Intel releases open source blockchain | Hacker News Reader

Intel releases open source blockchain

ibtimes.com

96 pointspjholmes28 comments

Anyone who has been following blockchain technology for more than 6 months can see that this is the same recycled already-done altcoin as the last guy.

The promoters get larger, and the consortiums get larger.

People need to talk about the WHY and HOW their blockchain works better. How it solves problems better than an existing blockchain. This isn't detailed because you already know the answer: "It doesn't, but I couldn't get a pull request to that other open-source repo approved so I made my own" .... "and this time got my managers to approve it too"

But yeah the consensus model sounds interesting.

The introduction in the actual code actually explains it. It's not yet another rebadged Bitcoin Core codebase.

http://intelledger.github.io/introduction.html

The security model is totally different than Bitcoin - it's based on trusted nodes, leading to much different tradeoffs.

> The security model is totally different than Bitcoin - it's based on trusted nodes, leading to much different tradeoffs.

Tradeoffs such as?

I read that and it is hard to conceptualize the pros and cons. Sometimes I think about why blockchains weren't considered as a solution to the byzantine generals problem before 2008. Was it fucking stupid? Was the consensus idea improperly dismissed? Never considered? I would say from 2000 - 2008 internet latency was 'good enough' in some places for this. Maybe 2004 - 2008 the storage space improvements were also good enough.

Sometimes I really wonder.

One obvious one: rather than consuming tons of power hashing, miners buy Intel chips. Hashrate in Bitcoin is equivalent to number of Intel CPUs owned in this scheme. The Intel CPUs are mostly idle, so use very little power.

There are a lot of other interesting things that they could do with SGX, though just from reading the introduction it seems that they didn't attempt any other innovations.

You're trusting Intel, essentially.

It would be interesting to see Intel open their SGX platform so as for it to be configurable, and use it to attest Tendermint nodes. Accountable BFT consensus benefit from hardware attestation.

So they reinvented Ripple?

Yes. They modified consensus algorithms from both Ripple and Stellar, they say it.

Here's the interesting part over existing blockchains / the reason why Intel is involved, from http://intelledger.github.io/introduction.html :

"This project includes a consensus algorithm, PoET (Proof of Elapsed Time), which is intended to run in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), such as Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX)."

Yes, I think that's the most interesting part of the Intel proposal. Rather than using lots of energy to compute a gazillion hashes (the work in Proof of Work), they rely on special processors to prove that they've waited for some amount of time (Proof of Elapsed Time). (The time is a random variable with known distribution.) That takes way less energy (cost). It's clever.

It got me thinking of other ways for computers to prove that a certain amount of time has passed, and I came up with this idea that takes advantage of the finite speed of light:

https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger/issues/18

Byzantine fault tolerance becomes simple if you have trusted hardware.

I've been trying to understand the base of trust in this: I think it's Intel EPID: it boils down to a secret key burned into the hardware and managed by the ME. What happens if Intel's signing machine is exposed?

That's an interesting point. If the threat model assumes that Intel's secure computing infrastructure will not be compromised, can't you just use remote attestation to prove you're running an unmodified Foocoin client on physical Intel hardware, and have a traditional consensus protocol? Then you don't need proof-of-time or proof-of-anything-else, just proof-of-physical-Intel-hardware.

Either way, whoever controls 50% of the genuine (where "genuine" = "signed by Intel's master key") Intel hardware gets to control consensus, right?

I'm somewhat surprised: this is written in Python.

I wonder what the motivation is here. I've long believed that a lot of security issues could be avoided simply by using higher-level languages, but I haven't seen many major security undertaking done in higher-level languages.

something like bitcoin is an excellent match for a high level language (altho not necessarily python). the performance demands are all in the hashing algorithms (which are done by dedicated hardware, not software). it's way more important the control layer be correct than it be fast

I totally agree, in fact, I'd say "it's way more important to be correct than to be fast" is almost always true in cryptography. Incorrect crypto is useless no matter how fast it is.

Are there any closed source block chains?

There are proprietary ones.

Guardtime?

I personally love the idea of using a blockchain to send anonymous, encrypted messages.

I tried out BitMessage I think it was, a while back; I think a stripped-down lightweight version of it would be very useful.

Maybe with a Web browser doing encryption, decryption in-browser (already Tutanota etc. do this). Not sure as to the the other pieces that would need to be deployed.

BitMessage is not secure (query BitMessage security on Google)

If you are interested, you can use OpenPGP with ECC ( and the JS implementation https://github.com/Jaxx-io/openpgpjs-secp256k1 )

Take into account that you need to use different keys for signing and encryption and the BIP 44 can be useful for this purpose.

I don't think BitMessage is a blockchain is it? It doesn't create or use a shared ledger or consensus for that ledger, it just sends all messages to everyone so that the sender and receiver are much more difficult to track down.

Using a blockchain for messaging means all your messages are stored until quantum encryption can come along to crack them open. Sure the usual distributed setup which blockchains like bitcoin have has advantages (namely in the hiding of metadata), but I'm not sure an actual blockchain is necessary or optimal for this.

I'm not well versed on developments in blockchain tech. Could someone here help explain whether this is good news and which specific problems, if any, would this technology help solve. For example, could this be applied to provide secure online voting systems? I like that proof of work protocols are inherently safe as long as majority computing power is 'good'. Could such decentralized security technologies replace the currently centralized ones completely, for example, certificate authorities? Please pardon my ignorance, I'm eager to learn.

Proof of Intel processor? Bitcoin people are going to have a fit.

Don't stir the pot, please. Getting people riled up is just pointless.

Here's the proof of time disclaimer, which might be considered to be "proof of Intel inside": http://intelledger.github.io/introduction.html?highlight=pro...

Talk about burying the lead. My first question was "why on Earth"? Thanks for answering it.

And I'd hardly call pointing this out "stirring the pot" or "pointless". This has serious security, openness, and privacy implications that definitely deserve to be mentioned in the discussion for what amounts to a press release.

When people use comments like "people are going to have a fit", they are speaking for others. THAT is stirring the pot, whether it's serious or not.

There's already a million altcoins, so I think Intel is late to the party.

A blockchain can be used for more stuff than currency. See ethereum for example.

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