
Bitcoin-NG: A Secure, Faster, Better Blockchain - AaronFriel
http://hackingdistributed.com/2015/10/14/bitcoin-ng/
======
kanzure
Some commentary here: [http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2015-...](http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2015-October/011528.html)

and here: [http://gnusha.org/bitcoin-
wizards/2015-10-14.log](http://gnusha.org/bitcoin-wizards/2015-10-14.log)

cross-post of
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3or365/bitcoinng_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3or365/bitcoinng_proposal_for_a_secure_faster_better/cvzoha1)

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copsarebastards
That sounds interesting enough that I'll read the whitepaper, but the
unfortunate truth is that people aren't going to switch off bitcoin any time
soon. There are already massive improvements on the bitcoin protocol which
have been largely ignored, partially because people don't understand them.
This looks even more complicated, which adds both skepticism and
implementation security risk.

~~~
ajkjk
I don't think anyone seriously imagines all the users of bitcoin switching to
a new protocol. It's still an interesting exercise to try to build on it,
since vanilla Bitcoin is filled with suboptimal qualities.

I don't see Bitcoin dying unless (until?) it's discovered to have an incurable
security flaw.

~~~
lectrick
> it's discovered to have an incurable security flaw.

AFAIK, that's not possible. Secure hashing algorithms tend to fracture instead
of completely break, so there will be some warning; to change to a new
algorithm, simply more than 50% of the Bitcoin miners would have to mine on
the chain that relies on that new algorithm, and it thus becomes "voted" in.

~~~
copsarebastards
> > I don't see Bitcoin dying unless (until?) it's discovered to have an
> incurable security flaw.

> AFAIK, that's not possible.

That's an incredibly stupid thing to say. Please don't comment on topics
you're ignorant on; you're spreading misinformation.

 _Obviously_ the hashing algorithm is one of the stronger points in bitcoin's
implementation; that's completely irrelevant.

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hollerith
Not to be confused with Bitcoin XT, the vehicle for that open rebellion
against Bitcoin Core by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn announced back in
August.

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OR13
Very cool. Anyone know of an info graphic or good comparison of NG and LN[1]?

Seems like both could be applied to Ethereum or Dashcoin? Kind of painful to
think about this space these days.

1\. [https://lightning.network/](https://lightning.network/)

~~~
stanga
NG is more efficient than the Bitcoin-type blockchain, while maintaining its
security properties. Any currency running on a blockchain can therefore
benefit from it.

Lightning network allows for off-chain transactions, so it's separate and
complementary.

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ketralnis
Calling it "Bitcoin-NG" without buy-in from the majority of the Bitcoin
community seems impolite at best.

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reddytowns
I would like to know what the researchers think of the consolidation of miners
within Bitcoin.

From the whitepaper "Miners with capacity smaller than 1/4 of the total
network are incentivized to follow the protocol."

Yet, if any two of the five biggest mining pools collude,
[https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs](https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs)
they'd already be over 1/4th of the network. And if three or more collude,
they could take over the entire thing.

~~~
emin-gun-sirer
Miner consolidation is a long-standing problem with Bitcoin itself.

When Ittay and I discovered selfish mining [1], we were quite worried about
the size of mining pools at the time. Even though we also came up for a fix
against selfish mining, the fix only prohibits selfish mining for pools <25%,
and we also found that there can never be a fix to prohibit selfish mining for
pools >=33%.

Things looked grim for a while, and we played a role in pushing back against
GHash when they exceeded 51% around April of '14\. The only tool that the
community had at the time to break up large miners was just social pressure.

In part as a reaction to GHash crossing of the 51% line, we [2] and Andrew
Miller et al [3] came up with techniques based on non-outsourceable puzzles.
This is a cool technique that would make it difficult for miners to run large
open pools. It does require a potentially disruptive change to Bitcoin, so
it's good to have in one's back pocket if the mining situation gets out of
hand, but it's not something you want to deploy.

Luckily, Ittay's subsequent work on the Miner's Dilemma [4] discovered an
incredibly interesting result: it pays for miners to attack other miners who
are running large open pools. This puts natural pressure on miners to not open
themselves up to the public and accept people into their pools willy nilly.
This in turn is, I think, fantastic news, as it means that the problem may
take care of itself, at least when it comes to open pools.

Overall, the distribution of mining power is a point of concern for everyone
in the Bitcoin space. The situation looked bleak at first, as it looked like
there were few mechanisms to keep open pools from growing ever larger. But now
we have a strong technical solution and a natural process that is well-
characterized. Large solo miners still remain an ongoing concern.

Hope this is useful.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243](http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243)

[2] [http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/18/how-to-
disincentivi...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/18/how-to-
disincentivize-large-bitcoin-mining-pools/)

[3]
[https://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/nonoutsourceable_full.pdf](https://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/nonoutsourceable_full.pdf)

[4] [http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/03/the-miners-
dilemma/](http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/03/the-miners-dilemma/)

~~~
reddytowns
This is interesting stuff, but it's still a stop gap. As you say, large solo
miners are an ongoing concern.

If bitcoin ever makes it big, IMO, it'll be large corporations running mining
operations. Just as the general population does most of its services through
huge corporations, mining bitcoin will probably be done by them as well.

What do you think of Proof of Stake systems? Are they feasible? I'm working on
one, btw, with a shared spending pool and an ability to vote to spend the
pool, and to change the code of the official client, thereby changing the
rules of the system.

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nly
Additional chains will be great when someone comes up with a race-free, third-
party trust-free protocol to do cross-chain trades. Last I read up on the
subject this was not considered possible.

~~~
olh
[https://bitshares.org/](https://bitshares.org/)

------
clemensley
From the article: "Bitcoin-NG addresses the scalability bottleneck by enabling
the Bitcoin network to achieve the highest throughput allowed by the network
conditions. Paradoxically, not only does it improve transaction throughput, it
also reduces transaction latencies -- it is possible to get an initial
transaction confirmation in seconds rather than in minutes. And it does so
without changing Bitcoin’s open architecture and trust model."

@stanga as you are one of the authors, could you give us a tl;dr as to how
this is possible?

~~~
nhaehnle
It says so right in the article: "In Bitcoin-NG, the protocol is, instead,
forward-looking: every 10 minutes, NG elects a leader, who then vets future
transactions as soon as they happen."

~~~
lectrick
So it's a leader-electing decentralized scheme?

What if the leader goes down? What if 2 leaders get accidentally elected in
the wake of that?

What if the elected leader is a bad agent?

I don't like non-leaderless decentralization schemes. All you're doing is
adding mobility to centralization.

~~~
emin-gun-sirer
All good questions, all of which are answered in the white paper. An "elected
leader" is essentially the same thing as a miner that mines a block in
Bitcoin. Miners can mine empty blocks in Bitcoin. This is OK, as others will
step in for such defunct miners. Likewise, in Bitcoin-NG, another miner will
step up if the elected leader does not mint microblocks.

Keep in mind also that NG would be layered on top of Bitcoin, so everything
that works in Bitcoin will work in NG as well.

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reilly3000
What if the block wasn't based on crypto, but on verifiable human attention?

~~~
lectrick
people have thought proof-of-work to death and what we have now is the best
that they've come up with.

every other scheme that people suggest replacing it with runs into
difficulties because you can't predict the amount of time (roughly) it takes
to do the work. in Bitcoin's case, you CAN predict (roughly) the amount of
time it will take to roll 3 1's in a row when repeatedly rolling a 6-sided
die.

