F****** blockchains, how do they work?

[jasc15]

Instead of posting customer hashes to a public digital ledger, Surety creates a unique hash value of all the new seals added to the database each week and publishes this hash value in the New York Times. The hash is placed in a small ad in the Times classified section under the heading “Notices & Lost and Found” and has appeared once a week since 1995.

As Ethereum’s cofounder Vitalik Buterin joked on Twitter, if someone wanted to compromise Surety’s blockchain they could “make fake newspapers with a different chain of hashes and circulate them more widely.” Given that the New York Times has an average daily print circulation of about 570,000 copies, this would probably be the stunt of the century.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5nzx4/what-was-the-first-blockchain

[pg1067]

Huh?

[TAC]

Is this a block thread?

[Stadler]

I don't know whether to be scared, amused, angry, or to go shut off my credit cards.   

[jasc15]

It's a very simple low-tech application of the blockchain idea.  I have a very tenuous understanding of blockchain, but in the context I have read about it, there was always a high tech environment it existed in.  Having the hash physically printed hundreds of thousands of times every week in a newspaper is a pretty clever way to ensure its validity.

[bosk1]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

[Crow]

I have never figured out what a blockchain actually is and I don't plan to find out

[jasc15]

I think we need Rumborak here.  I posted because I found it interesting, and thought others here would know more than I do and would also find it interesting.

[ariich]

I honestly don't understand Bitcoin/blockchains. I read about it once, a while ago, and I'm sure immediately I thought "ok, I sort of get it", but nope it's all gone again.

[bosk1]

This thread is literally the first time I have ever even heard the term "blockchain," and I now know nothing more about it than I did before I ever heard of it.

[ariich]

I love what an old-man forum this is. Literally nobody understands blockchain, not even the guy who started the thread.

[Cool Chris]

This thread is literally the first time I have ever even heard the term "blockchain," and I now know nothing more about it than I did before I ever heard of it.

Same here. Not even sure why clicked on the thread. Seemed like the chance to learn something. Also the subject being in [ ]s made it stand out.

[jasc15]

This thread is literally the first time I have ever even heard the term "blockchain," and I now know nothing more about it than I did before I ever heard of it.

You've certainly heard of Bitcoin, and blockchain is a term that has reached the public awareness alongside it.  In the context of Bitcoin, blockchain is the public ledger that everyone has access to, and there are many many copies of, so the world knows that I paid you 1 bitcoin and you received 1 bitcoin.  Neither of us can claim that the transaction didn't occur because everyone else has a record of this transaction.

The image I posted above is a public ledger, but for the purpose of maintaining the veracity of a set of controlled documents rather than financial transactions.

[King Postwhore]

Let me use mental telepathy to contact him.

[rumborak]

Blockchains aren't all that difficult really. Imagine you're kneading dough, and at every fold you're inserting a raisin at some specific spot. After 500 kneads, you have a really unique piece of dough that is virtually impossible to recreate or fake.

In the actual application, the raisin is a money transaction (user A transferring money to user B), and the dough is something called a "hash", which is a computer science thing, but the important part, to stick with the analogy, is that it's very easy to fold your dough another fold, but it's virtually impossible to "unfold" once it's done.

So, you have this ever-marching progression of folds, each fold incorporating the entire history of raisins/money transactions.

The folding is called "Bitcoin mining", but so that it doesn't grow out of bounds, they make it increasingly hard to fold. Because as an incentive to fold, you actually get money in return. So, the interesting thing about it that the act of recording the transactions, i.e. the folding, also makes you money, thus keeping alive the whole thing.

[El Barto]

Well done.

[rumborak]

Thank you!

I'm amazed I still count as the resident geek on this forum

BTW, there are issues with blockchains that the usual Bitcoin bois will gloss over, but IMO they are serious detractors to the whole thing, and why, IMO, blockchains will stay niche.

[Crow]

I love what an old-man forum this is. Literally nobody understands blockchain, not even the guy who started the thread.

I'm 25 and in the tech industry and I still have no clue what a blockchain is 

I'm also willfully choosing to not read the above posts so I can remain ignorant

[Chino]

Yup. Color me lost.

[El Barto]

Thank you!

I'm amazed I still count as the resident geek on this forum

BTW, there are issues with blockchains that the usual Bitcoin bois will gloss over, but IMO they are serious detractors to the whole thing, and why, IMO, blockchains will stay niche.

I know that energy costs are very close to the tipping point where mining a bitcoin costs more than the bitcoin. I was recently in the market for a used graphics card and there's a real panic going on with the [former] miners.

[PowerSlave]

All this talk about doughy folds reminds me of a blind date that I went on years ago...

[jasc15]

link=topic=52847.msg2468247#msg2468247 date=1535494425]I know that energy costs are very close to the tipping point where mining a bitcoin costs more than the bitcoin.

That's why you use other people's energy.

https://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/city-employee-fined-for-mining-bitcoins-on-work-computer.html

[rumborak]

Thank you!

I'm amazed I still count as the resident geek on this forum

BTW, there are issues with blockchains that the usual Bitcoin bois will gloss over, but IMO they are serious detractors to the whole thing, and why, IMO, blockchains will stay niche.

I know that energy costs are very close to the tipping point where mining a bitcoin costs more than the bitcoin. I was recently in the market for a used graphics card and there's a real panic going on with the [former] miners.

The energy consumption to mine is one of my peeves. Seriously, in a world of climate change, do we really need a scheme that has pure energy waste as one of its pillars? Bitcoin mining already wastes more energy than all of Iceland's homes combined.

[Stadler]

Well done.

I thought you meant King actually calling Rumbo telepathically.


And PowerSlave, thanks for sharing.

[Stadler]

Thank you!

I'm amazed I still count as the resident geek on this forum

BTW, there are issues with blockchains that the usual Bitcoin bois will gloss over, but IMO they are serious detractors to the whole thing, and why, IMO, blockchains will stay niche.

I know that energy costs are very close to the tipping point where mining a bitcoin costs more than the bitcoin. I was recently in the market for a used graphics card and there's a real panic going on with the [former] miners.

The energy consumption to mine is one of my peeves. Seriously, in a world of climate change, do we really need a scheme that has pure energy waste as one of its pillars? Bitcoin mining already wastes more energy than all of Iceland's homes combined.

how does that work?   I thought the whole kit and caboodle was virtual (and thus the need for the blockchain to begin with)?   What's the energy spend?  Computational power? 

[rumborak]

Yeah, it's all computational, and the problem is that it's not like it gets easier over time due to Moore's Law or something. There's an artificial race as part of the scheme that makes it increasingly harder (i.e. more energy needs to be spent)  to do the folding.

Which then brings up the next problem of blockchains. The whole process kinda relies (in terms of security) on a lot of different people doing the folding, but because of economy of scale, theres now fewer and fewer people (or dare I say, organizations writing with Cyrillic alphabets) doing the folding because only they can economically blow the energy willy-nilly. So, not only are you blowing increasing amounts of energy out of the window, but the ability to do so gets concentrated with increasingly sketchy actors. The moment one of those actors dominates more than 50% of the folding, they are now in a position to manipulate it in any way they want. And poof, there goes everybody's money, or some questionable organization finally gets the money for the weapons they always wanted.

[cramx3]

Totally relevant to the discussion of bit coin and being worth mining vs power costs while including Napalm Death and comedy

Gilfoyle's Bitcoin Warning - Silicon Valley

Good discussion rumbo, I've always been really hesitant to embrace bitcoin and therefore I've only ever given myself or looked to learn a little about blockchain, but I think you summed it up really well.

However, I am not sure what the original point was with regards to the new york times?  Some company was publicly releasing the hash for their own records so that their data would not be manipulated?  I'm not sure of the point and if they were doing this without people knowing for all these years for their own sake, or was there other reasons that I am not understanding?

[jasc15]

However, I am not sure what the original point was with regards to the new york times?  Some company was publicly releasing the hash for their own records so that their data would not be manipulated?  I'm not sure of the point and if they were doing this without people knowing for all these years for their own sake, or was there other reasons that I am not understanding?

I just found it interesting that there has been an analog application of blockchain for 23 years, not at all related to crypto-currency, when it seemed (to me at least) to be a totally new technology. 

[lonestar]

When I opened this thread yesterday, I gave it a cursory read and closed the fucker totally lost. It's comforting to know others are as lost as I was. Though I got to admit I'm even lost with Rumbo's excellent dough metaphor, though that may be I'm a chef, not a baker...

[Dublagent66]

That would be a good title for DT's next album.  Blockchain.  They released it, you heard it and no one can deny it.  You're welcome. 

[cramx3]

That would be a good title for DT's next album.  Blockchain.  They released it, you heard it and no one can deny it.  You're welcome. 

I'd call it "The Blockchain" but I think thats actually a solid album title for a prog band 

[El Barto]

Thank you!

I'm amazed I still count as the resident geek on this forum

BTW, there are issues with blockchains that the usual Bitcoin bois will gloss over, but IMO they are serious detractors to the whole thing, and why, IMO, blockchains will stay niche.

I know that energy costs are very close to the tipping point where mining a bitcoin costs more than the bitcoin. I was recently in the market for a used graphics card and there's a real panic going on with the [former] miners.

The energy consumption to mine is one of my peeves. Seriously, in a world of climate change, do we really need a scheme that has pure energy waste as one of its pillars? Bitcoin mining already wastes more energy than all of Iceland's homes combined.

how does that work?   I thought the whole kit and caboodle was virtual (and thus the need for the blockchain to begin with)?   What's the energy spend?  Computational power?

For a more down to Earth description consider thousands of normal folks mining from home. For years people were building custom computer rigs with 8 graphics cards in them and leaving them to run 24/7/365. For reasons I'm not real clear on GPUs are far better at folding than CPUs. The R9 290x I picked up on eBay uses 350w at load. A GPU in my computer would see that for an hour or two per night. A miner would run at that constantly with as many of those cards as he could afford. Now he's burning 2 or 3 kw every hour. For a while that was profitable, but eventually folding became slow enough that you couldn't earn enough coin to pay your light bill.

I don't know anything about it but that might be why everybody has switched to mining etherium. When that gets too hard to fold they'll move to the newest coin on the block.

[vtgrad]

To me, ETH's open source is the way to bring the blockchain idea into most avenues of commerce and information; I could see applications for the blockchain model for my own niche in the business world for Title/Abstracts for real estate transactions... imagine being able to almost instantaneously see the chain of title for a property and provide that information to a lender or underwriter... would cut 7-10 business days from the transaction in my estimation.

I've always understood the coins (BTC, ETH, LTC, etc) as a means of funding the actual blockchain ledger itself... a way to decentralize how we pay each other for goods and services and a way that we (the collective body of purchasers and sellers) could control the information regarding our transactions in a way that could be (in theory) more secure for that data than what is in-place today.  Of course, Rumby is right regarding fewer and fewer entities controlling that ledger.

I think now that major, major players are entering the blockchain game (JP Morgan and other entities that first snubbed their noses at blockchain) we may see it creep into mainstream transactions... I don't think that the tech is going away anytime soon and the arbitrage between coin and the world's currencies is making a lot of people very wealthy.  We'll have to see what happens in late Sept when the SEC reviews the Crypto ETF again to see if we get another bump like last year's bubble.