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Professors From 7 US Colleges, Including MIT and Stanford, Have Teamed Up To Design a Cryptocurrency Capable Of Processing Thousands of Transactions a Second (fortune.com)
Some of the brightest minds in America are pooling their brain power to create a cryptocurrency that's designed to do what Bitcoin has proved incapable of: processing thousands of transactions a second. From a report: Professors from seven U.S. colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley have teamed up to create a digital currency that they hope can achieve speeds Bitcoin users can only dream of without compromising on its core tenant of decentralization. The Unit-e, as the virtual currency is called, is the first initiative of Distributed Technology Research, a non-profit foundation formed by the academics with backing from hedge fund Pantera Capital Management LP to develop decentralized technologies.
Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and the first payment network to allow parties to transact directly without needing to trust each another or to rely on a central authority. Yet, while it has built a following among developers, anarchists and speculators, mainstream adoption remains elusive. That's in no small part the product of its design, where inbuilt restrictions have constrained its performance and scalability and, as a result, reduced its usefulness as an everyday unit of payment, DTR said in a research paper. The academics are designing a virtual coin they expect will be able to process transactions faster than even Visa.
Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and the first payment network to allow parties to transact directly without needing to trust each another or to rely on a central authority. Yet, while it has built a following among developers, anarchists and speculators, mainstream adoption remains elusive. That's in no small part the product of its design, where inbuilt restrictions have constrained its performance and scalability and, as a result, reduced its usefulness as an everyday unit of payment, DTR said in a research paper. The academics are designing a virtual coin they expect will be able to process transactions faster than even Visa.
"non-profit foundation formed by the academics with backing from hedge fund Pantera Capital Management LP"
Right. Non-profit.
it'll be interesting if this causes remaining bitcoin holders to try to sell
Don't get me wrong.... its a fun experiment to try and come up with new experimental types of blockchains and transactional systems.
But Bitcoin already has a pragmatic solution called the Lightning Network that uses second-layer networks allowing wallets to safely transact off the chain, resulting in extremely high scalability and low fees --- as a result it is not even limited to "Thousands of transactions per second".... indeed to be a competitor in payment processing, Millions of Transactions per Second may be required ---
so when you think of scaling; just making a native blockchain capable of thousands of TPS sounds impressive at first, at first, But its really not much in the grand scheme of things --- when you're talking about transitioning from experiment to real-world use.
Ultimately, layering additional peer-to-peer networks with certain safeguards and no lower bound that says a transaction takes at least X minutes, is a smart approach.
A cryptocurrency for non-binary people, unlike BITcoin..
Would I be able to pay with Unit-e to purchase Unity-engine based games on my Unity desktop?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Ripple is already the most-used cryptocurrency for cross-border payments (DAG-based) with years of R&D and partnerships with major banks and corporations around the world.
It'll be a steep hill to climb to get something out of the Ivory Tower to compete. This would have been cutting edge six years ago, though.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This
I'm selling ALL my bitcoin, gold bullion and Infowars.com shares to buy in now, and anyone who isn't a libtard should do the same. This is a guaranteed investment, backed by MIT, Slashdot and the full force of the US military.
Unless someone is living within the Bitcoin, it should be "core tenet of decentralization."
The prime suspect for causing the demise of bitcoin is bitcoin itself. The show is run by a bunch of fractious idiots* that keep on forking the thing into oblivion.
If it wasn't for that, this initiative wouldn't stand a chance. But it does occur to me that these bigwigs are very late indeed to the game. I suspect the only reason it exists is someone decided or got convinced to throw money at it, so it's a pork barrel. Eventual results will be incidental. I think it's at least as likely to fizzle with a conclusion "nope, better than bitcoin can't be done, honest". Because there are large interests in having a mess like the current, though some indubitably will prefer more tracking and less pseudonimity.
* And according to some, suspected government stooges. Hanlon's razor tells me to hold off on that conclusion until clear evidence says otherwise.
Keystone Kops.
How is Cryptocurrency even remotely a tech issue?
News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters my ass!
Visa alone is capable of processing 56,000 transactions per second.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"without compromising on its core tenant of decentralization"
Shouldn't that be "tenet" or is my English not as good as I think it is?
When I read the summary I wondered whether the researchers involved had a track record of interesting work in this area, or in cryptography more generally. It took some searching but I found the list of names here: https://dtr.org/research/#rese....
FWIW, neither I nor my academic cryptographer friends immediately recognized any of these people. I do see that Andrew Miller is on the ZCash board, which gives him some credibility in my book.
That I don't recognize them doesn't mean that much, but I'd be more inclined to follow this work closely if it were done by people with a solid track record in the space. Time will tell.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This is a hedge fund tax shelter where these professors will be working (probably during their university-paid time). This is NOT an initiative that is sponsored officially by those universities. One could take care to understand this is just yet another attempt at a lucrative ICO, and will likely end up being just another pump-and-dump like every other ICO has been so far.
You've re-invented sidechains.
What's amazing is how the ignorant get modded up so quickly.
Visa processes over 1,600 transactions per second and that is only a fraction of the global market. If the intent to create a global decentralized currency is realized they will need to exceed 10 times Visa's volume. This is just one of the issues.
One of Crypto's big claims is that the transactions are irreversible... but that is not a benefit to someone who's been defrauded or the victim of theft. Every time there is a multi-million crypto heist the market tanks. This is because no one wants to think of themselves as a victim in those cases.
Decentralized won't work in a lawful society... If you don't want to pay child support, alimony, or pay back what you stole in the example above? With no central authority to force you to pay the most they can do is attempt to blacklist your crypto account which won't work in a decentralized system, there will always be someone who willing to take your money.
Fixed monetary supply doesn't work in the real world... the population grows, and the need for cash grows with it. A fixed monetary supply will almost guarantee deflation at some point which is even more devastating to an economy than moderate inflation.
As a number of other people have said to me: "There is no reason to encrypt a currency unless you want to be able to track everything they spend it on and that is a tool of tyranny that can easily be abused; it's none of their business where, when and how I spend my money, and the IRS has too much power already.
Crypto currency is the biggest threat to freedom we have ever had, and any entity that even attempts to force it's use will be viewed as the aggressor in a military attack and it mandates a military response upon them."
it sounds like it's just something a bunch of guys want to do. They're smart guys, so maybe they'll do it, but they need to solve not just speed but power usage. Water & Electricity are both heavily subsidized. When you start using a ton of power and produce basically nothing for the local communities they're gonna notice. Bitcoin miners were starting get draw flack until the crash happened and slowed everything down.
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You are trading trusting a central authority with a majority vote authority. Is that really any better? I guess the upside is you can't blame anyone in particular when your money is lost.
The transaction limit of 3-7 transaction/second is an artificial one created because the original creators, years and years ago,who worried about spam, so they put in a block size limit. The intention was always to increase it as they learned more about how the network could scale.
That limit has since become an entrenched position. It in fact lead to a fork in bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash, which has a 32 MB limit. There's further work being done to increase this limit.
The summary starts off with "Some of the brightest minds in America are pooling their brain power". Well, nobody knows anything about these people...
Just what we needed. Now all of Earth's problems are solved.
The Lightning Network is a network of computers communicating via a well-defined protocol.
What are you blathering on about?
FUCK those 7 profs for their useless waste of time & resources aiding a bullshit Chinese project to move money out of the reach of Poohbear.
FUCK THEM ALL.
I note the following...
US Constitution Article I Section 8: "Congress shall have the power ... To coin Money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures". Um, These entities are not Congress, nor does this US-based Cryptocurrency have Congressional Approval.
US Constitution Article I Section 10: "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit..." and again, these entities are in US States, but not Congress.
The US government couldn't really crack down on Bitcoin because it was decentralized, and multiple hardware vendors were making drivers and processing so that users would de-facto distributed computing mine for Cryptocurrency... but it's failing in its own way including others stealing Bitcoins from accounts. This is CENTRALIZED among professors and a hedge fund.
at least mitcoin rhymes with bitcoin
https://coincodex.com/article/2052/eos-achieves-3000-transactions-per-second/
This means, it is now official that bitcoin (& not to mention all other existing cryptocurrencies) are completely useless/worthless!!!
(If not, then, why they are trying to create yet another cryptocurrency, if any other is also okay???)
The Red Belly blockchain is reported to handle 600,000 transaction per second. It was developed at the University of Sydney's school of information technologies.
That's not how it works.
Slashdot is the dregs.
Which is part of why I don't have respect for them anymore.
I2P is currently sitting on a few million in virtual currency donations.
ZCash, in an even sleazier bid than premined coins, made all blocks generated for the first X blocksplits give 10 percent of the coin value to the developers wallet. I actually ran it on CPU mining during the initial pre-release period and never saw a single successful solution, despite 2-3 months of mining. During this time the I2P development was fully ignored, and as it turned out the only real development had been taking place by a third party dev who the I2P project head was mad at (some cucked SJW man who allowed a CoC to be rammed through because his feelings had been hurt, while not offering anything significant back to the project.) They've since been removing that third party person's contributions while doing questionable UI replacement design.
Not sure if it is the same guy or group of people working on this new project, but I wouldn't trust it much. ZCash ended up being just as ponzi-ish as bitcoin was, and it hasn't really brought anything new to the table. The final darknet exchange on I2P is shutting down as well due to lack of demand.
allows for all the cash to be stolen thousands of times quicker! This is exactly what the crypto currency guys have been demanding since it takes too long to run their pump and steal scams now. This could cause a resurgence in this criminal sub-genre.
To get accpeted by the general public, the transactions would need to support 1E6/second. Or more!!
But an improved (from current)rate of 1e5 is a VERY nice start
Please, tell me you're not a lawyer.
The Constitution of the United States is unique in that it restricts government, not The People.
Grin was launched using MimbleWimble tech.
Where do you people come from?
It uses BTC, and is based around actual Bitcoin transactions.
The OP's point flew way over your head.