failure.
It should not be possible to verify a vote, even with a password you possess.

This allows for third parties to force someone to prove how they voted. This allows for either selling of votes or/forced revelation of vote and then repercussions.

An example may be, a certain boss wants person X to win and tells all his employees they must vote for X. The day after the results are available, he then sits down with each employee and tells them they have to show who they voted for. If they voted for Y or refuse to show, then the boss then fires them or just gives them shit duties for the rest of their career.

This is why it is a fundamental reason that an individual vote cannot be verified.
why? the voting app cannot create new voting rights, it only identifies you, tells the contract that you are a citizen with voting rights. Creation of voting rights is done on-chain with contract.
How do you know I went and help my grandmother set up her wallet and then vote for? Or vote in place of somebody’s that died recently? And why would you want it to be anonymous when it might need to be audited?
In my state, we use mail-in paper ballots. The ballot holds the actual vote information and no information about the voter. The return envelope is pre-printed with the voters name and address, and must be signed to be valid for counting. The election office verifies the envelope and records that the voter “cast a vote” which you can later check online, and they can use to de-duplicate fraudulent votes, but the content of each vote is anonymized when the ballot is taken away from the envelope and later counted. The system isn’t perfect, but it does a fairly good job of leaving two paper trails that can be audited, without a way to connect them together.


In web3, you would need to verify a signer and tally a vote, but keep those two things separated. I would think about things like zero-knowledge proofs, tornado cash style “swaps”, or privacy coins. It’s not impossible, but it’s definitely tricky to do well, and there is a significant hurdle in convincing the public that this type of system is trustworthy.
I don't think this is correct. ZK proofs enable mathematically provable fair elections, without revealing individual votes.

Try googling for ""ZK proofs anonymous voting""

https://www.charitynavigator.org/discover-charities/where-to-give/

https://www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities/all-charities
I see a tip button. I believe it's because I'm using the Brave browser. Can only pay in BAT though.
No they can't, can you explain what polynomials are to your grandmother that only speaks spanish?  How can she possibly understand that some long big hex number on the screen represents that the vote was cast properly?  How do we know that her computer isn't compromised in the first place?
\*\* There is already an ID app by the government working, which could be used as a way to identify and distribute voting rights in a anonymous fashion by using APIs to a smart contract that generates voting rights, i.e identity part is solved (not perfect but good enough)
See ZK proofs usage on private voting. It solves this exact problem. Mathematically provable to be fair, yet individual votes are private. Wild stuff!
I don't have a lot of confidence that a government sponsored app for storing private keys will be as secure or as user-friendly as the best crypto wallets out there today (and that's saying something). The benefit of supporting all ECDSA wallets is that citizens can choose their own wallet provider (including a government provided app).
How would a blockchain solve the first problem? (without trusting a 3rd party)
For the second problem, can you also describe how a blockchain would fix it? 

I think you're picturing an API based digital only voting system where everyone has a government issued private key, but I was to make sure that assumption is correct first.
Ridiculous, here in oregon we have mail in voting, you could just take a pic of your ballot.

In reality what you're worried about doesn't happen with any meaningful regularity because it's extremely illegal
Yeah but then what is the point of blockchain voting. You might as well let a centralized app manage it
This doesn't prevent vote buying or coercion, i.e. one-man-one-vote.

There has been a ton of research in this area, currently the consensus is there is no way to vote electronicalily without relaxing one of the fundamental democratic properties.
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Same reply as the other poster: you don't prevent vote buying or voter coercion
... I said it would help *some* of it, not all of it. I even specifically said Blockchain is not a good idea for this. What exactly are you trying to prove to me?
Quick, someone tell the murderers that what they're doing is extremely illegal!
yes, the vote buying is indeed a risk, but voting fraud/manipulation is also a risk in current systems.

Relaxing one property tightens others, tradeoffs not being constructive is not obvious.
[deleted]
Sure. But the security surface has been reduced to people present during the event, which is much more manageable than all of the people with access to the ballots (which I believe are kept around for months in case of a recount). That kind of access is restricted to poll workers, elected officials, and partisan auditors, so there is oversight but it’s ultimately still trust based. You could probably make a robot that opens the envelopes in secret or something, but the current system is considered “good enough.”
So you're saying that it's common for businesses to *checks notes* ""threaten employees to vote for one party and require proof that they did so""? 

Want to provide literally any proof of that? No? Ok I guess listening to your sarcasm is plenty proof.
https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/

Matt Blaze is a renowned cryptographer who specializes in e-voting. Google his research.."
The paradox of distributed consensus.,106,https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoTechnology/comments/ncz8r5/the_paradox_of_distributed_consensus/,"You just described Time as a Currency (TaaC) and Proof of Stake for Quality of Service  (PoS4QoS).

For a republic it depends on what kind of republic. One where you elect delegates? If so, you just described dPoS.

If I got all these right, you should look at nano, as it does all these things already.

If you like meme coins, you may be interested in banano instead.

also:

\- cloning an existing blockchain would allow replay attacks, as the leafs of the merkle tree are identical.

\- Folding @ Home seems to be a pretty good anonymous distribution method for banano. The only major downside is some grad student at University of Country turns their server cluster to F@H during idle time and gets 51% of the banano until we email the dean.
I'm enjoying this sub and the info guys. It's a refreshing change. Thank you!
Hi noob here.

To clarify, essentially each transaction will be sorted from high to low. 

You get penalized if you violate a rule (double-spend, spam), which puts you lower in the queue (or delayed infinitely).

For high value transactions (ones that are true, haven’t been reviewed yet, and that are being accepted as true by other nodes), they will rise to the top of the priority queue for review.

This solves self regulation, sorting, malicious actors.

Hope I understood correctly as a non technical person.
The consensus of blockchain for instance is not about deciding which transaction is accepted or rejected. The consensus is about creating one blockchain. 

Transactions are accepted if valid and rejected otherwise. The validity of a transaction is not subject to a vote. 

The problem is that you have *n* nodes that have to make sure they all have the same copy of the ledger. The difficulty is that some messages may be lost, some nodes may be down, some nodes may be traitors/cheaters, etc. The rule of the 51% is to protect against misbehaving *nodes*, the cheaters or traitors. The nodes are the one taking part in maintaining the ledger.
Would suggest you take a distributed systems course if you are interested in creating a feasible consensus protocol.
Lookup Solana. Proof of history is very similar to some of what you are describing about order of transactions. Gossiping etc.
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Ok let em see if I follow your logic.

I make a transaction-

The closest node listening see this transaction and communicates it to it's closest peers (Gossip protocol)

After a set time in which a message SHOULD be able to propagate through the network the transaction is verified if no node has heard a conflicting transaction.

'Time' in this sense is the node's observation of when the transaction declaration is received by them, not any time stamp the transaction may be carrying.

If a node(s) has heard a conflicting transaction the coins associated with that transaction of 'frozen' for a set period of time. Clear malicious actions would result in an infinite freeze

Question- What if the network is fractured for a prolonged period, such as damage to connective infrastructure, and then rejoined? In that time frame a double spend attack is executed but nodes on one side of the divide never see the other transaction till past the second threshold. How would the network respond to this?
I actually thought of something similar to what your are describing, but never took the time to formalize it and check if it really works. What made me give up:

1. No mining process. I thought about introducing a debt mode instead. Start at zero and allow negative/positive values to a certain extent. I thought also that this could make the money distribution a bit more fair in the society we have today. I called it the Zero Point Energy Coin (ZPE Coin). After all, money is debt.
2. This comes with problems. Since we now have debt that can be assigned to someone forever, a serious Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure is required.
3. Although certain value ranges are fine for individuals, companies may require a bit of a different model.

Just my 2 cent. Do whatever you need with it.
Could there be any benefit to having your coin (or many of your coins) be rendered worthless? If you did it to enough coins could you impact the price of the coin maybe by reducing supply? I feel like someone might figure out a way to make money off that.
What an interesting idea and cool concept!

From what I understand, this hypothetical coin has some issues with incentives though. Since there is no validation involved, there is no inherent incentive of setting up a node other than to participate in the network, right? The utility of participating in the network arises from the ability to use a *decentralized* ledger for payments.

In addition, all coins would need to be pre-mined and distributed according to some criteria other than to cover node operators‘ costs. So there is no reason to keep a node running unless your utility from using the network, which is only realized if you use additional ressources to aquire the currency in the first place, is greater than your operating costs. Unless the network starts out highly decentralized, nodes could only be operated at a loss.

Together, these two factors have a daunting implication: The network doesn‘t incentivize/disincentivizes decentralization, which defeats the purpose of a decentralized ledger in the first place.

**TL;DR:** Running a node is solely incentivized by the utility of the network to the node operator, a metric that hinges on the networks decentralisation, which in turn results in a lack of decentralization. This leads to an effectively centralized ledger, which defeats its purpose.

I‘m sorry if I‘m missing something and would love to be corrected in case that I didn‘t fully understand anything. This isn‘t meant to offend anyone but to voice a genuine concern about the practicality of the concept
IOTA uses this logic for rejecting double spends. Aka if you see a tx w enough time separation and you are in sync then you can reject the latter one.

Only issue is for double spends that arrive just in the cut off time period. Your idea of punishing users who send these txs is interesting, but you would still need some consensus on whether someone should be punished or not?
I still have to read the rest of the long post. I just wanted to say that your premise is already false. 
That algorithms based on the BFT protocol are vulnerable to less then that. 1/3 already.
Join r/TheCryptoTrade for all things Crypto. A new community so please post and contribute to help us grow.
Do you have some code that I can run?
Have you read about EdenOS? If so, what are some of your thoughts on the  positives/negatives?
It seems like an interesting concept for sure. Would coins recieve a locktime after they were sent to ensure that consensus has been reached?
I like where you're going. I have to admit I don't understand all of your idea, but the current consensus mechanisms seem a little overcomplicated or are missing the point of what it means to have consensus

For example: People say Bitcoin uses proof of work as a consensus mechanism, but that isn't really true. The ""right"" blockchain is just the longest blockchain you can find that starts from the genesis block and follows the protocol. Proof of work is just to make it take longer to expand on the blockchain.

But why not have a chain that anyone can expand on/take turns according to protocol. Surely, it only takes a while before all the chains look similar up to some point at which a transaction is deemed ""correct"".
Who knows what Emin Gun Sirer would think about this..
>Every existing cryptocurrency is susceptible to a 51% attack

not PoS coins because you need to buy 51% of them and they're probably not for sale if you're an attacker + you'd pump everyones' bags by trying.
I love TRIAS separation of powers model as a layer 0-type approach toward intercooperabolity between blockchains but I don't think it would have any impact of this 51% vulnerability of individual blockchains.

Anyone familiar enough to comment on TRIAS role, if any, in solving this?
There is an important difference. Nano is controlled by voting, and is susceptible to a 51% attack.

""If an attacker is able to gain over 50% of the voting strength, they   
can cause the network to oscillate their decisions rendering the system   
useless."" [source](https://docs.nano.org/protocol-design/attack-vectors/#50-attack)

There is no election of delegates. There is no election at all, so it's not dPoS either.
Can someone give me the spark notes? I tried to read it just couldn’t
All correct, except for the penalty. The penalty is to make your coin undesirable as a monetary entity. It has no effect on the how the system sorts and processes requests.
The problem is that with 51% of the vote, you can reject valid transactions. You can undo them from the blockchain and prevent them from being added to it. This isn't misbehavior, this is *according to the protocol.*
The bottom line is, if your messages don't correspond to the ledger they have, they will ignore you. If they do, your messages will be processed according to the prioritization rules that give you a fair turn and nothing more. There is no ""take control.""
I've designed no defense for that, because I imagine it to be essentially impossible. Each node operator should have multiple machines in multiple geographic locations. The consensus this protocol creates is like a flame which must never be allowed to go out, because it cannot be reignited.
It's worth pondering, but I can't think of anything. The supply is never actually reduced, because it is infinitely divisible. All you would be achieving by destroying your coins is effectively decreasing the ratio of the total supply that belongs to you, so that would seem to be self-defeating.
Thanks! I've been developing it for three years, since June 2018. I am currently writing an interactive simulation of the protocol in HTML canvas/javascript which I plan to share here in another week or two.

There is no inherent incentive of running a node other than to participate in the network - you are correct. However, the key concept to realize is that since there is no portable, self-evident proof that a ledger is correct, everyone that wants to know the contents of the ledger without having to trust anyone must run their own node. This results in broad, decentralized participation.

Being able to know the contents of the ledger without having to trust anyone has inherent value that can't be dismissed. If you are a commercial entity, making and receiving payments frequently, this will probably be worth it to you. The cost of running the node is very low, because the work it does is nothing more than validating and communicating at a predictable pace.

Also, a company can run several nodes across the globe with the intent of maintaining a very secure and reliable perspective of the ledger, and offer clients the opportunity to query coins or submit transactions for a small fee. This would be a competitive domain for the fastest, most reliable access at the lowest price.

This system is uniquely and inherently immune to the danger of centralization, because it provides no prize to seize control of. Each user is simply defending his own ledger integrity in a way that guarantees his ledger will remain identical with all of his peers who are doing the same, and the peers of those peers, etc.
Precisely. This is the reason for the graded response function. It allows all users to make the designation in a way that keeps them functionally compatible to one another. There is no discontinuity over which they could fall which would cause them to branch.
Hah, nice to see you here. Was also reminded of IOTA and wondered about the same!
Unless I misunderstand your comment, something that is vulnerable to 1/3 is also vulnerable to 51%, so his premise would still be true.

Anyways this is sonewhat tangential, since OP is trying to show how his mechanism is good, which doesn't necessarily depend on whether others are good or not.
Indeed, this would be a basic role of a node while serving clients, to protect payers from spoiling their coins and to protect payees from taking spoiled coins.
So when two nodes disagree on what time it is, who wins?

What if a malicious or lazy exchange has the wrong time set?

Or are you assuming that the majority of the network will always have the correct time?

Something like the time warp attack on bitcoin
What you are missing is a ledger structure. I also encourage you to take a closer look at nano. This could maybe be a helpful starting point:

[https://nano.community/design/basics](https://nano.community/design/basics)

The ledger structure is the starting point for a distributed ledger protocol (i.e. digital money). Without knowing the ledger structure the consensus mechanism can not be evaluated as forks / disagreements on one structure are vastly different than on another. For example, Nano's ledger design alone provides an advantage when it comes to consensus, since forks can only be created by account holders and only impacts their account. You can read more about it here in the consensus section at the bottom:

[https://nano.community/introduction/how-it-works](https://nano.community/introduction/how-it-works)

I would start to think about your consensus approach on top of a ledger structure like Nanos, as I believe it has the most potential to providing a breakthrough in consensus. Good luck!
Imagine bitcoin but instead of trying to do math to decide which transactions go into the blockchain you just have the five second rule:

If you try to send two transactions within five seconds, both get rejected. To prevent double spending.

This works but requires everyone to keep accurate time. Which makes it centralized and government controlled.
What does the “coin marked as worthless for duration of time proportional to violation witnessed” mean?

How does that apply here?
You are right that valid transactions may be rejected, but it's only at the head of the blockchain where it is constructed. If the transaction is valid and does not end in the stable blockchain it can be reissued as many times as needed. Soon or later it will become part of the stable blockchain. 

I don't see the problem you are trying to solve.
There's some work against this, though. For example BCH has a rolling checkpoint every ten blocks. If you were to try and undo a legacy tx you'd end up forking.
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How would one establish consensus between nodes on how long a user needs to be punished?

If this deviates then 1 node would accept it in x hours and another would still reject?
You are correct. But there are numerous little approximations like that that sum up and raise suspicion. There are many others.
If you know the correct time, you will always make compatible adjudications to other users who also know the correct time, and there is tolerance for realistic variation. If you have the wrong time set, you're only potentially messing up your own ledger.
You just summed up Reddit very nicely
One of the implications of this system is that all modifications are final, in real-time. There are no competing branches. There is no voting system by which what is observed could be retroactively re-evaluated. As a result, the ledger is nothing more than a list of all coins, which a user modifies according to each request.
No, because the graded response behavior solves the variation problem, which allows nodes to use their own motherboard clocks.

Occasional time synchronization is not a vulnerability. There isn't enough reliance on an external time supplier for it to be an attack vector.
The more time passes after you receive a message, the more certain you become that everybody else has heard it, given that you know the message is viral.

There are two important thresholds that you cross. First, the minimum safe threshold, where you know everybody has heard it. Second, the preferred threshold, which is some arbitrary, extra-safe threshold defined by the protocol.

If you hear another message affecting that coin, before threshold 1, that coin is worthless for eternity - you can never be sure that everybody heard those messages in the same order that you did.

If you hear another message affecting that coin, after threshold 2, you can just ignore it. You can trust that everybody heard those messages in the same order, so no action is needed.

In between, an inverse response function connects these two responses in a way that has no discontinuity. You will mark the coin as worthless, but only temporarily, with the duration being zero at threshold 2, and approaching infinity at threshold 1. This way, everybody makes functionally compatible judgments to each other.
>Soon or later it will become part of the stable blockchain.

Unless a single mining pool with 51% of the hash rate decides that it shouldn't.
[deleted]
This is the exact goal of my design, which separates it from the others: a mechanism that can *resist* and *reject* the will of the majority.

Truth is truth. If a transaction happened, we would all know about it, because it would have been viral. If you say it didn't, even if you say it a thousand times, we all saw it, so we don't believe you.
The coin (which is a thread of custody between transactions) is punished, not a user.

Since there is coherence between the perceptions of timing, there will be coherence in the judgments made based on those perceptions of timing.

For example, if one node punishes a coin for eternity, the least punishment it would receive from any other node is thousands of years.

If one node does not punish a coin at all, the most punishment it would receive from any other node is a few seconds.

Knowing that there is coherence allows each user to make their own judgment about whether they want to accept a coin for payment or not.

In all cases, everybody functionally agrees.
Right. So the 51% attack is setting the time wrong, because your assumption is everyone knows the correct time. So if (for example) a majority of the exchanges colluded they could destabilize the network.

Interesting idea.

You would want to make sure that the tx includes the time in the hash it signs, or a malicious node could rebroadcast a tx and mess with things.
If I understand you correctly, that is a fairly accurate analysis of the nano design. The implication of this design is it enables ultra fast settlement and irreversible finality (in nano's case you have deterministic finality as opposed to probabilistic finality).

These properties impact the core functions of money and are strengths.
Ah ok.

So safe threshold (#1), if you hear a duplicate txn before #1, you assume that there is some double spend risk and therefore invalidate it.

If after #2, then you can ignore since everyone has already “heard” or had the opportunity to validate the original txn. The extra safe time margin means that everyone in the network already has time to validate the original txn. Therefore, the duplicate can be ignored.

In between 1 and 2, we think there is some risk but given that you exceed the minimum safety requirements, it’s not enough risk to invalidate with 100% confidence. Therefore, the closer you are to #2, aka 100% safety confidence, the less risky it is and therefore can and should be validated as soon as possible.

Is that right?
perception of time is different for every node, thus, it might happen that a transaction reaches node A before one of your tresholds and at node B after that trshold. How do nodes reach consensus then?
What if 2 nodes are on a different clock? What of an attacker sends two transactions at the same time? Then they will each propagate at roughly the same time, meaning that it is impossible to reach consensus.
That is indeed a limit of the blockchain algorithm. The limit is already high when compared with BFT algorithms which was prior art in consensus algorithms. 

So you suggest a new algorithm that could raise this limit even higher ? That would indeed be a significant finding. How do you achieve that ? Do you have a document (e.g. whitepaper) explaining the algorithm more in detail so that I could understand it ? 

What I would like to know is how the nodes reach the agreement on the content of the ledger. This is the most critical and difficult task.
Well that's one side of it but it also means you could never reverse a transaction more than an hour and 40 mins old
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How is there coherence between the nodes' perceptions of time? Don’t they all see the network in a different order, because of propagation time? (Basically same question as in this other comment thread)
No. If 51% sets the time wrong, the other 49% has the self-evidently correct ledger, because the current time is self-evident.

Remember, there is no voting involved. The majority can do whatever it wants. It won't affect the ledgers of the minority. It will only affect their own ledgers.
Is it true then that Nano is not susceptible to a 51% attack? Because the Nano documentation describes it as a real attack vector. My protocol does not have this susceptibility.
Pretty much nailed it! Except that between 1 and 2, there is technically no risk. We are simply acting to protect those users who may have decided that there is a risk. In fact, we could use the coin, and there would be consensus, but not everybody knows that, so that's not consensus. Consensus is like a weird onion.

This is probably the weirdest aspect of the whole mechanism.
Negative. The Rejection protocol would cause the coin to become worthless in that case.
The limit goes away entirely. There is no 51% attack because there is no decision-making responsibility to be delegated.

The nodes have agreement on the sequence of transactions because each transaction infects the network in a viral manner, making it impossible to miss. The chronology of these events is witnessed in real time by all nodes, and as long there's sufficient time between them, there's no possibility of confusion. Otherwise, the affected coins are simply seen as tainted.

I don't have a whitepaper, but I think my next project will be creating an interactive demonstration in HTML5 canvas, with source code.
The collective of nodes following protocol, among which the true messages will spread virally and will out-compete all other messages for priority. Since these messages are self-evidently true, there is no need to trust them.
Yes, nodes will acknowledge a message at different times, because it takes time for that message to propagate through the network. However, there is a limit to how long this could possibly take, which defines the coherence window.

One of two states is guaranteed:

1. Every node received the two messages in the same order. There are variations in the judgments of how long the coin should be punished, but these are not problematic.
2. Nodes received the two messages in different orders. Every node decides to punish the coin forever.
The current time is not self-evident. NTP is vulnerable to MITM attacks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network\_Time\_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP\_server\_misuse\_and\_abuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_server_misuse_and_abuse)

So you would need to use a centralized, signed, synchronized, time service.

>The majority can do whatever it wants.

Isn't a 51% attack by definition that the majority can do what it wants?

So if there's two exchanges, one on the 49% ledger, one on the 51% ledger, how do you determine which one is ""right"" if someone is spoofing NTP packets to 51% of the nodes?
>  because the current time is self-evident.

It absolutely is not. Who decides what the current time is? How do you determine what the current time is?
Your protocol does not have a ledger design, that should be your starting point. Without it, I do not know what conflict your consensus approach is resolving.

Nano is susceptible to a 51% attack in the sense that if nano holders delegate 51% of the voting weight to a single rep, that rep could use it to stall confirmations. It can do so by simply going offline.

Forks can only be created by the account holder, so if you do not create a fork for your account, a 51% attacker can only make your confirmation stale by simply not voting at all.

A 51% attack on nano can not reverse any transactions because of its ledger design + consensus approach. With other designs a 51% attack could roll back a transaction. The best case scenario for a 51% attack on Nano is downtime or stalling confirmations of new txs. This can be mitigated by the network relaunching and excluding the weight of that rep and allowing nano holders to re-delegate their voting weight.
Actually consensus is the weirdest aspect of existing e-currency. ""Natural"" ones prevent forgery without requiring consensus. 

Consensus is just an expensive means to imitate physical boundaries.
The questions I have is how do all nodes know ""in real time"" about the transactions ? That would be a requirement of your system. But transmission takes time and every node won't have the information at the exact same time. How do you handle conflicting transactions (transaction collision) ?

You are referring to time as a criteria. How do you define this time ? Is it required that all nodes have the same time reference ? Do transactions have a time stamp ?
I rather mean, as the nodes are physically located in different places, if there are two messages sent, they might arrive at different nodes in different orders. It might be that for node A, a message arrives just in time for the treshold not to be exceeded, but the message takes longer to arrive at node B, so that the treshold is exceeded. How do the nodes reach consensus on how to treat that transaction?
The majority can do whatever it wants. *It won't affect the ledgers of the minority. It will only affect their own ledgers.*

The current time is self-evident to anyone with a digital clock, because the algorithm is designed to operate with high tolerances. Remember, it only requires perceptions to be coherent, not identical.

The way you know which one is right is by running your own node and having it behave according to protocol. If at least one node in the 49% is gossiping with you, your ledger will match *all* of theirs. That's all you need.
A typical motherboard RTC can keep time to ±20 parts-per-million. A temperature-regulated RTC can do it to ±5 parts-per-million. That's at most 3 seconds divergence in a week. That's more than adequate for this protocol.
The ledger is nothing more than a list of all the coins. Each request will consume some of these coins and replace them with new coins, having the same total value, but with new owners. Beyond that, just some metadata on each one to track its energy and rejection state.

All coins not marked rejected will exist identically in the ledgers of all users that are following protocol, and are therefore good for storing value, means of exchange, etc.

No talk of delegations, votes, weights, stalling, forks, accounts, or mitigating attacks. So I'm not convinced that what I'm proposing is *basically Nano.*
The operative concept is that nodes don't need to get each message at the exact same time as when their peers do, they just need to get each message within a definable timespan to when their peers do. That's what I mean by ""coherence.""

The viral and competitive nature of each message is what creates this coherence. If it can be guaranteed that each message will fully saturate the network within 5 seconds, then if you hear two messages 30 seconds apart, you know for sure that everybody else heard those messages in the same order that you heard them in.

Messages will have timestamps, but only to formalize their date for the purpose of calculating coin energy. It is the real time at which the message was acknowledged that a node uses to date it. The timestamp that a message declares must not fall outside the limits of what is observed. For this, nodes need to know the current time with some accuracy, but not with extraordinary precision.
It is okay if they disagree about whether it came just before or just after the threshold. It would mean that some nodes think the coin is perfectly clean, and other nodes think the coin should be penalized for a few seconds. After a few seconds, they all think it's okay.

Or, if we're talking about the other threshold, it would mean that some nodes think the coin is completely worthless, and other nodes think the coin should be penalized for thousands of years. Everybody involved will have decomposed before their disagreement manifests in practice.
No because a malicious user can see what all nodes are running and do a MitM NTP attack on them. Your computer gets the time from the us navy over an insecure unsigned channel.

They could make 1/10 be an hour early, 1/10 an hour late, and 30% four hours late.
The concept of a distributed ledger is the starting point to distributed ledger protocols. They are an open, global, and append-only list of operations that describe the state of the system. Operations can only be added but not removed, modified, or reordered. To know the current state of the ledger, you go through the full list of operations (first to last).

In essence they are an immutable append only list. Without knowing this structure, I do not know how an update to the ledger works. After that is known, then we can assess the problem of reaching consensus when there is conflict over the order of updates.

Also, with bitcoin forks happen naturally, they are not malicious. Two blocks can be created at nearly the same time and due to latency it will not be clear which block was created first. The job of consensus is for the network to decide on the order in a distributed and trustless manner. I'm not sure how your approach would reach consensus on the order of those blocks.
I still find that many critical aspects are left in the shadow. You can't expect coherence by just relying on a broadcast. If it was as simple as that, the problem would have been solved for long. 

Some nodes may be temporarily offline or some links may be down. Some nodes may be bogged down in ddos attacks. Some nodes may be traitors and evil, etc. 

Transmission takes time and may be emitted from different points in the network of nodes. As a consequence we can have broadcast of conflicting transactions at the same time in the network. How do you solve this conflict ? No votes you said. Time alone can't be used to choose which transaction to keep. 

Let say we have conflicting transaction A and B. Some nodes will see A before B and others will see B before A. What do you do ? 

Are you using the time stamp in the transaction ? What if clocks that created the stamps are not synchronized ? What if stamps have identical value ? One could cheat by changing ones clock. 

Does a node discard a transaction with a stamp in the future ? Due to imprecise clock synchronization, some nodes will discard the transaction and others won't. How do you deal with this use case ? 

It seam that your system depends on many unrealistic hypothesis: perfect time synchronization, perfect broadcast transmission, etc. Maybe I simply didn't understand your system. Your current explanation is not clear to me and many aspects are in the shadow.
Practically, I agree, depending on the implementation. Still important to think about these edge cases. But now I understand your idea better!
Secure timekeeping is a field of its own. There are many ways to keep track of time in a way that is not vulnerable to such attacks.
This makes a lot of sense, now I understand. My protocol is therefore *not* a distributed consensus mechanism. It's a gossip protocol that generates practical consensus on the state of a set of tokens *without* establishing a list of operations.
>You can't expect coherence by just relying on a broadcast.

You can if the information being broadcast has a self-evidently high priority for broadcast. There is a physical limit to how long it could possibly take to infect all nodes in a particular network.

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>Let say we have conflicting transaction A and B. Some nodes will see A before B and others will see B before A. What do you do ?

The coins involved will be universally rejected for eternity, because the conditions of a clear chain of custody have been self-evidently violated.

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>One could cheat by changing ones clock.

One must remain intelligible to the body of nodes they are attempting to cooperate with. If you fail to do so, you are only liable to cheat yourself. In other words, use timestamps that will be accepted by others, or your messages may trigger your coins to lose value.
Cool. Sounds like you have a good idea then.
The problem with broadcast is the reliability of communication. Can you explain how you do the broadcast ? 

How do you ensure that *all* nodes get the message in a *predefined time delay* ? Are you aware that traffic can be slowed down by congestion and that congestion is easy to achieve with a DDOS attack or spamming ? Consensus algorithms do not rely on such requirement because it can't be ensured. 


If I understood correctly your algorithm, you define a delay after which a transaction is considered valid. Lets call this time vt. When a transaction is submitted to the node network, it is broadcast. It will take some time until a node becomes aware of its existence. The time vt must than be relative to the injection time so that a coherent decision is made by all nodes. This implies that the transaction is time stamped at the start of the broadcast. 

This adds the requirement that all nodes are time synchronized to avoid that some nodes consider the transaction to be in the future and wrongfully reject the transaction. It might be interesting to evaluate the required time synchronization precision.  Maybe it's reasonable. Today we can synchronize clocks on GPS which is relatively cheap. It is vulnerable to jamming though. A currency should ideally not be vulnerable. To avoid this, one would need precise oscillators. 

Stamping the transaction is then a critical task. How is this performed ? I assume the client issuing a transaction submit it to a node, and it is this node that stamps the transaction. This introduces a new potential weakness in the algorithm that needs to be checked. What if the node is unfair. It can also discard transactions. So its worse than the voting system. 

Another aspect that needs to be clarified is the penalty which can lead to destroy coins. How is this penalty applied ? Who is applying the penalty ? How do you ensure that all nodes are aware of the penalty and agree on the penalty ? 

Maybe your algorithm is feasible, but you need to clarify all the details so that it can be verified.
Regarding DDOS, the protocol makes relevant traffic plainly distinguished from irrelevant traffic. IP addresses sending spam can be blocked. Also, one party running multiple nodes in multiple regions has good resistance, because any single one can be used to fully restore all others in case of outages.

Regarding injection time and synchronization, the time at which a node ""witnesses"" an event is not the moment they first receive the request, it is the moment they grant the request and modify their ledger according to it. This assignment of time is a good heuristic for the assignment of time that other nodes give for that same message, because it indicates that the message is highly competitive and either blooming or on the verge of blooming.

A precise oscillator can keep time to within about 3 seconds per week. If the rejection protocol's timing threshold is in this neighborhood, I don't think time synchronization is a threat to this system. I also would like an experiment to find what the necessary precision is.

The author of the transaction must sign the timestamp, and the transaction must physically saturate the network before that time. Otherwise, nodes will reject it. Therefore, it requires an estimate to be made, based on information that only a running node would have. There is no harm in playing it safe and choosing a very late timestamp, if the payee is still satisfied with it - it just means they can't use the currency until that time.

Trust is implied between a client and the node they've chosen to provide service to them. I've designed the protocol to allow nodes to stay in consensus. Who these nodes represent and how they treat their clients is outside the domain of my work. The safest way to play is to run your own node 24/7. You just need some currency to start making requests so that other nodes will find your IP address a useful one to gossip with for maintaining their ledger.

Regarding the penalties, they are entirely a matter of independent perception. A user is assigning these marks to coins in his own ledger as his best attempt to represent those same assignments made by other users. The reason for the graded response function is specifically so that variations in these perceptions are not destructive to the system.

What it really comes down to, is that if all users have a close-enough idea of the current time, and are communicating reasonably well, they will always have identical perceptions of the current organization of the money supply. This freedom comes with some unique risks that are less familiar to the world of cryptocurrency, but I believe they are the types of risks that can be overcome with research and experimentation."