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EPFL Researchers Invent Low-Cost Alternative to Bitcoin

posted by martyb on Monday September 30 2019, @10:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the money-for-nothing? dept.

AnonTechie writes:

EPFL Researchers Invent Low-Cost Alternative to Bitcoin:

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is limited by its astronomical electricity consumption and outsized carbon footprint. A nearly zero-energy alternative sounds too good to be true, but as School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) Professor Rachid Guerraoui explains, it all comes down to our understanding of what makes transactions secure.

To explain why the system developed in his Distributed Computing Lab (DCL) represents a paradigm shift in how we think about cryptocurrencies -- and about digital trust in general -- Professor Rachid Guerraoui uses a legal metaphor: all players in this new system are "innocent until proven guilty."

This is in contrast to the traditional Bitcoin model first described in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, which relies on solving a difficult problem called "consensus" to guarantee the security of transactions. In this model, everyone in a distributed system must agree on the validity of all transactions to prevent malicious players from cheating -- for example, by spending the same digital tokens twice (double-spending). In order to prove their honesty and achieve consensus, players must execute complex -- and energy-intensive -- computing tasks that are then verified by the other players.

But in their new system, Guerraoui and his colleagues flip the assumption that all players are potential cheaters on its head.

What do you guys think? Will this replace Bitcoin?

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:28AM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:28AM (#901108) Journal
    Any system that starts with the assumption that everyone is honest until proven otherwise is doomed. Every person who was found guilty in a court of law was, until the verdict, presumed innocent. Just because someone deserves a presumption of innocence in court doesn't mean that they deserve a presumption of honesty until disproven. Otherwise there would be no reason to check job references, have a car or home inspected before purchase, ask others their opinion of a book, restaurant, or repair shop, read the fine print on a mobile phone contract, etc.

    The web site looks like someone is trolling for grant money and potential suckers^winvestors. It's the current economic model - you don't need a reasonable expectation that something will work, just people greedy enough to want to believe. And cryptocurrency, by its nature, attracts people who really, really want to believe.

    Even bullets will be a more stable currency than cryptocurrency. And I'm saying that as someone who is in favour of gun control laws.

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