Block Chains: a contrasting position on decentralization

Fact and Fiction - love the contrast

My brother once quoted Winston Churchill:

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

An interesting muse for the mind, however, upon  research, one discovers that Churchill is not attributed with this saying.

1. What was my brother trying to do? Convince me of his position.
2. My response - why does the heart and brain have to be at odds with one another?

"Time is the hand, that writes the truth, on the wall of experience"

One often holds a belief in youth, that matures with age. Ideally the heart and mind work in unison. Think of the heart and emotions as the fuel in your vehicle. The head is the steering wheel. Both are needed for the journey.

Who doesn't wish there were no rules, speed limits, or fences when bouncing around with enthusiasm and reckless abandon, in one's youth? An yet, as the currents of time demonstrate the lessons that are too hard to embrace in childhood, one's appreciation for 'responsible freedoms' and 'conscientious authorities' evolves into a maturity of mind and heart.

I often joke that "the world would be perfect if everyone were like me". This sentiment is behind those that seek chaos, or the absence of authority; where there are no bullies, thieves, or "big kids on the block" that would certainly "take without asking" or "do without caring".

Block Chains and decentralization

Block Chains are beautiful - mathematically and technologically. They are robust and redundant. One might be capable of burning a $20 bill, but don't expect to 'burn' a bitcoin!

Wait, that just happened, didn't it?

How a $64M hack changed the fate of Ethereum, Bitcoin's closest competitor

1. A hacker stole $64 M of ether (bitcoin alternative) from an investment firm.
2. There was a time delay during which the hacker could not claim the funds - they sat there without the true owners being empowered to retrieve them.
3. Ethereum reset their system (burned the ether currency for the past day) to a backup that existed previously.
4. While this eradicated the transactions that occurred during the past day, and thus, the theft of the "investors' money", it also resulted in a 'fork' in which some users choose to stay with the original, pre-fork currency, and others choose the new, post-fork currency.

What does this mean? Consider the following analogy to simplify the concept:

Imagine that someone compromised a corporate 'MasterCard' and used it to steal a large amount of money. MasterCard cannot deal with a 'single transaction' (Block Chains), so it decides to reset the system to 1 day ago, resulting in the deletion of 'all transactions' that have occurred, and the issuing of a second set of 'cards' and 'processing machines' for all card holders and merchants. 

1. All transactions since this reset are gone.
2. An entirely new set of cards (for all clients) and machines (for all merchants) are issued.
3. Those who don't want the new cards may keep using the old cards. Those merchants that don't want the new machines may continue to use the old machines. There are now effectively '2 forks', 2 sets of MasterCards; remember there isn't a central authority that can insist that everyone uses the new cards and machines.

In all fairness, this isn't limited to Ethereum. In August of this year $94M of Bitcoins was stolen in a hack of the Bitfinex exchange. While Bitcoin did not 'reset the system' as cited above, these is an interesting story about a proposed fork that dates back to early this year: Bitcoin feud over expansion threatens to destabilize currency .

Bottom line:

1. Forks can be produced resulting in multiple "online currencies". Without  a central authority, there is no limit to how many different forks, and online currencies might result as time marches forward.
2. Mike Hearn (one time advocate and developer for Bitcoin) states in the article cited above, and on his blog, 'What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become something even worse:  "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people".'

A Centralized system

Block Chains may be great for online currency, however, for data security we do need a centralized methodology that allows the owners of the data to control it, and if necessary, shut it down. 

In the ideal world, in which everyone, equally, respects one another, and lives by the same rules and guidelines, there would be no need for security and built in controls. 

This is a great direction and beautiful dream. I am confident that quality education will eventually empower this evolved society.

While the journey remains ahead of us, and is marvelous in many ways, we have yet to arrive at this destination.

BlockChains and CORA

Allow me to briefly illuminate the similarities, and differences between BlockChains and CORA.

BlockChains are incredibly resilient, and beyond the control of any “one”. This makes BlockChains ideal for online currency, which was the apparent rationale that drove its creation.

CORA on the other hand was originally developed with a single purpose – to provide unbreakable data security – which encryption alone cannot deliver. 

While CORA has surprised us at CORAcsi.com with additional applications, such as securing one’s online, digital footprint, this is a byproduct of its primary mandate – security.

Hence I targeted a “distributed methodology”, but more than “just a distributed methodology”. I insisted upon the following characteristics:

Points B and D above are pivotal to understanding the difference between BlockChains and CORA as a means of securing data and protecting one's online digital footprint.

For online currency, I personally cannot imagine a better technology than BlockChains.

decentralized, peer-to-peer

The BlockChain is a decentralized implementation. Decentralized, peer-to-peer implementations have been around for years - "bitTorrents" that utilize many duplicates: seeds (files) and catalogs (routing tables).
The design of the BlockChain is beautiful; it is persistent, independent and versatile.

Regarding security, decentralized peer-to-peer systems violate requirement “B” above, by removing the requirements that:

1. The data can be quickly and permanently “shut down”.
2. The fragments are highly controlled and secured by professionals (not seeded to unknown computes, perhaps even home computers).

CORA must remain “centralized” so that it can be controlled and if necessary, shut down to prevent unauthorized individuals, teams, companies, or countries from viewing data that belongs to another. Moreover, CORA will not place packages (seeds) in multiple locations, nor on personal computers.

As stated in my earlier blog, executables in a BlockChain should make the global community extremely uncomfortable!

Executables violate requirement “D”, namely that each fragment must be inactive. Perhaps sterile is a better word! 

CORA is committed to using packages that inactive and can be shut down permanently if required.

Blockchains - Concepts and Connections

BitCoin

I often reflect about, well just about anything and everything. As I mused about BlockChains, I imagined that the paper accredited to Satoshi Nakamoto's gave rise to the BlockChain frenzy. An incredible concept and implementation that is ideal for the online currency that is "BitCoin":

1. redundant
2. decentralized
3. robust
4. a natural propensity towards security (as the number of blocks increase).
5. global

The following video can be found in IEEE SPECTRUM's article entitled "The Future of the Web Looks a Lot Like Bitcoin"

As with every pathfinder who proves a new concept, others are quick follow. Near the end of this article the author talks about the push to include executables in BlockChains. There are many articles and blogs that can be found about BlockChains, in particular I would like to draw your attention to the following:

BlockChain executable

O'REILLY's "Understanding the blockchain"

Blockchains and Online Dispute Resolution: Smart Contracts as an Alternative to Enforcement

Mike Hearn's blog "Developing apps for block chains"

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itnews reports "Ransomware uses blockchains for decoder delivery"

In Ethereum landing page (as of June 5, 2016) one doesn't have to look far to read "Build unstoppable applications".

I know it sounds good, or great, however, we need to slow down for a moment and think about it! In a perfect world, we would all accept the same definitions for honor and integrity.. We would all know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.

In a perfect world, I doubt that anyone would understand or care about a virus, worm, Trojan or malware. In a perfect world, a zero-day attach or vulnerability would only be found in the popular writings of a science fiction author with an incredible imagination.

Caution

Our world is not perfect - not yet! A zero-day vulnerability is "by definition" one that hasn't been considered or planned for! Do you see the danger in building "unstoppable applications"? Allow me to rephrase this:

Do you recognize the danger in an environment that allows for the building of:

• unstoppable viruses
• unstoppable worms
• unstoppable zero-day attacks

Yes, I know, we will build in safeguards, just like we do with Computers and Servers, and yet, someone always finds a way (sounds a lot like Jurassic Park).

Bottom line: Blockshains are ideal for an online currency that is decentralized. Once this moves to anything that can be "executed", there must be a "centralization" - a way to control these "seeds" of "potential disaster".

Upcoming Blog

Stay tuned for one of my upcoming blogs which contrasts this "decentralized distributed environment" with CORA, a Context Ordered Replacement Algorithm from CORAcsi that allows for the implementation of a centralized distributed environment.