Vitalik Buterin: If the Price is Zero, Then the Network Can’t Be Secure
In his recent live-stream interview with Laura Shin for the crypto journalist’s Unchained podcast, co-founder VitalikButerin has shared his views on the current situation on the crypto markets and answeres a number of other crypto-related questions including the value of Ethereum (ETH), industry’s regulation, future of ICOs and the work of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Ethreum Price: What’s Going on
It’s not a surprise the Buterin was asked about his stance towards the current ETH price. In his opinion, the Ethereum price has a strong influence on the entire market. He his position the following way:
“In part, it was counter-signaling to distinguish [Ethereum] from other crypto projects that do pumping and lambo-ing way too much. But also it was about minimizing the legal risk by basically trying to make the project seem more distant from something that would be covered by financial regulation.”
Now regulators as well as businesses and developers have started to realize the nature of cryptocurrencies and the fact that digital assets have their value. What’s more important, now they understand that blockchain applications can bring significant benefits to people’s lives.
Buterin insists that despite the fact that many people try to claim that prices do not matter at all, it is absolutely not so. Prices play a crucial role in the network’s growth.
“I can tell you what things are clearly important about why the price being higher rather than lower is good. One of them is obviously security. If the price is zero, then the network can’t be secure. That’s true in proof-of-work and proof-of-stake,” explained Vitalik.
Moreover, many Ethereum-based projects hold a significant part of their funds in crypto. That’s also one of the reason why prices matter. If the price increases, it means that they are more funded.
ICOs Still Have Future
Buterin agreed that success of Ethereum greatly depended on the fact that the network was used as a launchpad for a large number of ICOs. Nevertheless, he highlighted that even without Ethereum ICOs would have taken place and developed.
The only bad thing about ICOs, according to Buterin, is scam. A lot of projects turned out to be scammy and weak which was rather negative for the reputation of other ICOs.
What Satoshi Should Have Done
“Satoshi had a really hard job and could not have predicted which way the ecosystem would have went, [that it] would have turned into something more than a science experiment, ” said Buterin when asked about his potential recommendations to Satoshi that he would made if he could go back into the past.
He also joked that he would advise the bitcoin creator to build Ethreum 2.0 following the link on GitHub. And it’s not the first time when he tried to show the dominace of ETH. Now so long ago he ETH with a samrtphone while BTC wasnamed just a calculator.
bitcoin is a decentralized system of digital cash in which users don’t need to trust anyone else with their money; however, the full benefits of this technology are only seen when users operate a on the network. The vast majority of bitcoin users do not operate their own full nodes, but one man is trying to change that with a piece of hardware he calls the bitcoin Block Clock Jr.
There are for individual Bitcoiners to operate a full node. Full nodes are responsible for validating transactions and blocks on the bitcoin network. Only by running full nodes can users know with full certainty that they received a valid payment. Additionally, the more users that run full nodes, the more decentralized the bitcoin network is, making it harder to shut down or corrupt.
And as Co-Founder David Vorick at this year’s MIT bitcoin Expo, those who do not operate their own full nodes do not get a say in the matter when hard forks are deployed on the network. “If you’re not running a full node … your opinion on whether or not you like a hard fork is less relevant because, ultimately, if you’re not validating the rules and someone gives you a transaction following a different rule set, you don’t have a way to detect that,” he explained.
Running a full node, however, has been a rather expensive proposition. As a result, larger, economically invested entities that are better able to support full nodes have had more of a say.
According to Vorick, users can be dragged along with miners and large businesses if the cost of running a full node is too high: “If full nodes are expensive to run, only people who are capable of running nodes really have any say in what happens in a contentious upgrade.”
is the man behind the bitcoin Block Clock. A sound engineer by trade, he has been working in his spare time on creating full nodes that are both affordable and fun to use. During a recent discussion with bitcoin Magazine, Zipkin revealed his desire to create a piece of hardware for operating a low-cost bitcoin full node that isn’t boring.
When commenting on his reasoning for creating the bitcoin Block Clock, Zipkin pointed to the made by before they were acquired by .
“I always wanted one, but they disappeared when they got bought out, so I decided to build my own,” said Zipkin.
While there are other full node options out there, such as , Zipkin wanted to make something that was more than a piece of computer hardware that would sit on the floor next to a router. Zipkin wanted to turn a bitcoin full node into a work of art, and that’s exactly what he did.
Zipkin built the last year, and it was on display at the in May of 2016. After receiving positive feedback at the event and , Zipkin decided to make a smaller version of the full node hardware to sell.
The bitcoin Block Clock included a screen that displayed various live information about the bitcoin network. Zipkin put the original version of the bitcoin Block Clock for sale on and , but it hasn’t sold.
“I priced it pretty high because it’s art and I love it and kind of want to keep it,” explained Zipkin. “So of course it still has not sold.”
In an effort to create a version of the bitcoin Block Clock that could be produced at a lower price, Zipkin turned to and , which is an implementation of the bitcoin protocol written in .
“I discovered Bcoin was super easy to install and use, and the codebase was easier for me to review because it’s in Javascript instead of C++, and was built from scratch by a small group of developers (basically just two guys), so everything is really well labeled and consistent,” explained Zipkin.
Of course, the problem with using SPV mode is that it’s not a full node and the device won’t receive all of the information related to a new bitcoin block as it’s mined on the network. Zipkin opted for the option in Bcoin in an effort to lower the system resources required to operate the node on Raspberry Pi Zero.
“With pruning, I get all the fun block details I wanted to display,” said Zipkin. “I even submitted a pull request (which got merged!) to Bcoin to make my application work even easier.”
Zipkin described the LED displays on the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. as follows:
“The bitcoin Block Clock Jr. has two LED rings. The outer ring of 24 LEDs indicates recent blocks. Each LED represents 2 minutes, and they “tick” clockwise around the ring. The color of the LED is determined by the block’s version (BIP 9 version bits combined with keywords from the Coinbase scriptSig like “/EXTBLK” or “/EB1/AD6/”). The inner 16-LED ring indicates the progress of the current difficulty period (2,016 blocks, or about two weeks). It starts blue and gradually turns more and more red as the meter fills up. The tiny little display screen indicates some details about the latest block: height, size, version (and extra scriptSig version) and the adjustment period progress. I added a little web interface so I could turn the lights off at night without having to SSH into the Pi every time.”
An Economical Way to Contribute to the Network
While Zipkin noted that the original bitcoin Block Clock displays much more information and also comes with full wallet functionality, he also pointed out that the latest model proves that bitcoin users only need about $20 to run their own full nodes (at least in pruned mode).
Having said that, Zipkin admitted that the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. can struggle to keep up with the network at times.
“Bcoin plus my Python script and all the GPIO display output just barely hangs in there on this tiny underpowered computer,” said Zipkin. “The Python script has a method to restart Bcoin when it crashes and monitor it as it catches up to the network.”
All of the technical details of the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. are open source and .
Zipkin has now placed the bitcoin Block Clock Jr. for sale on and .
, the all in one financial services provider, has published the public part of the EON blockchain source code on GitHub.
[Note: This is a press release.]
The covers the rules of consensus, emission and block confirmation. The blockchain has been developed by the Exscudo team and is focused on providing and supporting financial services. It also enables Exscudo to develop its independent products and services.
The team has published the EON peer core source code on GitHub. It shows the main structure of the system, and how EON works and interacts within itself, but it does not cover the full functionality of the node.
“We are concerned about the security of our customers and we want to protect our intellectual property”, – CEO Andrew Zimine explains, – “I wouldn’t like anybody to set up a peer network before we do it ourselves. This is why we do not publish the full information about nodes on this stage.”
However, Exscudo plans to launch the EON test network in a couple of weeks after the end of the . The detailed instructions for setting up regular and master nodes will be published in June. The minimum technical requirements for setting up a node on a virtual server are the following:
A machine with 1 or 2 cores
1-2 GB operational memory with Unix support
100-200 Gb HDD.
EON uses the DePOS mining algorithm. This means that the nodes that have more coins deposited are more likely to sign a block. DePos mining is considered to be fairer for node owners, as the rewards do not depend on the power capacity of the mining equipment.
The minimum sum required for starting a node equals 25.000 EON coins. In case a user deposits more coins on the node, he raises his chances to sign a block.
The launch of the EON test network is planned for June 2017. After the blockchain is set up, Exscudo will launch its first product, the Channels mobile app. Channels is a mobile wallet and secure messenger that works on the EON blockchain. It provides for secure communication, payments, trading and money exchange.
The key features and the structure of EON are easily explained in this .
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