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hugohanoi's profile
Hugo Nguyen
Hugo Nguyen
Hugo Nguyen
@hugohanoi

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Hugo Nguyen

@hugohanoi

I chain, therefore I am ⛓️

Joined April 2012

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    1. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      1/ Here’s why I think Ethereum & Proof-of-Stake are bad ideas.

      203 replies 696 retweets 1,946 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      2/ Bitcoin ledger (relative) immutability isn’t magic, it has that special property only because it pays an extremely high price for it. That price is PoW mining.

      3 replies 20 retweets 158 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      3/ PoS proponents claim they can achieve the same immutability property, while doing away with this “wasteful” mining and as a result, operate at a fraction of the cost.

      5 replies 11 retweets 82 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      4/ There’s something very similar to PoS in the history of technology, it’s called the idea of a Perpetual Motion Machine.

      7 replies 19 retweets 135 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      5/ In the 19th & 20th centuries, people spent tons of money & effort trying to create a Perpetual Motion Machine. A Perpetual Motion Machine produces perpetual motion without requiring any energy, essentially creating energy out of thin air.

      9 replies 12 retweets 88 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      6/ Similarly, PoS promises ledger immutability without requiring any upfront cost, basically creating ledger security out of thin air.

      12 replies 16 retweets 112 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      7/ (“Ledger security” is used here interchangeably with immutability, or the ledger’s ability to resist changes or tampering.)

      1 reply 9 retweets 77 likes
      Show this thread
      Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

      8/ We know now why Perpetual Motion Machine doesn’t work. It violates the laws of physics. Specifically, the Conservation of Energy law: "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another”.

      2:29 AM - 12 Jan 2018
      • 14 Retweets
      • 135 Likes
      • Zain I Allarakhia David Zima !Bruce Wagner Gaurav Dahake Thomas M. Jorge Steffen ちきどん🐟DK Zhell BTCbuddah
      8 replies 14 retweets 135 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          9/ You cannot gain something without giving up something equivalent. This is the absolute law that governs our universe.

          20 replies 33 retweets 201 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          10/ Blockchains also have to follow the laws of physics. Everything in our world ultimately translates back to energy, at the lowest level. You are energy. I am energy. Blockchain is energy. Specifically:

          12 replies 21 retweets 148 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          11/ a- Ledger security is energy. This manifests in electricity cost in PoW mining.

          5 replies 13 retweets 117 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          12/ b- Decentralization is energy. This manifests in the cost required to run full nodes across the network and for these nodes to communicate. This includes costs for storage, bandwidth, TCP/IP routing, etc.

          3 replies 12 retweets 118 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          13/ c- Scalability is energy. This manifests in the cost required to support more and more transactions on the network.

          1 reply 9 retweets 86 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          14/ You can think of a blockchain as a fluid system where energy can flow from one property to another. You can move decentralization energy to scalability energy, and vice versa. You can move ledger security energy to scalability energy, and vice versa.

          6 replies 12 retweets 103 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          15/ The total utility of a blockchain should be roughly equal to the energy cost that goes into producing it. (In reality, utility is less than cost due to friction & other inefficiencies).

          4 replies 11 retweets 103 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          16/ What you cannot do, is to magically keep all properties the same while reducing total energy cost.

          8 replies 8 retweets 79 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          17/ The only way PoS can reduce energy cost while keeping the same properties, is by showing that PoW is truly “wasteful.” That PoW doesn’t contribute anything to ledger security.

          5 replies 8 retweets 87 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          18/ But PoW absolutely does contribute to ledger security, 100% ! Every single hash operation in PoW contributes to ledger security. In fact, PoW makes ledger security highly quantifiable & easy to calculate. Cost of rewriting X blocks == cost of mining X blocks.

          5 replies 10 retweets 121 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          19/ Since PoS removes billions of dollars of the mining that secures the ledger, it must follow that a PoS blockchain is billions of dollars less secure. Again, Conservation of Energy.

          5 replies 14 retweets 95 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          20/ So, the TL;DR is that PoS cannot work unless it violates the laws of physics: getting security without spending any energy.

          9 replies 20 retweets 112 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          21/ Let’s look at PoS from another angle. Concretely, PoS aims to achieve immutability via the idea of “punishment.”

          1 reply 7 retweets 65 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          22/ The idea is that if you misbehave, you pay a heavy penalty. PoS people hope this threat will deter bad actors from attacking. However, this has a fatal flaw.

          1 reply 8 retweets 73 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          23/ Threat of punishment works in real life, because in real life, there is only one version of reality.

          2 replies 10 retweets 86 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          24/ This does not translate to a distributed ledger. Each fork of a ledger is an alternate version of reality.

          1 reply 7 retweets 93 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          25/ Punishing bad actors in your version of reality works only if attackers choose to remain in your reality.

          4 replies 14 retweets 117 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          26/ But they don’t have to. By rewriting history, an attacker can wipe the slate clean. In an attacker’s version of reality, she’s the honest actor.

          3 replies 7 retweets 81 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          27/ PoS can only punish bad actors *after the fact*. By the time you get to punish somebody, it might already be too late.

          4 replies 18 retweets 138 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          28/ This is drastically different from PoW mining. In PoW mining, attackers have to pay upfront cost in order to mine a single block. In order to attack, you have to pay first. Period.

          8 replies 26 retweets 183 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          29/ Whether an attacker has to pay the cost *upfront* or *after-the-fact*, makes a huge difference. The difference is billions of dollars in security.

          4 replies 13 retweets 126 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          30/ PoS might be mildly interesting without being as secure as PoW. But I don’t really see the point. If you compromise on ledger security, you compromise on what makes blockchains special in the first place.

          3 replies 13 retweets 133 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          31/ PoS weaker security is also evidenced by its need to require a lot more “social consensus” (which is just a fancy word for manual human intervention) than PoW.

          5 replies 13 retweets 125 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          32/PoS plans to rely on “making it the user's responsibility to authenticate the latest state out of band. They can do this by asking their friends, block explorers, businesses that they interact with, etc. for a recent block hash in the chain that they see as the canonical one.”

          1 reply 4 retweets 43 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          33/ Vitalik’s beloved defense against this type of weakness is that PoW also require social consensus. Well, DUH. *All man-made systems require some degree of social consensus*, there is no exception.

          2 replies 5 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          34/ The political system, the transportation system, the banking system, the dollar, Bitcoin, etc. All these systems require buy-in from humans collectively as a group, in order for them to work. Man-made systems would break down immediately without social consensus.

          2 replies 8 retweets 61 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          35/ To argue that since PoW needs social consensus, it’s OK for PoS to need social consensus, is a downright stupid argument. What matters is not whether you need social consensus, but *how much*?

          1 reply 9 retweets 71 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          36/ The less social consensus / human intervention a system needs, the stronger & more secure it is. The goal is to move as much as possible to *machine consensus*- to eliminate human biases & errors.

          3 replies 20 retweets 104 likes
          Show this thread
        30. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          37/ PoW makes machine-level consensus a trivial problem. When there is a fork, a machine just has to pick the one with the most accumulated PoW. Yes, Bitcoin still needs some social consensus to get the system up & running. But after that, it’s mostly on auto-pilot.

          1 reply 7 retweets 63 likes
          Show this thread
        31. Hugo Nguyen‏ @hugohanoi Jan 12

          38/ In contrast, in PoS you would continuously need social consensus in order to resolve forks. The reliance on social consensus is magnitudes bigger than PoW.

          3 replies 9 retweets 60 likes
          Show this thread
        32. 6 more replies

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