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If you’re ever stranded on a deserted island, knowing how to run the process of decentralized consensus — or in other words, operate a very simple blockchain by hand — can prove to be very useful. All you need is some fellow survivors, this post, a pen and a few pieces of paper.
If you’re not certain this skill is useful for your survival, be sure to read my last post on how blockchain can vastly improve island life.
Let’s go back to that original story and go through the process with our fearless heroes, who just crashed on a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific — Hugo, Sawyer, Kate and Jack.
A short recap: the gang is trying to implement IslandCoin, a revolutionary new currency that will bring an end to the island’s crippled barter economy. The gang has agreed it’s fair if each of them starts with 100 coins. Since they don’t have metal to mint actual coins, they’ll have to make do with a few pieces of paper. Riddled with trust issues, the gang hasn’t been able to agree on one person to keep track of balances. Their only option is to maintain the balances together.
We’ll start with what is probably the simplest blockchain implementation for our island use case. In future posts we can explore other implementations and tie them to concepts like Proof of Work and Proof of Stake — this will help us see their benefits and drawbacks. But for now, let’s start as simple as it gets.
What are we trying to achieve? It’s very simple actually — all we’re trying to do is maintain a simple table of balances on a piece of paper. This table will show how many coins each of our heroes has. The trick is, because we can’t have one piece of paper that holds the only source of truth — we’re going to have to keep things equal and let each of the gang maintain their own version — this is the decentralized part. And naturally, we’re also going to hope that all 4 pieces of paper eventually show the same thing — this is the consensus part.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:03PM (8 children)
Rather than focus on trying to develop a monetary system on an island with 4 people living on it trying to survive, Hugo, Sawyer, Kate, and Jack could sit down and negotiate and plan and otherwise work things out like a group of adults trying to manage a difficult situation. All this effort to establish a decentralized consensus makes no sense when (A) each of the 4 people involved have the power to basically ignore the "money" whenever they like, and (B) the 4 people in question are perfectly capable of organizing around a centralized consensus established by a meeting of the 4 people each representing their own interests.
The economic system that tends to develop in situations like this isn't barter, but what's called "primitive communism", where each individual works for and takes from a collective pool of resources. Because the group is small enough that everybody knows more-or-less what the others are up to, no numbers or currency are required to assess who's a great contributor and who's a freeloader. The incentive to contribute is created by the need to survive, and the threat of a freeloader being forced out of the group.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:19PM (4 children)
I think you are missing the point. The point of the article was to explain blockchain via a simple, if silly, scenario.
At least, I hope that was the point...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:21PM (3 children)
Actually, I went and read his previous article about island blockchain, and I am not so sure he isn't serious...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by choose another one on Saturday May 19 2018, @06:14PM (2 children)
> Actually, I went and read his previous article about island blockchain, and I am not so sure he isn't serious...
And the beauty is that it should be easy enough to test, nice little double reality show, try Bear Grylls the Island *2 - one island of normal people trying to survive, one island of crypto-geeks trying to set up a paper blockchain economy. See which lot lasts longer...
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:15PM (1 child)
The producers ensure the pretty people on the non-geek island get extra food.
The geeks all die when war breaks out after someone mentions a preference for emacs.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by qzm on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:41PM
Or alternately the 'Geeks' actually end up working together to solve problems, because they find that more interesting,
while the 'normal people' (read: want-to-be actors) spend the whole time playing popularity games.
but yes, the behind the scenes manipulation is the whole story in reality tv.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 19 2018, @06:12PM
Agreed, 4 agents is not yet "critical mass" requiring decentralized consensus, or even currency. Currency starts to make sense when the size of a community passes "personal familiarity," about 200 individuals by some estimates. And decentralized consensus would seem to need at least that large a group before it brings any real value.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:59PM (1 child)
The problem is trust: if people could sit around and talk like adults, there'd be peace on Earth.
Unfortunately, there are few adults in the world and less trust.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 20 2018, @10:02AM
If you are on a lonely island with three other people, I guess you learn pretty fast whom you can trust and whom you can't.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.