lord help me, i'm about to post a 26 part tweet storm. on Telegram's ICO. save yourself, there' s no saving me.
nobody else will read this f'n Telegram ICO Technical White Paper for me, so I guess I gotta myself. Currently on my third drink to cope with this thing. docdro.id/zGNtmKk 1/26
"The Telegram Open Network (TON) is a fast, secure and scalable blockchain and network project, capable of handling millions of transactions per second if necessary, ... We aim for it to be able to host all reasonable applications currently proposed and conceived." 2/26
Well, that's certainly audacious. TON posits to solve every problem that present-day blockchains show in practice. Fast, secure *and* decentralised!
But I have doubts as to its decentralised security. 3/26
But I have doubts as to its decentralised security. 3/26
*psst* quite a lot of this is stuff that Ethereum already rejected - it's like Nikolay Durov went through @VitalikButerin's "Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol" and went "ha, that'll be easy" vitalik.ca/general/2017/0… 4/26
TON Blockchain as a Collection of 2-Blockchains. A network of sidechains: a master blockchain, and up to 2^32 "workchains" hanging off it. These are "sidechains" in conventional Bitcoin parlance. Each workchain can have 2^60 "shardchains" hanging off it. 5/26
Each shardchain is responsible for a subset of addresses. Each block in a shardchain can be replaced if found to be incorrect - thus, each block is a blockchain. The masterchain contains hashes of all blocks of all shardchains. 6/26
TON is designed as a pile of shards from the ground up - start with one shardchain per account, then work out how to reconcile all of these. This is the "infinite sharding paradigm". 7/26
This all just assumes the validity of shardchain block generation, against financially-interested outside attackers. Anyone can assemble indefinite subchains like Lego - but each of those sidechains must be secure. The word "security" appears *once* in the entire paper. 8/26
It's absolutely key to remember: *none of this exists*. This is not a detailed explanation of a live working system - this is *all hypothetical*, despite consistently using the present tense as if this is a thing. It is not a thing, and certainly wasn't then. 9/26
At best, this is how Durov thinks his unimplemented system will work - there are bursts of ridiculously low-level detail, and other bits are handwaved, or conspicuously absent. 10/26
Section 2.6 is how the Proof-of-Stake system works. This is *key* to TON solving the Blockchain Trilemma. I'd love PoS nerds to comment on this bit docdro.id/zGNtmKk as it looks to me like it skims over the really obvious "yes, but" questions pretty egregiously. 11/26
"The TON Blockchain ultimately consists of shardchain and masterchain blocks. These blocks must be created, validated and propagated through the network to all parties concerned, in order for the system to function smoothly and correctly." good, asks the right question. 12/26
There are 100 validators in any given month, elected according to stake. Nominators can lend capital to validators to achieve stake. 13/26
"this nominating or lending system enables one to become a validator without investing a large amount of money into Grams (TON coins) first. In other words, it prevents those keeping large amounts of Grams from monopolizing the supply of validators." 14/26
So, they just state that last sentence - it's the end of the section. Presumably this is their answer to "thems what has, gets." But they don't show how that follows, at all. 15/26
a ton of detail here on how they anticipate it to work. But none of t his existed when it was written. Why? Why any of this? What are the alternatives? Why is this a good system? Why is it more than just you making up a PoS system off the top of your head? 16/26
2.6.25. Decentralization of the system. this section explicitly compares TON to Bitcoin and Ethereum, which run PoW, which has centralised due to economies of scale. this is because of the nominator system: 17/26
In fact, the parameter L of 2.6.7 will force nominators not to join the largest “mining pool” (i.e., the validator that has amassed the largest stake), but rather to look for smaller validators currently accepting funds from nominators, or even to create new >> 18/26
>> validators, because this would allow a higher proportion s'-i/s-i of the validator’s — and by extension also the nominator’s — stake to be used, hence yielding larger rewards from mining. >> 19/26
>> In this way, the TON Proof-of-Stake system actually encourages decentralization (creating and using more validators) and punishes centralization. 20/26
... and that's it. No evidence presented it will work in practice how Durov hopes. No possible failure modes, nor anything that might have become obvious in Ethereum's attempts at a PoS system. I'd love to hear what those who know PoS make of section 2.6. 21/26
e.g. obvious off the top of my head: what stops large nominators backing a huge percentage of validators? As we see with Bitmain running multiple "separate" bitcoin mining pools. Read section 2.6 and add your own obvious failure modes! 22/26
Section 2.8 discusses types of blockchains. This sort of answers a bit of "why", but only on the broadest level, not why their particular decisions - and that detailed "why" begs for answers. 23/26
Section 2.9 TON is "the first fifth-generation blockchain project" in their own specially-constructed hierarchy of blockchain projects. I would say TON is 0th generation, because it *doesn't fucking exist yet*. 24/26
2.9.13. Is it possible to “upload Facebook into a blockchain”? - this is definitely the worst section heading I have ever seen in a white paper, and I've seen some doozys. 25/26
so the rest of the paper is a blend of low-level querulous detail and high-level handwaving. I'm pretty sure Durov is confident nobody could be smarter than him, he's thought about it really hard and all. Please read docdro.id/zGNtmKk and tell me what you made of it. 26/26
cc @VladZamfir @JorgeStolfi would love your thoughts if you have a moment. has Durov pulled an obvious and brilliant Proof of Stake system out of thin air? Or, y'know, not?
