
Why aren’t distributed systems engineers working on blockchain technology? - midas
https://eng.paxos.com/why-arent-distributed-systems-engineers-working-on-blockchain-technology
======
aphextron
>The blockchain community is immature and historically unwelcoming.

>It feels like a get rich quick scheme -
[https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536](https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536)

This is what it comes down to IMO. Anything cryptocurrency related is just
surrounded by a cloud of shady characters and scammers, even though the tech
is legit. You just can't trust anyone, nor their intentions. Living your life
and working in a constant state of paranoia like that is awful.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Even if the tech is "legit" it's encredibly inefficient. We're spewing off
tons of CO2 just to verify the block chain, but we have plenty of technologies
that can do the same with a minuscule amount of energy.

The problem is that they want a system that's trustless and that's simply not
what most engineers care about. We want a system that's fast and efficient.

~~~
darawk
There are solutions to that though, like Proof of Stake. If distributed
systems really cared about that, then that's exactly why they _ought_ to be
working on blockchains, to make them more efficient.

~~~
Taek
Most of the bitcoin researchers have thoroughly convinced themselves that
Proof of Stake is not achievable with acceptable levels of security, and for
good reason. The reason you don't see more active research on Proof-of-Stake
is that it is thought to only lead to dead ends.

~~~
billmalarky
The Ethereum team is serious about proof of stake.

~~~
indigochill
Ethereum has not shown a particularly strong track record when it comes to
security, so I think the comment stands until they address that or get
replaced by the next hotness.

~~~
tekromancr
I think that statement is a little disingenuous. There haven't been any
attacks that target Etherium proper, only bugs in smart contracts riding on
top of Eth.

~~~
davidgerard
> I think that statement is a little disingenuous. There haven't been any
> attacks that target Etherium proper, only bugs in smart contracts riding on
> top of Eth.

This is a bit No True Scotsman. It's like "secured by math!" about Bitcoin -
the ecosystem is rife with fraud and error.

So too with Ethereum. Given that smart contract functionality is literally
Ethereum's unique selling point, you can't claim that is somehow not something
that can be discussed as a problem with Ethereum. They _broke the immutability
guarantee_ for one bad smart contract, after all.

You really can't say "Ethereum is completely secure!! Except for everything
that people actually use it for" without being more than a little disingenuous
yourself.

~~~
darawk
It is, thus far, completely secure. The fact that SQL injection bugs exist
does not negate the security of HTTP. The fact that stack overflow bugs exist
does not make x86 insecure. The primitives you are provided are secure - how
you use them may not be.

Now you _may_ legitimately argue that Ethereum is poorly designed to encourage
secure contract authorship. And I would agree with you in many respects. But
that is a distinct concern from the security of Ethereum itself. Conflating
the two is at best confusing and at worst maliciously spurious.

------
random023987
Proof-of-work blockchains were developed to solve a problem that only exists
in a small percentage of distributed engineering use-cases. Unless you need to
build a "censorship-free" peer-to-peer ledger distributed among untrusted,
anonymous participants, the complexity costs and latency and computation costs
simply aren't worth it.

It's the same reason that Ford doesn't build a tunnel under the US/Mexico
border to ferry car parts to America.

~~~
andrewstuart2
Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the foundation
of a global system. The stability of whole ecosystems is predicated upon those
ecosystems being attractive to people who want to make money by competing to
solve hard problems by brute force.

That's a lot of energy going into a system that can commit a new block of
transactions once every 10 minutes on average. It solves a problem in an
interesting way, but it's nowhere near quick enough or efficient enough to
solve 99% of engineering problems. That's why only 1% of engineers are working
on it.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Proof-of-work is simply not sustainable (energy-wise), IMO, for the
> foundation of a global system.

Visa, MasterCard, AmEX, &c along with each individual bank, not to mention the
intermediaries and gateways all of them use also consume a tremendous amount
of power. It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power,
not to mention the number of steps and entities a transaction needs in order
to be finalized.

~~~
random023987
> It's not as if our current system uses a negligible amount of power

Our current system does in fact use a negligible amount of power. Each $2
latte you put on a credit card uses an amount of electricity so infinitesimal
that it can only be measured in the aggregate.

The percentage of the power used to generate a single bitcoin block for a
single transaction can power an average US household for (approximately) an
entire week.

To put it in perspective: If the bitcoin network scaled up to the size of the
VISA network it would require 100% of all energy used for all purposes planet-
wide, from transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, etc. Everything you
could possibly want to buy with bitcoin would be unavailable, as 100% of all
human activity would go to powering the miners.

~~~
devrandomguy
What if you also include the energy consumed by the employees and facilities
of Visa, including their commute-to-work energy? And the energy used to
construct their facilities, improve network infrastructure, etc? Now are we
getting within an order of magnitude of the energy consumption of an army of
ASIC miners, and the people who farm them?

~~~
srdev
On a per-transaction basis? No.

Those costs specifically end up being reified in the fee those processors
charge to their customers, so we can determine an upper limit to how much is
spent on energy in that way.

~~~
devrandomguy
The same is true of bitcoin transaction fees, no? Miners set the minimum fee
that they will accept, and people tack a fee onto a transaction, large enough
that a miner will likely process it.

~~~
srdev
No, because there is a block reward too that subsidizes the miners, so you
have to account for that too.

We don't really know the relationship between transaction rate and electrical
usage in a mature BTC system, because mining is mainly used to prevent double-
spends and the minimum required mining rate to support a given transaction
rate is a game-theoretical concern and not a technical one. We can only really
observe what has happened so far in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

------
gwbas1c
I work in distributed systems, and I consider blockchain very interesting.
It's so interesting I click on a lot of links on Hacker News, and sometimes I
take an afternoon on a weekend or vacation to read through some of the papers.

I just have a well-paying job and I don't see any opportunities lucrative
enough for me to jump away. Why? Bitcoin is an _experiment._ Reading through
the paper, Bitcoin does not scale to general purpose commerce. All of the
other technology appears to be "me too." When I first heard about Etherium,
the bullshit smelt so bad that I couldn't even look at the paper.

What will get me really interested? Pay me to implement a real-world use case
that fits the scalability constrains of blockchain. This isn't things like
general-purpose currency, or general-purpose contracts. Someone needs to pay
me to implement something that requires blockchain; instead of someone paying
me to implement a blockchain and then going and finding a use for it.

~~~
ProblemFactory
> Someone needs to pay me to implement something that requires blockchain

It's difficult to find something that _requires_ a blockchain, because the
unique distinguishing feature of blockchains is the lack of any trusted
central authority.

If you have a trusted authority, then you can do anonymous currency, money
transfers, smart contracts, or anything similar 1000x more efficiently with a
single server, an API, and some backend logic. All the distributed effort goes
into making these possible at all without any central authority who can ban or
filter transactions.

And for most real-world projects, having a government agency or tech company
working as the trusted authority works just fine. It's only shady to illegal
businesses where the lack of one is _required_.

~~~
gwbas1c
Which makes it look like blockchain is a solution looking for a problem.

I still believe that problem will come up, and/or we'll see technologies that
borrow concepts from blockchain without being true "blockchain."

~~~
ciocan42
The problem exists for ages, from a libertarian point of view: the govs as
oppressing power and the tax as a "legalised" theft mechanism to sustain only
a few in power. And all related issues that come from it: corruption, lack of
transparency and bureaucracy to name only a few.

The blockchain comes as the refactoring of this legacy system.

------
jchanimal
Distributed consensus algorithms are super interesting, but most distributed
databases run in a trusted context. So instead of spending time optimizing a
trustless system, database engineers optimize commit protocols like Calvin[1],
because high-throughput scalable consistency solves so many business problems.

When you have a general purpose globally consistent distributed database, many
of the problems that look like blockchain algorithm problems turn out to be
standard application programming tasks. Eg a distributed ledger is just a
table in a distributed database.

[1] [https://fauna.com/blog/distributed-consistency-at-scale-
span...](https://fauna.com/blog/distributed-consistency-at-scale-spanner-vs-
calvin)

~~~
stephenitis
I just wanted to drop appreciation for this answer. I never thought to see the
blockchain from this perspective.

------
rafiki6
Here's one take DLT and Blockchain: [https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-
blockchain](https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-truth-about-blockchain)

TL;DR, it's gonna take a real long time to make blockchain useful, if it even
is.

Further, I have yet to see a real production application of blockchain that
isn't a crypto-currency. Everyone and their grandmothers has invested in it,
or started a company or w/e. But has it actually been used to solve another
problem? Blockchain was the SOLUTION to the PROBLEM of how do I make a
cryptocurrency. It now seems that some folks are trying to make a PROBLEM out
of a SOLUTION in every other domain.

~~~
cperciva
Blockchain is not the solution to the problem of how to make a crypto
currency. Blockchain is the solution to the problem of how to cooperatively
timestamp documents.

~~~
Danihan
Completely agree. A true crypto-currency would not be "quasi-anonymous".
Bitcoin is a government's wet dream, a near-complete map of every dark web
transaction globally.

~~~
Rmilb
For now yes. More privacy features are on the road map though. You can always
easily convert Bitcoin for a more anonymous eccentric currency and then
convert it back to Bitcoin if you want to hide your trail if you need to.

------
asah
I had the same observation that the blockchain is "just" a distributed log
database with horrific performance overhead...

...but it's not true that nobody's working on it: quietly, Serious
Engineers(tm) working for blockchain companies and you can expect big
improvements in the next few years.

This rant is nearly isomorphic to the whining in the early 90s by the
academics and SunRPC & CORBA fanboys vs HTTP and HTML, which its insane
parsing and communications overhead. Serious Engineers(tm) showed up, made the
early web work, it took off, and... you don't see many HN job posts asking for
CORBA engineers.

As with the web, blockchains are exciting because they're a 'looser' and more
open protocol than other systems.

~~~
vocatus_gate
Can't remember how I stumbled across this article, but I thought it was a good
summary of Bitcoin works in spite of some glaring flaws.

[https://www.gwern.net/Bitcoin%20is%20Worse%20is%20Better](https://www.gwern.net/Bitcoin%20is%20Worse%20is%20Better)

------
Rjevski
Because I have yet to find an actual legitimate use-case for a blockchain.
Every task in our modern business world actually _requires_ a central trusted
authority.

Edit: not to mention that mining is an incredible waste of time and energy
that can instead be put to good use.

~~~
Rmilb
Good use is subjective, plenty of people are using the blockchain as a
speculative asset and willing to pay transaction fees for it.

~~~
gwbas1c
It's a great way to hide a pump-and-dump scheme. Although blockchain is a
legitimate undertaking, if you're good at surfing hype, you'll know when to
get in, get out at a profit, and then leave all the other suckers holding
worthless bitcoin.

------
davidgerard
Because it turns out the good bits are the ledger of transactions made tamper-
evident in a Merkle tree, and we had that with Git in 2005 and it works great
thanks.

The bit Git doesn't do: distributed consensus via Proof of Work, because it
turns out that a bit of trust is fabulously more efficient.

I predict any good and useful product labeled "Blockchain" will be the
cryptographically tamper-evident ledger of transactions, and not any of the
stuff that makes a blockchain different to Git.

(Researching the book, I had one developer admit that his "blockchain product"
was pretty much a simplified Git in terms of what it offered ;-) )

------
pnathan
Too many crooks. Too much hype. Too much ignorance of how the real world
works.

I'd be interested in working with large and boring financial institutions on
those sorts of projects, because they don't offer the failure modes as above.

------
lotyrin
I don't really get this article. The transaction rate limit and the
wastefulness and limitations of PoW as a fault-tolerance mechanism are brought
up but then just hand-waved away.

If we had discussed proof of stake or theorized about how some of these other
hurdles like transaction rate could be leaped then sure. Otherwise it's just a
list of things any distributed system has to solve for, demonstration that
blockchain solves for them (inefficiently) with the undertone of "I bought in
on the hype, and you can too".

------
highpark
DLT strips away almost everything that makes blockchain compelling.

Why would a distributed systems engineer work on what amounts to a really
shitty database?

~~~
varelse
See also the crazy cash they can make building distributed machine
learning/big data systems at next to zero risk...

~~~
zzzcpan
This is just incorrect. Making money on a distributed product is just as hard
as on anything else if not harder and riskier, because everything takes more
time.

~~~
varelse
Tell that to my bank account.

We live in a world where most current and future performance benefits come
from understanding how to program both parallel and distributed algorithms in
an age where almost everyone is either a single-threaded Java or Python
programmer relying on OSS frameworks and packages to do the distributed dirty
work for them.

And that's made it nearly free beer right now to have gone against the above
curve and stayed current on C++ and multi-core/distributed algorithms so one
can build those frameworks and packages. That will probably change now that
GPUs are a hot commodity as opposed to nerdy gamer stuff, but chance favored
the minority of prepared programmers here.

Further, I have zero interest in the blockchain. There's interesting
technology there, but it is of zero use to me or any of my life goals. Also
the hucksters and low-information sorts trying to make me believe I can't live
without it are driving me even further away from it.

And before you downvote me for negativity, this thread did ask why distributed
system engineers aren't interesting in this, yes?

------
random3
The goal of the article is to get distributed systems engineers excited about
blockchain and invite them to explore positions at Paxos. Ironically none of
the open positions are actually for distributed systems engineers :)

I think it's funny the author chose to center the article around that
assumption. IMO most engineers related to distributed computing (not
necessarily themselves distributed systems engineers) are actually quite aware
of the technology and many of the challenges.

------
strgrd
Why isn't X working on blockchain technology?

Maybe instead of asking this, we should ask the cryptocurrency enthusiasts
what area of technology _won 't_ be dropped-and-replaced by blockchains,
because so far it seems apparently applicable to every single use case in
every single industry... By the way, did you guys hear this thing is an
immutable ledger?

~~~
jstanley
That's a complete strawman.

There is very little overlap between _cryptocurrency enthusiasts_ and _those
who think blockchain technology will take over everything_.

~~~
strgrd
> There is very little overlap between cryptocurrency enthusiasts and those
> who think blockchain technology will take over everything.

Do you really believe that? Because from the outside, it seems that the only
people talking about "blockchain technology" are those who have a significant
amount of money invested in it.

This article is a blockchain banking service saying, "hey, other people should
use this solve-all technology that is definitely the future too!"

~~~
jstanley
Yes, I really believe that.

The people who are into "blockchain banking" are not actually into
cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is about decentralised, trustless,
permissionless, peer-to-peer networks. "Blockchain all the things" is
decidedly not.

I acknowledge that this can be hard to see from the outside.

Edit: And at risk of "no true Scotsman"... the people talking about
"blockchain technology" are not cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

------
srdev
My observation is this:

The "killer app" of Blockchains are the trustless nature of the system. In
most practical application, allowing actors without a trust relationship to
interact with the log is not a significant requirement of the system. Once you
remove that requirement, there are technically superior approaches to
maintaining a ledger.

~~~
vocatus_gate
That's why I've never understood all this talk about "private blockchains."
Why? What's the point? We already have distributed database systems that are
light years faster than blockchains. The ONLY benefits of a blockchain-based
approach are censorship resistance and not having to trust the actors in the
system. If you don't need either of those two benefits, then there are far
better existing solutions for record keeping.

~~~
PeterisP
Private blockchains have a use case where you have a central authority
coordinating many participants that don't trust each other - if the central
authority periodically publishes the signed blockchain ledger/update, it
enables "shared truth" that every participant can use, and each of them can
verify that noone has "altered history", that particular constraints have been
met, etc.

In essence, it can be used as a versioning + signing mechanism for a shared
database that ensures authenticity and non-repudiation even in the absence of
trust.

~~~
rlpb
> ...if the central authority periodically publishes the signed blockchain
> ledger/update, it enables "shared truth" that every participant can use, and
> each of them can verify that noone has "altered history", that particular
> constraints have been met, etc.

In other words, something like [http://ledger-cli.org/](http://ledger-
cli.org/) stored in a git repository with some input validation and signed
commits would suffice.

Proponents call this "blockchain technology" because it sounds advanced. They
can because nobody has a definition of what "blockchain technology" is. In my
mind, if it could have been designed by any competent engineer prior to
Bitcoin, then it isn't "blockchain technology". But that's just me.

------
mikeschmatz
Because we got better things to do than wasting time on bullshit blockchain
tech in a bullshit company filled with suits [0] who can produce only...
bullshit

[https://www.paxos.com/our-team](https://www.paxos.com/our-team)

------
didibus
Where's the data, or at least arguments suggesting that no distributed systems
engineer is working on blockchain technology?

If anyone could point to me what's the name for this fallacy. Lile when you
ask a question that tricks people in assuming the premise.

------
pietrod
[https://github.com/kadena-io/juno](https://github.com/kadena-io/juno)
actually this is poc research from jp morgan into using another bft algo:
raft.

~~~
jaseemabid
RAFT is not BFT. You need nodes to cooperate. If the nodes lie, the system
will collapse.

------
hossbeast
Answer: because most distributed systems are operated by a single entity and
don't need to solve the trustless consensus problem.

------
eternalban
From OP:
[https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536](https://twitter.com/naval/status/878018839044161536)

The cynic in me thinks "it's a scheme by oligarchs and tyrants to get rid of
troublesome /fully anonymous/ cash sold as a utopian scheme to those who are
motivated by the promise of a quick rich scheme."

------
bmurphy1976
The choice of font and lack of contrast make this nearly unreadable for me...

~~~
notzorbo3
The text is #0 on a #F background for me?

~~~
bmurphy1976
I was reading on Android. Perhaps the colors are different there.

------
draw_down
I mean, you read the most ridiculous things happening in those circles. Not
sure why most talented engineers would be interested in associating themselves
with that.

