Homework on High Availability - Questions

Blockchain and Bitcoin 101
#121
  1. a high availability is needed to ensure security and a global coverage
  2. such a high availability is done by financial incentives
#122

  1. Why is it important for blockchain networks to be high availability networks?
    It is important because the more trusted and “long running” the network is, the more trust it gets. Having a decentralized financial system open 24/7/365 without interruptions allows people to transact at any time, anywhere in the world with large amount of trust. The traditional financial institutions are subject to opening and closing on different time zones, continent with each having different holidays. The bitcoin protocol never reduces its opening hours for Christmas or what have you.

  2. What is it that enables blockchain networks to have such high availability?
    The nodes are incentivized to stay online because the block reward is awarded consistently on the network. The nodes have financial incentive to be online for as long as possible to maximize their chance of winning those rewards ($$$).

#123

  1. Why is it important for blockchain networks to be high availability networks?
    It’s is a global network. Therefore it should be available to user everywhere regardless of time zone. The more participants the more secure the network will be.

  2. What is it that enables blockchain networks to have such high availability?
    Incentives given to the participants of the network (miners) and decentralization.

1 Like
#124

  1. Availability 24/7/365 is creating security and at same time it’s a competitive edge compared to existing financial sytems

  2. Monetary incentives

#125
  1. Partially because the blockchain networks are global and people use it 24/7, and partially because that’s one of the things blockchain is here to solve; by decentralizing a service/solution for a problem, you decrease the risk of downtime, fraud etc. etc.
  2. Because it is distributed to many nodes, meaning that if one goes down, the rest of the network will just take over. If a network of 20 nodes lose 5 nodes (either because of the decreasing block reward or because of a electrical breakdown of a city/country/continent or anything), there will still be 15 nodes keeping the network running, while the mining reward will increase meaning the incentive to join the network as a miner will be bigger, and therefore; more nodes will join the network again (ending up at 20 etc. again).
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#126

The transactional world is 24/7/365 so networks need to be the same - stricly speaking the world is that way becasue networks are 24/7/365 (excluding solar flares :slight_smile:
Mining gives high network security and robustness - increasing or decreasing based on difficulty.

#127

1 Para que uma blockchain seja Ăștil ela precisa estar sempre operando, para que as pessoas e empresas que a utilizam possam tirar mĂĄximo proveito e nĂŁo ter contratempos, com isso aumenta a importĂąncia da blockchain em si.

2 Incentivo Financeiro, pois pessoas ganham dinheiro com mineração e staking.

#128

  1. It needs to be a high availability network in order to handle transactions 24/7/365 globally.

  2. Financial incentives and decentralization.

#129
  1. So that it can be used anytime.
  2. The mining difficulty adjust itself automatically based on the amount of miners available, which means that if a large number of miners stop mining, the difficulty decreases making mining profitable for new ppl that will start mining .
#130
  1. high availability makes it easy for anyone to join the network and with more people and computers it makes it more secure.
  2. people have the incentive to make money from the network
#131
  1. To secure the network.
  2. multiple computers that are spread out across the Globe (mostly China) that are online 24\7\365 days a year.
#132

  1. It is important because a blockchains network needs to run 24/7 and 365 days a year to allow transactions to go through worldwide. If one node fails, all other node in the network are equipped with the full data set, therefore bringing down the network would require bringing down every single node providing computation power to the network.

  2. Financial incentives, incentives are given to miners to secure the network and in return they are given block rewards via a proof of work or a proof of stake mechanism. The higher the hash rate, spread across multiple miners the more secure the network is.

#133
  1. Why is it important for blockchain networks to be high availability networks?

This is important for highly critical applications that require to be available all the time.

  1. What is it that enables blockchain networks to have such high availability?

Because when any node in the network fails, then the network is still accessible through the rest of the nodes there.

#134

Hey Rob,

I didn’t quite understand the process of mining and its correlation with security.
Also, who pays the miners?

I would appreciate if you can elaborate on this.
If you don’t know, then I hope someone else can answer these questions, @ivan

Thanks

#136

@haydar

The current block reward for mining bitcoin is 12.5 bitcoin per block plus the total amount of transaction fees.

for example
Bill pays Ben 0.000000001 BTC and this transaction goes in to the block with all the other transaction for this 10 min block.

each block can hold over 500 transaction or more but lets say this block as 180 transactions with a total of 0.05502060 BTC.

The winning miner or pool of miners will be reward 0.05502060 BTC + 12.5 BTC = 12.55502060 BTC.

All miner in the network compete to crack the code of each block and the miner or miners are rewarded for the computational contribution.

I believe the security comes from the hash rate, the higher the hash rate the more security but its important to know that the network is more secure when the hash rate is spread out more and not in one place.

I hope this makes sense.

am sure someone will correct me if anything is incorrect but that is my understanding of it.

1 Like
#137

Miners are putting transactions in a block, To be a valid block, they need to guess a number (nonce) in order to get a hash (blockhash) that can be accepted by the network (lower than target hash depending on difficulty) If Miners successfully append a block to the blockchain, The first transaction (coinbase tx) is a reward they get for solving the cryptographical puzzle. =currently 12.5btc +fee’s of each tx)
The more miners are mining the more hashrate (hashes per second checked) The more miners are mining, the higher the difficulty is to solve this puzzle, (to much competition) (so you need more hashrate to get same reward.)
The more people are mining(hashrate) , the more difficult it is to mine or cheat the network. =security

watch this presentation about the basics of Mining + technical details.

#138

24/7 365 availability - because of blockchain - everyone is incentivised

Mining protects the network. Mining creates security. This is how blocks are produced.

for all USECASES that need high availablility, blockchan is a highly incentivised option.

Everyone wants to make money.

#139

  1. High availability is important because the network is always accessible and always securized.

  2. Blockchain networks have high availability because of mining, which gives financial incentives. Everyone wants to earn money. If people stop mining, it becomes easier to mine, so there will be new miners coming.

#140

  1. To be able to use and verify any transaction the blockchain needs to be available and accessible at any given moment.

  2. The incentives through mining does ensure that the parties will attempt to keep the network up and running. Also as it is decentralized if parts become unavailable or break down other parts will take over their work.

#141

For all USECASES that need high availability Block Chain is the right option.
Block chain is INSENTIVISED because everyone wants to make money.

Blockchain networks have such high availability because it is global, and driven by mining - if one portion of network goes down, other users will immediately join the network - mining protects the network and security