Slashdot Mirror
The World's First Blockchain Smartphone Is In Development (engadget.com)
A company called Sirin Labs is developing an open-source smartphone that runs on a fee-less blockchain. "The Finney -- named in honor of bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney -- will be the only smartphone in the world that's fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic coins," reports Engadget. The company is launching a crowdsale event this October (date to be confirmed) to support the phone's development. From the report: According to Sirin, all Finney devices (there's an all-in-one PC coming, too) will form an independent blockchain network powered by IOTA's Tangle technology. The network will operate without centralized backbones or mining centers cluttering up the transaction process, using the SRN token as its default currency (only SRN token holders will be able to purchase the device). And it'll all run on a Sirin operating system specially designed to support blockchain applications such as crypto wallets and secure exchange access. The phone comes with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a device with a $1,000 price tag, including a 256GB internal memory and 16MP camera, plus a hefty suite of security measures.
Isn't the only benefit of a blockchain is to replace a single trusted server with distributed authority. How does that help with a local device (aka a smartphone)?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Is Slashdot done with the lengthy downtime? Or is the management intent on migrating the site to Windows 10 servers running IIS? What is going on here?!?
And what makes a "blockchain" phone more secure than a "non-blockchain" one?
Blockchain is an algorithm; or I suppose it could be viewed as an architectural viewpoint. But until someone says exactly what problem they are using blockchain to solve (and how) there's absolutely no reason to believe a "Blockchain Phone" would be any more secure than an ordinary phone running blockchain apps.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Anyone know why /. was offline for most of the day today?
It's the new Beowulf cluster.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Coincidentally, I was just reading about Iota yesterday. The super-condensed summary, for /.ers who don't want to look it up: Instead of a linear blockchain, you have a directed, acyclic graph with multiple "last transactions". In order to carry out a transaction yourself, you must do a unit of work to create a node (block) that incorporates two previous transactions. Hence, there are no miners, and also no transaction fees. Those are the positives.
The Iota whitepaper mentions a number of - as yet unresolved - problems. For example, double-spending is entirely possible. In addition, my first impression is that you simply have to trust that everyone is running software that honestly implements the algorithm. For example, part of your duty when creating a node is to check past transactions for consistency. What if you deliberately fail to do that, because the inconsistent transactions are to your benefit? In addition, the directed graph can diverge for long periods of time - indeed, diverging branches never need to be reconnected - so there are a lot of potential ways to cheat.
Maybe a failure of understanding on my part, but: I don't understand cryptocurrencies where all currency units are created in the genesis block. Maybe the algorithm is a fun technical toy, never meant to be used in reality? Otherwise, why should anyone use a currency where one person initially holds all the wealth?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.