Periodic reminder that if you ditch the zero-trust part, if you admit that trust matters even a tiny bit, you can ditch the consensus algorithm and run the entire blockchain exercise on one shitty five year old Android phone. A firstgen raspberry pi would be overkill. Seven transactions per second wouldn’t have stretched a 486 on dial-up in 1996 and the whole stack is an embarrassment.
@mhoye I think this is an especially key observation in messaging systems or "social" systems similar to Mastodon, since social systems by nature have to some degree "trusted nodes"— in fact, one of the functions of a social network is to create trusted nodes. Even partial trust can give you several interesting capabilities which zero-trust denies you.
@mcc A thing Matrix does brilliantly, that I wish Mastodon could incorporate, is the ability for instances to autosubscribe to other instances' moderation efforts. A bit of trust, a bit of mutualism and a bit of automation can come together to build some incredibly effective safety mechanisms with relatively little effort.
@mhoye Also, random fun fact with crypto, is the maximum transaction rate for a US-only crypto network is... 31 blockchain operations/second. That's assuming zero network lag, no conflicts or retries, only two mining nodes on the network, and zero processing time for each of those transactions.
That's assuming one miner in San Diego and another in Boston. You can get a screaming 36 ops/sec if it's LA and New York.
It's 3k miles from San Diego to Boston. Each transaction requires a full round trip before committing because to commit the other miner must agree with what you've done and ack that. That's 6k miles of total distance traveled and light just isn't that fast -- at around 186k miles/sec you can only fit 31 round trips of 6k miles into a second.
Go international and it's much worse. Shanghai to NYC is ~7.4k miles, or 14.8k miles round trip, or 12.5 ops/sec
And for even more fun, that requires every actual request to change something (that is, the exchange of numbers between two accounts) hits each miner in the same order. If there's any kind of mis-ordering then some of those transactions will fail and have to be retried, dropping your transaction rate even more.
Adding a third (or more, and anyone can add themselves because it's a trust-free network) transaction processor and your fail rate rises superlinearly. Which is fun.
@kkarhan@mhoye But does it? Is it actually possible to use it as a payment system without trusting someone in the system? And if you have to trust someone, why not just trust MasterCard?
You could host yourself a "full node" for #Monero :monero: and choose where to spend or exchange it.
And #TxProof allows independent verification that a transaction happened, so even in a dispute case before some #Escrow you'd have clear-cut evidence that a transaction happened.
@bhawthorne@mhoye but case in point: the OP was lilely about #Bitcoun :bitcoin: since #Monero :monero: sonce that does scale pretty well and whilst not as fast as #PayPal :paypal: or any #CreditCard it's certainly faster than even #SEPA's "Instant Transfers"...
@kkarhan@mhoye Well, then I would have to trust whoever I hired to install the hardware and configure the software. And if I want to actually, say, exchange some real money for monero or vice versa, I would have to trust the exchange. So, as long as I have to trust someone, what’s wrong with trusting my local savings bank or MasterCard?
Other than for those who wish to engage in criminal transactions, I don’t see the benefit, and I see huge costs.
For example #Banks in the #USA are unstable af and the reason why #CashApp and #Venmo don't operate in the #EU and espechally #Germany isn't just lack of licensing by @BaFin but flat-out illegal ToS.
Not to mention that #CreditCard companies do censor one's ability to exercise economic freedom beyond complying with reasonable restrictions like sanctions.
Ask #Sexworkers how often they got their accounts frozen for being a Sexworker!
@kkarhan@mhoye Oh, and even if I installed the HW and SW myself (which I was once technically capable), I would still need to trust the equipment manufacturer and all the supply chain and shipping steps between them and me. And I would either have to review the entire code base myself, or trust the devs.
@bhawthorne@mhoye yeah, but you'd have the same issue with a credit card terminal and payment provider: Needing to hope you don't end up wuth #scammers and #fraudsters like #wirecard..
Also #PaymentProcessors are way more expensive and even if you don't want to deal with exchanging #Monero :monero: yourself, there are #PaymentProviders that do offer you to direcrpy convert that and take all the risks at the same rares, so there's that...
@bhawthorne@mhoye in the end, it very much depends on your business and customers...
Whilst having the ability to accept #AliPay or #WeChatPay is a nice add-on for some asian takeout place in Germany, you basically can't survive as a business in the "P.R." China without...
Same goes with #B2B: Don't even bother trying that in Germany without a proper Bank Account because that'll make it de-facto illegal to do anything like paying employees..n
@kkarhan@bhawthorne@mhoye Not just Germany. Australian law insists that workers be paid in Australian dollars.
Because some mining town gold buyers once paid in scrip redeemable only at the company pub and the company store. And if you tried to take that gold out of town, well the only people travelling with gold nuggets must have stolen them, or so claim the police troopers who are hunting you down (for a cut of the proceeds, of course).
This being one of the factors which contributed to a revolt so large that it was as close as Australia has ever come to revolution. With that in mind, no legislature is ever going to alter that law.
Making a legal tender mantatory also enshures that the employee is also able to pay their share of taces that are due in said currency and closes tax avoidance schemes that are based around payment in shares instead.
@kkarhan@glent@mhoye Also the case in the USA, under the fair labor standards act. Likely for similar reasons to the Aus case, as we had plenty of company towns here before.
I'm glad this shit is so illegal in Germany, customs police (enforcing labour laws and taxes) would kick in doors for even attempting to hire children... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY
@kkarhan@mhoye Exactly. I would have exactly the same problem with Monero. So why bother? Banks in the USA are remarkably stable, as long as you stick to small community banks and credit unions. And my deposits are fully insured.
I have no problem trusting people about money. I trust people every single day to make transactions. Every day I have a balance in any accounts. So, as long as I am trusting people, what is the benefit of Monero? What benefit do block chain financial systems provide in exchange for their immensely expensive and unproven infrastructure?
@bhawthorne@mhoye tze benefit of #Monero#monero is that you don't have to trust a bank to be stable or that your payment processor doesn't decline to transact.
In fact, unlike cash you can reliably and tamper-proof audit it (via the #ViewLey) and unlike #Bitcoin transactions are done for tue fraction of a cent within 6 minutes.
@bhawthorne@mhoye so it it actually practical as a #Payment system, because the people behind it actually designed it with that single goal in mind without being reliant on a single point of trust or failure.
And unlike #Bitcoin or #Ethereum one can't taint your account with illegal funds, which is so rampant since the #TornadoCash ban that even #TreasuryDept's #OFAC recognized "#Dusting" as digital equivalent of throwing feces at a restaurant's windows....
@kkarhan@mhoye I understand the benefits of Monero over something like Bitcoin. I don’t understand the benefits of Monero over the existing banking system, other than as a mechanism for criminal payments.
I trust my bank. I trust them enough to hold on to my money. They are located in the same legal jurisdiction as I am. I already have to trust the jurisdiction where I live, imperfect though it may be.
So, how many additional organizations would I have to trust to use Monero? What jurisdiction are they within? Who guarantees my deposits? What is my recourse when something goes wrong?
Just like Bitcoin, Monero is a solution looking for a problem. So far, they only problems it appears to be more useful for than our existing system is for money laundering and criminal payments.
@zeroforks@mhoye In bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the whole money handling part isn't hard at all, and even the slowest computer could do it.
The difficult part about bitcoin and others is to do the money handling part while not trusting anyone or anything in the entire world.
If can find anyone at all to trust, could be a state, a company, the pope, doesn't matter, bitcoin's enormous energy consumption and the thousands of computers running it aren't necessary anymore.
@jaseg@zeroforks Jaseg has it. There are two elements of distrust in bitcoin - the first is "we don't trust anyone to create money", so bitcoins need to be created at enormous, almost 100% redundant, winner-take-all expense, and "we don't trust anyone to exchange money", so every transaction is also an enormous, almost 100% redundant expense.
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