"Decentralized Finance" Ahh, so it's the thing Bitcoin proved to be impossible. Any decentralized system with untrusted nodes needs a way to regulate the influence of individual nodes. This may not matter in some systems as nothing of value will be gained. When influence in the system allows you to extract value from it which allows you to have more influence, the system will always re-centralize itself as we are seeing with crypto currencies now.
Blockchain based systems use distributed hashing to solve the byzantine generals problem. The "way to regulate the influence of individual nodes" is provided by building a blockchain of transactions. There is no central control like you imply.
Only when you imply that every participant has roughly the same amount of computing power to mine. This became untrue when people started to buy computers in order to mine currencies. This causes people who invested more to gain more from mining. Effectively this causes most mining to be done by a hand full of entities today.
Yes, this is no central control, but no it's not really distributed. We are now at roughly the same point as traditional currencies are.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday February 04, 2021 @02:15PM (#61027864)
What you're describing is Bitcoin. There are plenty of other DeFi platforms and currencies and distributed computing blockchains that have nothing to do with bitcoin.
I can't think of a single blockchain I would call "relevant" other than Bitcoin and Etherium, unless you intend to stretch the definition of a blockchain to include every git repo.
Monero is pretty relevant - the main selling point being that it eliminates the downsides of Bitcoin and Ethereum (IE, being able to follow chains of transactions)
But as the saying goes (often attributed to Yogi Berra): In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they aren't.
Blockchains for instance allow for anonymous but verified transactions as long as the individual transactions within a chain are distributed between different nodes operated by different entities. But if you are operating a sizeable amount of nodes within a blockchain network, your nodes might appear several times within the same blockchain, and with the b
Do you suffer painful illumination?
-- Isaac Newton, "Optics"
What's DeFi? (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:What's DeFi? (Score:2)
"Decentralized Finance"
Ahh, so it's the thing Bitcoin proved to be impossible. Any decentralized system with untrusted nodes needs a way to regulate the influence of individual nodes. This may not matter in some systems as nothing of value will be gained. When influence in the system allows you to extract value from it which allows you to have more influence, the system will always re-centralize itself as we are seeing with crypto currencies now.
Re: (Score:2)
Blockchain based systems use distributed hashing to solve the byzantine generals problem. The "way to regulate the influence of individual nodes" is provided by building a blockchain of transactions. There is no central control like you imply.
Re: (Score:2)
"There is no central control like you imply."
Only when you imply that every participant has roughly the same amount of computing power to mine. This became untrue when people started to buy computers in order to mine currencies. This causes people who invested more to gain more from mining. Effectively this causes most mining to be done by a hand full of entities today.
Yes, this is no central control, but no it's not really distributed. We are now at roughly the same point as traditional currencies are.
Re:What's DeFi? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Not many newer, relevant blockchains depend on PoW. In fact, I can't think of a single one. Can you?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
But as the saying goes (often attributed to Yogi Berra): In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they aren't.
Blockchains for instance allow for anonymous but verified transactions as long as the individual transactions within a chain are distributed between different nodes operated by different entities. But if you are operating a sizeable amount of nodes within a blockchain network, your nodes might appear several times within the same blockchain, and with the b