Bytemater - BitShares - Daniel Larimer opinion on MaidSafe

I am really delighted people are getting this part. Its really important and the globally agreed price being calculated is really a key component/

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Me too David!

@polpolrene and @Seneca I love that you are providing detailed responses here, making clear the faulty statements and reasoning of this critique:smile :smile:

It doesnā€™t look good that heā€™s messed up on fairly well known (to many here) facts, and not come here to check his understanding first. I know next to nothing about bitshares but it doesnā€™t inspire confidence.

EDIT: Itā€™s really dumb for him to critique MaidSafe on points weā€™ve thoroughly debated here months ago, based on incorrect statements (pay for get), and then on the correction without discussing his concerns here and having a chance to hear responses to his criticisms!

Why is he critiquing an alternative approach without understanding it or discussion with those who do - despite knowing about it for so long!

He says his points will withstand slight errors in understanding, but they donā€™t IMO.

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True. On the other hand, staying up to date on MaidSafe is quite time consuming right now, I imagine if you have your own platform to develop you donā€™t have time for that. But then itā€™s better not to write such blogs, if he wanted to give an alternative he could have done so without addressing MaidSafeā€™s supposed flaws.

@Seneca:

But then itā€™s better not to write such blogs, if he wanted to give an alternative he could have done so without addressing MaidSafeā€™s supposed flaws.

Exactly. I just went to check out the MaidSafe discussion at bitsharestalk and they have a subsection for MaidSafe with three whole topics in it, none of substance. I didnā€™t find any follow up to his articles. It makes it look like heā€™s doing some SEO/traffic generation trying to lift bitshares on the MaidSafe tide. That would explain the poor quality of his engagement - i.e not being serious as critique, but with another motive. It all looks shabby to me. Iā€™m inclined to leave him to stew.

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Could start cutting and pasting threads over to correct, and get a better basis for discussion there.

I donā€™t know Daniel, but the few articles Iā€™ve read by him seem to be critiques of other systems intended to promote Bitshares.

This is fair enough, but his articles should perhaps be seen as Bitshares marketing, rather than purely objectives critiques.

As you say; if he was wanting to be highly informative, heā€™d come here and get the details right before writing long articles about MaidSafe.

He appears to be more interested in promoting Bitshares than promoting good understanding of ā€˜competingā€™ crypto-technology projects, which is fair enough, but itā€™s good to have in mind that he does have a motive / agenda (Iā€™m not saying this is necessarily bad or wrong - just marketing).

Edit: by the way, I really like what Bitshares are doing & Iā€™m glad theyā€™re actively marketing their great innovations!

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@dirvine [handle corrected by happybeing]

Youā€™ve no idea how much I can personally relate to your busy-ness level. Good luck with everything and donā€™t worry at all about not being able to hit up the chats: one thing that everyone agrees on is that youā€™re doing a good thing for the right reasons.

:slight_smile:

-Jake

PS:

You referred to the network as an entity, and I agree. Fascinating times we live in.

PPS:

To summarize the disagreement, youā€™re saying that humans need to be incentivized, machines do not. When I explain MaidSafe to people, I usually tell them that the brilliant part is monetizing bandwidth/connectivity and doing so in a way that pays higher provider rates as bandwidth gets more scarce. Is this correct?

@davidmc0,
from what I can see, Dan really supports maidsafe. I donā€™t know, though.

Everyone-- I think that BTS isnā€™t trying to solve the same set of problems that maidsafe is. (full disclosure, yes I do dabble in BTS-land) As itā€™s been explained to me, BTS is a toolkit for creating DACs, which in his interpretation, are distributed organziations, specifically, run by humans, not AIs.

I think that Dawn will issue its ā€œstockā€ there, and on a few other crypto platforms, too. I am going to script it so that one share of the control token consists of 4 (one for each platform) of the others. Iā€™ll say this, too: BTS has an excellent voting setup built into its client.

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My sentiments, as well.

Reading his posts becomes very frustrating because he starts by saying he may not have the details exactly right but that that shouldnā€™t invalidate his perspective. Then his details are based upon a COMPLETELY wrong picture of the network function with additional assumptions about how it is supposed to work, and why! It leaves one no place to wade in to correct his details, and attempting to do so seems to just causes him further concern, basically because he doesnā€™t begin to have a grasp on the synergy of the network.

His better choice would be to admit that he really doesnā€™t have enough understanding of the whole project to have a useful critique.

His projects with BitUSD, etc., took a bit for me to start to grasp, but seem quite brilliant and useful. I wish him well, but doubt that more effort to enlighten him would be useful at this point. When the network is up and running, then weā€™ll all know more.

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Ladies & Gents,

The following is meant to be tongue-in-cheek - I actually think Dan is brilliant.

Butā€¦this is how I read (between the lines) Dan Larimerā€™s opinion on MaidSAFE.

"Hi, my name is Dan and I founded BitShares in the ā€˜Corruption Freeā€™ Commonwealth of Virginia.

In my opinion, MaidSAFE is WAY TOO COMPLICATED and will ultimately FAIL if it doesnā€™t forget about trying change our already perfect world.

Why MaidSAFE is trying to tamper with our established ā€˜Corruption Freeā€™ business-as-usual Economics Incentives model is FAR beyond my comprehension.

MaidSAFE could benefit from BitSharesā€™ strategy of partnering with existing ā€˜Back-Door-Freeā€™ OEMs to ensure their network is as speedy as the publication of American Net Neutrality lawsā€¦umā€¦uhā€¦yeah.

We at BitShares vow to be the most transparent organization in the world. With major investors like [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED], we plan to grow at an exponential rate relative to our competition."

Okā€¦so I took some artistic license with my interpretation. I have the, sometimes insatiable, need to beat on Pink Elephants in the room.

:wink:

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I think on this Bytemaster is wrong but Bytemaster has a different design philosophy from @dirvine. I think for what Maidsafe is trying to do the design philosophy is correct but the concern is whether or not the incentives will be enough to kickstart it.

Iā€™m now convinced that Maidsafe has everything necessary to be kickstarted but the vulnerability it does have will be that there is no way for it to interact with the regulators of the current system. I think SAFE Network has the vulnerability that some ā€œbad actorsā€ could use it for ā€œbad purposesā€ early on in itā€™s adolescent phase and ruin it before it can decentralize the Internet.

SAFE Network is uniquely vulnerable to false flag attacks. I hope the SAFE Network team understands that SAFE Network is vulnerable to this and that if it does happen there will be people waiting to fork SAFE Network if necessary to save and preserve the decentralization agenda. Ideally we would want the SAFE Network to survive but itā€™s not a guarantee that it will.

This is in fact itā€™s strength I would suggestā€¦isolation from self interested humans in ā€˜governmentā€™

If one municipality or government department (like Britains NHS) adopts SAFE for whole of business, does a ā€˜false flagā€™ in the name of SAFE have a ā€˜Presumptive legalityā€™ (propaganda, espionage, or economic pressure) in relation the parent of this statutory body?

The nature of this ā€˜false flagā€™ would be propaganda via the internet and MSM channels and not an attack against the physical network itself. The crowd is quite adept at peeling back the deception of government propaganda these days and a false flag could well have the opposite effect to itā€™s desired outcome i.e mass adoption.


When people ask whether a cyber attack is an act of war, according to Schmitt, what people really want to know is

  1. when is a cyber attack an unlawful ā€œuse of forceā€ under the United Nations Charter? and
  2. when can the victim state respond with physical force because the cyber attack qualifies as an ā€œarmed attackā€ under the Charter?

While the difference is nuanced and important to most of the world, the U.S. does not distinguish between the two. Schmitt directed a group of 20 experts in creating the Tallinn Manual, which seeks to clarify and, to the degree possible, answer that question in the cyber context. The Manual includes eight factors that states can use to assess whether a cyber attack constitutes a ā€œuse of force.ā€ Those factors, simplified, ask the following questions:

  • Severity: How much damage did the attack cause?
  • Immediacy: How quickly the consequences of the attack manifest themselves.
  • Directness: How many intermediate steps had to occur between the attack and the consequences?
  • Invasiveness: How much security did the attack have to bypass in order to cause its results?
  • Measurability of effects: How easy is it to measure the damage caused?
  • Military character: How involved was the military in carrying out the attack?
  • State involvement: How involved was the state in carrying out the attack?
  • Presumptive legality: Was the attack more akin to a military act, or was it merely propaganda, espionage, or economic pressure?

Schmitt and his group designed this agenda to help nations determine where a cyber attack falls on the spectrum of hostile acts. On one end of the spectrum are acts that donā€™t constitute acts of war, like espionage. On the other end are acts that do constitute a use of forceā€”say, military aggression. Itā€™s a relatively simple process to determine whether an act constitutes military force and, accordingly, if the victim nation has the right to respond.

ā€œIf you have a cyber operation that causes physical damage or injuries to a person, thatā€™s an armed attack and you can respond forcefully,ā€ Schmitt says. When a cyber attack doesnā€™t reach that threshold, things become more complicated. ā€œEveryone agrees that certain cyber operations are clearly not armed attacks, for example, cyber espionage,ā€ Schmitt says. ā€œIn between that [and uses of military force] ā€¦ the law is not clear enough. Shutting down the national economy is probably an act of war, but short of that, weā€™re not certain.ā€ Schmitt and other experts also agree that, despite Senator McCainā€™s contentions to the contrary, the Sony attack fell outside of the grey area and did not constitute an act of war.

So when would a cyber attack constitute an act of war? According to Schmitt and others, the only cyber attack that could have constituted an obvious armed attack was allegedly carried out by the U.S. and Israel.

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Safecoin and Open Transactions are the only systems in crypto which can do micropayments in a very fast, secure and cheap way.

Have you tried RippleTrade? Itā€™s instant, and itā€™ll soon be integrated with The Fed. (Disclosure: Iā€™m an investor.)

As far as speed, youā€™re right, Bitcoin is massively wasteful and takes a minimum of ten minutes for a transaction to multi-confirm. New Economy Movement seems great too (ourNEM), but theyā€™ve only just started. I believe Bitcoin will be to Friendster in the social network sphere as a newly developed system will be to ā€œThe Facebookā€. Iā€™m speculating THE behemoth to already be in the top 100 cryptos as I type.

Any links to announcements regarding Federal Reserve integration? Massive move if true.

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Iā€™m merely connecting the dots between Ripple Labsā€™ ambition, basically doing whatever major banks want, and tearing through its FinCEN fine like it was expected. One recent development is that Ripple Labs will force XRP owners to disclose their ID, similar to exchangesā€™ KYC because the government asked RL to.

Hereā€™s the best source I could find among the many links I hoard. I saw the St. Louis Federal Reserve VPā€™s talk ā€œBitcoin and Beyondā€, but keep in mind, heā€™s speculating/dreaming, not saying they are currently testing or getting Rippled.

ā€” edit ā€”
I also meant to add this link too to outline how the Fed will fit in to Rippleā€™s ambitions.

ā€œDoes anyone use ripple?ā€ he asks. ā€œWow, I think you guys might be the winners.ā€

Yes, that was the statement I was aware of and it seems nothing has come from it so far.