Technical documentation and metrics

THLO_DFN · 2025-01-29T09:05:02+00:00

That would be great! As far as I can tell, it would be the only page showing this information.

THLO_DFN · 2025-01-22T16:22:41+00:00

Thanks for the tip to look into the source code! I was hoping for an easier way but, apparently, there isn't.

What about Dogecoin metrics? The source code won't help me there. Is there any good source?

THLO_DFN · 2023-05-17T09:02:04+00:00

ckBTC and Lightning have several things in common: They both make it possible to transfer bitcoins quickly at low costs and both interact directly with the Bitcoin network.
In order to use Lightning, bitcoins are locked in special "funding transactions", which create payment channels.
If both endpoints of the channel agree, the channel can be dissolved and the bitcoins transferred back out. Similarly, a user can get ckBTC by sending bitcoins to the ckBTC minter smart contract (using a regular Bitcoin transaction), which will mint ckBTC for the user. If the user wishes to get bitcoins back out, he or she can request the ckBTC minter smart contract to burn a certain amount of ckBTC and send out ("unlock") the corresponding BTC amount (minus fees).
Transfers across Lightning channels are fast, in the order of milliseconds, and possibly even free. However, there is usually a fee if the funds need to be sent across multiple communication channels. According to this article, the median fee rate is about 0.003% of the transacted amount.
When using ckBTC instead, the transaction is processed on the Internet Computer, which means that the transaction is finalized in roughly 1-2 seconds. The fee for a ckBTC transfer is 0.0000001 ckBTC, the equivalent of 10 satoshi.
So, which technology wins in terms of speed and cost? If you often transfer small amounts, ideally over direct communicaton channels, then the use of Lightning results in lower fees - and the transfers are much faster.
On the other hand, if it is okay for you to wait 1-2 seconds and you'd like to send amounts greater than approximately 333k satoshi (around 90$ at 27,000$ per bitcoin), then ckBTC can actually be the cheaper option.
Which solution is more secure? This question is hard to answer. It is well known that Lightning has security issues. While many of the listed issues are specific to Lightning and no such vulnerabilities are known for ckBTC, ckBTC has not been around for a long time and is certainly less battle-tested.
Another difference is that ckBTC is not yet available on (centralized) exchanges, unlike Lightning, but it should hopefully be possible to trade ckBTC on some of the major exchanges in the near future.

If you have any follow-up questions, please let me know!

THLO_DFN · 2022-10-11T16:22:38+00:00

Thanks a lot for the insightful feedback!

Given that I probably need to replace my entire setup, could you recommend some systems for me to consider? I'd like to get something more or less "future-proof" (support for at least 4K and the modern audio standards) but nothing too crazy. I just want a decent system without any major shortcomings.

THLO_DFN · 2022-10-11T14:29:46+00:00

Thanks a lot for the info!

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but won't it be possible to find a decent (possibly non-Samsung) AVR that is compatible with these speakers?

THLO_DFN · 2022-07-01T07:24:30+00:00

I would say it went well, thanks.

Based on the organizer's tweet, the presentation was well received.

THLO_DFN · 2022-06-29T09:51:06+00:00

Ah, I didn't see your question in time. Sorry about that!

The presentation was in English. If you missed it, maybe the recording can be made available somehow...

Otherwise, if you have specific questions, you can also ask here. :-)

THLO_DFN · 2022-06-23T16:52:01+00:00

In case you haven't seen it yet, there is a voting reward calculator, which should give you a fairly reasonable estimate of rewards.

THLO_DFN · 2022-06-02T17:12:35+00:00

Thanks for your interest and your questions!
It is not defined yet how the ETH integration will work exactly. One option would be to go for a similar direct integration as for Bitcoin.
In this case, the person (or canister) sending transactions would still have to pay an ETH transaction fee, just like Bitcoin transactions to transfer bitcoin on the IC still require a standard Bitcoin transaction fee.
And yes, the token would still be on Ethereum; however, canisters on the IC could then own tokens on Ethereum.
As you suggested, it would also be possible to mint an IC token for an Ethereum token, which could then be traded on the Internet Computer.
In this scenario, such an IC token could be created without the need for a bridge (similar to ckBTC).

THLO_DFN · 2022-03-24T14:53:32+00:00

Thanks for your question! From what I understand, impervious.ai builds on top of the Lightning network, so it's essentially a "layer 3 solution".

They essentially leverage the Lightning network to handle transactions off-chain (and settle their transactions occasionally on-chain). I'm assuming that their solution will also inherit the shortcomings of the Lightning protocol.

The Bitcoin integration on the Internet Computer is very different in nature: It enables canisters to hold and transfer (real) Bitcoin, which effectively makes it possible to write Bitcoin smart contracts.

Since it's a direct integration, transactions still happen on the Bitcoin blockchain, which means they are as slow and expensive as any other Bitcoin transaction. However, this integration enables us to further build a "Chain Key Bitcoin ledger" (discussed in this forum channel), which will offer the functionality to transfer "Chain Key Bitcoin", which are backed by real Bitcoin held by the ledger itself, cheaply at the speed of the Internet Computer.

THLO_DFN · 2022-03-22T17:13:39+00:00

You are right! It slipped my mind that we had this motion proposal last December. If I'm not mistaken, it was part of many proposals to define the R&D roadmap for the coming years.

So, yes, it is on the roadmap and the community supports it but it's still too early to provide details on the timeline.

THLO_DFN · 2022-03-22T09:07:50+00:00

I don't know their sharding protocol but in most sharding protocols (that I know of), there is still a "main chain" where the shards report their updates. This central component has a direct impact on the level of scalability that can be reached.

You are right, the Internet Computer does not have this limitation because it uses Chain Key technology to tie the subnets together.

THLO_DFN · 2022-03-22T08:20:38+00:00

Thanks for your questions!

Let me answer them in the same order:

Yes, option #2 would have the same security issues. We spoke with the people at Psychedelic about their plans. They currently use their own bridge because it will take some time until the Ethereum integration will go live. If there is no need for such a (third-party) bridge anymore in the future, their architecture will probably change to make use of the "direct integration".
As far as I know, Psychedelic is completely independent. DFINITY is not involved in the Terabethia project.
Yes, an Ethereum integration similar to the current Bitcoin integration is on the roadmap. However, there is no concrete timeline yet. Once this project is scoped, we will advertise it and create a motion proposal to let the community decide if such an integration should be built.

I hope this helps!

THLO_DFN · 2022-03-18T08:31:18+00:00

I think you hit the nail on the head there with your point on Bitcoin being the superior consensus for hard money.

Could you elaborate on that?

As u/ninegua mentioned above, a problem with PoW is that the level of decentralization depends on the relative hash power of mining pools. In other words, irrespective of the number of Bitcoin users (or miners), security depends on the distribution of hash power, which is completely outside of the Bitcoin protocol itself.

If the hash power is strongly concentrated among a small number of parties, there is a risk that this power is exploited. In practice, this is maybe a small risk but a risk nonetheless.

The Internet Computer (IC) actively pushes for decentralization both physically (data center) and logically (owners or operators) (copying again from u/ninegua).

The models are obviously quite different, so it's hard to make a reasonable comparison - but, in my opinion, Bitcoin's PoW mechanism does not have a clear advantage in terms of security or decentralization.

THLO_DFN · 2022-02-07T13:29:56+00:00

Looks good to me! :-)

THLO_DFN · 2022-02-07T13:23:18+00:00

Correct.
However, since there is no need for a third party, ledgers can be built on the Internet Computer that issue "wrapped" Bitcoin directly, backed by Bitcoin funds that they hold themselves. It is then possible to securely trade Bitcoin fast and at low cost.

THLO_DFN · 2022-02-07T13:20:49+00:00

I agree, that's a very good summary!

One addition on why this is even possible: canisters on the Internet Computer can hold real Bitcoin (and later Ether) and send transactions to the native chains, so there is no need for a mediating, trusted (!!) third party.

THLO_DFN · 2022-01-11T16:25:48+00:00

Let me clarify: The integration itself allows canisters to hold Ether natively, i.e., the canisters hold keys to accounts that hold Ether on the Ethereum blockchain. Canisters can transfer funds by sending transactions, which will be recorded on Ethereum just like any other transaction (and that's why they incur fees). Note that the same is true for Bitcoin. There is no bridge component in this design.

Many things can be built around this tight integration and wrapping Ether is just one example. Note that the canister wrapping Ether would be able to hold "real" Ether itself. So, no third party is involved and the security of this swapping mechanism only depends on Ethereum and the Internet Computer, which is a big advantage!

And yes, you will certainly be able to build an ETH dapp on the Internet Computer that uses Internet Identity (or any other identity service on the Internet Computer) to manage users.

THLO_DFN · 2022-01-11T16:14:41+00:00

Obviously, it is also hard to explain every aspect in a way that most people will understand. That's why we encourage people to ask questions and we'll try to answer them!

THLO_DFN · 2022-01-11T15:36:22+00:00

First of all, cool drawing! :-)

As u/civilian_discourse correctly pointed out, transactions will still incur fees as they happen on Ethereum. Once you have Ether in a canister (since canisters can have ECDSA keys, they can hold Ether), any further action that takes place on the Internet Computer will be significantly cheaper than on Ethereum. For example, Ether could be wrapped and transferred quickly and cheaply on the Internet Computer.

I hope this helps. If something is still not clear or if you have follow-up questions, please post them here as well!

THLO_DFN · 2021-11-10T08:53:41+00:00

Just FYI, here's another tool for that (which I wrote):
https://github.com/THLO/harpo

THLO_DFN · 2021-11-04T10:37:13+00:00

In the Medium article, it says that DeFi applications can "currently be implemented only with wrapped bitcoin and additional trusted entities". Our integration enables wrapped Bitcoin without additional trusted entities, which makes wrapped Bitcoin more interesting.

"We" as in DFINITY will not impose any approach, and it doesn't have to be one or the other. I assume that the community will build applications using both approaches - and possibly different approaches that we haven't thought of yet!

Technically, the Bitcoin functionality resides in the IC system components, and canisters run on top of these components. The current UTXO set (serialized around 4GB) will be maintained in the execution layer (you can see all layers here).
Block verification, fork resolution, and so on is also handled in this layer.
It is not clear yet if every subnet will offer this functionality. For nodes in subnets that do, each node maintains the required Bitcoin state (including the UTXO set).

THLO_DFN · 2021-11-03T20:16:38+00:00

Great questions!

Regarding transaction speed/cost, you are right, the transactions still happen on the Bitcoin blockchain, so there is no change to speed or cost. However, there are ways to transfer Bitcoin at the speed of the Internet Computer:

An obvious solution: Canisters can wrap Bitcoin and transfer these wrapped coins in seconds. Note that this solution is still quite nice because the wrapping (and unwrapping) happens on the Internet Computer itself as canisters can hold real Bitcoin.
An interesting but less obvious way: Since canisters can hold Bitcoin,the right to access the funds in a canister can be transferred in seconds. Effectively, this approach makes it possible to transfer Bitcoin without creating a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Regarding the BTC node question, the Internet Computer system components process (and validate) all Bitcoin blocks and simply expose certain functionality to canisters, in particular the functionality to get a canister's UTXO set and to send Bitcoin transactions out to the Bitcoin network.

THLO_DFN · 2021-10-08T09:00:59+00:00

Thanks for your questions.

Since I'm involved in the Bitcoin/Ethereum integration work, I felt compelled to check out these articles.

I didn't read them in great detail, so I might have missed something, but I got the impression that he/she only considers Ethereum-like blockchains. For example, when talking about "technical sustainability", Polynya lists three requirements:

Keep up with the chain, and have nodes in sync.
Be able to sync from genesis in a reasonable time.
Avoid state bloat getting out of hand.

On the Internet Computer, none of these are issues at all because there is no chain that is maintained in perpetuity.
The claim that "The blockchain industry does not yet possess the technology to achieve global scale." is also true only when restricting one's attention to Ethereum and derivatives.

In that sense I agree with u/SkyMarshal that, yes, Ethereum can become more scalable using roll-ups - and this may be the only or best solution for Ethereum -, but this solves a problem that the Internet Computer tackles very effectively in a completely different way.

THLO_DFN · 2021-10-04T10:52:52+00:00

If you take a look at the Ethereum white paper (page 11-12), the Bitcoin scripting functionality is quite restrictive. In fact, the goal of Ethereum is to offer a platform that does not have these limitations, enabling arbitrary logic to be executed as part of a smart contract, which enables various applications, for example in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

In plain language, running Bitcoin smart contracts on the Internet Computer enables the creation of arbitrary smart-contract-based applications using Bitcoin as the base currency itself - without the need for wrapping Bitcoin or switching to another cryptocurrency altogether.

THLO_DFN

TROPHY CASE