QCLUG Meeting Notes: Feb 8, 2022

[William Bean]

Call to order & brief introductions.  Nice to see some new faces, and good attendance after a few months break from holiday/covid!

Crypto Currency Introduction by Alex Maidak

Brief history of Bitcoin
Started with Satoshi, 2009 whitepaper, in which he describes "A peer-to-peer electronic cash system"
Fundamental 1: Crypto-transactions using public/private keys used to sign transactions

Loss of private key leads to loss of funds

Here we pause to acknowledge Travis's loss of 1 BTC, RIP

Fundamental 2: Timestamp server/blockchain

Transactions gathered into sets called blocks

Prior block is hashed and its hash is included in current block

Fundamental 3: Proof-of-work
each block has a nonce, which is basically a string that provides the correct number of leading zeros in the hash of the block.  Miners try to compute the hash quickest to award themselves coins in the block.

hash of previous block validates the previous block's addition to the chain.

All nodes validate each block to agree it is the valid next block on the chain, and progress to the next

Is Bitcoin a success?

BTC network -- 3-7 transactions/sec (and not growing)
VISA 50-100k transactions/sec
BTC has 500-1000bn market value, so...

Ethereum, Vitalk Buterin 2013 @19 years old
What if blockchain wasn't just a database?  What if it could do programmatic steps: a "smart contract"
Ethereum blockchain as an escrow? if/then payments
NFTs -- Nonfungible Token, a record on the blockchain.  Like baseball cards: NBA Top Shot

IPFS - Interplanetary Filesystem, Juan Benet 2014

Make the internet more decentralized (remove importance of big providers like AMZN/GOOG)
Content Addressable Storage, so you don't get Rick Rolled when trying to find an armadillo image (key feature)
some side conversation about BitTorrent Magnet Links??

On NFT/web3 overall:
Read Moxie Marlinspike article: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
 

Crypto-Controversies:
Ethereum DAO Hack - 2016, $55M in eth taken, and key Ethereum insiders conspired to reverse it on the chain.
BitCoin block size wars - 2017, bitcoin cash fork, miners/buyers voted with their wallet, and the small block size seems to have won.

Q/A:
Which crypto should I invest in? -- Alex soap-boxes his opinions on random crypto currencies & forks.  Alex doesn't seem to be fond of "shit-coins".

Travis gives a detailed explanation on how he lost 1 full BTC, and partially blames the QCLUG for his harddrive being cryptolocked/ransomwared.  Do we owe Travis 1 BTC?

Thanks for attending, and thanks Alex for the insightful presentation!

-- Bill Bean

[Alexander Maidak]

Thanks All who attended. 

If you're interested here is a link to my slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a2FpBarcMl3nBgPrgbJ2M3pjsxLbNHba2mIuHynhrjM/edit?usp=sharing

-Alex

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[Denny Goad]

This is great stuff!

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