Show HN: My experimental take on a decentralized ledger (opens in new tab)

(github.com)

48 pointsbuhrmi10y ago27 comments

27 comments

Needs a brief documentation "how it works" or something... I really don't understand the concept, I'm very familiar with bitcoin and somewhat familiar with ripple/stellar. How is the ledger maintained? How do we form the consensus on the valid ledger? What are the incentives for running nodes? etc.

ianpurton10y ago

How would this prevent a flood attack ? What I mean is in Bitcoin and presumably Stellar, you need coins to create transactions. There is therefore a cost to spamming the system.

buhrmiOP10y ago

It doesn't prevent a flood attack. The challenge in this approach does not lie in "preventing it" but in "dealing with it".

herendin10y ago

Do you have some ideas on how to deal with it?

1 more reply

oafitupa10y ago

Stellar is 100% centralized. In fact, its owners took it down at some point to change some rules.

devit10y ago

It's interesting that it says that "Warning: Requires Postgres 9.5. You WILL lose sync if you run against an earlier version. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED."

Which PostgreSQL features new in 9.5 are being used that cause that? Or are earlier versions somehow buggy?

buhrmiOP10y ago

I'm using upserts... The reason I'm using upserts is basically just lazyness because I didn't feel like refactoring the source code to work around requiring upserts. Also, I'm not very confident in C++ so I did not want to take on that task.

opendomain10y ago

You can fix this with basic SQL

IF record EXISTS then UPDATE else INSERT

1 more reply

joeyspn10y ago

> Transactions are FREE (the fee is always zero)

How would you deal with DDoS attacks? Taking down a ledger like this could be easy...

buhrmiOP10y ago

> How would you deal with DDoS attacks?

That's the open question.

deckar0110y ago

Cloudflare doesn't have to charge a fee for every http request, although transaction fees do seem like the elegant solution.

Karunamon10y ago

Cloudflare is a massive, well-funded, centralized entity.

kushti10y ago

How is it protected from Sybil attacks on consensus algo? The algo description is definitely needed.

jgeerts10y ago

Is there any interesting lecture that got you this far or did you study source code?

BinaryResult10y ago

Check out https://morph.is/v0.8/ if you haven't seen it, decentralized encrypted file storage and email, exciting stuff.

explorigin10y ago

> Distributed Spam Proof Mail! Uncensorable, inherently spam proof and transparently encrypted and sender authenticated messaging! Secure enough for Edward Snowden! Easy and fool-proof enough for a child!

43 exclamation points on the front page. He has the hype cranked up pretty high. Still, it's nice to see all of these P2P efforts.

misiti378010y ago

very cool! thanks!

col_rad10y ago

Cool. I really liked the idea of Stellar, but I just cant get over the premined coin distribution. Nice to have a truly decentralized alternative!

oafitupa10y ago

What do you like about Stellar? It's not decentralized at all. Being premined is just the icing on the cake.

col_rad10y ago

Stellar is indeed decentralized but not distributed [1]. What I like about Stellar is the concept of gateways and trust. It adds a whole new dimension for transactions.

[1] http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/Baran64.pdf

zamalek10y ago

Basically, `Bitcoin - Politics`. A nice idea.

tinco10y ago

It's also `Bitcoin - all_the_hard_problems_bitcoin_solves`. Still nice but you can't compare it with Bitcoin. This is more the sort of service banks could use to track loans.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

27 comments

repomies69110y ago

ianpurton10y ago

How would this prevent a flood attack ? What I mean is in Bitcoin and presumably Stellar, you need coins to create transactions. There is therefore a cost to spamming the system.

buhrmiOP10y ago

It doesn't prevent a flood attack. The challenge in this approach does not lie in "preventing it" but in "dealing with it".

herendin10y ago

Do you have some ideas on how to deal with it?

1 more reply

oafitupa10y ago

Stellar is 100% centralized. In fact, its owners took it down at some point to change some rules.

devit10y ago

It's interesting that it says that "Warning: Requires Postgres 9.5. You WILL lose sync if you run against an earlier version. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED."

Which PostgreSQL features new in 9.5 are being used that cause that? Or are earlier versions somehow buggy?

buhrmiOP10y ago

opendomain10y ago

You can fix this with basic SQL

IF record EXISTS then UPDATE else INSERT

1 more reply

joeyspn10y ago

> Transactions are FREE (the fee is always zero)

How would you deal with DDoS attacks? Taking down a ledger like this could be easy...

buhrmiOP10y ago

> How would you deal with DDoS attacks?

That's the open question.

deckar0110y ago

Cloudflare doesn't have to charge a fee for every http request, although transaction fees do seem like the elegant solution.

Karunamon10y ago

Cloudflare is a massive, well-funded, centralized entity.

kushti10y ago

How is it protected from Sybil attacks on consensus algo? The algo description is definitely needed.

jgeerts10y ago

Is there any interesting lecture that got you this far or did you study source code?

BinaryResult10y ago

Check out https://morph.is/v0.8/ if you haven't seen it, decentralized encrypted file storage and email, exciting stuff.

explorigin10y ago

43 exclamation points on the front page. He has the hype cranked up pretty high. Still, it's nice to see all of these P2P efforts.

misiti378010y ago

very cool! thanks!

col_rad10y ago

Cool. I really liked the idea of Stellar, but I just cant get over the premined coin distribution. Nice to have a truly decentralized alternative!

oafitupa10y ago

What do you like about Stellar? It's not decentralized at all. Being premined is just the icing on the cake.

col_rad10y ago

Stellar is indeed decentralized but not distributed [1]. What I like about Stellar is the concept of gateways and trust. It adds a whole new dimension for transactions.

[1] http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/Baran64.pdf

zamalek10y ago

Basically, `Bitcoin - Politics`. A nice idea.

tinco10y ago

It's also `Bitcoin - all_the_hard_problems_bitcoin_solves`. Still nice but you can't compare it with Bitcoin. This is more the sort of service banks could use to track loans.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse