The Blockchain Just Became 😨 Obsolete 😨, the Future is Hashgraph... or NOT?! 😎
Despite multiple debunkings of the lofty "Hashgraph" promises (some by Dan Larimer himself), I repeatedly see people still asking in discord and other forums how exciting it sounds, and if it will truly render STEEMIT, BitShares, and other blockchain technology all but obsolete.
First of all, let's go through some the claims:
- 50,000 Times Faster: limited only by bandwidth — 250,000+ Transactions Per Second (Pre-Sharding)
- More Fair: mathematically proven fairness (via consensus time stamping) meaning no individual can manipulate the order of the transactions.
- Improved Bank-Grade Security: Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant: No member can prevent the community from reaching a consensus, nor can they change the consensus once it has been reached.
- 100% Efficient: No mined block ever becomes stale.
- Inexpensive: avoids proof-of-work (PoW), meaning it does not have to waste computations to slow itself down, therefore the expensive, custom hardware is no longer necessary.
Link: What is Hashgraph? How is it different from Blockchain?
These claims sound great, so much so that chains such as IOTA and Swirlds have wholeheartedly embraced Hashgraph and UXTO (standing for "Unspent Transaction Output", and fundamentally how BitCoin operates) as the "future" of blockchain technology. But, what's the catch?
How can it possibly be so much faster than even the graphene-related chains have proven to be, through actual real world active use cases (ie. STEEMIT and BitShares)?!
Swirlds is a software platform that has developed the hashgraph consensus algorithm: an entirely new distributed ledger technology that is much more cost-effective (no proof-of-work), 50,000 times the speed, safer (Byzantine), more efficient (no stale blocks) and mathematically fairer than the blockchain.
Link: Blockchain Just Became Obsolete. The Future is Hashgraph
And the million-dollar question, does Hashgraph make Blockchains obsolete?
Well, before even getting to @dan's comments on the subject, here's one quote from the article "Demystifying Hashgraph: Benefits and Challenges":
Hashgraph is an interesting consensus protocol that has been shown to yield high throughput in a private and static setting. Hashgraph is fast, fair, and secure within the permissioned setting it currently operates in. However, if and when used in a public setting, Hashgraph will face the same issues that other public blockchains are facing today and may not be able to maintain its security and performance.
Notice the key phrase in that statement: "within the permissioned [NON-PUBLIC] setting it currently operates in"!
From another article, "IOTA vs RaiBlocks":
People argue that IOTA is not yet decentralized due to the deployment of something called the coordinator. This is basically “training wheels” for the IOTA network which is used to mitigate 51% attacks and such. Most blockchains, including Bitcoin, have had mechanisms like this in their early days. But we are still waiting on a official metric or a timeline for when this will be removed. The link earlier stated that it would become “optional” by the summer (the article looks dated so I think it meant the summer of 2017?). In theory, I believe the coordinator is optional, but in practice, I highly doubt people are running their nodes in a coordinator-less fashion; please let me know if I am mistaken here.
To clarify the function of the IOTA coordinator:
To make it possible for the network to grow and protect it against certain attacks, IOTA currently relies on a coordinator. The coordinator checkpoints valid transactions, which are then validated by the entire network. The coordinator is being run by the IOTA Foundation in a multi-signature. The coordinator cannot go rogue, as he is being checked and validated by the entire network.
That sounds pretty centralized right there, and it seems highly unlikely that performance and throughput claims would be sustainable once a more decentralized "coordinator" solution is implemented.
"Anti-FUD" Half-Time Break...
I don't want to be accused here of any kind of "FUD" on IOTA and Hashgraph, so here's a github page that offers "a curated list of IOTA FUD counter-arguments".
So just get to the final point... WTF's Dan got to say about it?!
For those who participate in the various EOS discord and telegram chats, you may have already come across some of his thoughts on the subject:
Ken Anderson: But isn't hashgraph a message based approach? Events (which include transactions) are broadcast and the network seeks consensus on ordering. It's not a blockchain nor is there a utility token or coin. Are you seeing something in the Whitepaper I'm not seeing?
Dan: right, if you only focus on ordering then hashgraph can also work; however, you still need to execute the transactions
and ordering does not imply validity
so you still need to filter the invalid ones from the valid ones
and you still need to execute things in parallel
blockchain implies several things: 1. order 2. validity and validity implies it has been executed in order. If all we had to do was order transactions and not execute them then DPOS could be 1 million TPS single threaded.
So therein lines the key... Just because something is properly ordered, doesn't imply it is valid. And once you add transaction validation, the level of performance will inevitably drop significantly.
Furthermore, Dan addresses the inability of UTXO to scale for practical real-world applications other than a pure "currency model". That's why the UTXO model suits BitCoin (as a pure virtual currency) quite well. However, using UTXO for dapps (distributed apps) is a whole other story entirely:
Every transaction explicitly includes its new output state. This state includes everything that must be modified in an atomic manner. If the UTXO were an exchange order book, then the state would be the entire order book. What works for Bitcoin currency (a short script and a balance), doesn’t work for anything that is even slightly more complex or that refers to more data.
Because of these drawbacks, people who build applications based upon UTXO are forced to limit the amount of state impacted by each output. This means exchanges without rules on the order in which things are filled. This means anything that is the result of aggregating input from multiple parties is likely not viable.
Steem and Bitshares adopt a message based approach. In this case, the blockchain represents a consensus over the order of messages and the state is deterministically derived from these messages.
Link: Blockchain UTXO Model is a Dead End for General Purpose Applications
If you're unclear on why UTXO is an issue vis-a-vis Hashgraph and IOTA as well, here's the reason:
IOTA uses a UTXO-like scheme. This means that we have inputs (addresses) which you have to spend in order to transfer tokens. Addresses are generated from private keys, which in turn are derived from a trytes-encoded seed. A transfer in IOTA is a bundle consisting of outputs and inputs. Bundles are atomic transactions, meaning that either all transactions will be accepted by the network, or none.
Any chance that could also be another limiting factor to the scalability claims made by IOTA and Hashgraph?
At this point, I'll let you all be the judge of that! 🙂
Permissioned/centralized blockchains will be necessary for certain industries and use case, while truly decentralized payment networks will fulfill the needs of other markets.
I believe there's no point in having some kind of competition/war between the two.
that may be true, however it's a rather different proposition completely, when one purports to be better than the other (and even better than all others), while completely denying those basic differences in use cases, along with the required compromise in design choices made, in order to achieve those differing goals and objectives.
Sigh
The order is enough because you know who paid which token first.
Yes. "the state is the entire order book". The state is determined by effectlivy sending everyone the whole hashgraph. This is called virtual voting because you already know how someone would vote if you see the state of the world.
From your own link:
Dan & hashgraph = no results.
Going from Leemon Baird, everyone get's the whole state eventually and since the messages are so small it could work for just currency. Bigger apps might be problematic but you don't have to save the whole state.
And they have Java apps for you to play with @alexpmorris also a little stock exchange thingie ;)
5th video with Leemon about HashGraph
this is kind of interesting too, @nutela. I went to check out the Swirlds/Hashgraph SDK, and saw this message:
And from this post, "Is Hashgraph Technology Just Hype, or Can It Dethrone Blockchain?":
So at this point all that is available for Swirlds is a closed-source library, and I've gotta contact their sales department if I want to deploy my application?! Not to mention, of course, that Swirlds even has multiple patents on the future of the "free and open" blockchain killer, which of course is their private solution, wait for it... Hashgraph!
Hmmmm......... yeah, unless I'm reeeeeeaaaaalllly missing something here, I think I'll pass.
As I've written in other comments, I'm not saying there aren't particular use-cases where Hashgraph may be useful, such as for the purpose of a temporal distributed order book. But the thing is, perhaps you can explain to me (except for possibly a more stream-lined "plug-and-play" solution), how this is so revolutionary versus something like Bisq Network (also open-source and written in Java):
Link: Bisq Network FAQ
In addition, by using TOR, counterparties have a lot more anonymity than I would expect they would through a Swirlds-based solution, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Also, perhaps you can also better explain to me this whole concept of "gossip about gossip", because the more I try to understand it, the more it seems to me little more than a fancy marketing "buzzword".
Bisq sounds mighty interesting, I'll check coinmarketcap.
Gossip about gossip means that everyone adds two hashes from which the order can be validated.
ah okay, "the order", and what about "the validity"?
It's valid when it is in order, double spending cannot occur because of the order of the tokens! You cannot suddenly have a coin or spend it twice, the first one is always valid...
But it could happen that tx1 spends all the funds, which would make tx2 invalid. When you receive the votes and reorder, and realize tx2 is invalid, what do you do ? Broadcast a reorg?!
Well. I appreciated the perspective. Up to now I'd only heard the positive side of hash. Thanks for sharing.
Fascinating, when I first heard about iota and looked into it, it seemed like it would be the next step after blockchain. Your article and the links provided show that may not be the case at all. This seems to limit the potential upside for iota, but I'm no expert. A lot of this was over my head, my takeaway is that even though it might be faster, it may have issues validating, which may compromise a certain amount of "state"
sounds like you pretty much were able to get the "gist" of it! :)
I think the real question is going to be the ternary microchips from JINN labs. Ternary as opposed to binary is never been done before in a microprocessor (and this might have its reasons). Software and algorithms can be changed but another platform will takes the Tangles place when the ternary microchips fails . This is a huge challenge, a startup creating a fully functioning, cheap, safe durable microchip to be placed on every device with the smallest of circuit-boards (which is their goal) seems like an insurmountable task. I am writing an article about the role of the hardware development of JINN Labs in the possible success of IOTA in the future.
iota is a young currency, it can not quickly rise should wait a little bit!;)
Permissioned/private ledgers = jokes. Well, in terms of what the people wants, anyways. Sure, they're probably great for something like UPS, Amazon, etc. But for us? Nahh.
you got it, @matt-a, but then again, you're one the last people I'd expect to have to explain it to! :)
Besides that, hope all's going well, and Best Wishes for the New Year to all of you!
Great post. I learned a lot I didn’t know. Thank you for sharing
glad you enjoyed it @road2wisdom, and great to see you back around these here parts again! :)
I wish I could say I understand an iota of this, yet, alas, I'm just a humble student. Thank you @alexpmorris for sharing, educating and keeping us up-to-date! ; )
humble's good, never stop learning! :)
true dat!
Hashgraph is simply a more efficient algorithm and data structure than blockchain and therefore it should be pretty obvious that it can't replace all the other code built into Graphene that has way more to do than just the execution and storage of the blockchain. You could however swap out the blockchain if Graphene was developed modularly and use Hashgraph as the algorithm and data structure at the foundation.
DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs) are not Hashgraph. Sure, there are a lot of supposed comparisons because these other DAGS (IOTA, ByteBall, RaiBlocks, etc.) don't use a blockchain, but that's pretty much where the comparison's stop. You are mixing apples with oranges here.
IOTA performance is known to be crap. Loads of users have already complained of this. So explaining that IOTA is basically applying Hashgraph with nodes is completely wrong. Comparing any other the DAGs as Hashgraph is wrong too. Hashgraph is not the same and currently is only implemented in Swirlds and nowhere else.
If you really want to understand Hashgraph then you should read my summary and have a listen to Leemon Baird's videos and discussions here. Leemon developed Hashgraph and he makes abundantly clear other DAGs are NOT Hashgraph. You are working off secondhand information and misinformation without understanding the fundamentals of what Hashgraph really is. If you want to understand what it is then you need to first have a serious listen to its creator, who is one of the smartest computer scientists out there.
I'd also be interested in your perspectives vis-a-vis what I further commented to @nutela on his comment above as well:
Swirlds is not Hashgraph. Swirlds is a solution built on top of Hashgraph so no surprise if they don't open source their code. Big deal. I sounds like you are still in the mindset that Hashgraph is a full-fledged solution. Hashgraph is a patented algorithm that can be used as the basis for a lot of different types of solutions - Swirlds is just one of these solutions.
The simple takeaway is that Leemon and company want to make money off of their investment in solving a serious computer science performance challenge. They therefore don't want to give away their exact code to others, but they certainly have in any case revealed how it is working to a large degree already. I don't think this is a crazy thing for them to do. They can then license it to various crypto developers for a portion of their profits. I've seen here for example that Lykke is planning on using Hashgraph
respectfully, it sounds like you've bought hook, line, and sinker into their "kewl-aid". I understand that hashgraph is just a "consensus algorithm", but the fascinating thing to me, is that everything you say I don't seem to understand, pretty much comes directly from Leemon Baird himself! Furthermore, there isn't even a working model in active production that can verify any of the claims that made. Even if it works, what makes you so confident that this patented algorithm will be any better or faster than any of already proven complete solutions using alternative consensus mechanisms already available today (such as DPOS or even Ripple) for similar usage cases?
And perhaps gun.js is another option as well. GUN is a real-time, distributed, offline-first, graph database engine, doing 20M+ ops/sec in just ~9KB gzipped, and open-source! Of course, it too comes with its own set of constraints and limitations.
From swirlds (his own company which he is also chief marketer and promoter):
And as we already know from IPFS, relying on "peers" isn't generally the best way to go for assuring network stability and fast consensus. And gossip circles themselves take time to propagate throughout the whole system too. For example, what if on STEEMIT, it took several minutes before you could confirm a vote or a market bid/offer or trade goes through?
But then again, if I wrote the fastest database system ever, even faster than an in-memory database, it would be unfair to compare it to a complete distributed and persistent solution that didn't involve sending all data to /dev/null...
Link: Blockchain Just Became Obsolete. The Future is Hashgraph
Whooooaa, say what?! Everyone knows about it "within a couple of minutes"?! Well, apparently that's how long it takes for consensus to be assured using Hashgraph. And of course, that's just for ordering, not including all the required validation as well.
And, would you really want to use a smart phone as a node, with the high cost of bandwidth, not to mention high latency and intermittent connectivity?!
Like I said earlier, I just must be missing something here, or perhaps I'm simply jaded by all the bullshit claims I've seen over my 30+ years of programming that never came close to living up to their hype.
I'm not certainly not saying that Leemon Baird and his colleagues have everything solved.. far from it. I think they have a hell of a lot more work to continue with. Additionally, it would not make sense for them to put every transacting entity on Hashgraph as a full node, and so no, I don't anticipate smartphones as full nodes. The connectivity and data storage would certainly be a limitation. The point of even mentioning a smart phone being able to run on it was in comparison to the ridiculous computational power needed to do effective Bitcoin mining.
I have no stake in Hashgraph and really don't care whether it's Hashgraph or another technology that takes us to the next step in fully peer-to-peer transactions. My interest is just to see that the middlemen finally get taken out and if Hashgraph shows real promise of doing this, then let's see what it can do. I'm certainly not religious about it. (By the way, miners are middlemen too, just as we have seen in the ridiculous costs of Bitcoin transactions and their centralization in China and elsewhere.)
If you look historically, it has always been key controlling monopolies / oligopolies that have screwed mankind. These controllers have used their middleman manipulation in trade, money, markets, communications, etc. to basically keep everyone under their thumb. My hope with Hashgraph, or any other technology that works exceedingly well in its stead to keep out the middlemen, is that finally we can have truly free markets, money, trade, and communications. It's also my personal view that blockchain is still in its infancy in its ability to fully enable this needed transformation. This, therefore, is my real interest in Hashgraph, but I don't care if it's Hashgraph or another technology that can achieve it. In other words, I'm not drinking any Hashgraph Kool-Aid, but I do want to see them enable what Baird is envisioning. His vision is to disintermediate everything and this is exactly what I want to see as well.
well, now this response is more difficult for me to take issue with! lol :)
I suppose my biggest issue with all this Baird / Hashgraph stuff is that so far I've seen mostly a bunch of marketing hype from what I would consider another one of those groups that actually seems more interested in helping those middlemen maintain control (ie. private, permissioned ledgers), versus something that works towards openly "setting the world free" (I mean, who else will be a "client")?
I also think EOS is a lot closer to actually solving many of these issues, and Dan's solution is completely open-source. Perhaps its the programmer in me, but I also get what Dan says. It makes sense from a practical perspective. Take, for example, his explanation of how they plan to achieve sub-second stable block times. No hype or B.S., just matter-of-fact "how we plan to achieve this":
Link: EOS.IO DAWN 2.0 Released & Development Update
That said, I think open-source projects such as Bisq.Network are pretty cool too! :)
I'm looking forward to seeing what Dan develops with EOS, but Dan is working not for himself but for Block One. I am very glad to see it is Open Source, but have to say that I am still very suspicious of Block One, especially considering the BS ICO tactics that BlockOne have used to date. Everything about how this ICO has been done has been a disaster in my view. Let's see what EOS is when it arrives as a usable platform.
I've written another post sometime back about EOS and the naming and branding of EOS by Block One makes me very suspicious as well. (So you still may have something to take issue with. :) I have been studying occult symbolism for a long time because those in power are almost always involved in secret societies that use very specific symbolism to advertise their plans and control. They almost always give us hints to their agendas in symbols rather than words.
Eos is the Greek goddess of the Dawn and the mother of Lucifer, the morning star (a.k.a. Eos-phoros). This is a veiled reference to Lucifer worship that was used most prominently in late 1800s and early 1900s. (Have a look at another previous post here for more on this.) Just as an example of this, if you go to Newport, RI and see the handful of Vanderbilt and other Gilded Age mansions there that are open to the public, three of them have massive centerpiece murals of Eos on the ceiling. Why? Because just like the Obama logo and tagline, they saw themselves as bringing in "the dawn of a new day." The Soviets used this symbolism very prominently as well since Lenin and Trotsky were Freemasons in Brooklyn before they headed over to start the "people's revolution" funded by the most powerful bankers in the world at that time. I'm not saying that EOS is therefore absolutely not to be trusted, but I watch all the actions of the people that are involved in major initiatives and I can tell you that I don't like a number of things with Block One to date. This symbolism definitely concerns me as part of the story because it is by no means a mistake on their part. They know exactly what this symbolism means even if the vast majority of the uninitiated populace have no idea what it really means.
Hopefully this doesn't weird you out too much, but I reference it simply because just as you are wondering about motivations with Hashgraph, I am also wondering about motivations with Block One and EOS.
BTW, thanks for the tip on Bisq. I'll happily have a closer look.
you might find some of our hangouts and "after-party" discussions quite interesting... stop by next time if you have a chance! :) lol
Link: BitShares Hangout #52 | 2017-12-30 | Sat @200PM UTC | OpenSource Agenda [Beyondbit Payouts Powered by SP!]
(and that's all I'll say about that, for now! lol)
EOS ico will produce the most decentralized blockchain in terms of users and accounts. It has worked so bloody well - DPOS hinges on a wide and varied voting base so individual actors can not get control of the network. Block one has the most shares, owning 10% of the network. The next biggest whale owns less than 1% of the network. More than 80% of the network is owned by ethereum accounts that hold 10,000 or less EOS.
This ICO is a slam dunk. Look at steem or bitshares of Bitcoin for that matter where 98% of accounts own like 2% of the Bitcoin or something stupid.
Woa, real good arguments with the minutes... But wait validating is done by virtual voting! Which means you already have that for free, it's Gossip about Gossip!
they're validating "the order", not the actual payload
Lol, looks like time has proven this entire rant incorrect.
I read your post, and I've re-watched some of the videos you posted (most of which I had already seen before). Oddly, the validation is always conveniently overlooked. Yet, Baird does an excellent job at repeating "Fast, Secure, and Fair" to make sure the terms are well-ingrained into the viewer's subliminal and subconscious mind. He even starts out by saying it's currently meant for permissioned blockchains, yet he repeatedly compares it directly to other blockchains, again repeating the mantra, in comparison, that Hashgraph is "Fast, Secure, and Fair".
I'm not saying that Hashgraph doesn't have its particular niche, but the performance claims, by Baird included, are frankly only achievable in very particularly tight usage cases. If I'm still missing something here, perhaps @dan could fill in any gaps in my understanding here, as I'm quite sure he understands this far better than most, myself included.
And once more, for good measure, to really ingrain it into your minds...
You say that DAGs aren't Hashgraph. However, do you really believe that if graphene swapped out its currently foundation in lieu of Hashgraph that it would really be orders of magnitude faster? That seems quite unlikely to me. But perhaps I will be proven wrong in the near future.
As such, I do look forward to seeing some of these performance claims validated in a real-world application such as STEEMIT in the near future (quoting from your post):
thanks for sharing, wondering if since this hashg is no honest, should not US experts be calling this union , i mean to avoid people loses.. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171027005457/en/Swirlds-CULedger-Collaborate-Deliver-High-Performance-Secure
it's amazing that every article and video I watch basically emphasizes the following claim, "timestamps on transactions" are determined by the community. Yet, just because transactions are inserted in their "correct order", does not imply they are "valid" transactions. In the context of a credit union alliance, it's probably fine as they more or less trust one another. However, they will still need to implement other ways to assert the validity of the underlying transactions themselves.
As for US experts calling things out to help people avoid losses, never rely on anyone but yourself to protect you. If you have any doubts to that effect, read this article I posted last week: "How much would STEEMIT or BitShares be worth as SHARES on the New York Stock Exchange?!".
Like I said, validated is done by virtual voting
ah okay cool, please explain that in detail, from the perspective of an actual implementation