back

by raphlinus·4y ago·view on hn ↗
It's funny how the comments here are polarized, some of them claiming that Jepsen slaughtered RDX, others that it proved that the consensus layer is rock solid.

Let's appreciate this for what it is. Blockchains are, at their heart, a type of database (or at the very least a ledger which can be the foundation on which some subset of database semantics can be layered). Performance and reliability are empirical claims which can be tested empirically, using the kind of methodology that Jepsen has been innovating for many years. It is very much to the credit of RDX Works that they subjected their product to this type of testing. I'm not saying anything about the way the use the test results in their blog post and marketing materials, though.

What I'd like to see going forward is that it's routine for blockchain-based databases to be tested the same way as real databases, based on actual shipping product rather than speculative goals. Whether you think this would be validating or devastating reveals quite a bit about your preconceptions, but either way would be a win for truth and progress.

1 comments
I would love for a highly reputable team or individual to test blockchains and their claims. However, the testing should be done in a way that respects the fact that blockchains are a different type of database and should be judged as such.

For example, because of the blockchain trilemma, increasing transaction speed isn't always a good thing since it could sacrifice decentralization.

Right but there's a noticeable difference between claiming millions of transactions per second on your blockchain home page and having around 5 in an audit. Sure transaction speed isn't always a good thing, and 5 tps might be very good, but then it should be marketed as such and with a slower speed than competitors, rather than say it broke a world record, maybe ?
No offense but you and the people downvoting me don't seem to understand blockchains very well. If TPS is all that matters then there would be no need for a blockchain, just use a traditional database.

As someone who's been in the blockchain space for 8 years I've seen numerous scamcoins become popular because they lure people in with claims of high TPS. High TPS isn't actually that hard of a problem. High TPS with decentralization and security IS hard.

Case-in-point, blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum limit TPS on purpose specifically because they care about decentralization. After all, that's the whole point of a blockchain.

I would encourage you and the people downvoting to read up on a few things. 1) The blockchain trilemma. 2) Why Bitcoin and Ethereum limit transaction speed and block size. 3) Layer 2 Rollups (zkRollups) that offer an actual solution to transaction speeds without sacrificing decentralization.

In summary, my point is that judging a blockchain by the standards of a traditional database is like judging a traditional database by the standards of a filesystem. Sure they both store data and yes a filesystem might store data faster but there are other constraints that make them fundamentally different (like ACID transactions).

I agree TPS doesn't matter, what I'm saying is that honesty does ! Who cares, they could have claimed a record of 5 TPS and that would be it, why lie about millions, speak of a world record, and then launch an army of over-invested mobs fawning over it everywhere ?

We understand crypto very well: the goalpost is always changing for a solution looking for a problem. Yday you were probably telling everyone your investment was the best because it could handle a million per second, today you tell us we're idiot: TPS don't matter. So what matters, what is this thing good for ? It's no better than Ethereum and at least Ethereum can launch a tree of related scams so it has half a utility.