The Blocks For This Coin Are Confirming So Slow That I Think They’re Being Sent Via The Post Office
I just saw this line in a crypto slack room and it made me crack so hard, I had to share it :)) I had the choice to make a meme out of it, but I'm lazy.
Besides, there's something to ponder here as well. Something to think about...
We all take for granted the fact that blocks in whatever blockchain we're interested in will be confirmed at some point, or, in other words, that the word will keep moving. There are so many projections banking on the fact that the blockchain will keep on going.
But just think for a while. If tomorrow all service providers will block the port 8333, Bitcoin will simply cease to exist. No more blocks will be exchanged via p2p. So the transport protocol - and security - is just as important (if not more important) as the consensus engine. It doesn't really matter if we agree on something, if nobody else knows that, right?
So, thinking of a safer way to transport blocks, one that doesn't rely on legacy systems which can be easily shut down by a third party, does seem like a useful pastime.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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Yeah, it was supposed to be all about security and decentralization. An event that can be stopped by nobody. That was the beauty. But it's selling out it seems. I would never invest in a blockchain that could be potentially shut down by government or any third party. Sent via the post office in wagons pulled by horses.
The current blockchain transport protocol only seems safer than post office wagons pulled by horses, because it's way, way faster. But when you get down to it, it's pretty much the same. There are shake hands made, semaphores to be obeyed and even speed bumps or crossroads. As it is right now, every crypto protocol can be shut down by the government or by whatever authority has the power to control the transporters.
Would be naive to think there are not considering the amount of money already involved. Well i am not that technical. Can't you just change the port and continue? Government can't shut all the ports. Though am not talking about this loud i have a theory that Bitcoin itself might be a government project.
That would be really something :))
Well considering the person behind the bitcoin is a myth. And Purchasing power of dollar 4 cents or something. the governments are not stupid. These are powerful people and greatest minds with legacy, power and i'd say unlimited funds. Won't that be naive to think it all just appeared from a thin air? Even leave aside transportation protocols and ports. The government could simply buy all the cryptos in one day and hold it or dump it if such was the desire to destroy hype in the block chain. And distributed systems are known for more than 50 years already and developed by governments itself for military purposes. Just a thought. Might be just another conspiracy theory :)
When was the last time the first proto type was the best ? The revolution and Evolution will continue. But everyone seems so smug about beating "The Man" and not taking it the next step! I hope you read my other posts and we keep the dialog going and start working on a perfect coin :-)
Cheers
Just followed you so will be getting your updates. evolution will continue. This only makes even more sense it's been dropped by the government. Safe way to switch from dollar to crypto. You can't just take and declared the largest world economy is moving from dollar to crypto out f the thin air. So you just initiate the process, watch it evolve and grow, open source solutions created for free with no risk and expense. Do the study, and when the time comes step in, adopt it on government level with official crypto and move on from there. Because they really need a solution pretty fast in order not to implode the world economy with the worthless dollars. Please keep in mind that it is their money that have no more purchasing power. The rest of the population own just ~1% of the wealth.
Great well thought out reply worthy of my upvote and your newest follower.
On my way to your blog now...
Cheers, Life is Good
I'm trying to access steem.supply on chrome with metamask plugin. I get the following message:
"
ATTENTION
MetaMask has detected this domain to have malicious intent and has prevented you from interacting with it.
This is because the site was listed on the EtherAddressLookup malicious site blacklist.
You can turn MetaMask off to interact with this site, but it's advised not to. We blacklisted it for a reason.
You can donate to the blacklist maintainers if you want:
"
I guess somebody listed your site on the blacklist, or may be hacked the site. It's off-topic, but I left this message here, because it was the easiest way. Once you reply to it I'll delete it.
It's not hacked, as far as I can see. I enabled bitcoin paying ad network a-ads a couple of weeks ago and it may be that some people saw some ads on that network, which looked fishy and reported them. I'm filtering all NSFW, Shady and Gambling ads from a-ads, but if the IP belongs to that network, then it will just fall under the filter. At least that's my opinion now... Will look into it further...
It may also be some dirty competition move, but who knows :)
This was my first assumption(dirty competition). But keep in mind your site is not accessible unless you disable the extension. Traffic is redirected to https://metamask.io/phishing.html.
It seems the blacklist is updated via github https://github.com/409H/EtherAddressLookup. Though I couldn't see your url there when I took a quick look. Hopefully if you investigate more you'll be able to find the root cause.
Thanks a lot, appreciated :)
I think @dan touched upon this topic a little bit in his 2015 interview with @lovejoy and @roadscape.
I asked if a peer-to-peer internet is possible in one of my previous posts and I speculate that this will be @dan's next challenge and project in a few years once he's finished creating and implementing EOS.
Thanks a lot for the link, I'll look into it. A peer-to-peer publishing platform backed by blockchain is possible, but using torrents for storage and hashes stored in a blockchain OP_RETURN opcode. It's already done in a project I'm closely following, Slimcoin, the latest client allows for serverless "publications'.
But the real challenge is to rewrite even the low level protocols of blockchain and torrent servers and clients.
Post offices can still be used to transport blocks though, right?
but of course, dear Watson.
" But just think for a while. If tomorrow all service providers will block the port 8333, Bitcoin will simply cease to exist. No more blocks will be exchanged via p2p."
Is this so? I've never looked at this angle. I knew about Bitcoin from way back and poo pooed it due to assumed Government intervention, Don't I feel the fool now LOL
Every time I write anything negative about BTC I lose followers and make nothing The latest being HERE & HERE Nobody is interested in hearing about their cash cow dieing.
I'm patiently waiting for the next level crypto that addresses all my issues.
And It will come along :-)
Thanks for a very thoughtful post ( Party pooper ) LOL
I've never really thought about this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
If they use the same port and protocol as most of the Internet (i.e. HTTPS on port 443), they're safe from this? Steem RPC does, so should be ok, whilst the RPC servers can stay afloat!
To shut that down, they'd have to turn off the Internet as we know it, or commandeer the DNS servers, which I think is their usual approach.
The attack surface is so big, that they can start from anywhere, if they really want. If you don't think this is possible, look at China and at their internet, which is basically a glorified intranet.
I've never looked into how China censor their 'Internet'. Do they not just block most cross gateway SSL connections, and do packet inspection on unencrypted traffic?
Much, much more complicated than that. I've been in Hong Kong a few years ago and exchanged a few tweets with a friend who was traveling with me but staying at a different hotel. The tweets arrived 2 days after we left HK. In order to pull this out you gotta have a lot more than just packet inspection (huge pipelines, storage management, etc). It's not called "the Great Wall of Internet" for nothing.
Right, yeah I suppose they have internal censorship too, so can't even use the same SSL as we do! A different world indeed!
Great aarticle
hahah post office in this age of crypto LOL
'The Blocks For This Coin Are Confirming So Slow That I Think They’re Being Sent Via The Post Office' lmfao, this put a smile on my face.
Seems like people would rather use post offices rather than paying these transaction fees.
Indeed this is worrying. But there will always be people who push boundaries and find a new way. Progress can be slowed and shouldn't be forced, but it cannot be shut down forever. Censorship never really works long term.