Rock, Scissors, Paper: HASHGRAPH vs BLOCKCHAIN vs TANGLE

ALT COINS
#1

If you came into the world interested in BITCOIN, you dove into the BLOCKCHAIN world without even knowing you went through that portal. Now, however many months later, for me, after balancing life events, it’s 2 years, and I am just finding out that the ‘internet of things’ I heard of so long ago is an entirely different portal and that it is contrasted by yet ANOTHER called HASHGRAPH.

From what I have read, viewed and gathered, HASHGRAPH trumps TANGLE (because it is truly DDOS proof and QUANTUM attack proof, TANGLE trumps BLOCKCHAIN, because it is DDOS proof and at least ‘quantum resistant’, and BLOCKCHAIN, where most ICO’S are being built in the Aramaic language of ETH that is still BLOCKCHAIN 2.0 are racing to market before 4.0 chains can ‘third-market-mover’ them.

I know this is simplified, and that each technology has multiple advantages in regards to MINING REQUIRED (blockchain) vs SELF MINED (tangle) vs LETS PRETEND WE MINED (hash graph’s make-believe we didn’t really take a vote ‘gossip-protocol’ which is based on a deception and not a “TRUEVOTE” ©’.

What are your thoughts?

I am wondering why anyone would even consider any BLOCKCHAIN tech when you could use HASHGRAPH. I would think your first comment would be:

RESPONSE: “BECUASE IT’S OPEN SOURCE”, and that’s valid. Please expand!

1 Like
#2

Because it’s open source :stuck_out_tongue:

OK, kidding, yes, Hashgraph requiring an SDK and not being open source I would consider a big disadvantage.

At work we are looking into a few blockchain implementations and due to this, Hashgraph was almost immediately discarded, the cost is as off yet unknown (at least at the time of discussion) and this limitation puts the control of your ledger technology in the hands of a third party (I.e. farewell to decentralisation and autonomy).

In terms of Tangle, I’m not sure how DDoS proof it really is, you can outpace the network and / or create a parasite chain that you introduce fully formed and as such inject your own transactions. This is countered in their whitepaper but still highly theoretical. Until such time that they reach a critical mass in terms of nodes and no longer have a need for coordinators the system remains untested. Not that I dislike Tangle but these are items to consider when selecting technology.

Personally I really like Raiblocks much more than Tangle (and I’ve been a Tangle fan since the beginning); for the work I do Raiblocks makes a lot more sense due to it’s two movements per transaction (sending / receiving, which ties close with accounting principles of double entry) and which allows for asynchronous use. Granted this creates more traffic but I see this offset by the increased security it provides.

The fact that each node has his/her own chain, that each transaction is a block, their Blake2X hashing algorithm (Tangle had to replace theirs) and the reality that there is no inherent limit to the number of transactions you can process which makes it incredibly scalable (as is Tangle). Another benefit of Raiblocks over Tangle is that even though they have representative blocks to resolve conflicts, these remain inactive until a conflict occurs (so only active 0.1% of the time).

Raiblocks doesn’t have mining, nor transaction fees and each transaction only requires a minuscule amount of processing power (as opposed to Bitcoin, which is a horrendous power consuming beast and frankly speaking completely against any form of reducing carbon emissions).

Also communication wise, while I’m a fan of Tangle, I’m not a fan of their communication skills. On the flip side,a potential downside to Raiblocks is the size of their team (4 people), which is a continuity risk (then again it is open source).

Having said that, I do need to dive deeper into Hashgraph (was on the plan for this week) to see how it stacks up against Tangle / Raiblocks but the lack of open source really puts it at a serious disadvantage in this case.

Aside from using Raiblocks / Tangle; we’re also looking into using Ripple for a different use case.

It is really becoming a forest out there in regards to different technologies available and I’ve read at least 10 truly horrible white papers but also some very compelling ones.

Once I’ve waded through Hashgraph a bit more I’ll write an update.

4 Likes
#3

Hi how are you -your comment is very helpful. May you please tell me more such as the different companies using hasgrapj? Do you like iota?

#4

Hi,

I’m good thanks :smile: how are you?

As far as I’m aware, nobody is using hashgraph as of yet, they (Swirlds) have raised USD 3M in seed funding in September 2017 to further develop their platform, once fully developed they will go for ICO, but the ICO date hasn’t been announced yet (they might ICO prior to completion but I haven’t seen much detail around the ICO yet).

In terms of IOTA (The Tangle) it’s a two part answer I guess, sorry for the length, you can look at the bottom for conclusions :):

Do I like the Tangle?
It is a blockless blockchain approach that is very new and honestly a bit untested (or at least undertested), they claim to be able to handle up to 1,500 transactions per second using the Tangle but in reality they’re nowhere near this number yet, both in terms of usage and in terms of performance.

Transactions are supposed to be confirmed within 0.002 seconds but currently the network is a bit slow (about 1-2 minutes confirmation time) and while this may not seem like very long, it is still 1,000x times slower than it should be. A lot of this is due to the coordinator functionality they have built in which is emulating users on the network but which is also slowing things down.

This coordinator functionality was supposed to be shut down in 2017 but is still very much up and running as far as I’m aware (they haven’t hit critical mass yet to shut it down). I do really like the idea and the concept, and was very enthusiastic about it when I first starting reading up on the subject. It is a novel idea on how to build a scalable blockchain solution and could be tremendously successful if built well.

Talking about IOTA
This is the first implementation of the Tangle and coin released, this is where the bit about “if built well” comes into play;
Hacked1

  • Going back about 4 months, a major flaw/bug was discovered in the Tangle, more specifically with their in-house created hashing function (called CURL-P); people from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) announced that they could create collisions in IOTAs hashing function, which means they could create the same output with different inputs (they found with different data put into the hashing function). This should by definition not happen with a hashing function.
  • The IOTA teams response at the time was sub-par, they claimed they were aware of it and that it wasn’t an issue with IOTA because their coordinator took care of it, while a cloned system (MITs) would be susceptible because they didn’t have the coordinator. They actually had quite an open fight about it with Vitalik Buterin (the founder and brains behind Ethereum), you can read up on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/72org2/vitalik_buterins_response_to_iota_criticism/
  • Mind you, the coordinator is supposed to be only used at the start of the roll-out, until things run smoothly. This is a normal thing to do, Bitcoin and other blockchains also had similar training wheels when it was first launched.
  • In the mean time they have moved away from using their own hashing function as far as I’m aware.

Issue 2

  • They overhyped their relationship with Microsoft back in December 2017 which drove up the price; the reality is that there is no formal agreement with Microsoft.

Hacked again

  • IOTA doesn’t run and maintain its own seed generator and the process of setting up their wallet is cumbersome and - for non-technical people - practically impossible to use.
  • As a result, many users reverted to using iotaseed.io which is / was a site available to create IOTA wallets (not managed by IOTA); which has a very unsecure seed generator and the process was basically hacked. Resulting in about USD 4M of users money invested in IOTA being lost on 23/01/208. This was a coordinated hack which happened simultaneous with a DDoS attack on all their public nodes.
  • IOTAs response; we’re not responsible, those were inexperienced users, the technology wasn’t compromised. While technically speaking true, it echoes of their earlier lack of accountability.
  • This is a situation that - as a responsible company - they could have easily avoided and as such should have avoided.

TL:DR
So do I like the tangle? Yes, very much.
Do I like IOTA as a coin, yes I do.
Do I trust the development team behind it, not really, their communications skills leave a lot, and I mean a lot to be desired. They come across as condescending to say the least IMHO.

As such, do I invest in this company, personally no, not at this stage, technical problems need to be resolved first and communication needs to improve.

If you’re looking for better technology, faster transactions and no transaction fees I would go with RaiBlocks for now.

However, that is purely my personal opinion, this isn’t investment advice, just a positioning of the facts as I see them.

Cheers,

2 Likes
#5

:pray:t2::tulip::sun_with_face:
Well I did not scroll to the bottom because everything you wrote was a pleasant learning experience for me. I invested in IOTA and for some reason even if it goes to .01 I am going to hold on to it. I have a very strong conviction about it despite its ooor communications team (which can truly make or break a company). I think they need a crisis communication team to respond apologetically when need be and reassure their advancement in their product.

So would you mind if I ask you about a few other projects to determine if I should invest in those? If so read ahead per your leisure-

Beetoken
Wanchain
Wepower
Adhive
0chain
Medical chain
Referring
Gonetwork
Dether
NEX

#6

Agreed, as said I do like the IOTA coin but they have their fair share of issues at the moment, make sure your coins are secure and indeed play the long game; day trading is by and large a bad idea in the crypto space unless you can actually spend time on the markets all day, which is similar to day trading on any stock market.

#7

I’m not that into crypto currency, I’m far more interested in the blockchain technology and its various applications; so I usually look for up and coming technologies and see if they truly are different and have novel ideas that I believe will change the way the whole space operates (such as tangle initially and RaiBlocks and Hashgraph).

I will check them out and I’ll post if I find anything of note.

Cheers,

1 Like
#8

Hi thank you you’re awesome :pray:t2::pray:t2::heart::heart:

#9

On this note, very good interview with Ivan on Tech with the IOTA founder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwhJQ67zxbg

#10

David, in his interview with Ivan, actually makes a very valid point about the copy protection mechanism, according to him they have put it in to prevent people from copying the current IOTA / Tangle source code and launch their own version (as they would be highly susceptible to this major flaw that was discovered). Once it reaches critical mass, this copy protection mechanism will no longer be required as by then IOTA will be the established benchmark and anyone cloning at this point will clearly be just that, a clone.

The copy protection mechanism was in CURL-P (the prototype), not CURL (the hash function); it is the latter that is ultimately used in the production environment.

As said, actually a valid, compelling point. However, they could have been much clearer about this in their communications.

#11

That interview with Ivan really gave me a lot of confidence in the project.