Clive Robinson • September 15, 2022 3:03 AM

@ Winter,

Re : Blockchain efficiency

“Blockchains are transparent, robust, and fast.”

No they are not.

To be transparent they need to be “public” and few people actually want every financial move they make being made naked and open to all.

Whilst they look like they are robust they are not as data structures, or systems. The only robustness they bring to the table over existing systems is by the public duplication. Which is problematical as who is going to pay for the infrastructure many times that of Googles current setup, just to implement one such? Remember you would need a minimum of four such systems[1] and all the high security communications to support it, which would make the NSA envious.

As for fast, the current systems due to the moronic “Proof of XXX” attached are so slow transactions are at best just a handful a second. Even without that “Proof of XXX” the number of global transactions at any one time numbers up in the tens of millions a second, something most do not realise.

But people do not appreciate the combined,

1. Gate Keeper Effect
2. Ripple across Effect.

This will create a significant time delay which has consequences in that high speed transactions can be done and compleated long before the blockchain gets updated, thus “High Frequency Fraud” will be a result. This will require “back-out” mechanisms that don’t exist because they destroy the blockchain security model.

Then of course any system with locked in time delay and capacity issues, is a “Sitting Duck” target for extortion by “Denial of Service”(DoS) attack.

To be honest I’m surprised there has been no real concerted effort to Ransom one of the crypto-coin blockchains by a DDoS…

As has been pointed out the idea of a global blockchain is a “Crypto-Anarchists” dream and every one elses very real nightmare.

Because like it or not, it will become not some kind of libertarian freedom, but a tool of near total oppression as it will have all the failings of hierarchical systems[2] that certain entities will lust after to control. We actually see this with blockchain gate keepers already.

[1] There is a problem with blockchains in that if someone gets more than 50% control they can “own it”. This means you need three at all times sharing effectively equitably. Add in the fact “at all times” need 100% availability, and no single system has 100% reliability means you need an absolut minimum of four, preferably more.

[2] Mankind has known many of the failings of single and hierarchical systems for as long as there has been any kind of social structure. War is just one obvious side effect, slavery or forced servitude yet another the list of hierarchical system failings is both long and grevious. For centuries at the very least people have sort out ways to robustly maintain the desirable effects of social cohesion, yet get rid of hierarchies, or atleast their many undesirable side effects, and so far the failure to do this is effectively 100%…