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| author | Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> | 2015-03-08 16:45:02 -0500 |
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| committer | Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> | 2015-03-08 16:45:02 -0500 |
| commit | 1f09e4ed7440b6145a0d85f9b09143775e6f382a (patch) | |
| tree | 08b4a4018609148afa760891a0dcfd216b3f457c | |
| parent | f7f28bf1c7dd1ae6747e3e1e3f5dcc9216a90ed8 (diff) | |
| download | diyhpluswiki-1f09e4ed.tar.gz diyhpluswiki-1f09e4ed.zip | |
petertodd said paxos
| -rw-r--r-- | transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/peter-todd-scalability.mdwn | 2 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/peter-todd-scalability.mdwn b/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/peter-todd-scalability.mdwn index cb7e80e..ced9b0d 100644 --- a/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/peter-todd-scalability.mdwn +++ b/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/peter-todd-scalability.mdwn @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Right now a block does not commit to its contents in a way that is indexable. If The problem is, it's not that simple. Bitcoin is not something where we have a centralized database. This is not a web2.0 application where we have someone who we already trust. We don't just query them for data. "Be your own bank" means that we want to have a system where everyone can participate fully. When we say fully we mean not just in making a transaction but also in terms of being a part of consensus and validation and the decentralization. After all, if you define "fully" as "able to make a transaction" then technically Paypal is a system where everyone can participate. A paypal transaction costs 1% or 5% of the value of the transaction. That's "fully participating" I guess. -Miners are a trusted third party. That trusted third party as a whole signs blocks. Blockstream calls this a dynamic membership multi-party signature. Matt used this term earlier today. It's kind of this way of thinking about consensus algorithms in the context of how people talk about consensus. PAKSAWs and other algorithms have a notion of a set of people in the consensus. But in Bitcoin the contribution is that the set can change. That's not to say that Bitcoin is not a trusted system... miners can censor transactions, they can change the rules. Your only way of protecting against that is your ability to audit what they are doing and participate. +Miners are a trusted third party. That trusted third party as a whole signs blocks. Blockstream calls this a dynamic membership multi-party signature. Matt used this term earlier today. It's kind of this way of thinking about consensus algorithms in the context of how people talk about consensus. Paxos and other algorithms have a notion of a set of people in the consensus. But in Bitcoin the contribution is that the set can change. That's not to say that Bitcoin is not a trusted system... miners can censor transactions, they can change the rules. Your only way of protecting against that is your ability to audit what they are doing and participate. Bitcoin has economic incentives to build along these chains, touching along what Matt Corallo was talking about. Those incentives do not mean anything if noboy has incentives to be a part of that. When the number of participants is quite small, then incentives are hard to align and make work properly. |