<story><title>Iota cryptocurrency shuts down entire network after wallet hack</title><url>https://www.zdnet.com/article/iota-cryptocurrency-shuts-down-entire-network-after-wallet-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imglorp</author><text>Yeah the pre-mined coins were sketchy, and the ternary was dubious.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want the innovation to get lost in the bathwater though: the tangle datastructure was novel. Not an expert, but it was designed to allow for minimal proof of work while retaining some hashed auditability and tamper resistance. I think the key idea would be that you help hash several other blocks into transactions and then your transaction will get hashed by a few other workers. It didn&amp;#x27;t require heavy POW so it was more suitable for an embedded device to perform on the edge.</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>For those who haven&amp;#x27;t been following the previous episodes, IOTA is the cryptocurrency that uses ternary logic because it supposedly makes it more efficient (it very much remains to be proven). The idea is to bring cryptocurrencies to embedded devices, which IMO like much of the cryptocurrency space is very much a solution in search of a problem. Didn&amp;#x27;t stop them from making a fortune with pre-mined coins during the cryptocurrency boom.&lt;p&gt;I remember that a few years ago there was a lot of debate about whether IOTA was truly decentralized. Advocates were arguing basically that &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s not completely decentralized now but it will be soon&amp;quot;. Well I guess we know were we&amp;#x27;re at right now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pshc</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; 3 is closer to the universal optimum 2.71 than is 2. That is the absolute most simple elevator pitch for ternary.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;- iota co-founder&lt;p&gt;Drivel like the above has long outed Iota as an absolute scam. The ternary business was some mixture of (a) bamboozling non-technical users, (b) distraction from its other failings, and (c) sheer delusion.&lt;p&gt;Iota pushers hand-wave with slogans like &amp;quot;gets faster the more people use it&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;replace the central coordinator with voting (someday?)&amp;quot; but without actual security. Whereas PoW has a well-understood security model (see 51% attacks) Iota hopes you won&amp;#x27;t notice that basically nothing can be decided without the central coordinator.&lt;p&gt;And then it gets worse. Iota-without-the-coordinator washes its hands of consistency. Individual nodes would have to pray they are connected to good actors, and then through some unexplained governance scheme, deduce the consensus state.&lt;p&gt;In short: iota is unsuitable as any kind of distributed ledger.</text></comment>
<story><title>Iota cryptocurrency shuts down entire network after wallet hack</title><url>https://www.zdnet.com/article/iota-cryptocurrency-shuts-down-entire-network-after-wallet-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imglorp</author><text>Yeah the pre-mined coins were sketchy, and the ternary was dubious.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t want the innovation to get lost in the bathwater though: the tangle datastructure was novel. Not an expert, but it was designed to allow for minimal proof of work while retaining some hashed auditability and tamper resistance. I think the key idea would be that you help hash several other blocks into transactions and then your transaction will get hashed by a few other workers. It didn&amp;#x27;t require heavy POW so it was more suitable for an embedded device to perform on the edge.</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>For those who haven&amp;#x27;t been following the previous episodes, IOTA is the cryptocurrency that uses ternary logic because it supposedly makes it more efficient (it very much remains to be proven). The idea is to bring cryptocurrencies to embedded devices, which IMO like much of the cryptocurrency space is very much a solution in search of a problem. Didn&amp;#x27;t stop them from making a fortune with pre-mined coins during the cryptocurrency boom.&lt;p&gt;I remember that a few years ago there was a lot of debate about whether IOTA was truly decentralized. Advocates were arguing basically that &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s not completely decentralized now but it will be soon&amp;quot;. Well I guess we know were we&amp;#x27;re at right now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simias</author><text>Maybe it&amp;#x27;s the greatest thing since the invention of the Fourier transform but talk is cheap and it looks like despite being many years into development and having access to more cash than most startup would dream of they still haven&amp;#x27;t managed to make it work without a central node. Cryptocurrency startups sure seem to break things but they don&amp;#x27;t move very fast.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll add it to the list of absolutely revolutionary blockchain technologies that are going to change the world [working implementation is left as an exercise for the reader].</text></comment>