Thread by @hus_qy

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger You can criticize the early IOTA for:

- assuming that resource constrained IoT devices would provide enough PoW security (hash power)
- using a slow and gameable random walk to "find" the heaviest branch
- using ternary logic and alot of other things

but I strongly disagree ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... with the statement that it started with a totally broken idea. The idea to translate the longest chain wins consensus of Nakamoto into a heaviest branch wins consensus in a DAG is absolutely brilliant - and imho even necessary if you want to deliver on the original vision ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... of Satoshi to create a completely decentralized network that can be used as a medium of exchange (a real currency).

Nakamoto consensus is the most secure and robust consensus mechanism that we know and it would in theory work well with millions of nodes and millions of ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... miners. There are however problems that even Satoshi did not anticipate:

1. The competitive mining process combined with the dynamics of "economies of scale" lead to the formation of mining pools and a centralization of power.

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger 2. This centralization of power makes it hard to shard the system since it is easy for a single actor to get the majority of power in a shard.

This and the slow confirmations make it suboptimal for the use as a currency. IOTA's approach doesn't just solve the slow ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... confirmation times (confirmations can be issued in parallel) but it also turns the validation process into a collaborative process.

And most importantly it removes the need for absolute consensus on the weight of the messages that introduce new transactions into the ledger.

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger This opens up a whole new dimension of sybil protection mechanisms and you can use things like subjectively perceived trust instead of a "limited resource" like PoW or PoS. I usually tend to say that contemporary DLT projects waste trust like bitcoin wastes energy. There are ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... already projects like Stellar that use such a different sybil protection mechanism but they have other problems like the limited size of their quorum slices and the message overhead that arises from a lot of people trusting the same nodes / actors.

With IOTA you can have ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... quorum slices of millions of nodes and a single validator that is trusted by a lot of actors would not have to answer more requests because his statements are replicated as part of the DAG using gossip and Nakamotos principles.

It really hurts my sould to see how other ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... projects are switching to classical consensus mechanism with their limited validator set size and lower byzantine thresholds to overcome the limitations of Nakamoto consensus and it sometimes feels like IOTA is the only project that is left in the whole space that still ...

@JorgeStolfi @pobserver2 @WealthSeeker28 @Mat_Yarger ... holds up the ideals of the early days of crypto.

I think that our new approach that solves the algorithmic callenges and attack vectors of the first and broken iteration of the technology will greatly influence the DLT space in the coming months and years.