Bitcoin, year 12. Alice: This year sucks. You know what’s almost as bad as 2020? Bob: Yeah? Alice: Multisig is still scary. Nunchuk: Hold my beer. It’s somewhat ironic that for a technology that reveres decentralization as its central operating principle, Bitcoin still heavily relies on single point of failure…

In its 3+ years of existence, Ethereum has had no shortage of controversies. From the DAO hack, to the long-anticipated transition to Proof-of-Stake, to the Constantinople upgrade that reduces mining reward and changes the inflation schedule on-the-fly (not that Ethereum had a clear one to begin with). Ethereum’s culture seems…

“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” Ten years ago today Satoshi Nakamoto immortalized these words by embedding them in Bitcoin’s very first block — the genesis block. …

Unlike Proof-of-Work and Public-Key Cryptography, the third component of Bitcoin is not based on math, but human behavior. Specifically, Bitcoin relies on a system of financial incentives and people chasing these incentives to sustain itself. That sounds a bit scary, and a sharp shift from the strong mathematical foundation that…

Cryptography is the art of protecting and breaking secrets. Bitcoin employs a special type of cryptography, called public-key cryptography, in order to facilitate its system of storing and transferring of value. It is through this mechanism that Alice can keep her bitcoins secure or send some of them to Bob…

Much has been written about Proof-of-Stake (PoS). There are many ways to slice and dice PoS and uncover its weaknesses. Mainly: Evolutionary Psychology/History: “Collectibles” or “proto-money” in history all had one thing in common, unforgeable costliness [1] — or at least unforgeable costliness in the context of their times. From…

One of the nastiest, consensus-critical bugs (CVE-2018–17144) has been recently discovered in the Bitcoin Core software, which prior to that point had an almost immaculate history. Jimmy Song has written an excellent breakdown of this bug. The short summary of the bug is that there are 4 cases where the…

Feedback loop and circular reasoning fallacy are highly common, but they involve very different types of circularity. Feedback loop: action induces further action, but the extra action also requires work, it doesn’t come from thin air. Feedback loops typically weaken and end by themselves, although they can last longer as…

Randomness forms the cornerstone of Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work (PoW). But how did we get here? A brief history of the study of randomness [1] Randomness has always been an essential part of life. Many ancient divination rituals were based on chance: the tossing of astragali (animal knucklebones) by the Greeks, Kau Cim sticks by the Chinese, Opele chain by West…