The r0ach report 27: No, DAGs (IOTA + Byteball) are not useful, and Bitcoin so called "triple entry accounting" isn't real
This post is in response to someone I saw saying to buy IOTA that either has no idea how it's supposed to work, or was too lazy to try and figure it out. IOTA is worthless.
A DAG is completely counterintuitive to trying to create consensus on some type of variable or balance sheet. A DAG is basically the opposite of consensus. To use a DAG, you're required to create an artificial, forced consensus (and that's exactly what they're doing). It's like IOTA and Byteball were created while ignoring any of the issues that had to be researched while trying to create bitcoin (bitcoin - another system that does not work since it's designed to centralize, but at least succeeds in creating centralized consensus). In the case of Byteball, they just use an obfuscated form of bitshares DPOS, thus invalidating any reason to have a DAG at all since the DPOS system completely negates DAG due to the DPOS layer taking precedent in the hierarchy.
Systems that have removed the so called "triple entry accounting" aka blockchain, are also way more prone to being instantly destroyed by black swans. But in the case of bitcoin, it's not even real triple entry accounting if it's designed to centralize, now is it? It's like claiming the act of Bank of America giving customers a weekly balance sheet print out is a triple entry accounting breakthrough. It doesn't matter if people have access to store read only digits for no reason, it only matters who controls the fucking digits! If the block validators (aka miners) are designed to centralize, they can insert chain anchor, censor or block transactions, increase or lower coin count, or mutate the protocol any way they want.
A 51% attack is NOT a so called miner raising the coin cap above 21 million or double spending only, a 51% attack is any type of collusion to change the protocol in any way because one man's wanted change is always going to be another man's nightmare. If mining is just a power vacuum that is always exploited by centralized cartels, then you have no redundancy, you just have authoritarianism and no reason for bitcoin to exist.
(img src: History Channel - or aliens)
@r0achtheunsavory , you have made some good points here. Bitcoin mining is becoming more expensive and centralized and thus opens itself up for control by a limited number of mining organizaitons. While I think Bitcoin will continue moving higher in price over the coming year, who really knows which coin will be the ultimate winner. Maybe it doesn't have to be just one or two coins, any coin with a good use case will have value it the Crypto Universe.
A 51% attack can do double spends but they cannot change the protocol such that they could do something drastic like increase the coin count because the client's software would reject those blocks. The clients would follow the longest chain the conforms to the protocol rules that are embedded in the clients.
This is a nonsense post.