Tau whitepaper, Blockchain section

Kilian

I have not yet had the time to read the full whitepaper, but as my mind
turned to the blockchain for a short moment, I found the chaptr in your
whitepaper to see if could  help me to clarify some ongoing doubts,  I also
copy it below for the purpose of this discussion. However, it does not
really say what blockchain is and how it work
A few thoughts and questions from what I have read so far, please comment
if you can and correct if wrong-
i this discussion develops into anything meaningful maybe Carl will set up
a call
1. Tau (as in the whitepaper) is a name for an ideal system of sorts, which
is an instance of a blockchain. The whitepaper from my understanding
describes a type of ideal system that can be applied to anything in any
configuration, is that so? or not? if so, isnt it still a bit abstract, the
description of a vision of some kind?
(I know all about being vague myself)

2.  is the blockchain an architecture? a model? a blueprint for
transactions?
If yes to any of these, then please provide some working examples of the
blockchain, in particular in relation to its transparency, auditability. I
would like to evaluate any bclockchain transaction end to end to assess
its accountability against standard auditability criteria, So far, I have
been unable to do so because although
people say that the blockchain is a way to uphold transparency and
accountability nobody that I know of has been able to see anything, let
alone audited
This latter remark comes from a KR point of view ie
if we were to standardize the knowledge representation for the blockchain,
what
would that look like? what concepts, elements, entities, constructs,
algorithms relationships etc would be there

Back to work, have a nice weekend all
P

https://www.idni.org/whitepaper_community_draft.pdf
 2.3.3 Blockchain As for the time of writing these lines it is important to
explain what blockchains are for, since currently the world is largely full
with misconceptions for what blockchains can do which other best-practices
and cryptographic primitives cannot do. The answer is that blockchain
solves the problem of decentralized timestamping. Many forms of securing
data can be done without any blockchain but with the use of public key
infrastructure, hashes, and other cryptographic means. However the problem
of securing an ordering of events in time was shown to be unsolvable in an
environment that does not assume trust, cf. the Byzantine Generals Problem.
Satoshi Nakamoto [8] was the first to come up with an approximate solution
which 20Waiting is also a possible solution as proposed by Buridan, but is
not guaranteed to work. 19 is based on cryptographic assumptions. This
solution is very expensive (and not only in financial terms) and therefore
is highly unrecommended for cases where decentralized timestamp is simply
not required. However, it is required at the scope of Tau. Tau’s blockchain
is a ledger of its own code. Each block contains the current Tau code and
the next block contains the next code, in a fashion similar to
“auto-update” 21 . The time-ordering of those codes is vital: if clients
are not aligned regarding which code version to choose, they may break down
the ability to even communicate over the network with one another, e.g. in
case that the network protocol has been modifided in a
non-backward-compatible way. One might ask: which kind of blockchain
algorithm will Tau use? And the answer is trivial: it’ll use whatever its
users want it to use. If one day a better decentralized timestamp algorithm
will be invented, it can then be incorporated in the next autoupdate.



On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 10:06 PM Kilian Kunst <kilian@idni.org> wrote:

> Dear Paola,
>
> It's a pleasure to connect with you!
>
> I understand that many people have misconceptions about what a blockchain
> can do and what it's good for - I'm sure we all ran into such consultants
> at conferences in the past. :)
>
> Just days ago, we published our whitepaper, which hopefully will be able
> to shed some light onto your stated points:
>
> <http://goog_711244734>
> https://www.idni.org/whitepaper_community_draft.pdf
>
> It's abstract reads:
>
> *We describe the systems Tau-Chain and Agoras, the former being a
> peer-to-peer network which is fully and effectively defined by its users,
> and the latter being an economy built on those capabilities, facilitating
> economics of knowledge among other supporting aspects. Tau is a
> next-generation intelligent social network and discussion platform based on
> a newly proposed paradigm, termed here Human-Machine-Human Communication,
> offering a logic-based set of solutions to problems related to large-scale
> discussions, decision making, software development, artificial
> intelligence, philosophy of law, and more. *
>
> I very much invite you to ask questions and I'd be very happy to have a
> live Q&A between some of your people and the founder of our project, Ohad
> Asor.
>
> Should I start by sharing our whitepaper with your group or will you,
> prior to that, reach out individually to people in order to distribute the
> ideas of our project and organize a Q&A?
>
> Very happy to learn more!
>
> Thanks,
> Kilian
>
> [image: created with MySignature.io]
> <https://mysignature.io/?utm_source=logo>
>
> Kilian Kunst
> Community Manager | Intelligent Decentralized Networks Initiatives LTD
> site:  www.IDNI.org <http://www.idni.org/>
> email:  Kilian@idni.org
> [image: created with MySignature.io] <https://twitter.com/TauChainOrg>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 1:56 AM Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Kilian
>> I just received this email together with the follow up thread, but no, I
>> had not seen the email in June!!!
>> How could this be? I am meticulous about responding to all emails
>> But now that I have seen you joined the mailing list, (we gen an alert)
>> and your name is familiar I spotted the email coming from you
>> and opened it. So sorry I did not reply before.
>> WELCOME!!
>> Decentralization is good but the blockchain has baffled me and made me
>> anxious. I recently came across a KPMG consultant who is doing a PhD in the
>> blockchain
>> and even he could now answer questions. Met a few top blockchain
>> consultants at conferences and what they were saying
>> was a bit iffy, and not in agreement with what others were saying
>>
>> My main problems with the blockchain:
>>
>> it is the contrary of what it says it is (it is not transparent, not
>> audible, it is designed to crack and make
>> responsible people for the cracks anonymous and not accountable etc)
>>
>> it is too closely linked to crypto, which is something volatile
>>
>>
>> so YES PLEASE  tell us all about projects and allow us to ask questions,
>> tell us all
>> Carl has some magic in the way of organizing calls so if you want to do a
>> call sometime we may be able to get some people to join
>> or even better for me, post some papers and videos of your presentations
>> then we can do a question and answer
>> session
>> Let us know how you would like to interact with this froup and why AI KR
>> is relevant to you, etc
>>
>> Look forward to exchanges
>> Paola A (she)
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 7:08 PM Kilian Kunst <kilian@idni.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Paolo & Carl,
>>>
>>> with great interest I came across your AI KR Community Group, as we
>>> currently are looking for opportunities to collaborate in the fields of
>>> computational linguistics, machine learning, KRR and finite model theory.
>>>
>>> IDNI <joanna@math.su.se> (Intelligent Decentralized Networks
>>> Initiatives) is a research oriented company with the goal to solve the
>>> bottlenecks in discussion scaling
>>> <http://www..idni.org/blog/the-new-tau> with the help of the blockchain.
>>>
>>> In more detail, it is about transforming natural languages into logical
>>> formulas while maintaining the semantics.
>>>
>>> Do you think this could be interesting for your community group?
>>>
>>> If yes, I'm sure we could provide you with exciting research topics in
>>> this area.
>>>
>>> I'd love to hear from you to further explore possibilities of
>>> collaboration.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Kilian
>>>
>>> [image: created with MySignature.io]
>>> <https://mysignature.io/?utm_source=logo>
>>>
>>> Kilian Kunst
>>> Community Manager | Intelligent Decentralized Networks Initiatives LTD
>>> site:  www.IDNI.org <http://www.idni.org/>
>>> email:  Kilian@idni.org
>>> [image: created with MySignature.io] <https://twitter.com/TauChainOrg>
>>>
>>>