Re:Eric Brewer on Why Banks Are BASE Not ACID – Availability...
by amscanne on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:52PM
(#12522132)
> Bitcoin and Ethereum and their ilk have, out of necessity, valued ACID qualities above all else
They definitely don't have ACID properties.
The blockchain gives you something like eventual consistency, but it's probabilistic.
You have atomicity within a single block, but given the acceptance of the block is only eventually consistent, I'm not sure it's meaningful.
Re:Eric Brewer on Why Banks Are BASE Not ACID – Availability...
by cloudjacker on Saturday September 17, 2016 @03:22PM
(#12521975)
You can get a benevolent miner friend to process your blockchain transaction for free
Gotta send them the signature and broadcast it directly to them
Bitcoin and Ethereum and their ilk have, out of necessity, valued ACID qualities above all else- including availability and responsiveness. Does it make sense that completing a $1 transaction would require the same amount of resources as a $100,000 transaction? The traditional banking system has the flexibility to expend fewer resources on the $1 transaction, but Bitcoin does not- by design.
Interestingly, I think it is the inconvenience of the traditional banking system that gives it this flexibility. If financial transactions were something that could be done instantaneously, by a computer, without having to provide personal information to set up an account, then stealing money in 100,000 $1 transactions might be easier than stealing $100,000 in one big heist. Add a little inconvenience to each transaction and this problem goes away.
Unless blockchain transactions are extremely cheap, it will limit their competitiveness with the traditional banking system for this reason.