FoldingCoin - HackerNews
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8962896
Gridcoin - The Bad
https://web-in-security.blogspot.ca/2017/08/gridcoin-bad.html
https://github.com/Erkan-Yilmaz/GRC/issues/34
How does GRC "securely" reward BOINC computations?
https://www.reddit.com/r/gridcoin/comments/5w4v4i/how_does_grc_securely_reward_boinc_computations/
"nevertheless destroyable by a malicious actor with reasonable funding, since it relies on a centralized service to distribute its data."
"there is some concern about Gridcoin's dependency on a second outside network (the various BOINC projects and statistics collections and so on) which could be an issue for people who believe that it negatively impacts Gridcoin's decentralization as compared to Bitcoin, which has no such external dependencies."
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/37276/why-cant-bitcoin-switch-over-to-gridcoins-proof-of-work-system
Gridcoin vs Golem
http://www.natesimpson.com/blog/archives/2017/05/21/why-gridcoin-beats-golem-hands-down/
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I definitely see Swongels point and agree with his reasoning about decentralization,
But also going along that line of thinking, how truly decentralized is Bitcoin?
Theres a group of devs called Bitcoin Core that control commit access,
theres no inherent way to pay the Devs from Bitcoin itself and so they get funding from outside investors/donators that most likely have strings attached,
theres also the issue of mining becoming more and more centralized with ASICs with a few major players/groups controlling the majority of the network hash power,
Is Bitcoin decentralized?
How secure is the hardware that runs miners and nodes and wallets? Are there government backdoors built in?
How many people actually read the code that gets added to Bitcoin, How many have the skill to understand it?
Could someone pay off/bribe/blackmail all the Bitcoin devs?
Could someone hack 51% of Bitcoin's 11,000 full nodes?
Could a supercomputer come about that makes SHA 256 obsolete? How soon would we know about it?
What if the internet and computer use becomes extremely censored and monitored?
What happens if electricity across the world gets shut down?
What if the government prints more money and buys 51% of the currency?
How much does the average cryptocurrency investor or average person truly understand and care about 100% decentralization?
Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic, Ripple vs Stellar
Also its kind of funny, whenever there are any issues in the crypto space (coin fork/clone, trade scam, coin scam, exchange scam, etc),
theres tons of people who want the government to step in or want to add regulation
Is rewarding scientific research worth the risk of some centralization?
Is there any way to reward science research without centralization?
Im still quite new to cryptocurrency and I only know a little, just thinking out loud, I look forward to learning more!
I think the mining cycles going towards research is pretty awesome,
though I am also slightly worried about potential security concerns,
but Im down to see how it plays out.
Hi Togo,
I'll gladly answer some of your questions:
But also going along that line of thinking, how truly decentralized is Bitcoin?
"Theres a group of devs called Bitcoin Core that control commit access,
theres no inherent way to pay the Devs from Bitcoin itself and so they get funding from outside investors/donators that most likely have strings attached,
theres also the issue of mining becoming more and more centralized with ASICs with a few major players/groups controlling the majority of the network hash power,
Is Bitcoin decentralized?"
How do get open source developers paid for their work?
First of all I'll give you a link to a Wikipedia going into detail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-source_softwareBut personally I would use the reputation and experience from contributing to Bitcoin software in order to get jobs or provide services to companies interested in deploying Block Chain technology this can be very lucrative. (Companies such as Red Hat and Canoncical run off this business-model).
"theres also the issue of mining becoming more and more centralized with ASICs with a few major players/groups controlling the majority of the network hash power"
Yes, unfortunatly for Bitcoin ASICS make the amount of stakeholders in mining smaller than perhaps desirable, however there are still mutliple miners who all have the incentive to act in a good way there is an financial incentive for them not to join an attack (as they might lose mined bitcoins, Section 6 of the original Bitcoin white paper:
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf).
"How secure is the hardware that runs miners and nodes and wallets?"
Software security is defined by against which threat-model a system is protected, all Intel processors for instance contain Intel Managment Engine allowing for anyone with the key to take over. However Bitcoin is ported to many different hardware types, hardware wallets running open-hardware MIPS processors for instance would be incredibly hard to remotely exploit. Nevertheless security will and can never be completely guarenteed (anyone who does lies), however this doesn't mean all threats are equal.
"How many people actually read the code that gets added to Bitcoin, How many have the skill to understand it?"
Many people have read the original Bitcoin client source code and audited it, however Bitcoin is not software it's a protocol; there are multiple implementations audited made by different people. Most are open source, some are not; this however means that the source code cannot be changed by a single person a change in protocol must be implemented by all software implementations of Bitcoin.
Anyone understanding C++ can read the C++ implementation of Bitcoin, there are however implementations availible in Java and Python (read more:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/213pxw/what_programming_language_is_bitcoin_written_in/)
"Could someone pay off/bribe/blackmail all the Bitcoin devs?"
Unlikely but not impossible, however if people decide that a new version of the protocol is harmful they can choose to fork (such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold) this way the coin splits in two with the community choosing which version they like best and choose to use that one.
"Could someone hack 51% of Bitcoin's 11,000 full nodes?"
Yes, one would have to hack 51% of the miners however, these miners all use different software in highly secured environments, if they were to be hacked they'd notice (by missing expected Bitcoins) and look in to the problem. One would have to do a great amount of hacking in order to get 51% of all the mining capacity hacked. (in contrast to just 1 instance when using a centralised system).
"Could a supercomputer come about that makes SHA 256 obsolete? How soon would we know about it?"
This is a really hard problem in Computer Science/Maths called P!=NP, In short all modern encryption and computer security depends on this rule being true. Breaking SHA256 (I would interpret as making it trivial to reverse the hashing operation) would have huge implications to all systems (not only crypto currency, but traditional finance, government, armed forces, etc.)
"What if the internet and computer use becomes extremely censored and monitored?"
If this happens, finance is no longer of importance, freedom of communication is a basic human right worth more than any monetary amount will ever be.
"What happens if electricity across the world gets shut down?"
Solar panels and wind mills will get more expensive, money will dissapear (I personally use very little cash these days anymore with electronic payment systems being wide spread).
https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-worlds-money-is-digital"What if the government prints more money and buys 51% of the currency?"
Crypto prices will rise during this buying, unless 51% chooses to sell their crypto for now useless and inflation torn fiat currency this cannot happen.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/634/economics/the-problem-with-printing-money/"How much does the average cryptocurrency investor or average person truly understand and care about 100% decentralization?
Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic, Ripple vs Stellar"
Less than they should, decentralised trustless consensus is the basis on which crypto currency is built. How many people understand encryption? Very few, many profit from it though removing encryption from online banking for example would negatively impact all users.
That's why people like me very much try to make noise when such a thing is planned.
People holding Bible Pay share my interest of keeping the coin decentralised regardless if they understand the underlying technology, if you're interested about why this is important I recommend reading the original Bitcoin white paper of watching a video going through it in layman terms. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs"Is rewarding scientific research worth the risk of some centralization?"
No, this update might very realistically destroy the network which will have as a consequence that people will stop mining which will not only destroy the coin and take away money from orphans it will also make the added amount of compute power to research dissapear.
"Is there any way to reward science research without centralization?"
Yes, we could for example set another tithe for scientific research and donate the money to the project directly via the decentralised charity committee (master node voting). Directly rewarding researchers and allowing them to best allocate the funds to help scientific research.
I hope these answers clear up some of the questions you and others may have about this change and why there's a need to keep crypto currency decentralised.
