in case anyone is reading this thread later: per the above, I wrote the author a lightly edited version of nadam's question and a summary of this thread. He replied as below, offering to connect with people who know more. I asked nadam if he was interested but didn't receive a reply. So I didn't follow up except to say "thank you" and let the author now I've copied his comments into the thread.
Author's reply:
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Hi,
thank you for reaching out to me, and for your interest in IOTA. You are right about the Tangle paper - I've put a lot of effort in it, and also tried not to overcomplicate it. But, well, it's "make things as simple as possible, but not simpler" thing - nothing comes for free, and so IOTA is really much more complicated than traditional cryptos, one simply cannot understand it without investing some effort first.
Regarding your questions: first of all, I'd like to stress that that paper is more about the Tangle - an idealized mathematical model, than about concrete details of IOTA's implementation. In view of this,
- are nodes full nodes?
In the paper it doesn't matter, there the nodes are just entities that sign the transactions and (more importantly) choose where these transactions will be attached.
- Is the history maintained in each node?
In principle, yes. Note, however, that the tip selection algorithm only uses the recent history of the system (that cumulative weight calculation only depends on this). This opens possibilities for periodic snapshotting: for the system to work, a node should know that recent history, and the account's balances before.
- How much storage does a node need?
- How fast is a transaction confirmed?
This depends too much on the concrete details of the implementation. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert there, I'm too much a "theory" guy. Should I connect you with someone more qualified?
Author's reply:
------
Hi,
thank you for reaching out to me, and for your interest in IOTA. You are right about the Tangle paper - I've put a lot of effort in it, and also tried not to overcomplicate it. But, well, it's "make things as simple as possible, but not simpler" thing - nothing comes for free, and so IOTA is really much more complicated than traditional cryptos, one simply cannot understand it without investing some effort first.
Regarding your questions: first of all, I'd like to stress that that paper is more about the Tangle - an idealized mathematical model, than about concrete details of IOTA's implementation. In view of this,
- are nodes full nodes?
In the paper it doesn't matter, there the nodes are just entities that sign the transactions and (more importantly) choose where these transactions will be attached.
- Is the history maintained in each node?
In principle, yes. Note, however, that the tip selection algorithm only uses the recent history of the system (that cumulative weight calculation only depends on this). This opens possibilities for periodic snapshotting: for the system to work, a node should know that recent history, and the account's balances before.
- How much storage does a node need?
- How fast is a transaction confirmed?
This depends too much on the concrete details of the implementation. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert there, I'm too much a "theory" guy. Should I connect you with someone more qualified?
Best regards,