Digital preservationist, David Rosenthal, has a blog post discussing his recent Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) talk about distributed ledger technology. CNI is a joint initiative of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and EDUCAUSE to promote the use of digital information technologies to advance scholarship and education. The discrepancy between the available capacity in transactions per second and what is actually needed, plus the excessive power consumption, suggests that many attempted uses for distributed ledgers are inappropriate and counterproductive.
I gave a talk at the Fall CNI meeting entitled Blockchain: What's Not To Like? The abstract was:
We're in a period when blockchain or "Distributed Ledger Technology" is the Solution to Everything™, so it is inevitable that it will be proposed as the solution to the problems of academic communication and digital preservation. These proposals typically assume, despite the evidence, that real-world blockchain implementations actually deliver the theoretical attributes of decentralization, immutability, anonymity, security, scalability, sustainability, lack of trust, etc. The proposers appear to believe that Satoshi Nakamoto revealed the infallible Bitcoin protocol to the world on golden tablets; they typically don't appreciate or cite the nearly three decades of research and implementation that led up to it. This talk will discuss the mis-match between theory and practice in blockchain technology, and how it applies to various proposed applications of interest to the CNI audience.
Below the fold, an edited text of the talk with links to the sources, and much additional material. The colored boxes contain quotations that were on the slides but weren't spoken.
Earlier on SN:
BitCoin's Record Drop may have Started Scaring Miners Away
Cryptocurrency Miners Are Building Their Own Electricity Infrastructure
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Access to cheap electricity can make or break a cryptocurrency mining operation, and firms angling to strike it rich in an industry where delays can and will cost digital money will do just about anything to get it, as soon as they can.
The latest move in the quest for bargain-basement kilowatt hours, as quickly as possible: building out local power grids with bespoke electrical substations.
Canadian company DMG Blockchain is building what it hopes will be a fully-functioning substation near the Southern British Columbia town of Castlegar, which is electrified by hydro power. When I spoke to Steven Eliscu, who leads corporate development for DMG, over the phone, he told me that building the substation costs millions of dollars and required the company to build its own access road to haul equipment to the site. The goal: to plug it into the local grid and have it power DMG's expanded mining operations by September.
"At the end of August we'll go through a commissioning process where the utility will test everything as a completed substation and make sure that the town doesn't blow up when we flip the switch," Eliscu told me over the phone.
Source: MotherBoard
Bitcoin just ended its worst-performing month in seven years in terms of month-over-month price declines. While this is comparing rate of fall and not absolute values, the world of economics is run on rate.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency began November at an average price across exchanges of $6,341, but as of 0:00 UTC on December 1 is trading at just $3,964, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
As it stands, the near $2,400 drop in bitcoin’s price has created a -37.4 percent monthly performance, which is its worst on record since August 2011, when it fell from roughly $8 to $4.80 to print a -40 percent monthly loss.
This may have some good impact for PC gamers:
Bitcoin miners hit hard by the cryptocurrency’s crash may be throwing in the towel.
The Bitcoin network’s hash rate, one way of gauging the computing power dedicated to mining the digital currency, dropped about 24 percent from an all-time high at the end of August through Nov. 24, according to Blockchain.com. While the decline may have partially resulted from miners switching to other cryptocurrencies, JPMorgan Chase & Co. says some in the industry are losing money after Bitcoin’s price tumbled.
A big miner shakeout could be bad news for chipmakers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Nvidia Corp. who supply the industry, along with mining-rig designers like Bitmain Technologies Ltd. that are pursuing initial public offerings.
When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed. "This was clearly going to be a circus," Todd told WIRED in an email.
[...]
The mystery has proved all the more irresistible for the trove of bitcoin Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.
[...]
Since the documentary aired, Todd has repeatedly and categorically denied that he created Bitcoin: "For the record, I am not Satoshi," he alleges. "I think Cullen made the Satoshi accusation for marketing. He needed a way to get attention for his film."
[...]
The search for the creator of Bitcoin has dragged into its orbit a colorful cast of characters, among them Hal Finney, recipient of the first ever bitcoin transaction; Adam Back, designer of a precursor technology cited in the Bitcoin white paper; and cryptographer Nick Szabo, to name just a few. Journalists at Newsweek, The New York Times, and WIRED, among others, have all taken stabs at solving the Satoshi riddle. But irrefutable proof has never been unearthed.
[...]
The case for Sassaman was first outlined in 2021 by Evan Hatch, founder of crypto gaming platform Worlds. Whenever speculation about Sassaman bubbles periodically to the surface, the spotlight is thrown on his widow, software developer Meredith Patterson, who believes the theory is unfounded."People used to be really fucking nosy and entitled. I'd get people writing me with a two-page list of dates and locations, asking where I was at such and such a time or place," says Patterson. "Where do you get off? A complete stranger walking up to a widow and trying to interrogate her. It's like, fuck off Sergeant Joe Friday."
[...]
"I was relieved for myself and my family that they named Peter Todd," says Patterson. "But I feel sorry for Peter Todd. Frankly, nobody deserves getting a target painted on their back."
[...]
Todd expects that "continued harassment by crazy people" will become the indefinite status quo. But he says the potential personal safety implications are his chief concern—and the reason he has gone into hiding.
[...]
Hoback sees things very differently. Though there have been cases where violent extortionists have targeted crypto holders, plenty of people have been unmasked as Satoshi before—and nothing terrible is known to have happened to them, he argues. "I think the idea that it puts their life [at risk] is a little overblown," says Hoback.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:53PM
Who ruin everything with their mindbogglingly irrationally, boundless greed.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:59PM (10 children)
Isn't blockchain about who can do the most proof of work and overwhelm the ledgers that are agreed upon by consensus? Or not?
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday December 12 2018, @09:16PM (1 child)
Bitcoin requires proof-of-work (mining)
Blockchain requires verified encrypted transactions. You shouldn't have to mine your reciept
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 13 2018, @03:16PM
Ah, thanks!
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @09:23PM (7 children)
No, that's not true at all in fact.
There are multiple consensus models. PoW is one, but there are literally thousands of others.
Blockchain is about taking the cryptographic hash of the sum of previous hashes and using it as the basis point for the next step in the chain.
It's called "block chain", because data submitted to the network is aggregated into relatively fixed size blocks of information, with the cryptographic hash of the data contained within the block, plus the cryptographic hash of the previous block being used to form a chain. Different chains have different ways of accomplishing this. However the more recent blockchain technologies take a hash of the individual unit data, add it the hashes of other data units, never actually storing the raw data itself in the chain. Hashes only, and then the hashes can serve as an address in a content addressed network wherein the raw data unit itself is stored. This reduces size of the chain and means you can use other techniques to achieve consensus on what blocks are accepted or rejected, without the need to marshall gigs of data between worker nodes.
Fundamentally the article fails to even understand what a blockchain is, nor how they operate.
They are perfect if you need a cryptgraphically secure, time stamped, registry of data especially if this is used and index into a content addressable network.
Ledgers are just an application of the time stamped data.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday December 12 2018, @10:17PM (1 child)
Amazing how often this happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @11:09PM
Yet somehow we want to pretend they know what they are talking about on other topics.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday December 12 2018, @10:28PM
Wow, well put.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 12 2018, @10:42PM (3 children)
I think you're missing the sarcasm in:
Of course that's not what blockchain is designed to do, that's the widely acknowledged (often mistakenly discounted) weakness in the original bitcoin protocol.
Loosely equating blockchain and bitcoin is kind of like loosely equating Republicans with blind fundamentalist racist idiot bigots. Of course that's not true of all Republicans, just the entertaining ones.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)
I know you're being a little sarcastic there, but the shitty Republicans hurt my brain on a logical and moral level. Entertaining they are not, their rhetoric is so obvious and bad I can not call it entertainment. Their views quite literally impact the freedom and safety of their fellow citizens.
For a group that doesn't like being compared to Nazis they sure are quick to label any opposition as Pol Pot style socialists, as if no one has enough of a brain to see through that comparison.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:47PM (1 child)
The #AmazonWashingtonPost [twitter.com] says I'm the worst guy since Pol Pot (RIP!!!). Because I promised to get the 11 million Illegals out of our Country -- something I'm working very hardon (very successfull meeting with Chuck & Nancy). So I invited Henry Kissinger -- big Pol Pot guy -- to my Washington White House. Something Crooked H would have loved to do. She couldn't do it, because she lost very badly. And I had a great talk with Henry. We talked about North Korea, China and the Middle East. So interesting! And I'm thinking, maybe Pol Pot wasn't so bad. He's not my enemy!!!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @01:17AM
Don't you and Chuck and Nancy all basically agree on the immigration issue?
Have you outdone the Deporter in Chief yet?
Only crazy libertarians and socialists believe that labor should be able to move as freely as capital moves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:21PM
Who ruin everything with their mindbogglingly, irrationally boundless greed.
That's what's not to like.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:20PM
it's a jew who finds blockchain to be a threat to his tribe members' global domination scheme known as the fractional reserve banking system.