Re: [Bitcoin-development] Getting trusted metrics from the block chain in an untrusted environment ?
Hi Rob,
Thank you for answering.
> So you want to 'benefit' from the network without contributing to it ?
> Not going to happen - why would anyone be interested in providing you
'free compute resources' ?
Not free. As I stated in my second email ("some more thoughts" etc.), it
seems really fitting to pay a fee to the network for every metric request
you send. 'I want to execute this request on your blockchain, and I want
the response to be approved by the Bitcoin network, and here is a fee for
all the computing trouble".
You either have the blockchain and the hardware resources to compute things
based on it, or you have addresses that takes a few bytes of data in your
environement but contains money, potentially a lot. The situation seems
plausible to me.
The thing is, as soon as there is an exchange of value (hardware computing
resources vs bitcoins) between parties that do not trust each other, there
is a need for proof of work, and thus my idea (in my second email) of a
specifc block chain that would store metric requests, current block number
when they were asked, and hash of theirs responses. This can be validated
by others nodes and as such can be published in a ledger just like bitcoin
transaction.
> Setup a node, create an API interface and have your 'app' use your API on
yoru node :p
The idea would have been actually to be able to get these computations in a
trusted way without having access to a specific trusted node. Compensating
absence of trust by providing actual money.
Anyways. I got quite a few answer privately, and after study it seems SPV
mode of bitcoinj will be just fine for my specific needs. I would have
liked the solution to be network-centric ideally (By committing to an
SPV-ready API like bitcoinj, I'm committing to languages that provide a
stable SPV API), but I'll be just fine with bitcoinj for now.
Thank you Rob and everyone for your time.
Clément
On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:44 PM, Clément Elbaz wrote:
> Some more thoughts :
>
> If no such project exist yet, I thought it could work with an alternate,
> small and fixed-length 'metric request block chain' of some sort.
>
> It would temporarily stores structures defined as [metric request |
> current block number when request was made | hash of the response] instead
> of financial transactions.
>
> These structures are verifiable so it could work the same way as a regular
> financial blochchain.
>
> It should not be part of the main Bitcoin protocol but could be a plugin
> interacting with the data managed by the fullnode bitcoin software.
>
> Also, metrics requests can be expensive to compute and validate, so it
> would make sense to pay a fee everytime you ask one.
>
> Does any of this makes any sense to you ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Clément
>
--
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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The insecurity of merge-mining
On 1/6/14, Peter Todd wrote: > On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 01:27:42AM +0100, Jorge Timón wrote: > It's not meant to prove anything - the proof-of-sacrificed-bitcoins > mentioned(*) in it is secure only if Bitcoin itself is secure and > functional. I referred you to it because understanding the system will > help you understand my thinking behind merge-mining. > > *) It also mentions proof-of-sacrificed-zerocoins which *is* distinct > because you're sacrificing the thing that the chain is about. Now that > has some proof-of-stake tinges to it for sure - I myself am not > convinced it is or isn't a viable scheme. I'm not sure I understand all the differences between proof-of-sacrificed-bitcoins and proof-of-sacrificed-newcoins, but I'm still convinced this doesn't have anything to do with MM PoW vs PoW. The idea looks very interesting and I will ask you and adam to understand it better on IRC, but take into account that when you say "merged mining is insecure" some people hear "merged mined altcoins are less secure than non-MM altcoins" (which is false) and somehow conclude "scrypt altchains are more secure than SHA256 altchains". Whether we like it or not, many people believe that scrypt, quark or primecoin PoW algorithms are somehow more secure than SHA256, and claims that "merged mining is insecure" from core bitcoin developers contribute to spread those beliefs and that no new altcoin has been created with the intend of being merged mined for quite a while. I'm not trying to make you or anyone here responsible for the mistakes other people make. But rephrasing your claims as "We're exploring new ideas for altchains that could be more secure than MM..." sounds very different from "MM is insecure, by the way look at this new idea..." >> Feel free to ask for corrections in the example if you think it needs >> them. >> Feel free to bring your edge legal cases back, but please try to do it >> on top of the example. > > You're argument is perfectly valid and correct, *if* the assumptions > behind it hold. The problem is you're assuming miners act rationally and > have equal opportunities - that's a very big assumption and I have > strong doubts it holds, particularly for alts with a small amount of > hashing power. That's why I made the offer above. What you point out is the reason why freicoin started without merged mining, to grow its own independent security first, before starting to be merged mined. > You know, something that I haven't made clear in this discussion is that > while I think merge-mining is insecure, in the sense of "should my new > fancy alt-coin protocol widget use it?", I *also* don't think regular > mining is much better. In some cases it will be worse due to social > factors. (e.g. a bunch of big pools are going to merge-mine my scheme on > launch day because it makes puppies cuter and kids smile) Fair enough. Do you see any case where an independently pow validated altcoin is more secure than a merged mined one? The reason why I participated in the discussion was that I believe that merged mined PoW is more secure than completely-independent-from-bitcoin pow. And I thought that that was the general understanding in the Bitcoin development community. If that's the case, we agree on what's more important to me. About the new proposal, I don't have a firm opinion yet. I'm sorry but I have to understand it better and think about it in more depth. -- CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Getting trusted metrics from the block chain in an untrusted environment ?
> My program should run on lightweight/embedded hardware. The execution > environment provides access to the Bitcoin network but not enough > resources to set up a trusted node along with my program. So you want to 'benefit' from the network without contributing to it ? > I would need a way to ask an untrusted Bitcoin node to compute some > 'metric request' on my behalf and having the result of that metric > request validated by the network. Not going to happen - why would anyone be interested in providing you 'free compute resources' ? > Is there any available or work-in-progress projects that would come > close to this need ? Or should I do it myself ? :-) Setup a node, create an API interface and have your 'app' use your API on yoru node :p Rob -- CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
