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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 19 2018, @01:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-not-your-biggest-concern dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:21PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:21PM (#681597)

    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)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 19 2018, @06:14PM (#681626)

    > 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)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:15PM (#681662) Journal

      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

        by qzm (3260) on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:41PM (#681667)

        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.