Blockchain: Next tech juggernaut?
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My bad. It seems that cryptocurrencies hogs a lot of electricity because of how long their chains are. Blockchain (the design) itself wil probably have a good future in banking and business. But I still jump on the ship. Sorry. I don't see how it can become practical use everywhere.
Daniel Wilianto wrote:
It seems that cryptocurrencies hogs a lot of electricity because of how long their chains are
It actually has to do with the consensus algorithm and the difficulty of a network based on Proof of Work consensus. The Proof of Work consensus was the first to be established on blockchain solutions. Today there are many more, which don't depend on heavy calculations to include a new block in the chain. In the case of proof of work (Bitcoin, Ethereum ethash), what determines the energy consumption is the current difficulty of the network. In the case of Bitcoin you're right, the difficulty increases with the length of the chain, but it's by the design. Ethereum PoW works slightly different, which is more related to the amount of transactions in a given timeframe + the amount of miners on that given timeframe. The length of the chain plays a role in Ethereum too, but it's not it alone what determines the energy requirements. What happens is, the longest the chain, the harder to break it: Imagine blocks are like this: [hash]<-[hash]-<[hash]<-[hash] For the sake of simplicity let's say the hash of the next block is an increment of the previous: [1]<-[2]<-[3]<-[4] Changing the first block implies on having to recalculate the entire chain, because this state is invalid: [5]<-[2]<-[3]<-[4] To make it valid and attacker would have to do the first block's calculation, plus all of the following blocks: [5]<-[6]<-[7]<-[8] Only that by itself is already computationally infeasible. The attacker not only needs to do that, but also convince the entire network that his chain is correct instead of what they have. That means controlling at least 1 third of the minder nodes of the network. So in the case of ethereum with ethash (PoW) algorithm, which has around 10k simultaneous miners, the attacker would need to control over 3k's worth computing power for a "chance" to convince the network. So very undersimplifying it, understand that the next block basically takes the previous block hash + a nonce (difficulty) + current pending transactions, to calculate the current's block hash. Which is an implementation of Merkle's tree. The length of the chain has no direct correlation with the next block's difficulty to compute. I hope to have clarified that for you.
Daniel Wilianto wrote:
I don't see how it can become practical use everywhere.
It's not for everywh
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Not denying any of that. Just emphasizing that while it's largely snake oil, there are practical concerns that it can address which are largely being lost in the current buzzword mess.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
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jschell wrote:
Nothing is used everywhere.
How about atoms? I believe they are even used in the most distant suns and at the far edges of the Universe. :rolleyes:
jschell wrote:
So certainly not an unbiased view of the potential.
And yet, where is there an unbiased view of anything? Many people like chocolate and yet other fools do not. And people who sell chocolate like it even if they don't eat it themselves, all because they are trying to make money. I have yet to find the human who has an unbiased view of anything. Whether they know it or not. :rolleyes: But, that's just my biased opinion. :laugh: I get your points though. I know there will be vast challenges for blockchain tech but that is what struck me the most -- the huge corps who are getting behind it. I'm not really _for_ blockchain since there are some inherent dangers in it. I just think the technology behind it (merkle trees) is interesting and since I don't like large systems I find it to be interesting that so many large companies are backing it so strongly already.
raddevus wrote:
the huge corps who are getting behind it.
Large companies use a lot of things. And they try a lot of things because they have the money to throw away. That doesn't mean anything. Even more so because marketers like to promote exactly that usage.
raddevus wrote:
that so many large companies are backing it so strongly already
What statistics? How many fortune 500 companies have invested more than 50 percent of their total IT dollars in it? How does the actual investment of those same companies over the past 20 years in other technologies compare?
