
A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency - salvadormon
http://news.mit.edu/2019/vault-faster-more-efficient-cryptocurrency-0124
======
malloreon
I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question:

‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10
years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was
a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current
currencies into it?’

Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other
cryptocurrencies drop to zero value, then a crypto miracle occurs - the one
true coin is uncovered and almost overnight becomes the defacto monetary
standard. Would crypto fans be satisfied?

This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you
knew that you could not profit from it doing so?

~~~
sametmax
How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9
years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney,
to foster the project.

My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my
time, and so lany things.

Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great
thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks, it was a
happy side effect of a mad naive bet.

All great things start like that. Comics are now the thing, but 20 years ago
were still for pationate nerds.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my
> time, and so lany things. ... All great things start like that.

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who
are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

\-- Carl Sagan

[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sagan_163043](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sagan_163043)

~~~
paulgb
“First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the
world.” - Elizabeth Holmes

~~~
mandeepj
I don't think she is the original author of this quote.

Going to share another quote, which I think is relative here -

“Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.” -
Steve Jobs

~~~
ithkuil
Sadly those you think are too crazy to change the world, usually are

~~~
saalweachter
s/Sadly/Thankfully/

------
naveedi
Full disclosure: I work on the cryptocurrency in this article, Algorand.

There are a lot of questions and speculation here about this paper and
Algorand. I would be happy to try an answer them to your satisfaction. Some
context may be helpful first, though. This paper is an innovation about one
aspect of our technology. Algorand has a very fast consensus mechanism and can
add blocks as quickly as the network can deliver them. We become a victim of
our success. The blockchain will grow very rapidly. A terabyte a month is
possible. The storage issue associated with our performance can quickly become
an issue. The Vault paper is focused on solving this and other storage scaling
problems.

The Algorand pure proof-of-stake blockchain and associated cryptocurrency has
many novel innovations aside from Vault. It possesses security and scalability
properties beyond what any other blockchain technology allows while still
being completely decentralized. Our website, algorand.com, and whitepaper are
great places to start to learn more.

If you learn best from videos then I suggest you watch Turing award winner and
cryptographic pioneer, Silvio Micali, talk about Algorand:
[https://youtu.be/NykZ-ZSKkxM](https://youtu.be/NykZ-ZSKkxM). He is a
captivating speaker and the founder of Algorand.

~~~
empath75
Without the marginal energy cost of mining blocks from proof of work, what do
you think would drive the value of such a currency?

~~~
AgentME
This question seems to assume that the cost of electricity and mining sets
cryptocurrency prices, but I'm not sure why that would be the case. I think
it's the other way around. Demand for Bitcoin doesn't increase when
electricity gets cheaper / mining becomes more profitable. Mining becomes more
profitable when demand goes up. If electricity became more expensive or mining
otherwise became less profitable, demand for bitcoin does not go down; most
traders and users of bitcoin probably don't even notice. The only direct
effect is that some miners stop mining (and the network becomes a little more
vulnerable to 51%-attacks).

Another way to think about it: if Bitcoin somehow worked without mining,
that's no reason for demand or usage of Bitcoin to go down. The value of
bitcoins comes from network effects and scarcity.

------
good-idea
I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are
brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security,
storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see
it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those)

But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a _real problem_ \-
it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems above). This is
something that literally affects every human being.

Of the 203 comments (at the time I am posting this), there are only two uses
of the word "environment". One of these is about the "regulatory environment".

Let's say Bitcoin, Ethereum, or another coin achieves an economic value &
level of efficiency that makes mining an accessible investment for low-income
people. Instead of server farms in Iceland, mining would be done by millions
of people around the world. Some of the energy used for this would be
renewable - but plenty of this is going to be coming from coal. In that sense,
the coin would create an economic incentive to pollute (there are plenty of
these already), and there's no way to regulate that kind of decentralized
network. (That's the whole point)

My favorite summary of crypto is something along the lines of: leaving your
car running while it solves sudoku puzzles in exchange for drugs. The drugs
part isn't as relevant anymore, but the rest is.

I'm not here with an answer. There are many problems that I think crypto can
solve and I'm glad it is something on the horizon.

But we _need_ to talk about the environment.

~~~
SilasX
No, we don't.

Bitcoin is one _way_ to use energy. There are hundreds of thousands of other
ways.

When you say Bitcoin "hurts the environment", what, concretely do you mean?
Presumably, you mean it in a stronger sense than "using energy to produce food
hurts the environment" or "using energy to run an ER hurts the environment".

That is, you think that _relative to the benefit provided_ , the use of
(harmful) energy to run bitcoin miners doesn't justify its environmental cost.

Which is great, but I could say the same thing of Ferraris for show-off
producers in LA, or Hello Kitty backpacks.

What justifies focusing our attention on _Bitcoin_ per se, and not those? Do
you plan to publish a universal, agreed-upon list of things whose social value
doesn't justify its environmental cost?

The real problem is energy users not bearing the full environmental costs of
what they do.

The thing is, we have a well known solution to that: cap the total carbon
emissions, or tax them in a way that reflects the harm.

Yes, Bitcoin creates an incentive to use energy. And it will be spent by
miners who weigh the costs of the energy against the value of the Bitcoins
produced. Like every other good on the market, it will respond to incentives
created by laws.

If the damage of energy isn't priced in, then there will be too many resources
spent on mining relative to the environmental cost. But _this is true of every
other good as well_.

All Bitcoin does is amplify the problems of the existing failure to
appropriately price energy. But this is true of literally every other energy-
using good in existence!

There is no reason to single out Bitcoin. To blame it for environmental
problems is special pleading or privileging a hypothesis.

"I don't want wiggins at my university. They cheat!"

'Well, a certain percentage of any demographic is going to ch--'

"Irrelevant! We're talking about wiggins!"

EDIT: Should probably add the disclaimer that I'm long Bitcoin.

~~~
orthecreedence
An enormous amount of energy used to support a tiny minority of people
participating in a highly-manipulated wealth redistribution mechanism is,
objectively, a complete fucking waste.

You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical
success for _any_ of its goals. And given the amount of energy it uses to
perpetuate its own failure, it's nearly sinful to keep it going.

That said, I do support some form of decentralized currency. Not because
people are ever going to be smart enough to be their own bank or because I
think some currency will magically topple governments and financial
structures, but mainly so people can transact without overly-censorious
middle-men who take a cut while adding nearly no value.

We have the internet, now. Payment networks should have died years ago. I'm
glad this problem is being worked on. However, it's possible to solve without
using a country's-worth of energy to support a pathetic ~ _10 transactions per
second_.

~~~
ecwilson
> You cannot look at bitcoin by any measure and say that it's a practical
> success for any of its goals.

I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million in
my brain, and full confidence that that money is _mine_. That's pretty damn
cool.

> I do support some form of decentralized currency. Not because people are
> ever going to be smart enough to be their own bank or because I think some
> currency will magically topple governments and financial structures, but
> mainly so people can transact without overly-censorious middle-men who take
> a cut while adding nearly no value.

It sounds like you're projecting what you think Bitcoin should be.

> We have the internet, now. Payment networks should have died years ago. I'm
> glad this problem is being worked on. However, it's possible to solve
> without using a country's-worth of energy to support a pathetic ~10
> transactions per second.

10 transactions per second on the L1 network (averaging $10k-20k each), and
many thousands possible today on L2. Plus a way to securely store the
transacted value.

To argue that a small country's worth of energy being used to secure Bitcoin
is a poor use of resources, you really have to consider how much energy the
worldwide banking system consumes in all its complexity to do the same thing.
I don't know how to do that calculation, but my point is there's more to it
than you're seeing.

You have to also consider which energy is being used. Dirty energy is
certainly part of it. But a lot of the energy used is through geographic
renewables arbitrage. For example, there are hydro power facilities in China
that were built and never fully utilized or connected to the main grid. You
can set up miners nearby those facilities to use the surplus energy, and as
long as you are connected to the internet, you're good to go.

It's also a potentially great incentive for governments to start NEW
renewables facilities, because they have a way to use the surplus power until
their populations grow to use the full capacity of those plants.

~~~
orthecreedence
> I can memorize 20 words and cross whatever border I want with $100 million
> in my brain, and full confidence that that money is mine. That's pretty damn
> cool.

No, you can have 30K BTC in your brain, but unfortunately the USD value
fluctuates so wildly that as a store of value, it's useless.

> It sounds like you're projecting what you think Bitcoin should be.

Probably, yes. Bitcoin is a failed project. It spawned many others, some of
which may be successful. I am interested to see how they do.

> To argue that a small country's worth of energy being used to secure Bitcoin
> is a poor use of resources, you really have to consider how much energy the
> worldwide banking system consumes in all its complexity to do the same
> thing. I don't know how to do that calculation, but my point is there's more
> to it than you're seeing.

That's assuming that banking is JUST storing and sending value. Banking does a
whole lot more. I understand the drive behind taking that power away from
banks, but it's just not going to happen until one can fluidly exchange USD
for some for of _highly-stable_ distributed currency. And once that happens,
banks are still going to exist and handle most of the transactions! Please,
take a stroll in r/cryptocurrency or r/bitcoin and see how many people are
whining about how their private key got lost or stolen or etc etc. Banks exist
because they not only store value, but protect it in numerous ways. They will
continue to exist past whatever cryptocurrency-revolution people envision.

> You have to also consider which energy is being used. Dirty energy is
> certainly part of it. But a lot of the energy used is through geographic
> renewables arbitrage. For example, there are hydro power facilities in China
> that were built and never fully utilized or connected to the main grid. You
> can set up miners nearby those facilities to use the surplus energy, and as
> long as you are connected to the internet, you're good to go.

Great? So a fraction of the energy would have been wasted anyway. Fine, use
that for bitcoin mining. For everything else, it's pouring carbons into the
atmosphere so idiots who don't know how investing works can leverage 100x on
margin while the exchange they're betting on is manipulating the price to call
their bets and wipe them out.

> It's also a potentially great incentive for governments to start NEW
> renewables facilities, because they have a way to use the surplus power
> until their populations grow to use the full capacity of those plants.

Really? "Let's buy a bunch of toxic waste and dump it into the river because
the government will be incentivized to not output toxic waste" isn't the best
argument for why bitcoin is useful.

~~~
nickpsecurity
In response to stability criticism, chadski on Lobsters told me about so-
called stablecoins with MakerDAO and Dai being in active use:

[https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper/](https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper/)

It's an Ethereum-based scheme that's tied in value to the U.S. dollar. That
sounds good. The methods to achieve that look... complex... to say the least.
If they work, then there's at least one of them that's stable so long as
there's no serious problems in it and/or Ethereum. Well, that sounds
promising. ;)

~~~
orthecreedence
I'm aware of Maker.

It's a bunch of math that uses market mechanisms to try to solve the problem
of stability when the only real answer for the question "how do I stabilize a
cryptocurrency" is "for each unit you issue, you have a bank account with $1
matching USD in it."

Maker essentially banks on the fact that a bundle of cryptos (ETH and a few
others) will not drop past a certain amount _in relation to USD_ over a given
amount of time. They've been correct, so far, but that doesn't mean there
won't come a time when the markets drop past whatever magical threshold
they've set.

I'm not putting down the project, I followed it closely for a while and a lot
of work went into it. My point is you can't really have a stablecoin unless
you have the USD to back it up.

An interesting plot twist will be if Maker derives from other stablecoins
(ones backed by USD reserves, like GUSD) and not ETH.

~~~
teknologist
I would think that, regardless of the math, the token prices might remain
stable just because people think the algorithms are doing their work. Kind of
like an "invisible hand" situation.

Circulating supply fluctuations don't seem to have much of an influence on
crypto prices (as seen with quarterly Binance Coin burns for instance)

------
DenisM
This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the
use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not:

    
    
      - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is)
      - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA)
      - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players
    

I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a
third party...", I actually want to know what _are_ those cases where you have
to avoid a third party, and why.

The economist-in-me appreciates that non-legal activities are perfectly
capable of both demanding and supporting a novel financial instrument on their
own, I only exclude it from my question because it's a rather obvious
application and I would like to probe beyond that.

~~~
smokeyj
I don't know if you've realized this, but HN is religiously against crypto and
anything that rhymes with it. Like, irrationally mad.

If you want to explore the utility of crypto go check out different online
communities that focus on that, some decent ones on reddit. The level of
discussion on HN is usually "crypto baaad, centralized goood". As an economist
I'm sure you expect more. Unless you want those ideas reinforced, keep the
discussion here!

~~~
notyourwork
I think you are conflating bad with unjustified. They aren’t the same but can
appear similarly themed. HN is skeptical of the utility and validity of
crypto.

~~~
smokeyj
That's what I thought too! But no - HN is against crypto at the moral level.
One day the almighty father Paul Krugman declared crypto as thought-crime, and
ever since, progressives have dutifully towed that line. It's _tiring_.

I think they subconsciously see it as an attack on state-sovereignty or
something like that. The ability to tax and redistribute. That's just me
reading between the lines.

------
SkyMarshal
_> In experiments, Vault reduced the bandwidth for joining its network by 99
percent compared to Bitcoin and 90 percent compared to Ethereum, which is
considered one of today’s most efficient cryptocurrencies._

Ethereum is not considered one of today’s most efficient cryptocurrencies, not
remotely. One of the most full-featured perhaps, but not efficient. Not even
Bitcoin is since the invention of the MimbleWimble protocol, and more recently
the even more efficient Coda Protocol. The real efficiency comparison is
against those two.

[https://grin-tech.org](https://grin-tech.org)

[https://codaprotocol.com](https://codaprotocol.com)

~~~
throwaway415415
This is true. I would be interested in knowing the difference in approaches
between vault and coda.

~~~
evanevan
Hi, I'm one of the founders of Coda -

In Coda we use zero knowledge proofs to stand in for downloading / checking
the blockchain. This means you get the identical computation to normal
blockchain syncing, but in only the size of the zero knowledge proof and your
account, which ends up being both constant and ~20kb. Which makes a big
difference if you want to use Coda from a phone or browser.

Check out this video if you want to understand more of the tech behind it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWVGATxEB6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWVGATxEB6M)

And feel free to ask any other questions as well!

~~~
throwaway415415
Whats the difference with vault?

~~~
evanevan
Biggest difference is Coda's constant 20kb vs still at least a few hundred
megabytes for Vault. This matters because it helps in making cryptocurrency
and cryptocurrency apps usable by people from their phones and browsers, at
20kb with Coda that's actually possible.

I haven't looked particularly into if any consensus / security assumptions are
different either with Vault, but that could be another place for them to get
down to a few hundred MBs without zero knowledge proofs.

------
atdt
Paper:
[http://www.mit.edu/~yossigi/vault.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~yossigi/vault.pdf)

------
thesausageking
There's no free lunch. These gains come with a tradeoff in security. Bitcoin's
proof of work which uses an algorithm and processing power to secure it.
Vault/Algorand throws out PoW and replaces it that with a pure "proof of
stake" system that requires 2/3rds of the currency's value is held by honest
actors. In addition, if the network were ever to go offline, there isn't a
deterministic way to get it back online.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>In addition, if the network were ever to go offline, there isn't a
deterministic way to get it back online.

I haven't heard anyone say this about Algorand. Can you provide more details?
Lets say a bug causes all the Algorand nodes to crash. After a patch is
released 90% of the network comes back online. What prevents the selected
users from arriving at consensus over the next block?

~~~
thesausageking
If the network goes down completely, as it's coming back up, groups of nodes
will start adding blocks before all of the other nodes are back online. When
connectivity is completely restored, you end up with different parallel
chains, each of which thinks it's the main chain. With Bitcoin, there's a
simple, deterministic way to decide which chain to trust: the one which has
had the most work done it. With Algorand, it's not clear what would happen.

~~~
justicz
(I work for Algorand) This is false. The BFT protocol that Algorand uses
guarantees that each round may have exactly one block (up to our security
assumptions with regard to honest stake); this is one of the protocol’s
“safety” guarantees. In the case that a large number of participating nodes
crash, the network will refuse to produce a block until a sufficient amount of
stake begins participating again. Nodes that fall behind can use the standard
catchup protocol — the one that nodes new to the network make use of — to pick
up where they left off.

~~~
thesausageking
Calling the case of the network halting "safety" doesn't help things.

To walk through a plausible example: let's say 3 Chinese services control 35%
of the stake of Algorand. Without warning or any public announcement, the
Chinese government steps in and forces them to turn off their servers. The
Algorand network will now stop functioning as it can't reach 2/3rds. Hours go
by and no one is able to transact. At this point, the network needs to decide
how to proceed. Does everyone just agree to take a complete loss?

Most likely, a group of other stakers would work on a proposal to deal with
it, maybe by removing the offline tokens. How do they get consensus for this
proposal? And, if they do it, what do they do if the Chinese stakers come back
online?

~~~
justicz
In this case the Chinese government can kill the liveness of the network
(preventing it from producing new blocks), but not the safety of the network
(they can't fork the chain).

Your question has changed into: "doesn't the system break when a malicious
party controls 35% of the stake?"

To which the answer is yes. If a malicious party can control 35% of the stake,
that is very bad.

I should add, though, that if you know your machine is going to be taken down,
you can mark your account as "offline" via a special transaction, which will
allow the network to proceed without you by increasing the probability that
others will be chosen to be on a committee.

~~~
thesausageking
"If a malicious party can control 35% of the stake, that is very bad."

That didn't happen in this case. The Chinese government never took anyone's
keys or controlled any stake, which is the point of the example.

The malicious parties don't need control. They don't need to take anyone's
keys or access their servers. They just need to be able to bring it offline,
which is much easier to do.

Which raises the question I asked and you didn't answer: if 35% of the stake
goes offline with no signs of coming back, how do participants reach
consensus?

~~~
justicz
You are right to call out the difference between "control" in the sense of
keys and "control" in the sense of a network adversary. I should have been
more careful with my wording there.

It is true that if 35% of the participating stake is suddenly prevented from
contacting the network, no new blocks will be created. The word
"participating" is important -- you can have stake that is not participating
in the agreement protocol, but that is still spendable.

The only way I can think of to mitigate the scenario you've described would be
this: before going offline, you can broadcast a transaction which essentially
removes your stake from the pool of participating coins until you're able to
come online again. This would ensure the network can proceed without you.

------
scabarott
Hadn't heard of vault or Algorand before, but woah, what a team of heavy
hitters: Micali, Goldwasser, Andrew Lo, Kenneth Rogoff, Herlihy etc. basically
a who's who in CS, Cryptography, Econ & finance. If any group will do crypto
right then at least on paper it would look like this team

~~~
throwaway415415
Yup. It's a shame that HN isn't willing to talk about the interesting new
research instead of debating around the same philosophical discussions.

------
_Kristijan_
A "faster, more efficient cryptocurrency" is already in productive operation
since 2015. Called "Nano" [https://nano.org/en](https://nano.org/en)

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Care to elaborate? If this is faster and more efficient, why is it #40 on
coinmarketcap.com?

~~~
mihaifm
Coinmarketcap is not to be taken as a standard of quality. I mean Bitconnect
used to be in the top 10 before it was exposed as a massive ponzi scheme.

[https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20171029/](https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20171029/)

Coinmarketcap just reflects what people invest in at a certain time, it
doesn't mean that these investments are rational or are based on highly
calculated decisions. A lot of coins in the top 100 are copycats, tokens or
just concepts, very few are fully functional products.

~~~
gammateam
> I mean Bitconnect used to be in the top 10 before it was exposed as a
> massive ponzi scheme.

and after

------
ilaksh
It seems most of this is already covered by Ethereum, but Ethereum also has
much more in the way of functionality and already has very significant
resources behind it. Can we incorporate the vaulting concept also into
Ethereum? Since it seems like they are trying to steal their thunder I wonder
if someone from that camp will come out with a reason vaulting can't work.

------
MusaTheRedGuard
It's been pretty telling to watch sentiment on HN towards crypto slowly shift
from complete disgust to mild curiousity

~~~
throwaway415415
When you look at the big cryptographers behind vault and algorand you
understand why.

------
amelius
> Design reduces by 99 percent the data users need to join the network and
> verify transactions.

Is this enough? I'm guessing that if bitcoin would grow to support even 1% of
global payments, that 99% performance increase is not going to cut it.

------
shadowfiend
Another approach to similar problems is Coda:
[https://codaprotocol.com](https://codaprotocol.com) .

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Coda takes an entirely different cryptographic approach than Algorand.
Different layers of solutions.

~~~
throwaway415415
No it doesn't. Coda can work with Algorand's byzantine agreement protocol.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Sure, but Coda targets a different scalability bottleneck.

~~~
throwaway415415
Hence why it can work with algorand.

------
api
Does this just reduce join bandwidth? If so it's a minor improvement since the
real problems with scalability are transaction size and proof of work cost per
TX.

~~~
striking
> With traditional cryptocurrencies, users compete to solve equations that
> validate blocks, with the first to solve the equations receiving funds. As
> the network scales, this slows down transaction processing times. Algorand
> uses a “proof-of-stake” concept to more efficiently verify blocks and better
> enable new users join. For every block, a representative verification
> “committee” is selected. Users with more money — or stake — in the network
> have higher probability of being selected. To join the network, users verify
> each certificate, not every transaction.

Seems they've moved to a Proof of Stake solution, rather than a Proof of Work.
Ethereum was meant to switch to it, iirc, but never did.

~~~
DennisP
Ethereum is still planning the switch. They've combined proof of stake with
sharding for scalability, and the combined system is being rolled out in three
phases, the first of them this year. There's a complete spec for the first
phase, and teams building implementations.

------
akerro
There are a few cryptocurrencies out there on market and usable with big
communities that use 99% less energy and data that bitcoin

~~~
whytaka
I should do my own research but I’d appreciate if you can name a few of them.

~~~
mihaifm
I would name Nano, a very underrated cryptocurrency. Uses DPoS (Delegated
Proof of Stake) instead of Proof of Work, so it doesn't do mining, also it has
zero fees and minimal transaction times.

I've ran a full node for some time to support the network, the whole
blockchain size was about 5GB, but the downside of zero transaction fees is
that there is less incentive for people to run full nodes. I stopped mine out
of boredom when the market crashed.

Unfortunately the market is so full of overhyped projects and buzzwords that
people are no longer interested in something that just works.

~~~
throwaway415415
If no fees, what are the incentives to accept transactions in a block?

~~~
solean
Also, what stops you from spamming the network?

~~~
mihaifm
I've had concerns in this area as well, as far as I know the team performed
some stress tests and the network can do 100+ transactions per second, maybe
more. There is also a small computation that the hardware needs to perform
before sending the transaction, which is only a small guard against spam but
pretty useful.

~~~
akerro
afair peak of stress test on main network was >300TPS, on test network is was
>1500TPS. there exists dedicated software to create wallets and transaction
using GPU, just for stress testing.

------
damip
Here is also a lesser known open source project that demonstrates the use of
proof-of-stake for energy efficiency, combined with a fixed-width directed
acyclic grah with transaction sharding for parallelization. Furthermore,
"final" and "stale" blocks are dynamically forgotten to increase storage
efficiency.

It achieves 10,000 tx/s on chain and transaction times below 1 minute.

[https://blockclique.io/](https://blockclique.io/)

~~~
tim333
There's also Credits which claims to be the fastest chain at 0.1 second
transaction times and to be capable of over 1 million transactions a sec.
Though it you run it that fast you use a lot of disk space.
[https://credits.com/](https://credits.com/)

------
emptyfile
Is data usage a big problem for Bitcoin?

~~~
ponyous
Yeah, I can't run a node without 200GB+ of free storage space. No way I do it
on the phone for example.

~~~
polyomino
You can bootstrap a node without storing the blockchain. You have to download
it though to build up and validate the unspent transaction outputs which are <
1 gb iirc.

------
scotchmi_st
This seems like just another proof-of-stake currency, albeit with some
niceties like sharding and the 'vaulting' mechanism. It'd have all of the
issues with a proof-of-stake currency, such as leading to small clique with
most of the coins in the system, who get to decide who gets their transactions
signed. Can anyone see anything more here or is that all there is?

------
ksec
_Up to_ _99%_ more efficient are meaningless number.

Just tell me how much electricity is require for each transaction. How much is
required for minning, Maximum possible transaction per second. etc.

I still believe in Blockchain, one way or another for many possible use case
once all the technical / unit cost problems are solved. But I remain extremely
sceptical of Cryptocurrency.

------
tylersmith
This is interesting. It sounds similar to the non-interactive proof of proof
of work system that uses "super blocks" of excessive work to prove that blocks
in between must have occurred.

[https://nipopows.com/](https://nipopows.com/)

------
WMCRUN
Vault is based on proof of stake, which is much less energy intensive than
PoW...

------
DigiMortal
I was just thinking on my way to work this morning about crypto - it was so
much fun riding the thrill late 2017, excluding the tech, it was an exciting
time for many. I crave another crypto boom

~~~
Nuzzerino
I was in the thick of it and frankly I found it to be pretty cringeworthy to
see so many armchair "investment experts" coming out of the woodwork.

~~~
DigiMortal
Well yes, there was a huge cringe factor. I'd say 99.99% of everyone was the
opposite, clueless in the midst of it (In hindsight I made my mistakes as
well!)

I'm no expert on blockchain, but crypto taught me very very very powerful and
insightful investing lessons.

------
5partan
It seems the MIT lives in a world were only Bitcoin and Ethereum exist.
Seriously, who besides Vitalik Buterin himself considers Ethereum as one of
today’s most efficient cryptocurrencies?

------
beaker52
Nano is a crypto that already has some of these qualities and is already
brought to market.

[https://nano.org/en](https://nano.org/en)

Disclaimer: I own some nano

------
polyomino
Hogwash. How can a user be sure that the chain is valid if they don't download
the transaction set?

If users cannot verify the amount of coin in the network this is useless.

~~~
zaphar
Not usable for certain operations perhaps. But useless? That seems a little
extreme.

------
bouncycastle
From the article, it sounds like it uses sharding and pruning to scale. Both
are nothing new, pruning has been implemented in many crypto-currencies
already, sharding is currently an area of intense development.

Quote "Vault, a cryptocurrency that lets users join the network by downloading
only a fraction of the total transaction data. It also incorporates techniques
that delete empty accounts that take up space"

------
CydeWeys
Wow, I'm pretty disappointed that the entire MIT website isn't secure. What's
going on over there? Meanwhile, my random state school has a fully secure
https website.

Security is of critical importance to cryptocurrencies, and it's hard to take
anyone seriously on that subject if they can't even get the fundamentals of
web encryption right.

~~~
throwaway415415
Wow wow wow

------
rkagerer
Setting aside the giant environmental debate, does anyone here actually have
an opinion of this new cryptocurrency?

e.g. Do you think the advancements are novel, or just a mashup of ideas
already tried in other blockchains?

Do any other cryptos do the "breadcrumb" shortcut?

------
kragen
This sounds pretty similar to the benefits of MimbleWimble, the design behind
Grin (and another earlier system whose name I forget). Grin recently "went
live" in the sense that now there's a network that isn't the testnet.

~~~
throwaway415415
Not true

~~~
drexlspivey
How is that not true? In grin you only have to download the block headers and
only the last 5000 blocks (called horizon) for a full sync. Bandwidth saving
is even greater than 99%.

------
sschueller
Where can I get the source code?

~~~
salvadormon
I don't know if the source code has been released, but I think the company
funding the research has published an API:
[https://developer.algorand.org/docs/installing-
mac](https://developer.algorand.org/docs/installing-mac)

~~~
mLuby
How can it both claim decentralized trust and be closed-source?

~~~
justicz
(I work for Algorand) The project will be open-sourced prior to the public
launch of the network.

~~~
tamalesfan
When will the launch happen?

~~~
SkyMarshal
When it’s ready.

------
beagle3
But it’s still proof of work, right? If it has a ratchet like bitcoin, it
becomes uneconomical to mine at some point.

I think proof of space-time (Bram Cohen’s and spacemesh.io’s currencies are
examples) is a better way forward.

------
patientplatypus
Crypto currencies have all seemed like an obscurantist version of hot potato.
Either the hash gets too long to calculate effectively or the amount of money
at stake means very very smart people will start finding ways to hack the coin
(and they will).

But basically the deal crypto developers are trying to make with me is to
trade US backed dollars for "fun bux". These developers are usually very smart
people - often much smarter than I. But I don't like smart. Take US dollars.
Little pieces of green paper are very uncomplicated and if anyone starts
copying them armed thugs show up at their house to have a very serious
discussion. And my corner chemist takes dead presidents on delivery no
questions asked.

~~~
smokeyj
Bro have you looked at the source code for the green paper? There's weird ACL
rules, double spending, it's backdoored and pre-mined. Trust me, crypto is
wayyy simpler to understand.

------
legohead
Until the 51% attack problem is "solved" I can't take any cryptocurrency for
serious. You can't use the word "secure" with this attack vector being
possible.

~~~
jki275
What do you believe about the "51% attack problem"? It's a very overblown
concept.

~~~
legohead
[https://twitter.com/etherchain_org/status/108232936094896947...](https://twitter.com/etherchain_org/status/1082329360948969472)

------
ique
So basically they re-invented light clients and checkpointing?

------
viach
Interesting, will they accept tuition payments in it?

~~~
dpflan
That could be an interesting first use case: accepting partial or full tuition
payment or maybe student fees or club/activity fees with this?

~~~
viach
Yup, that could become big - Facebook started first in academias and first
users were students.

~~~
dpflan
Agreed, college students can be a good target user-base. Making payment
easier/simpler/"more futuristic/cooler" could lead to buy-in/usage. Just
recall how it was to interact with your university registrar/bursar...

------
jhh
Could existing Coins switch their network to the new technology or is there
something fundamentally in the way of that?

------
xtat
Love MIT but truthfully I don't find this is that different from what folks
are already implementing.

~~~
throwaway415415
What folks?

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
This sounds extremely similar to Grin project imho... which was just released
last month.

~~~
companyhen
Grin is PoW and this seems to be PoS though.

------
z3t4
It needs to be simple enough so that a layman can understand, implement and
use it.

------
ForHackernews
If this kills proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, I'm all for it.

~~~
throwaway415415
It is already dying

------
arisAlexis
do we want governments and politicians to use transparent money that can be
tracked? hell yes

------
0x262d
cryptocurrency is and always has been a useless technology in the best
tradition of useless technologies: a combination of libertarian aesthetics and
a pyramid scheme.

the complaints people have with state currency are basic political problems
that cryptocurrencies are not going to resolve. the basic feature that gives
state currencies reliability is the backing of the state. without that, and
states will never want to give that to cryptocurrencies, they will always be
commodities with no stability and no real use value. and all the people who
have bought in already will need to sell to a new generation of suckers,
regardless of if they conceptualize it like that or not.

------
netsa
Anyone still believe this shit after the bitcoin pyramid?

------
HashBasher
Yet another PoS shitcoin... The validation of a cryptocurrency must burn real
world asset!

~~~
SkyMarshal
I wouldn’t call Algorand a shitcoin. There’s Bitcoin, altcoins and shitcoins.
Altcoins have credible teams exploring alternative architectures, which is
fine. And yes current wisdom is there’s no free lunch and you have to spend
some resource to gain decentralized security. But it’s worth having credible
altcoins exploring if that rule can, like Neo in the matrix, be bent or broken
with some clever crypto or other CS. ;)

------
jtms
When moon?

------
eruci
I propose a "proof of workout" cryptocurrency.

It will make miners fitter with no cost to the environment.

------
xiphias2
As usual assumptions are much stronger than what Bitcoin has. I'm really sorry
about the fact that this currency is voted up so much.

~~~
Vervious
Well, in some sense that's a good thing. Bitcoin relies on a synchronous
network - an honest majority of _online_ miners must be honest. Algorand's
safety assumption is stronger - the honest stake need not be "always online",
and the system cannot fork even under worst-case asynchrony.

As a result I certainly don't trust Bitcoin with anything more than pocket
change. I would, on the other hand, put money on Algorand. A Bitcoin attacker
could conceivably DOS a handful of honest miners/network relays (given that
mining seems pretty centralized), sequester a third of the mining network, and
mint money.

No matter how much DOS power you have, you cannot mint money on Algorand
without a substantial proportion of the stake.

